Left against empire

No Cold War for This China
Mark Weisbrot, AlterNet
April 17, 2001

The standoff with China has been resolved, but it has raised some serious
and long-overdue questions about our foreign policy in the post-Cold-War
era.

This first one is: does the United States really need to police the whole
world? Because if we are going to remain committed to this job, we can
expect more involvement in incidents of this kind, not to mention wars and
other violent conflicts.

Most Americans do not find this role any more appealing than the idea of
going around to all the bars in Chicago on a Saturday night and breaking up
fights. "We have enough problems here at home," is normally the prevailing
sentiment among the citizenry when the question of overseas intervention is
raised.

But our foreign policy establishment -- the politicians, think tanks, and
many intellectuals and journalists -- remains attached to the idea of
America ruling the world.

"The United States is the only power that can handle a showdown in the
[Persian] Gulf, mount the kind of force that is needed to protect Saudi
Arabia, and deter a crisis in the Taiwan Strait," says President Bush's
National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice.

Do we really want that job?

For half a century Americans were told that policing the world was a
strategic and moral imperative: we were "saving the world from communism,"
and defending our own national security. On this pretext Washington
overthrew democratically elected governments, installed and financed some of
the most bloodthirsty regimes in world history, went to war in Vietnam, and
even supported genocide -- from Indonesia to Guatemala -- when our leaders
found it politically convenient to do so.

Looking at the world in 2001, it's hard to believe that we were really
fighting communism all those years. Today China is the only remaining
communist country with any power, and it is not only a major (if lopsided)
trading partner but also the largest recipient of US foreign investment in
the developing world.

Ironically, that may be what saves us from a new Cold War with China. There
are just too many lucrative business deals that could go sour. China may not
be a rich country, but it has one of the world's fastest growing economies
and a fifth of the Earth's population.

The Clinton administration worked hard to get China into the World Trade
Organization -- it's not quite there yet -- so that US telecommunications,
financial services, and other big corporations could break into these
potentially huge markets. Manufacturers such as Nike and Timberland are
happy with their Chinese production facilities, where workers put in 70-hour
weeks for wages of 22 cents an hour, and are not likely to strike or try to
form an independent union.

This was the Bush Administration's dilemma: some of their biggest corporate
supporters would find it difficult to forgive them if they blew all these
prizes over this one incident. On the other hand, there are still
influential people who would appreciate a new Cold War, for all the purposes
that the old one served.

Besides providing an excuse for the crimes of empire, the Cold War was also
a rationale for our enormous military expenditures. This was America's
unique form of industrial policy, a way to subsidize our leading industries
such as aircraft and computers.

A number of political commentators have suggested that Mr. Bush's recent
unfriendly gestures toward Russia, North Korea, and China (before the
current crisis) might be related to his efforts to fund his own high-tech
subsidy: $60 billion dollars for a missile defense system. But right now --
at least as regards China -- the balance is still in favor of more immediate
business interests. Hence the Administration's delivery of a "non-apology
apology" to resolve the standoff, despite the embarrassment.

The best way to prevent future incidents would be to stop looking for
trouble all over the world. We would never allow a foreign plane with
sophisticated surveillance equipment to fly 70 miles from coast of Florida,
gathering intelligence on our military. Yet Washington insists that it has
the right to make 200 of these kinds of flights each year to spy on China.
You can't have it both ways -- unless you want to claim the status of
Emperor, and pay the price to enforce it. We are already paying more than
$1000 each year -- for every man, woman, child, and infant -- to the
Pentagon, while we forgo urgent needs such as prescription drug coverage for
our senior citizens.

While the American people bear the costs and risks of maintaining an empire,
the benefits do not trickle down. It's time we began to downsize the grand
ambitions of our leaders.

Mark Weisbrot is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research
in Washington, DC.

Elson E. Boles
Assistant Professor, Historical Sociology