By Gregory Elich
Text of talk delivered on May 16, 2023, at the International Strategy Center’s ‘International Conference for Peace in Northeast Asia: The South Korea-US-Japan Military Alliance is Stoking a New Cold War.’
We stand at an ominous moment for the Asia-Pacific. The U.S. tightening of the noose around the People’s Republic of China is producing widespread and alarming consequences.
There is a class dimension to Washington’s Indo-Pacific Strategy. By design, the costs of that policy are offloaded onto others, both in the United States and for those who live in the region. The benefits, of course, go to the few.
The bloated and rapidly expanding U.S. military budget consumes so much federal discretionary spending that many human needs are neglected. Meanwhile, military contractors reap enormous profits. Military hardware sales are driven not only by Washington’s Indo-Pacific strategy and the Ukraine war. The U.S. urges its allies to increase military spending, a significant portion of which goes toward buying American military technology.
Earlier this year, at an arms exhibition in Abu Dhabi, Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić was startled by the frenzied buying he observed. He said that “everyone plans to go to war in the next twenty years,” and a global arms race has begun, the likes of which has never happened before. Vučić added, “It is complete madness. When someone thinks of increasing the total defense budget to five percent [of GDP], it is clear to you that everything has gone to hell.”
And indeed, for much of the world’s population, everything has gone to hell. However, military contractors and U.S. policymakers can only delight in the new cold war, in which they see only advantages.
On the other side of the equation, in the United States, homelessness, deteriorating infrastructure, and inadequate mass transportation are just a few of the many urgent issues that are ignored. Nevertheless, many lawmakers are calling for more cuts in social programs. And the Biden administration has declared the COVID-19 emergency over and ended budgetary support, even as the virus continues to kill and disable. But it has long been the norm to starve social programs when imperial interests must be served.
In the United States, anti-China rhetoric is as fierce as it is unremitting. The American public is exposed to a single message of hostility. Bashing China has consequences at home. One cannot deliberately generate such intense levels of hatred for another nation without creating anger and intolerance towards anyone perceived to be of the same ethnicity.
Consequently, there has been a surge in racism and hate crimes against Asians in the United States. One-third of Americans regard Asians as disloyal, and one in five Americans holds the lunatic notion that Asians are at least partly responsible for COVID-19.
The recent mass shooting in Texas is one of many acts of violence against Asian people. Asians have been insulted, abused, threatened, assaulted, and killed. In a recent poll, 72 percent of Asian Americans reported worrying about being threatened or attacked. Over a third said they had changed their daily schedule or routine during the last year out of concern for their safety. And a recent survey by Coqual concluded that for some Asians, “commuting on public transportation has changed from a routine practice to something to avoid at all costs.” The psychological toll of living in fear is beyond measure.
The Department of Justice and the National Institute of Health have targeted hundreds of Chinese-American scientists, scholars, and researchers and criminalized standard scientific collaboration. False accusations and charges have destroyed the careers of many. Such fear-mongering has implanted a perception of Chinese scientists as being inherently untrustworthy.
The constant drumbeat message that economic relations with China are a zero-sum game has racialized attitudes about international trade. The opened Pandora’s box of xenophobia cannot be put away. The harm to the American population’s intellectual, psychic, and moral character will persist for years.
For all the scare-mongering in the media about a potential war with China, what gets ignored is that the United States is already at war with China. This war does not yet include combat, although the U.S. is doing its best to provoke conflict over Taiwan and the South China Sea. For now, this is a hybrid war that includes diplomatic, economic, information, and cyber aggression against China.
Based on the fear that American companies may not be able to compete on a level playing field, the United States has set out to cripple China’s economy. The Biden administration has banned sales of Huawei and ZTE telecommunications equipment, and U.S. envoys have successfully pressured several nations into canceling contracts with those firms.
