China in an Era of Weak US Foreign Policy Expertise

China in an Era of Weak US Foreign Policy Expertise

There’s something happening here; what it is is not exactly clear

"The Chinese simply can’t believe their luck: that at the dawn of the electricity-guzzling era of artificial intelligence, the U.S. president and his party have decided to engage in one of the greatest acts of strategic self-harm imaginable."

NY Times journalist Thomas Friedman, at Trump’s slashing alternative energy initiatives to favor BIG OIL & BIG COAL.

China is very complicated and clearly aiming to replace the United States as the predominant economic and military power on Earth. Their universities are accelerating in AI research, hovering to equal or surpass US efforts. Their fleets are now moving beyond the disputed channels in the China Sea, bolstered by a fully militarized, manmade (landfill) airport and support systems in the Spratley Islands. They are challenging Philippine military vessels in traditional Philippine fishing zones, harassing Taiwan and the US vessels that support it, and letting Japan and S Korea know who’s boss. Now, often in conjunction with Russian naval vessels, they are extending their range to encircle Australia and venturing north around Alaska and the melting northwest passage.

With two modern aircraft carriers, stocked with modern attack and fighter jets, they now have the largest navy (in numbers of ships) in the world, and as their sophistication grows, potentially the equal of US naval power. But they have several huge advantages over the United States. First, their forces are concentrated in the Asia Pacific area, while the United States has seven active fleets deployed across the globe. We are thus spread thin when it comes to supporting our south and eastern Asian allies. Second, their military (the Peoples’s Liberation Army – PLA), while politicized to some degree, has only seasoned, highly experienced officers at the top, dwarfing the leadership of our own Department of Defense, led by an emotional, immature, inexperienced alcoholic Secretary of Defense… and lumbers under “DEI cuts” of some of our best senior officers.

But all is not rosy in China these days. The tariff battles with the United States combined with high-tech export bans of sensitive US-designed technology have taken their toll. Chinese college grads are finding a harsh entry-level job market, unemployment of what should be China’s elite engineers and scientists is high, and an over-built and over-leveraged residential real estate market is tanking both property values and the increasingly shaky debt leveraged in support of those failing efforts. The net impact is an unstable economy, one that has imperiled the underlying “peoples’” promise of the Communist Party: give us your total support and we will provide a solid economy for all of our people. An essential part of that economic pledge, one that dramatically impacts both nations, is the profound interdependence on US trade.

President Xi Jinping, now in his third term in a nation that once limited such leaders to a two-term maximum, is playing politics at new and, for him, probably an uncomfortable level. His rapprochement, his very treaty commitments, with Russia were meant to destabilize the US international power dynamics. And while he is exercising an end-run to create stronger trading ties with the European Union and other nations equally aghast at Trump’s bully tactics, nothing quite replaces the sheer volume of Sino-American trade. Xi has reduced the size of the powerful Standing Committee of the Politburo to five members, tied with the lowest number in PRC history. While this appears to be a purge to concentrate his power, he has also announced new efforts to “coordinate” economic and military efforts with Russia and various internal Chinese political entities. In “tealeaf reading” parlance, “coordinate” in China means power-sharing, something that would seem an anathema to a Chinese dictator.

But as much as Xi is facing obstacles to his plans, he has one strong ally in helping him achieve his global power-reach: Donald John Trump. To aid China in its development of AI and all sorts of other technologies, Xi is grateful for Trump’s reversal of alterative energy initiatives (where China is soaring) and his cultural assault on America’s best research universities, his bizarre need to keep the best and the brightest international students (who often stay in the US and become the greatest domestic job creators) out of xenophobic America. He smiles at how, despite Trump’s recent announced support of NATO, he knows that not one single other member of NATO remotely trusts him or his treaty obligation if a NATO nation is attacked. The United States is the only NATO signatory to have benefitted by that clause after the 9/11 attacks.

Xi is happily aware of the battle, even within the Republican Party, over immigration tactics and military support for Ukraine against Russia. Featherweight Secretary of Defense, Pete “how high should I jump” Hegseth, himself a serious national security risk based on his proclivity of using relatively unsecure communication platforms, appears to have halted congressionally approved and desperately need military supplies to Ukraine. Immediately after that announcement and following a totally unproductive call between Trump and Putin, Russia launched its most devastating attack against Kyiv. Despite contradictory statements from his own military, Hegseth justified his hold on those shipments so as to keep US military weapon systems at full capacity. That news made China happy for yet another reason:

“Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told the European Union’s top diplomat that Beijing can’t accept Russia losing its war against Ukraine as this could allow the United States to turn its full attention to China, an official briefed on the talks said, contradicting Beijing’s public position of neutrality in the conflict… The admission came during what the official said was a four-hour meeting with EU foreign affairs chief Kaja Kallas on Wednesday [7/2] in Brussels that ‘featured tough but respectful exchanges, covering a broad range of issues from cyber security, rare earths to trade imbalances, Taiwan and Middle East.’” CNN, July 4th. China is watching the objective metrics of America’s self-unraveling, gleeful that many of these approaches may not be reversible or may take many years to fix. China has more freedom to pursue taking Taiwan these days. As the US pulls back on international aid, China has repeatedly stepped in to take our place. Putin and Xi were particularly gratified at the rapid demise of our Voice of America radio platform.

With the stock market vacillating at every bit of news, Xi is focused on the real economic harm Trump’s policies have done to the United States: “Analysts have sounded the alarm after the value of the U.S. dollar suffered its worst drop in nearly five decades. The sudden plunge in value is reportedly likely to trigger a price hike in everyday items as well as cause visitors to the country to experience a jump in expenses.” The Mirror US, July 4th. As the US increases its deficit to implement the tax cuts for the rich, the marketplace for US treasuries (how we finance the deficit) has demanded significantly higher interest because of the general global perception that the US is now a much riskier economy. We pay that interest as one of our highest priorities.

I’m Peter Dekom, and as much as Donald Trump has declared China to be our number one enemy, his only weapon seems to be “tariffs,” but no one on Earth has done more to amplify and solidify China’s growing global power (at our expense) than Trump himself.