339 - Our Greatest Global Threat: What Really Matters
The United States and China are competing (or are about to compete), knuckles bare, for global supremacy. This is a consummate struggle of the post-Hitlerian, post-Cold War era. Nothing is more important in a bi-polar world. The outcome of this clash between the planet's giants for primacy and control overshadows any subsidiary considerations -- any settling of petty scores. It even dominates (or should dominate) current conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza -- as important, deadly, and consequential as they are.
Our eyes should be on the epochal prize, and on the dangerous consequences of forfeiting what is left of the twenty-first century to a Chinese colossus that has many problems, but also many advantages, and is focused, laser-like, on competing with and then overwhelming the U.S. Beijing, especially under the all-encompassing rule of Xi Jinping, is determined to achieve superiority over its only rival. Xi seeks to make the rest of this century (and beyond) Chinese in its leadership, culture, and political design. He intends to make up for Mao's failures and for Deng's willingness to follow the lead of the West in embracing private, rather than state, capitalism. Xi rightly fears a Soviet-style meltdown; U.S. pretensions and influence-mongering impedes the Chinese greatness that Xi is determined to restore.
Instead of focusing on these and other pressing threats to American hegemony, Trump -- the president who talks grandly but often nonsensically about making America "great" -- is betraying the entire well- and long-constructed edifice of American prosperity and global moral leadership that he inherited, and seems likely relentlessly to abandon and fritter it away.
Instead of taking every opportunity to enlarge and strengthen our fighting forces, especially our naval and air power, Trump devotes his time and mental machinations to the character of straws (paper or plastic?) in the White House, to fighting with the Associated Press over the name of the Gulf of Mexico (America), on what is performed at the Kennedy Center, on trying to ban a collections of words that riff on "diversity," on chasing down students with sensible views, and on settling scores endlessly with the Biden administration and with world leaders who have refused to kiss the monarch's ring: President Volodymyr Zelensky and former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau are his pet peeves, along Sen. Mitch McConnell.
Despite the titanic ongoing and intensifying struggle with China, Trump backs Putin in a slavish manner that weakens Trump and the U.S. in China's eyes, and which could well accelerate Xi's plan to blockade and then conquer Taiwan. Giving major advantages to Putin by (briefly) stopping intelligence sharing and refusing to resupply ammunition and missiles to Ukraine show how dangerous Trump and his minions are, and also how Trump's eye is determinedly focused on being buddy buddy with Putin -- a declining world figure -- without gaining any advantage for the U.S. Xi treats Putin as if he were a poor relation; Trump elevates him to star status.
China is our existential threat now and for the next several decades. Yes, China's birth rates are declining severely and, yes, China is currently enmeshed in an economic crisis that promises to slow its growth rate and make catching up with the U.S. a much more drawn-out process than everyone thought five years ago. But, as DeepSeek's recent startling AI success showed, and as our failure to keep China from bullying its way across the South China Sea reveals, China is just beginning to threaten to end (if that is what it is about to be) the long American century that Washington dominated because of its brawn but also because of its brains and its essential belief in doing what was right. Must we lose our standing in the world, our competitive advantage, our post-Keynesian focus on winning the war for humanity?
President Kennedy enunciated our stirring creed -- " "Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country". He also echoed that sentiment internationally, with USAID and the Peace Corps among the satisfying results. Kennedy's subsequent belief in helping peoples across the globe (President George W. Bush's PEPFAR initiative for HIV/AIDS assistance is another example) demonstrated that the U.S. had not helped to defeat Hitler and held off Stalin just to feather our own national or personal nests. There was nothing transactional about Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Carter, or even Reagan. Leadership for good was the intent.
The Peace Corps introduced young Americans to the world but also tried to provide real benefit to the host countries. Kennedy created USAID to help pull the poor of the world up by their bootstraps. Its betterment efforts are legion in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, and Latin America; it saved lives daily, provided water and nourishment, combatted disease, and worked for good government. Now, in a bizarre and costly denouement, USAID finds itself accused falsely of being "criminal" and profligate by a man who knows nothing about any of the institutions he is wrecking. An apartheid-era South African billionaire (on whom Trump dotes) has no business gutting such a contributor to planetary improvement and welfare.
The very ability of the US to portray itself as "better" than China and more attuned to the real human needs of the world depends on restoring USAID, not on decrying things and people who may or may not be "woke" -- earnest believers in new causes such as human rights, human equality, and women's liberty. Diversity is a good. So is equality and inclusivity.
President Kennedy and successive USAID administrators were devoted to helping the peoples in the world who are underprivileged, struck by unexpected calamities, beset with various afflictions, subject to epidemics, or victimized by scourges like HIV/AIDS and multidrug resistant tuberculosis.
Likewise, discharging 70,000 employees of the Veteran's Administration, and equal numbers of young "new blood" appointees to the State Department and other key components of the apparatus that keeps our Social Security checks coming, our national parks staffed, our forest service sites functioning, our rivers clean, and our polluters held in check, saves a very little money (maybe), but does nothing to strengthen our ability to analyze, strategize about, and compete against China. This gutting of our infrastructure and destroying civilian morale simply shows China how irresolute, how weak. and how foolish we are under a corrupt president who surpasses all others in stupidity and ignorance.
In the long run, destroying our ability to respond sensibly to China depends on having a well-oiled and totally dedicated and responsive bureaucratic machine running smoothly in Washington. Trump has now destroyed that possibility. Letting Musk and his acolytes run rampant through our carefully programmed machines leads naturally to error and misconception, and to the gutting of resources that could otherwise be used to combat the Chinese menace.
By forsaking our historic moral posture regarding the rest of the world's peoples, especially those who are poor and least privileged, we undercut our vaunted soft power and breeds resentment. Why have we abandoned the Nigerians who relied on us or the Zambians? What about the Mozambicans who we have been saving from the ravages of HIV/AIDs? They will remember. And China will notice how we turned our back on the world.
The Nasdaq and Dow Jones indices have demonstrated their disdain for fiddling with tariffs, and with causing consternation in the financial world. They have taken particular umbrage against tariff wars based on personal pique. Trump truly dislikes Trudeau, so he hits our closest and nearest ally with nonsensically punitive tariffs. Doing so may enable new Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney to defeat Pierre Poilievre, the Conservative Party candidate who speaks fondly of Trump. As Carney said stirringly: "We didn't ask for this fight...[but] in trade, as in hockey, Canada will win.... [We] will keep our tariffs on until the Americans show us respect."
Tariffs, we many of us have been predicting, result in unnecessary inflation, vastly higher costs for consumers, and an inordinate waste of time for those trying to work around any high imposts. Trump uses tariffs to show his might, not to accomplish anything economic. Nor is he bringing factories home to the U.S. That takes forever.
In a Congress that was not so thoroughly intimidated by the Executive and could think -- as Congresses once did -- for themselves, we could expect push back and a reining in of someone foolish like Trump. The courts will do some of that, but action there is slow, ponderous, and ultimately to be litigated in the Supreme Court. Absent a Republican Congress that wakes itself up from today's stupor and obeisance (unlikely, so don't hope for it), it is likely that Trump's slashing and burning will destroy our ability to cope even remotely well with China and Xi's ambitions. We are likely to be eviscerated morally and strategically by 2027, when Xi wants to pounce on Taiwan.
This is a continuing American tragedy. Too late those who voted for Trump may soon begin to understand how he is destroying everything that they wanted him to achieve and provide. Instead, they receive chaos compounded with utter weakness. China is ready to pounce.