As the United States becomes increasingly isolated – ruled by a man who seems to hold the other two branches of government (judiciary and Congress) with alarming disdain – global relationships are changing fast, some obvious… and others under the surface. Most of our traditional allies, at least those who remain with us, have moved from fellows in the promulgation of full global democracy to reluctant allies with what the Economist calls the United States: a flawed democracy. Our strongest supporters, the Likud coalition in Israel (with leader Bibi Netanyahu under a major corruption investigation), and the Tory government in the U.K. (flailing to implement an increasingly unattractive Brexit path, losing voter appeal every day), are themselves facing a new level of isolation as well.
What power the United States does have is a massive economy backed by the most powerful military in the world. There is little international respect for Donald Trump; his boisterous, tweet-driven bully politics that shift daily, sometimes hourly, have alienated most global leaders… as well as their constituencies. As Trump reverses decades of our international commitments – under the internationally despised “America First” slogan – the United States is no longer a trusted and reliable partner in much of anything.
We have lost any moral legitimacy as a world leader, and as we pull economic support from developing nations, there is rejoicing in certain distant global capitals, particularly Moscow and Beijing. Russia seems to be hell-bent in fomenting increased polarization in its disturbing and rather significant use of fake news across American social media, but if sowing dissention in the good old USA was their goal, they have found the perfect ally in Donald Trump.
But China is the nation with the economic and military resources to replace American supremacy as quickly as we cede that authority. Almost as soon as we pull out of any developing nation, Chinese officials are on the spot, ready to take our place, garnering exclusive access to lucrative resources (from agricultural leases across the massive Great Rift Valley in Africa to mineral and fossil fuel rights all over the developing world). You can expect China to accelerate negotiating for the right to establish PRC military bases all over the world as part of the price for it to provide economic aid to nations who no longer see any value in prioritizing relationships with the United States, a nation they believe has simply gone rogue. And once those ties are signed, sealed and delivered, there is almost no likelihood for the United States to come back and resume its past glory within any foreseeable timeline.
The plunge in American credibility has also given developing nations pause in what was once believed to be best form of government on earth: democracy. If democracy can produce modern America, gun crazy, angry and highly polarized, then maybe there is another more reliable political model. It has not escaped the developing world, that the People’s Republic of China has lifted over a billion people out of dire poverty, creating the largest middle class in the world, in a matter of just a few decades.
Effectively, this one-party system – born of ruthless suppression and a Maoist era with two horrifically failed programs (the Great Leap Forward program of the early 1960s and the Cultural Revolution that ended in the mid-1970s) – has settled into a new and vastly more sophisticated era, beginning with Deng Xiaoping in the post-Mao period. Party leaders – charged with “representing the Chinese people” but without a direct popular election – are groomed by the Party from the time they leave college up through the ranks to top Communist Party positions. President Xi Jinping (center above, at the opening of the 19th Congress) made that journey.
With billionaire entrepreneurs – a stark contract to the drab green-gray uniformity of Maoist China – staggering numbers of ultra-modern high rises, floods of shiny new cars driving on highways without potholes, upscale shops in major cities brimming with customers reflect what some view as the ultimate hypocrisy: a communist country with a whole lot of rich oligarchs and a middle class in numbers greater than the entire population of the United States. You don’t have too far to look for the old China… poverty in the hinterlands far from this modern urban sprawl… or understand the pervasive corruption within the PRC power elite… to understand that all is hardly perfect. But in a world that has long accepted the Taoist “harmony of opposites,” this apparent political inconsistency is simply “socialism with Chinese characteristics.”
After Chairman Deng, under a then new 10-year maximum tenure rule, China installed an effective but not particularly charismatic Jiang Zemin, who was followed by Hu Jintao, a man who has been described as a leader with the personality of a stick. In 2012, the Politburo moved what they felt was an easily controlled Xi Jinping to the top spot… but Xi had other plans. He rapidly purged those who did not fully support him, moved his people into key positions and began a publicity program that seems to have elevated him to the same level of cult status enjoyed only my Mao and Xiaoping in the communist era. His anti-corruption program has wide popular support and has given him powerful tools to consolidate his power. In 2017, that same UK-based Economist called Xi “the most powerful man in the world.”
Through his military assertion over a man-enhanced island in the Spratly islands (South China Sea) to his emphasis on building a powerful inter-Asian bloc under his “One Belt and One Road” (“OBOR”) initiative, Xi has been anything but subtle that China, and NOT the United States, is the dominant regional power. This OBOR program will ultimately reach across Asia, the Middle East, and create a new extended link (air, sea and rail) all the way to Europe itself. China’s power will travel with that network, at the expense of American influence.
While North Korea’s Kim Jong-Un is carving his own path, making it clear that he is not China’s lackey, he knows that the PRC would never tolerate a direct border with South Korea, home to a major US military presence. Hence China’s reluctance to topple his regime. With that fly in the ointment, President Xi has taken steps to become an unstoppable power in China, perhaps extending his governance beyond that ten-year rule.
China’s 19th Party Congress began on October 18th in Beijing. “The Congress occurs every five years, and is an opportunity to understand the Chinese leadership’s vision for the direction of the country. 2017’s Congress is slated to be Xi Jinping’s show, as he solidifies his power and appoints his political allies to the Standing Committee of the Politburo.” The Cipher Brief, October 18th. We have much to watch during and after this most significant Congress.
To understand what is happening in Beijing better, former acting CIA director, John McLaughlin, makes these observations in The Cipher Brief: [President Xi] has certainly centralized decision-making and tightened the leadership’s grip on the party — or at least his personal grip. Xi has done this mainly through an extensive anti-corruption campaign — no issue has more political salience in China than corruption. Although the [Communist] party asserted last year that more than a million of its 89 million members had been probed, there is still great skepticism within the party and the public that this has successfully rooted out corrupt practices.
On the economy, Xi and the party are still struggling. Chinese growth, hovering around the 7 percent range, is the lowest in 25 years. The old model of cheap labor producing cheap exports is wearing thin. China’s model is a victim of its own success as increasing prosperity has pushed up wages, raised manufacturing costs, and made businesses less competitive… Xi has also shied away from cutting deeply into the big state-owned enterprises that make up more than 30 percent of the economy and are the source of much corruption…
We may not see an overt move by Xi to stay beyond the traditional two-term limit. One sign that he is however laying the groundwork for that would be if he manages to get himself enshrined in the constitution by name for his ‘thought’ or ‘theory’; the only predecessors so honored are Mao as the modern country’s founder and Deng Xiaoping, as its first great economic reformer…
[China] is a rival of the United States and wants to limit U.S. influence and access in Asia in particular — while maintaining an overall atmosphere of cooperation. Xi has pushed a restructuring of the military aimed at more joint operations and a strengthening of its capabilities in cyber, electronic warfare and mobility — all of this aimed at strengthening its ability to limit access and maneuver by the U.S. and other powers in the Asian theater.
Meanwhile, China has taken some tentative steps to assume broader leadership responsibilities by extensive participation in UN peacekeeping, expansion of port visits and facilities outside Asia, and endorsement of climate accords. It deeply saddens me to watch American influence wane, to see Americans fight each other while clinging to the rather mistaken belief that we can still force the rest of the world to do our bidding. Every day, increasing numbers of global players are simply building a new “work around” the United States and what is left of our rapidly dwindling global power.
I’m Peter Dekom, and I remain stunned at how rapidly American power and influence in the world has declined and equally how quickly China’s power his risen to supplant it.
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