Ceding the Trade Terrain to China

ltlee1

2023-12-20 17:36:24 UTC

Post by Oleg Smirnov
<https://tinyurl.com/yo25ueou> city-journal.org
Ceding the Trade Terrain to China
Democrats have completed the Trump turn away from markets, damaging
America's economic and security interests in the process ..
In the years since the U.S. abandonment of the TPP, China has led the
effort to build the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP),
a trade agreement that includes [regional countries]. This agreement
more tightly binds those countries to China, particularly in
manufacturing .. While China has been commercially assertive in the
Asia-Pacific region, the United States has been missing in action in
trade negotiations ..
Protectionist policies that irritate our allies and partners come at
the expense of building an effective coalition to counter China ..
Biden's protectionist instincts are undermining transatlantic
cooperation .. Netherlands, Taiwan, and South Korea .. are starting to
grow more reluctant ..
Democrats' approach to trade is to kneecap our most important businesses
in global markets, make demands on our economic allies while offering
nothing in return, and cede more geopolitical power to China ..
...
The point is that the US policy makers are trying to achieve mutually
exclusive goals, and such an effort is naturally unsuccessful (but they
can't be saner because they don't know other way).

The following quote is from Thomas Waldman's book "Vicarious Warfare: American Strategy and the Illusion of War on the Cheap."
Vicarious warfare - fought by American proxy, Ukraine, against Russia - is also be waged on the economical sphere against China.

"In alchemy, the symbol of the squared circle represented the elements that would combine to create the philosopher’s stone. We might employ a similar idea to capture the way actors seek to ‘produce’ less burdensome wars through reduced costs and requirements, whether in terms of, among other things, blood, treasure, political capital or material resources. True to the alchemical image, these different spheres are all deeply intertwined. The ideal might be the minimization of requirements in all spheres simultaneously, but often sacrifices might be required in some in order to achieve desired reductions in others, depending on priorities. However, there is a missing element that must be added, which pertains to the mindset of the alchemists themselves: faith, that ‘secret fire’ of desire, or its more mundane cousin, wishful thinking.

In war, this translates into a form of denial with regard to the serious costs that might have to be incurred or the level of investments in material, social, political and even emotional capital required to realize objectives, resulting in a mismatch between ends and means.5 This takes us away from rational prudence or balanced cost-benefit appraisal and into the realm of what the 19th-century Prussian theorist of war, Carl von Clausewitz, termed ‘passion’ or ‘moral forces’. It is a phenomenon principally generated by emotional impulses and psychological fixations, nourished by prevailing norms, values and preoccupations existing in wider society. But it can also be provoked by the alluring possibilities presented by developments in material spheres – the confidence inspired by a new wonder weapon, the hubris generated by early victories or one’s sense of superiority deriving from an advantage over the adversary in terms of troops and armaments.6"