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US imperialism targets China in Biden’s new national security strategy

Relegating Russia to second place, US imperialism is gearing up for years — potentially decades — of confrontation with China as an existential threat economically, politically and militarily in a shocking declaration of hostilities, reports CJ ATKINS

PRESIDENT Joe Biden on Wednesday told the US military and foreign policy establishment to focus on “outcompeting China and restraining Russia” in a new national security strategy document.

Biden’s declaration, which runs to 48 pages, was expected last December but was held over apparently to await the results of the anticipated Russian invasion of Ukraine.

With the ongoing war between Moscow and Kiev dominating headlines, Russia comes in for the kind of condemnation one would expect. Russia is relegated, however, to the category of an “acute threat” and not seen as a consequential danger to US global dominance.

“Russia and the PRC [People’s Republic of China] pose different challenges,” the president wrote in his introductory letter. “The PRC is the only competitor with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to do it.”

Essentially, the administration bemoans the fact that China has become economically developed, built an internationally competitive technology base, and established cooperative trade relations with many nations in the world, especially through its Belt and Road Initiative.

The “international order” China allegedly challenges is the global capitalist economy and military empire that the US has controlled without challenge since the destruction of the USSR.

The shift toward pinning down China was declared in earnest by then-secretary of state Hillary Clinton in 2011, when she foretold the beginning of “America’s Pacific Century” in a seminal Foreign Policy article. “The future of politics,” Clinton wrote, “will be decided in Asia, not Afghanistan or Iraq” (though technically those are both Asian states).

Tangible results of the pivot included the drawdown of the US military’s wars in the Iraq and Afghanistan theatres, the regular deployment of US warships to the Pacific waters near China, the return of US troops to the Philippines, and the encirclement of China with a chain of air bases and naval ports.  

Donald Trump put his own aggressive spin on the turn against China, restricting trade and initiating a tariff war on Chinese-made goods. That was followed during the pandemic with the peddling of Covid conspiracy theories that encouraged anti-Asian racism and distracted from his government’s disastrous handling of the coronavirus.

The Biden Doctrine

Now, it’s Biden’s turn. Though his national security strategy is a direct evolution of earlier iterations, the Biden Doctrine is more calculated and explicit in setting the stage for a long cold war.

The president asserts that China has “ambitions to create an enhanced sphere of influence” in its region. This is deemed inexcusable because the US already views the Indo-Pacific area — like most areas of the world — as its own sphere of influence.

Biden broadcasts the complaints of a US capitalist class that China won’t phase out socialism and open its major industries to further foreign control and privatisation. The document condemns China for benefiting “from the openness of the international economy while limiting access to its domestic market.”

The next 10 years will be the “decisive decade,” the strategy predicts, for blocking China “in the technological, economic, political, military, intelligence, and global governance domains.”

The timing of the new national security strategy’s release appears intended to accentuate the attacks on China already appearing in the mainstream media this week. The announcement of the new national security strategy comes just days before the 20th congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) opens in Beijing.

The most important political event in the Chinese political calendar, the congress will draft economic policy for the coming years, assess and possibly recommend changes to the country’s Covid-19 mitigation measures, and elect the party’s leadership.

Most predictions are that the new central committee chosen by the delegates will opt to renew party general secretary Xi Jinping’s mandate for a third term, paving the way for his re-election as China’s president. The move would be a break with the recent convention of top Chinese party and state leaders retiring after two terms.

Biden’s accusation on Wednesday that China is plotting to become “the world’s leading power” on Wednesday adds to an avalanche of Western press coverage portraying Xi as a power-hungry dictator.

Pitching US policy as a struggle against authoritarianism, China’s (and Russia’s) “behaviour” is characterised as “a challenge to international peace and stability.” They are said to be “waging or preparing for wars of aggression, actively undermining the democratic political processes of other countries, leveraging technology and supply chains for coercion and repression, and exporting an illiberal model of international order.”

It is much more likely that Xi’s revival of Marxist ideology in China and his apparent determination to keep the country on the path toward socialism are the things earning the ire of the corporate press and the US government — not concern about democracy within the CPC.

As mentioned, the war in Ukraine provides the convenient point for launching a broadside against Russia, and added to the list of offences are its 2014 annexation of Crimea, military intervention in Syria, and interference in US elections.

By funnelling billions of dollars’ worth of weapons into Ukraine — a policy which the document pledges will continue indefinitely — the Biden administration takes credit for having made Russia’s war “a strategic failure.” It celebrates the fact that the US-led Nato military alliance has been strengthened and expanded thanks to the war.

Planning the next cold war

To guarantee a US-dominated order and contain China, the strategy envisions a number of specific steps. First up are major new investments in the already bloated US war machine.

The 2022 US defence budget broke records, coming in at over $838 billion, even more than Biden had requested from Congress. The US spends more on armaments than the next nine major powers combined, and more than three times what China does. It maintains approximately 750 foreign military bases in more than 80 countries; China operates just five.

The president’s national security strategy will be followed in the coming weeks by the publication of the Pentagon’s own “national defence strategy,” which will make the case for diverting additional US tax dollars toward military spending. Also expected soon is the US’s “nuclear posture review,” a declaration of the Biden administration’s plans for upgrading the country’s nuclear weapons arsenal.

Second, traditional military alliances like Nato will be strengthened further, “particularly on the eastern flank.” Third, new arrangements along the lines of the Aukus nuclear submarine pact, which is aimed at keeping China hemmed in in the Pacific, will be promoted and expanded. The same will be true of regional agreements like the Indo-Pacific Quad.

As aggressive as the administration’s new cold war tactics might seem, for some war hawks, they’re still not enough. Kori Schake, a director with the American Enterprise Institute — a right-wing think tank populated by capitalist ideologues — was critical of Biden’s strategy on Wednesday. She told the New York Times that the current military spending plan of the government “does not envision modernisation” at the needed speed.

In a Times op-ed last month, she wrote that “the deficiency of the Biden administration’s strategy and its lack of foresight” are to blame for supposed Chinese advances. Schake claimed, “The [US] ships, troop numbers, planes, and missile defences in the Pacific are a poor match for China’s capability.”

So, the debate in Washington is between different shades of pro-cold war opinion. Other than a handful of progressives in Congress, there are almost no voices urging detente, co-operation, or disarmament. The US midterm elections are an opportunity to block the even more belligerent Republican caucus from controlling the military budget; but even if the Democrats hold on to power in 2022 and then in 2024, the unacceptable foreign policy status quo will carry on.

It all highlights the weakness of the organised peace movement and the urgent need for the democratic coalitions coming together to fight for progressive domestic policies to add a progressive foreign policy to their agendas. Every dollar spent on weapons is a dollar not spent on healthcare, education, jobs, housing, and infrastructure.

CJ Atkins is managing editor at People's World, where this article appeared — www.peoplesworld.org.

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