William Pfaff: Enough G-2 Talk Already
[William Pfaff is a globally respected political commentator and author on international relations, contemporary history and U.S. policy. He is published in five countries and his column is syndicated by Tribune Media Services.]
I have never understood the widely touted idea or assumption of China-U.S. equality or partnership or joint rule of the world or superpower partnership that has dominated the press coverage of Barack Obama’s trip to Asia. In what ways do any of these descriptions really fit the situation?
Soviet Russia and the United States could reasonably be spoken of as the “two superpowers” because they provided the dynamic ideological core of the Cold War, the two fundamental and indispensable antagonists—or so it seemed in the beginning, back in the 1950s and 1960s. But even then there was more hyperbole than substance in the description, although the two sides perhaps did not think so, since both were gratified with being one of the Two Greats of this world.
In the China-America case, there is Prime Minister Wen Jiabao’s modest final statement that China remains a developing country, far from ready to strike a partnership with the U.S. The Chinese nation has indeed awakened, a moment when “the world would be sorry,” according to a warning from Napoleon. But, under the regime of Mao Zedong and his colleagues, it was mainly the awakened Chinese themselves and their neighbors who were given cause to be sorry...
... The United States is dynamic and belligerent, with an expansive ideology. This is why the Chinese treat Washington with great circumspection. As recently as 1952, Gen. Douglas MacArthur was advocating nuclear attack on the Chinese mainland to “win” the Korean War, and in 1963, when the Pentagon was successfully pressing Lyndon Johnson to commit combat troops to the Vietnam War, some officers recommended nuclear attack on North Vietnam—presumed at the time to be an instrument of Chinese Communist aggression. The American military record over the years since the Vietnam truce, and particularly since 9/11, is an intimidating one...
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I have never understood the widely touted idea or assumption of China-U.S. equality or partnership or joint rule of the world or superpower partnership that has dominated the press coverage of Barack Obama’s trip to Asia. In what ways do any of these descriptions really fit the situation?
Soviet Russia and the United States could reasonably be spoken of as the “two superpowers” because they provided the dynamic ideological core of the Cold War, the two fundamental and indispensable antagonists—or so it seemed in the beginning, back in the 1950s and 1960s. But even then there was more hyperbole than substance in the description, although the two sides perhaps did not think so, since both were gratified with being one of the Two Greats of this world.
In the China-America case, there is Prime Minister Wen Jiabao’s modest final statement that China remains a developing country, far from ready to strike a partnership with the U.S. The Chinese nation has indeed awakened, a moment when “the world would be sorry,” according to a warning from Napoleon. But, under the regime of Mao Zedong and his colleagues, it was mainly the awakened Chinese themselves and their neighbors who were given cause to be sorry...
... The United States is dynamic and belligerent, with an expansive ideology. This is why the Chinese treat Washington with great circumspection. As recently as 1952, Gen. Douglas MacArthur was advocating nuclear attack on the Chinese mainland to “win” the Korean War, and in 1963, when the Pentagon was successfully pressing Lyndon Johnson to commit combat troops to the Vietnam War, some officers recommended nuclear attack on North Vietnam—presumed at the time to be an instrument of Chinese Communist aggression. The American military record over the years since the Vietnam truce, and particularly since 9/11, is an intimidating one...