Whistling Past the Graveyard

Mike Coté

Mike Coté is a writer and podcaster focusing on history, Great Power rivalry, and geopolitics. He has a Master’s degree in European history, and is working on a book about the Anglo-German economic and strategic rivalry before World War I. He writes for National Review, Providence Magazine, and The Federalist, hosts the Rational Policy podcast, and can be found on Twitter @ratlpolicy.

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33 Responses

  1. Kazzy says:

    “… Biden has struggled to get through a paragraph written on a teleprompter.”

    Tell me you made up your mind in advance before telling me you made up your mind in advance.Report

    • Pinky in reply to Kazzy says:

      He was saying that his first reaction was pessimistic due to the length of the meeting, and explaining why. So he had apprehensions in advance, yeah, and explained them.Report

  2. Philip H says:

    We are not building out our military – especially our navy – to face the Chinese threat, leaving us at a severe shortfall in ship numbers, stuck with older vessels, and left without the ability to project enough regional force to overcome those disadvantages.

    Just this fiscal year the Navy was appropriated $26 Billion to buy 13 new warships. Our current Navy active ship total is where it was in 2003 – were we too small then? And why is it Biden’s fault that his administration is spending the funds Congress gives it on the things Congress directs?

    We have not worked hard enough to move or incentivize the moving of supply chains outside of China to diversify away from a single supplier for critical goods and resources;

    You’ve seen the CHIPs Act, right? Did Trump or Bush ever propose anything like that, much less get it passed?

    We are not taking steps to isolate China internationally, prevent its coercive economic and diplomatic penetration abroad, or create a stable regional bulwark of friends and allies to protect these shared vital interests.

    So you want us to unilaterally impose a trade war on china that pissess on our NATO, EU and Asian allies? I’m sure Japan and South Korea would love to chat with you about that.

    Also, if an invasion is not imminent, but still likely in the next few years, as our military officials have stated, what are we doing to prepare? Why is this not a daily topic of discussion in the executive branch and the Congress?

    You assume it’s not simply because you aren’t in the room. That’s generally a bad assumption.

    Given the Chinese government’s direct role in allowing the pandemic to spread unfettered across the globe – and its potential initial leak from a Chinese biolab – why would anyone trust a single word the Chinese government says on the topic of public health?

    And that’s where you lost all credibility. China has indeed been uncooperative in the post emergence investigation, but when the Republican Controlled Senate Intelligence Committee agreed with the DNI that it was highly unikely to have been a lab leak, that should have pout an end to this nonsense.Report

  3. Chip Daniels says:

    China is in fact the other pole of a multipolar world, much like the Soviet Union was after WWII. And like the USSR it also is an increasingly repressive and malevolent regime.

    Except unlike that era, containment is not an option. China is deeply embedded in every economy around the world so whatever tools for leverage we have will involve a massive amount of collateral damage.

    Which means that whatever tools we use to safeguard Taiwan and our interests, will be complex and involve a lot of subtlety and won’t really have the clear and satisfying outcome that say, the fall of the Berlin Wall had.

    But in the main, it does appear that we are entering a new Cold War, with the outcome very much uncertain.Report

    • Brent F in reply to Chip Daniels says:

      China isn’t really a pole of anything right now. Its a Great Power within its own area, but its not the center and controlling power of any kind of meaningful international bloc like the USSR was. This is one of the many reasons that China isn’t a real peer to the US, despite Beijing’s overblown conceit in recent years.

      On the Cold War thing, both sides are too preoccupied with something else to really do much Cold Waring. Beijing is busy with Xi’s consolidation as Dictator-for-Life and the fallout of a number of domestic policy blunders, while Washington’s top priority is completing their once in a lifetime chance to kneecap the Russians.

      Following that thought, the best ant-Beijing think Biden can do is handle Ukraine well, because that both denies Beijing a useful ally in Moscow and demostrates the value of American alliance to everyone in the Pacific regionReport

  4. North says:

    A delicious neocon screed, I enjoyed it greatly, made me feel like I was ten to fifteen years younger.Report

    • Chris in reply to North says:

      lol… This is the only proper response.

