Robert Dreyfuss: In China-Bashing in the 2010 Election, Echoes of the Cold War
[Robert Dreyfuss, a Nation contributing editor, is an investigative journalist in Alexandria, Virginia, specializing in politics and national security. He is the author of Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam and is a frequent contributor to Rolling Stone, The American Prospect, and Mother Jones.]
...Now, according to the New York Times, China is becoming an issue in the 2010 election, with both Republicans and Democrats bashing Beijing in campaign ads and accusing opponents of kowtowing to the Chinese. This is dangerous nonsense, and it contains echoes—well, more than echoes of the cold war, when the "Who lost China?" debate fueled McCarthyism in the 1950s and fear of "Red China" built momentum for the war in Vietnam. No, the United States isn't going to war against China just yet—in fact, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates is in Beijing today, in an effort to rebuild US-China military ties. But the Obama administration has taken a series of steps that, seen from Beijing, must look a lot like American military containment of China. In the past few months, the United States has confirmed a $6.4 billion arms deal for the island nation of Taiwan, which China considers a breakaway province. It has conducted needless, provocative naval maneuvers off South Korea, not far from China. It has started cooperating militarily with disreputable, violence-prone special operations forces in Indonesia. And it has butted into disputes between China and some of its neighbors around the South China Sea, adopting a clearly anti-China position. In addition, of course, the United States and NATO have troops astraddle the Afghanistan-China border—which, Chinese officials told me a year ago, during a visit to Beijing, look very much like a NATO military deployment to contain China. And the United States is still pressuring China over Iran, whose oil and gas resources are vital to China's economic expansion....
The tone of the ads is despicable and disgusting, from foreign-sounding Chinese music to stereotypical gongs to pictures of, yes, Chairman Mao....
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...Now, according to the New York Times, China is becoming an issue in the 2010 election, with both Republicans and Democrats bashing Beijing in campaign ads and accusing opponents of kowtowing to the Chinese. This is dangerous nonsense, and it contains echoes—well, more than echoes of the cold war, when the "Who lost China?" debate fueled McCarthyism in the 1950s and fear of "Red China" built momentum for the war in Vietnam. No, the United States isn't going to war against China just yet—in fact, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates is in Beijing today, in an effort to rebuild US-China military ties. But the Obama administration has taken a series of steps that, seen from Beijing, must look a lot like American military containment of China. In the past few months, the United States has confirmed a $6.4 billion arms deal for the island nation of Taiwan, which China considers a breakaway province. It has conducted needless, provocative naval maneuvers off South Korea, not far from China. It has started cooperating militarily with disreputable, violence-prone special operations forces in Indonesia. And it has butted into disputes between China and some of its neighbors around the South China Sea, adopting a clearly anti-China position. In addition, of course, the United States and NATO have troops astraddle the Afghanistan-China border—which, Chinese officials told me a year ago, during a visit to Beijing, look very much like a NATO military deployment to contain China. And the United States is still pressuring China over Iran, whose oil and gas resources are vital to China's economic expansion....
The tone of the ads is despicable and disgusting, from foreign-sounding Chinese music to stereotypical gongs to pictures of, yes, Chairman Mao....