The Alaska Summit showed the world that Team Biden are a bunch of muppets.
An interesting piece that makes some good points, but is about a decade too late, and which is essentially meaningless in today’s world.
The core fundamental problem with this piece is in following the same terminal-decline-yet-in-total-denial thinking of American policy of recent years/decades - at the core of its messaging and strategy, it is all about how America can ‘manage’ and manipulate others and never about what America needs to do to get it’s own house back in order.
That is why I say this piece is a decade too late, because Obama was basically the last US President who could have played China so.
During the Obama years, America’s decline was not yet apparent despite the catastrophe of the subprime implosion. While there were farsighted Chinese strategists and analyst who saw the truth of it, they were still a long long way off from being able to convince enough of China’s leaders to effect real significant policy changes to capitalise on that decline on a global strategic level, although it was during the Obama years that significant regional push backs started, but that was again more down to Obama’s own bad policy and choices which gave China no other choice.
That is where having actual Chinese subject matter experts advising on policy and strategy could have been significantly beneficial. For example, had Obama-Hillary been less obnoxious in trying to seize the SCS and instead took a slow and stead salami slicing tactic, it might have taken Chinese leaders far longer to pull the trigger on its island bases. Similarly, had the US pushed back harder and earlier when China started to reclaim land, it might have served to limit the scope and breadth of Chinese island building ambitions.
But it was Trump who once and for all exposed American weakness to Chinese leaders. Trump bought the western MSM BS about America dominance wholesale. His entire strategy was basically one designed to box China into a corner and start a fight. Because Trump truly believed he could have delivered a devastating knock-out blow, since that is what the western MSM insists.
But the reality was that Trump wheeled out America’s biggest guns and pulled the trigger on all of them aimed at China, and half of them fizzled while the rest backfired, and China was like, WTF?! Is this a joke or a trick?
But it wasn’t until the pandemic that any lingering doubts were erased permanently. Now China knows what a paper tiger America is economically and politically. It still holds reservations about American military power, but doesn’t fear it any more like it used to.
That is why the old American strategy of trying to play mind games and poker bluffs are no longer viable against China, because it has already shown China its cards to be inferior, so there isn’t a now zero chance of them being able to get into Chinese leaders’ heads to win a bluff.
Now, it’s all about raw national hard power. America still has a lot of that inherited from the hard work of earlier, better generations, but what edge it still has is eroding fast while China is busy building up its own raw hard power and is catching up fast and extending its lead in areas where it has already overtaken America.
It’s like they are in a Mr Universe weightlifting competition, and while the newcomer China is busy doing more reps and achieving real gains, the reigning Champ America is only concerned with rubbing on more baby oil to make its shrinking muscles look bigger and more defined and hasn’t touched any of its rusting exercise gear in ages.
