The Republican concern with China’s threat to America is understandable, arguably even laudable, as many of China’s economic, security, and human rights policies do, in fact, challenge America.
Republicans suffer from ‘China Obsession’
When that laudable concern turns into a single-minded obsession, however, then it does more than a disservice to America. It becomes exactly that which it was supposed to deter: a threat to America’s security.
Both former President Donald Trump and his running mate, Ohio Senator J.D. Vance, along with the Heritage Foundation and scores of conservative analysts, suffer from this obsession.
If China were the only big country that matters in the world, the China-only camp would be right. But because China isn’t the only country that matters to U.S. interests, the China-only camp is wrong. This is elementary.
The China-only camp could counter that while it’s definitely true that India, Brazil, Mexico, Europe, and Nigeria also matter, China outdoes them in terms of strategic importance that a China-only foreign policy is warranted.
There’s something to this view, but only if we close our eyes to other countries. Surely India, with its huge population and territory, nuclear weapons, and economy, is in the running for second place after America. Ditto for the European Union and Russia. The former has an enormous economy and large population while being weak on the military side of things. The latter has an economy and military in tatters due to its strategically myopic invasion of Ukraine. However, it still has thousands of nuclear weapons and is ruled by a dictator who is evidently willing to place the existence of the world on the line in pursuit of his ends.
Fight for power
The international system is, in a word, rather more complex than the China-only camp would have it. The world used to be bipolar during the Cold War, but it is not yet bipolar today. China is aiming for the status of America’s rival superpower, but it still has some way to go before it gets there, if it gets there. To be sure, Chinese efforts to reach that status threaten American hegemony, but they are still far from threatening the United States.
In contrast, Russia has decisively lost the competition for equal superpower status, as the Ukraine war has exposed Russia as a paper tiger. But Russia’s nuclear rattling—something that China studiously avoids—makes Russia a direct and potentially immediate existential threat to the United States.
Which country therefore deserves more U.S. policy attention? They both do, but for different reasons. China is a rising power, that appears to be largely committed to maintaining much of the international status quo. Russia is a declining power that wants to throw out every possible rule book. Neither can or should be ignored. Both arguably deserve equal attention from the United States.
But there’s an even more compelling reason for paying attention to both. As conservatives surely know, China and Russia have become, or say they’ve become, the closest of allies. We’ll see whether an alliance between a rising power and a declining power is sustainable in the long run, but for the time being it’s a reality. Which means that, willy-nilly, even an unwarranted obsession with China necessitates paying attention to China’s main ally, Russia. Since China appears to have tied its horse to the decrepit Russian wagon, the two countries cannot be viewed independently of each other. If China sneezes, Russia will catch a cold. If Russia gets into even more trouble over Ukraine or invades another former imperial territory, China may not experience massive instability, but it will feel the consequences and the pain.
The political course must be changed
This is why Vance’s casual dismissal of Ukraine—“ I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or the other”—is not just a repudiation of the geopolitical priorities conservatives claim to endorse. It’s also a recipe for disaster: a Russian victory would empower the Kremlin and Beijing to challenge the United States in Europe and Asia, thereby threatening the United States with the one thing conservatives claim they want to avoid at all costs—American involvement in a world war over the Baltic states or Taiwan.
Vance’s stance overlooks the one cheap, easy, and quick way for the United States to diminish China’s challenge. A Russian defeat in Ukraine would be a Chinese defeat (as well as an Iranian and North Korean defeat). A Russian defeat wouldn’t just humiliate China; it would also break the alliance or transform Russia into a full-fledged colony that would draw China’s resources and attention from the United States to the sick man of Eurasia, Russia.
Conservatives can do better, as can a Yale Law School graduate who may become America’s next Vice-President. An America First policy won’t work if the United States adopts a China-only policy. It will work only if the United States adopts a Russia-defeat policy.
Picture credit: trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov
About the Author: Dr. Alexander Motyl
Dr. Alexander Motyl is a professor of political science at Rutgers-Newark. A specialist on Ukraine, Russia, and the USSR, and on nationalism, revolutions, empires, and theory, he is the author of 10 books of nonfiction, including Pidsumky imperii (2009); Puti imperii (2004); Imperial Ends: The Decay, Collapse, and Revival of Empires (2001); Revolutions, Nations, Empires: Conceptual Limits and Theoretical Possibilities (1999); Dilemmas of Independence: Ukraine after Totalitarianism (1993); and The Turn to the Right: The Ideological Origins and Development of Ukrainian Nationalism, 1919–1929 (1980); the editor of 15 volumes, including The Encyclopedia of Nationalism (2000) and The Holodomor Reader (2012); and a contributor of dozens of articles to academic and policy journals, newspaper op-ed pages, and magazines. He also has a weekly blog, “Ukraine’s Orange Blues.” The text you just read was published in The National Security Journal.
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