Original post, May 31, 2019:
The last twenty years of U.S.- China relations prove up the the line in Anne Stuart's historical romance (got a problem with that? huh, got a problem with that?) Lord of Danger:
She was a spoiled brat and he knew it. She had spent her short young life getting her own way by dint of her beautiful face and her wheedling charm. Someone should have spanked her lovely little arse when she was a child but he suspected no one had had the heart to.From Forbes:
It was too late for that now....
From the South China Sea to the Indian Ocean and the African Continent, China is rising fast, challenging America’s long dominance.
That’s something investors should watch closely, as rising tensions between the world’s two largest economies raise geopolitical risks that begin to spread beyond trade......MORE
China’s rise didn’t happen by accident. It occurred systematically, helped by the kindness of the previous US administrations that allowed China to launch and execute its grand strategy.
That’s according to a recently published Council of Foreign Affairs special report, which argues that US administrations, from President Clinton to President Obama, misread China’s strategic intentions on several fronts; and made optimistic statements about US-China relations.
While these presidents were making such optimistic statements over a nearly twenty-year period, China implemented a grand strategy under Xi Jinping; used geoeconomic tools to coerce its neighbors and others, including most recently though the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI); violated international commercial practices, including by committing massive theft of U.S. intellectual property; manipulated its currency for trade benefits; threatened Taiwan; build up its military forces to push the United States beyond Japan and the Philippines; constructed and militarized artificial islands in the South China Sea, in violation of the international law. . . and patiently and incrementally built its power and influence with the strategic goal of challenging the United States as the primary power in Asia.
One of the errors of previous administrations in South Asia was the failure to assure Asian allies that America would come to their side in case they were attacked by China, as has been argued by foreign policy experts for quite some-time. Ely Ratner of the Center for American Security, for instance, has been calling for America to abandon its neutrality in the South China Sea region by supplementing diplomacy with military assurances.
In ‘The Stealth Superpower: How China Hid Its Global Ambitions,’ published in the January/February issue of Foreign Affairs, he says the US “should supplement diplomacy with deterrence by warning China that if it continues, the United States will abandon its neutrality and help countries in the region defend their claims. Washington should make it clear that it can live with an uneasy stalemate in Asia—but not with Chinese hegemony.”....
