Which Superpower is Damaged More?

 

Which Superpower is Damaged More?

Hint: It’s the one in North America

Xi Jinping had to fire virtually every senior military flag ranked officer of his Peoples Liberation Army. The PLA, which is technically a branch of the Communist Party and not directly part of the Chinese government itself, houses all military branches of the nation. The uniform announced reason for the firings: corruption. Many were sentenced to death (often suspended), but simply, Xi didn’t trust them at all, and while these senior officers may have presided over the accelerated modernization of every facet of China’s war machine, Xi determined that he could not trust them to lead, to follow his policy directives… and clearly annexing Taiwan was still his major focus.

While both superpowers are lumbering with various levels of failure, Trump’s domestic unpopularity, America’s isolation from its (former?) major allies, his embarrassingly cruel immigration policies, his decimation of popular federal agencies, his proclivity to self-aggrandizing projects and garish and obviously wasteful pet projects, his scandal-ridden and obviously incompetent cabinet and his effort to negate that unpopularity by asking red states to redistrict their congressional maps to purge Democrat-friendly voters (mostly Black Americans) into powerless ballot choices… a march into Victor Orbán’s failed notion illiberal democracy. Through all of this is Trump’s established policy vacillation, so bad that world leaders may react to his ill-considered idiotic statements, but at the bottom line, they do not trust a word he says. Bad reputation for a President intending to negotiate with another world leader.

But nothing can be compared with his nation-busting, unilaterally declared WAR against Iran, kowtowing to an equally unpopular leader (especially here in the US) – Israeli PM Bibi Netanyahu. But as much as US consumers join a global inflationary spiral directly related to Iran’s firm control of the Strait of Hormuz (Tehran’s powerful response to Trump’s failing massive military assaults), the longer term economic damage to the United States will come from the deficit exploding wartime cost overruns, the potential of our losing the power of the dollar’s being the major reserve currency on Earth (the dollar is the major valuation reference point for most global commodities), the potential for being unable to place our fiscal debt (which bears current interest paid by taxpayers) and the pressure to raise taxes to feed our increasingly depleted military. As recovering alcoholic, DOD head, Major Pete Hegseth is demanding an extra half a trillion dollar increase to our military budget, clearly the Trump administration does not fully appreciate the financial impact that will shackle America’s future, saddling Americans with huge cost burdens.

CNN’s Kristie Lu Stout (May 15th) drills into the true cost of Trump wartime folly in Iran: “The Pentagon says the cost of the Iran war is $29 billion, a figure that’s higher than the $25 billion price tag it issued to Congress two weeks ago. But according to one war budgeting expert, the conflict will ultimately cost US taxpayers at least $1 trillion.

“On Tuesday [5/14], a senior Pentagon official said the new cost of the conflict included updated repair and replacement of equipment, along with operational costs… CNN previously reported that the earlier $25 billion estimate was a lowball figure that did not include the cost of repairing damage to US bases in the Middle East… Linda Bilmes, a public policy expert at the Harvard Kennedy School, projects that the conflict with Iran will cost American taxpayers at least $1 trillion.” The dollar, which has already lost 10% of its value, will continue to decline. But it is useful to appreciate all the major issues dominating or at least hovering over the Xi/Trump meeting.

David Sanger, cited by Sam Sifton writing for the NY Times‘ The Morning newsfeed (May 15th), presented this summary of the main issues in Trump’s China meeting: “Six weeks ago, Trump pushed off his summit meeting with China’s leader, Xi Jinping, because of the war in Iran. He’d thought the conflict would be over by now, showing Beijing that reports of America’s demise as a superpower were premature. Instead, David writes, Trump starts the meeting today [5/15] ‘bogged down by a far lesser power in a war he started.’

“But Xi’s in a tough spot, too. China gets more than 30 percent of its oil from the Persian Gulf, which is now cut off. Economic growth there is falling as energy prices rise. ‘The result is that this is a summit like few others,’ David writes. It features the world’s two dominant superpowers looking hobbled. Experts aren’t optimistic the sides will announce a major economic deal or resolve their differences.

Smaller nations across Asia are worried about that, my colleague Damien Cave reports. As the summit looms, they’re ‘behaving as if they are stuck in ‘Godzilla’ or ‘Dune’ — moving quietly in small groups, trying not to provoke the wrath of petulant giants.’

Here’s some of what Trump and Xi may discuss:

Trade: Trump hopes China will buy lots of American soybeans, beef and Boeing airplanes. Xi is likely to push for an extension of last year’s trade truce between the U.S. and China, and for the right to import more A.I. computer chips.

Taiwan: Currently, the U.S. says it ‘does not support’ Taiwanese independence. China wants Trump to actively oppose it — and to stop selling Taiwan weapons. (That’s unlikely. But it’s Trump. He could always go off script.)

Iran: Trump will ask Xi to persuade Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Xi’s administration has prodded Iranian officials to negotiate with the U.S., but Beijing sees the war as Washington’s problem.

In the meantime, Trump’s other war – against climate change technology adaptations and AI growth – includes a battle over AI guidelines, chip access and most of all, alternative energy. Trump has effectively relegated Detroit to a “drill baby, drill” uncompetitive automotive policy that almost no one on Earth wants, ceding global car-making outside the US (where EV dominates) to China. What’s worse for American industry is the impact of skyrocketing pricing at the pump, such that most of the rest of the world has all but abandoned oil as the fuel of the future (it will take time to wean much of the planet from oil and gas) and has zero interest in buying energy technologies that rely on coal, oil and gas. This rising economic pressure is over and above the mounting decimation that climate change has already wrought in almost every corner of our world. Trump just may be the wrong leader at the worst time.

I’m Peter Dekom, and Donald Trump seems to be lost as a time-warp anachronism with contemporary military hardware, a 17th century monarch will little or no feeling for functioning effectively in the 21st century.