Yevgeny Bazhanov: China Coming Full Circle as a Superpower

Yevgeny Bazhanov is vice chancellor of research and international relations at the Foreign Ministry’s Diplomatic Academy in Moscow.

In the fifth century B.C., Chinese philosopher Shan Yan developed a new form of propaganda based on the following notion: When a powerful nation goes to war, it unifies the people and makes the state even stronger. When a strong country is at peace, the people become relaxed, and it loses its edge.

More than 2,000 years later, U.S. political scientist Samuel Huntington wrote in his 2004 book, “Who We Are: The Challenges to America’s National Identity,” that as long as Americans believe their country is at risk, national identity is strong. But once this sense of danger dulls, so does the identity.

Modern politicians are often tempted to strengthen the state and personal power by exploiting and manipulating the existence of external threats. This applies to democracies as well as autocracies. In the United States, for example, some Republicans have accused U.S. President Barack Obama of selling out the country’s national interests for the sake of resetting relations with Russia.

For military-industrial complexes, the more enemies, the better. During the Cold War, it was easy for the United States to find an enemy in the Soviet Union. Now, U.S. hawks look for enemies among so-called rogue states like North Korea and Iran. When the U.S. military-industrial complex is in full force, it, along with its allies in the White House and Pentagon, tries to provoke conflicts and then sells weapons to solve these conflicts by force.

Hegemonic ambitions are a natural outgrowth of Shan Yan’s theory...