Trump is ginning up a cold war with China solely to distract from his own corona incompetence. Not for something genuinely noble - like Taiwan's independence - or something really critical - like North Korean proliferation - but solely to cover his a** businessinsider.com/trump-says-chi… /1
This is astonishingly irresponsible. Yes, the CCP has been a terrible actor in all this. It repressed critical information early and fought travel bans. The party carries much responsibility, and we should say so. And it is also true that the possibility of a twilight conflict /2
with China has been real for decades. China hawks have long warned this outcome was likely. But we should not encourage the worst outcome or jump toward it. We should not purposefully stoke an open competition with a near-peer competitor. We might still be able to find a modus /3
vivendi on at least a few shared interests like climate-change or trade rules. Yet Trump is purposefully going for the worst possible outcome with China, just to save himself politically. This is terrible. /4
The Trumpish responses to this thread have been pretty meager:
A. Of course we can fight a cold, or even hot, war with China & win. That's not the point. Ideally we would avoid that outcome.
B. If we must cold war with CN, we should do it for genuinely good reasons, like /5
A. Of course we can fight a cold, or even hot, war with China & win. That's not the point. Ideally we would avoid that outcome.
B. If we must cold war with CN, we should do it for genuinely good reasons, like /5
its behavior in the East & South China Seas. The risks & expense of this course are high, so doing it solely so that Trump can get re-elected is a terrible reason.
C. A functional relationship w/ CN does not mean overlooking all its awful internal behavior. Indeed, corona may /6
C. A functional relationship w/ CN does not mean overlooking all its awful internal behavior. Indeed, corona may /6
well be the break-point that pushes us to economically de-couple from it. Ok. Let's have that debate. But that's not what Trump is doing. He's amplifying tension for his own narrow purposes, not laying out a long-term strategy of economic withdrawal from CN.
D. This sudden /7
D. This sudden /7
Trumpish belligerence is blatantly opportunistic. Trump was praising Xi not two months ago & celebrates the brutal North Korean leader as his friend. And Trump has claimed to wind down US wars and over-extension. Yet now, suddenly, we're gonna take on China, the biggest state /8
in system? Gimme a break.
The point is that if we must cold war with China, we can. And yes, maybe it's inevitable. But we shouldn't purposefully pick a fight w/ the second biggest country in the world, and certainly not bc Trump is embarrassed and wants to change the subject /9
The point is that if we must cold war with China, we can. And yes, maybe it's inevitable. But we shouldn't purposefully pick a fight w/ the second biggest country in the world, and certainly not bc Trump is embarrassed and wants to change the subject /9