      Well, that or “Some people will never be happy until we’re well into WWIII.”Report

      • Jaybird in reply to Chris says:

        You want to avoid WWIII? Do you hate Ukranians? Would you have stood with Charles Lindbergh in 1938?!?!?

        Oh, you’re talking about China.

        Well, yeah, we have to keep a lot of things in mind about how complicated the world is.Report

      • CHip Daniels in reply to Chris says:

        I think its important not to let past history pollute our assessment of the present. China isn’t Na.zi Germany, but it isn’t Vietnam either. It is a unique situation, similar to historical parallels in some ways, but vastly different in others.

        And yes, warmongers have consistently lied and inflated foreign threats since forever.

        But the fact remains that China is a severely repressive regime willing to imprison millions of people without justification. And that it is increasingly belligerent, and willing to extend its reach and influence across the globe.

        FBI director ‘very concerned’ by reports of secret Chinese police stations in US
        https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/nov/18/fbi-director-very-concerned-by-reports-of-secret-chinese-police-stations-in-us

        So we should take a cautious approach and not be afraid to call them out when they threaten the liberal order.Report

        • Chris in reply to CHip Daniels says:

          The Chinese overseas police stations are mostly like consulates, but I understand the concern, particularly with risk of intimidation of dissidents. Fortunately, to date at least, they’ve been good about closing them when governments asked them to, and will hopefully do that for the station(s) in the U.S.

          I agree that the Chinese government is repressive, but we have no problem working closely with other extremely repressive regimes, so I’m not sure why that, in particular, is a reason why we wouldn’t work closely with them. Hell, if we work closely with them, we have more leverage with which to pressure them to be less repressive than we do if we treat them as enemies.Report

          • InMD in reply to Chris says:

            That was certainly the theory, that cooperation and integration into the world economy would give us leverage, and at least moderate their political repression. Unfortunately it hasn’t worked out that way.Report

    • Pinky in reply to North says:

      Liberals on this site seem content to label articles that don’t match their positions.Report

      • North in reply to Pinky says:

        If the shoe fits, why not apply it. The article is mostly a mishmash of chest thumping and criticisms against the Biden Admins approach that amount (generously) to complaints about style, all wrapped about an assortment of vacuous far right conspiracy thinking like a news paper wrapped about a decaying cod fish. When you add in the fact that the author conspicuously left out the Biden administrations devastating export restrictions on microchip related tech which has defenestrated the Chinese microchip developments the picture of the article as a dishonest hack job smeared with Maga excrement becomes even harder to deny.

        In all honesty I think I’m being generous in labelling it an aught era neocon screed since neocons back then would probably be embarrassed to be caught peddling the Biden senility or the Wuhan leak conspiracy nonsense.Report

        • Chris in reply to North says:

          I think many of the specifically anti-China neocons from back in the day would be on board with Wuhan leak conspiracies, but yeah, the Biden senility stuff would be more the source of jokes they tell at parties than something they’d use as an argument against working with China.Report

          • North in reply to Chris says:

            Good point. The kind of crowd that’d swallow the Iraqi WMD story would believe anything. I joke, of course, the neocons invented that story- they didn’t fall for it. And that is the difference, of course, between right wingers then and now. Then they invented the deranged stories to snow their marks; now, decades on, the right has devolved to believing their own agit-prop.Report

            • North in reply to North says:

              *shrugs* Bernie rattled her and she went the wrong way. It’s on Hillary, she never should have let it get so close that Comeys fish up would make the difference between winning and losing. I’ll never forgive her for it.Report

  5. InMD says:

    I don’t really understand how a piece on the US China relationship under Biden can credibly diagnose the situation when it ignores the major changes in export rules put into place last month, the corralling of Europe away from Chinese trade and tech, or leaving in place the Trump admins tarrifs. Whatever happens at these meetings is way less consequential than the actual policy moves.

    I’m also not sure that ‘we ain’t building enough boats!!!!’ is really the way to look at modern warfare. The question is whether Taiwan has the weapons technology in place to check Chinese capabilities and the command structure to use them effectively in a hypothetical amphibious attack, plus the resources to outlast a blockade.

