{"id":218169,"date":"2022-08-22T12:00:37","date_gmt":"2022-08-22T11:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=218169"},"modified":"2022-08-18T08:24:03","modified_gmt":"2022-08-18T07:24:03","slug":"washington-wants-a-new-cold-war-but-thats-a-bad-idea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2022\/08\/washington-wants-a-new-cold-war-but-thats-a-bad-idea\/","title":{"rendered":"Washington Wants a New Cold War\u2014but That\u2019s a Bad Idea"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

15 Aug 2022 – <\/em>As China unleashed live-fire military exercises<\/a> off the coast of Taiwan, simulating a real \u201creunification by force<\/a>\u201d operation in the wake of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi\u2019s ceremonial visit to the island last week, the bipartisan fervor for a new Cold War with China and Russia took greater hold in Washington.<\/p>\n

\u201cLeaders in both parties,\u201d Post columnist Josh Rogin reports<\/a>, \u201cunderstand that the United States has a duty and an interest in \u2026 pushing back against America\u2019s adversaries in both Europe and Asia.\u201d The United States showed that it could take on both China and Russia at the same time, he adds. The Senate voted 95-1<\/a> to add Sweden and Finland to NATO. The Taiwan Invasion Prevention Act<\/a> enjoys bipartisan support. And politicians in both parties scrambled to give the Pentagon even more money<\/a> than it asked for.<\/p>\n

Cold War is America\u2019s comfort zone. We won the last one. We wear the white hats. It\u2019s democracy against authoritarianism. And we\u2019ve got the biggest and best military. Who could object?<\/p>\n

But haunting questions remain. Does a new Cold War\u2014taking on Russia and China at once\u2014serve the real security of Americans? Does it further President Biden\u2019s promised \u201cforeign policy for the middle class?\u201d<\/a> Might most Americans prefer that this country curb our enthusiasm for foreign adventure while focusing on getting our own house in order?<\/p>\n

The existential threat to our security now is the extreme weather caused by climate change, which is already costing lives and billions of dollars in destruction from wildfires, floods, plagues and drought. Monkeypox reminds us that the deadliest attacks have come from global pandemics. Throwing money at the Pentagon doesn\u2019t help. Wouldn\u2019t it be better if Special Presidential Envoy John F. Kerry\u2019s journeys got as much attention as Pelosi\u2019s Taiwan performance? Addressing climate change and pandemics can\u2019t be done without Chinese and Russian cooperation, yet the Chinese officially terminated talks on these issues in the wake of Pelosi\u2019s visit.<\/p>\n

Biden\u2019s foreign policy team has focused on lining up bases and allies to surround and contain Russia and China. But the Ukraine war has revealed Russia\u2019s military weakness<\/a>. Meanwhile, sanctions <\/a>have cut off access to Russian food, fertilizers and minerals vital to countries worldwide and might contribute to a global recession.<\/p>\n

China is a true \u201cpeer competitor,\u201d as the Pentagon calls it. But its strength is its economy, not its military. It\u2019s the leading trading partner<\/a> for countries across the globe, from Latin America<\/a> to Africa to Asia. When Pelosi stopped in South Korea <\/a>after her visit to Taiwan, South Korea\u2019s president did not receive her. President Yoon Suk-yeol, we learned, was on a \u201cstaycation,\u201d attending a play. The snub by a loyal ally, home to nearly 30,000 U.S. troops, is surely a reflection of the fact that China is South Korea\u2019s leading trading partner. The United States would be well advised to focus\u2014as China does\u2014on developing the new technologies that will define the markets of the future, rather than spending more than $1 trillion on items such as a new generation of nuclear weapons that can never be used.<\/p>\n

The revived Cold Warriors assert that the U.S. deployment of forces around China and Russia is defensive. But as Stephen Walt notes in Foreign Policy, this ignores the \u201csecurity dilemma\u201d<\/a>: What one country considers innocent measures to increase its security, another might see as threatening. U.S. administrations kept asserting Ukraine\u2019s \u201cright\u201d to join NATO as security against the threat posed by Russia. Russia saw the possible basing of NATO forces and U.S. missiles in Ukraine as a threat. Biden\u2019s comment that Putin \u201ccannot remain in power,\u201d echoed by U.S. politicians, and the history of U.S. support for regime change around the world, weren\u2019t exactly reassuring.<\/p>\n

Though Washington formally accepts that Taiwan is a province of China, it arms the island<\/a> and deploys more forces to the Pacific. Pelosi described her visit<\/a> as an \u201cunequivocal statement that America stands with Taiwan, our democratic partner, as it defends itself and its freedom.\u201d Beijing views this as an attack on its national sovereignty, a violation of our official position, and as a provocation designed to spur independence movements in Taiwan.<\/p>\n

The Cold Warriors assume that most of the world stands with us. True, our NATO allies rallied against Russia after its invasion of Ukraine, but two-thirds of the world\u2019s population, according to the Economist<\/a>, lives in countries that refuse to sanction Russia. Much of the developing world is skeptical or worse about U.S. claims regarding democracy or the rules-based order. This makes sanctions less effective\u2014China\u2019s purchases<\/a> of Russian oil and gas, for example, have increased by 72 percent since the Ukraine invasion. It also reflects the growing strength of Chinese \u201csoft power\u201d and the declining currency of the U.S. military force.<\/p>\n

Great powers decline largely because of internal weakness and the failure to adjust to new realities. In an era of dangerous partisan enmity, the reflexive bipartisan embrace of a new Cold War is a striking contrast. But the old habits don\u2019t address the new challenges. This is hardly the way to build a vibrant American democracy.<\/p>\n

_____________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> Katrina vanden Heuvel <\/em>is editorial director and publisher of <\/em>The Nation and<\/em> served as editor of the magazine from 1995 to 2019. She has edited or co-edited several books, including<\/em> The Change I Believe In: Fighting for Progress in the Age of Obama (2011) and<\/em> Meltdown: How Greed and Corruption Shattered Our Financial System and How We Can Recover (2009).<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

15 Aug 2022 – As China unleashed live-fire military exercises off the coast of Taiwan, simulating a real \u201creunification by force\u201d operation in the wake of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi\u2019s ceremonial visit to the island last week, the bipartisan fervor for a new Cold War with China and Russia took greater hold in Washington.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":188033,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-218169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-anglo-america"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=218169"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218169\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/188033"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=218169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=218169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=218169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}