CHINA IS THE REAL EXISTENTIAL THREAT TO THE UNITED STATES

 

…China’s Communist Party shows it’s real focus by removing University of Hong Cong’s “Pillar of Shame,” a tribute to the victims of the Tiananmen Square massacre in Beijing,

 

Today, our nation has political extremes and the obsessions of social media

 

There is no doubt that there will continue a battle between the far right and Trump supporters, and the left.  But hopefully, the nation will eventually unify and take heed that the real concern about an existential threat is from the Chinese Communist Party.

Unfortunately, I doubt that the nation will ever, really come together.  And to understand the threat from China, it will come way too late, if it ever comes.

I am hoping that there will be, at some point, where the nation will internally see that if we don’t put down our dueling sabers with the other side, in our endless cultural and political wars, we will at least eventually see that the real danger is China itself.

The elections in 1968, 1980 and 2004 were driven by national security concerns.  That being, the Vietnam War, the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan and a generalized feeling of incompetence in foreign matters, and then of course 9/11.

But the elections of 2022 and now, 2024, might fall into another category of the country’s political extremes and the obsessions of social media and of course, cable news networks, such as the Fox network.. The country cannot afford another 15 years of its self-absorption.  In fact. we can’t afford even five more years.

Today, President Biden’s national security posture is anchored in his understanding of American exceptionalism.  It is overseen by those folks who are still replaying the Vietnam/Afghanistan dramas in their minds..  All this, while there is another big group of America that includes the vast financial and technological fortresses of New York and Silicon Valley.  They are quite certain their rise was the work of their genius and not the lucky intersection of all the smartphones and Internet connectivity. 

And all this is happening, while the Democrats’ intellectual wing, is mostly oblivious of those who don’t care a whit about law and order.  And that is namely China, Russia and Iran.  All authoritarian, non-democratic states.

By far the most dangerous of these is China, as it is led by the most able of the absolutists. 

President Xi Jinping is backed by a Communist Party as ruthless as any of its predecessors. The technological, military and economic might of China is greater, as 2021 comes to a close. The might of China today is greater than was the U.S.S.R. at the height of its power.  Even given, that the collapsed empire had a much larger nuclear arsenal, than China’s.

At the time, the United States and its allies were constantly alert to the threat the Soviets posed. The allies had waged a 40-year Cold War against the Soviets across nearly every free continent. It took time, sacrifice, and lengthy and deadly standoffs.

In the past 25 years, we have largely ignored the rising challenge of China and only now are we maybe, approaching an appropriate level of alarm.  

Beijing’s calling cards are now there for all to see.  Such as, their willingness to crush Hong Kong’s quasi-independence.  Also, to erase any Chinese person for any reason in an Orwellian fashion, and to conduct genocide against its minority populations. 

They continue to threaten Taiwan, and to allow a killer virus to escape its country without issuing any alarm.  That attitude is evident in China’s lack of regret, or even the offering of a sincere apology.

To paraphrase Mr. John Mitchell, the former Attorney General under President Richard Nixon, today we fail: “To watch what a country does, not what it says.”

Two decades of battles with Islamist extremism might seem to have left the United States too exhausted for a long struggle with China, much less with a China potentially aligned with Russia and Iran.  

But seriously, there isn’t much of a choice.  Either rally to the cause, or face a severe challenge from China..  A real challenge from China will not be pleasant.  Not for the near term; and most certainly not for our grandchildren.

Rallying is in fact, possible, but it would require an indifference to the radicals at each end of our current politics.  Those who are addicted on either side, and to trashing the other's extreme.

The best of the Trump era was a national security policy, as was its broad re-funding of the military, the Abraham Accords and its vocal alarms about the Chinese.

Now, the best of: Year One for Team Biden, was the new Submarine Accord between Australia, Britain and the United States, aimed at keeping Beijing in check.

But it will take much, much more in going forward. 

Rallying requires national security realism and a resolute bipartisan approach to the extraordinary challenge China poses. Our policy of strategic uncertainty toward Taiwan needs clarifying. Our defense budgets must shift to sea, air and space more quickly.  We also need to hear from a new generation of writers and public intellectuals equal to those who waged the first Cold War.

Serious men and women need to lead the two great parties, if we could ever get the GOP back to what they once were.  We must have two functioning political parties, not just one, as it is today.

We should also hope our political battling between the two parties never ends, as it is a central mark of our freedom.  But it must not be a civil war that separates the nation.

There needs to be a new perspective, and now!  Without that, China will become what the United States has been since World War II.  And that is when this nation will stop being a world leader.

But, in reality, has that already happened?

Copyright G. Ater 2021