    Now I think China is a strategic threat and we have spent the last 30 years playing overly nice with them to our detriment. But they’re also facing a demographic crisis, have done serious damage to themselves with 0 covid, and may already be becoming too rich to be the world’s manufacturing hub. They relentlessly fail in soft power, and are better at making enemies than friends in their own backyard.

    None of this is to underestimate them, but it is a reason to think that if we play our cards right we can still outcompete them. Which is why it is right for us to try to be the leaders of future technology, including of the cleaner variety, instead of fretting that they’re still building coal plants (which are still cleaner than those of the past, and it isn’t like the Chinese aren’t also heavily invested in renewables as well). The stone age didn’t end because we ran out of rocks, it ended because we advanced. On all of these counts the Biden admin is IMO imperfect but also not nearly the disaster suggested in the OP. It is involved in an intricate game of putting pressure where we can, but also trying to avoid a conflict. That’s hopefully what any administration would be trying to do.Report

    • North in reply to InMD says:

      Commenting on the substantive policies of the Biden admin towards China would undercut the overaching message of mindless chest thumping bellicosity.Report

      • InMD in reply to North says:

        Sadly that would seem to be the case.

        And it isn’t like I’m unwilling to criticize Biden/the Democrats. I think the apparent abandonment of strategic ambivalence on defending Taiwan and Nancy’s visit to the same have been pointlessly provocative without any real benefit to the US or anyone else. But like the export thing is really a major hit to them and it isn’t even mentioned!Report

        • InMD in reply to InMD says:

          *strategic ambiguity I mean, damn autocorrect!Report

        • North in reply to InMD says:

          I wasn’t delighted with the end of strategic ambivalence myself though I think a good argument could be made that China “earned” the US being less ambiguity through their misbehavior. Still Pelosi’s visit deed seem reckless.

          Also, if Biden really wanted to stick it to the Chinese he should resurrect some sort of TPP/free trade agreement with non-Chinese sources of cheap labor. That is, alas, something he’s completely ignored perhaps due to lack of bandwidth but likely because it’d offend a lot of Democratic interest constituencies and wouldn’t play well with the masses.Report

          • InMD in reply to North says:

            Free trade is just such a tough nut politically right now. I think the long term strategic interest is in figuring something out that can work as a win-win for allies and the American worker. However I would not want to prioritize it while the balance of the electoral college rests in parts of the country hit hardest by globalization. If I’m Biden and I want to do it I’m looking at it as a second term goal.Report

  6. Greg In Ak says:

    Oh boy yeah we should be trying to isolate China politically and economically. Agreed. We could put together some sort of trans pacific alliance of trading partners that leaves China out. That would be…..oh wait. Obama did that and the R’s/Trump scuttled it.Report

    • Pinky in reply to Greg In Ak says:

      R’s like Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, et cetera. You can’t fairly cast it in partisan terms when both 2016 presidential candidates were running against it.Report

      • Greg In Ak in reply to Pinky says:

        TBF various D’s did backtrack on the plan Obama negotiated. The R’s led the charge and weak D’s folded. Fair enough. It was R’s against it the entire time and finished it off when trump was prez. We could have contained China a bunch of years ago but R’s torpedoed the plan. R’s/ Trump gave China the biggest economic geo political win in the last couple decades. That hillary jumped on the bandwagon isn’t promoting how good the R’s were.Report

        • Pinky in reply to Greg In Ak says:

          “That Hillary jumped on the bandwagon isn’t promoting how good the R’s were.”

          Which means you could have said it without anyone thinking you were a turncoat. But the point of your comment was to criticize the R’s, no matter whether the D’s were guilty too. “Both sides do it” isn’t the greatest argument, but it is a valid response to “only one side does it”.Report

  7. LeeEsq says:

    TLDR: The Biden Whitehouse isn’t doing enough chest-thumping and saber-rattling towards the People’s Republic of China.Report

  8. InMD says:

    I think I may have had a comment eaten. Requesting assistance. Please and thank you.Report