Many Chinese companies have been hit by Treasury Department economic sanctions and the Commerce Department’s blacklist. In addition, the CHIPS and Science Act and last October’s export controls aim to strangle China’s ability to manufacture advanced microchips and associated equipment. The Biden administration has also strong-armed Japan and the Netherlands into agreeing to restrict the export of chip-manufacturing technology to China.
With the launch of the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, the United States plans to create “resilient supply chains.” In practice, the plan is to cut China out of global supply chains to as great a degree as possible. Over one million foreign businesses operate in China, and that nation is central to the global supply chain, with a support infrastructure that can’t be matched in the region. While it may not be possible to expel China from the global supply chain entirely, the objective is to inflict as much damage as possible. This reckless policy threatens to send economic shockwaves worldwide, and the U.S. economy won’t be immune.
The United States is resolutely escalating tensions in the Asia-Pacific as it fortifies its military encirclement of China. The Biden administration’s National Security Strategy document argues that the U.S. is “in the midst of a strategic competition to shape the future of the international order.” That vision of the future is based on total U.S. economic, political, diplomatic, and military domination in the Asia-Pacific.
The elections of Yoon Suk-yeol in South Korea and Fumio Kishida in Japan have shifted power dynamics in the region. Biden attaches great importance to alliance building. He has said, “When we strengthen our alliances, we amplify our power.” Allied nations are routinely referred to as “force multipliers.” This means that in the event of war, countries such as South Korea and Japan are assigned the role of cannon fodder, sacrificing themselves to further U.S. objectives.
Washington’s Pacific Defense Initiative calls for building “precision strike networks” along the first island chain, which encircles China and includes Taiwan, Japan, Okinawa, South Korea, and the Philippines. If war comes, the U.S. forward-based military posture is intended to confine combat to China and nations along the first island chain. Death and destruction would be visited upon these countries, while the U.S. presumes it would remain untouched.
So, we come to the question of the solution for peace. I would probably not choose the word ‘solution,’ as that seems to imply a formula that can swiftly transform our current predicament into permanent peace in a single step. I believe peace should be regarded as a process rather than an event. It is not a pleasant thought to contemplate, but we are in for a long struggle, especially as Biden, Yoon, and Kishida are all wedded to militarism. It may even be that the best we can manage as long as these men remain in office will be to prevent the situation from worsening. That in itself would be a victory not to be discounted.
The most important point I would like to make was put by 19th-century abolitionist and activist Frederick Douglass, who said: “If there is no struggle, there is no progress.” So, I believe we cannot appeal to those in power whose interests are antithetical to ours to hand us peace as a gift. They have their objectives, and they are not ours. To quote Douglass again, “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” Those of you in South Korea witnessed that with the Candlelight Revolution. Would Park Geun-hye have been impeached without the nation rising and demanding it? I think not.
Progress rarely goes in a straight line. Victories that are won can be overturned. When South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun went to North Korea in 2007 and signed economic agreements, his successor immediately killed each one. And improved inter-Korean relations under Moon Jae-in were undone when Yoon came into office with his policy of confrontation on steroids.
For Korea, peace won’t come in a single step, and once won, it must continually be defended. Let us look at this as a struggle to be won in stages. A key achievement along the way would be for South Korea to compel the U.S. military to go home. That surely will be the most challenging task, and it will likely require more than a request from a future Korean government. After more than six decades, the U.S. continues to ignore Cuban demands to end its occupation of Guantanamo. South Korea’s geographic position is far more critical to U.S. policymakers than Cuba’s, and the U.S. military won’t go willingly. How to make that happen remains to be worked out. It may take a future Korean government demand combined with mass protests approaching the scale of the Candlelight Revolution. Once South Korea is no longer under occupation, if it then joined the non-aligned movement, I believe two essential elements on the path to peace would be in place.
The U.S. military has its “force multipliers” in Asian allies. We can have our force multipliers, too. It’s international solidarity. The more we connect across borders, the stronger we become.
The forces of reaction never give up. Neither should we. Taking the long view, we can push past temporary setbacks and fight to make a better world.
The entire conference can be viewed here (click on CC for English subtitles)