[A-List] Has China Become an Ally?

["John Gulick" <john_gulick@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

I posted this to WSN and I thought it might be of interest to the A-list
crowd:

Regarding the Liberthal article posted by Boris Stremlin, what do WSN list
members think of the following set of (very crudely formulated and very
hastily scripted) propositions ?

1) More and more, the U.S. foreign policy establishment recognizes that the
EU (most notably the continental EU countries) poses the greatest threat to
the sustenance of its global pre-eminence. The Euro currency bloc presents
the biggest challenge to U.S. seignorage privileges. France and Germany are
the leading opponents of the U.S. Defense Department's muscular
interpretation of the full spectrum dominance doctrine (epitomized by its
stance on regime change in Iraq). The EU states are playing hardball on
various trade and investment disputes
(US steel tarrifs, agricultural subsidies, tax breaks for overseas TNC
affiliates, etc.). The EU states still embrace models of social market
capitalism and corporate governance somewhat at odds with the U.S.
neo-liberal and shareholder value models. The left wing of the political
class in the EU states (unlike the Democrats in the U.S.) is sympathetic to
the anti-Washington Consensus claims advanced by non-core NGO's, social
movements, and electoral parties (in fora such as Porto Alegre).

2) The softening, post-911 position of the U.S. toward the PRC is driven by
the growing awareness of 1). To oversimplify, the hegemonic power has
decided to extend its cooperative ties w/one of its putative "strategic
competitors" (the PRC) in order to outflank the EU states which are no
longer behaving like pliant junior partners (moreso
than since deGaulle ?). All in all, this makes a lot of sense, for both the
CCP elites and the U.S. The fate of the CCP elites depends in large part
upon social stability in China, which in turn depends in large part on
continued high rates of economic growth, which in turn depends (at least for
now) in large part on 1) guaranteed access to U.S. markets, 2) continued
high rates of FDI (much of it U.S. FDI), 3) predictable and cheap flows of
Persian Gulf oil, for which only the U.S. Navy can supply "security." The
U.S. knows just how dependent the CCP elites are on U.S markets, U.S. FDI,
and the global reach of the U.S. military, and hence feel comfortable
engaging China as a hedge against souring relations with the EU states.
Also, the U.S. realizes that because of the historic antagonism b/w China
and Japan, it need not fear a self-contained currency, trade, and investment
bloc intertwining China and Japan. It can continue to deal with each of them
bilaterally, rather than having to deal with an undiplomatic united front
(contra the case of the EU minus the UK). At the same time, just to assure
the complicity of the CCP elites, the US has to apply a certain amount of
pressure: it must maintain its ambiguous stance on Taiwan, hew to its
position on national missile defense, present itself as the "solution" to
the "problem" of North Korean nuclear capability, and so on.

3) As these reshuffled geopolitical and geoeconomic contours in the world
system take shape, Russia is the wild card. The eastward expansion of NATO
was about driving a wedge between the EU and Russia, reinforcing both the
EU's reliance on U.S. military protection, and
the post-Soviet ruling class' reliance on the Wall Street/Treasury complex
for concessionary loans, a place to stash ill-begotten money from the
privatization plunder, and so on. But just as the US tried to use NATO
expansion as a means for interrupting a horizontal alliance between the EU
and Russia, Putin today is attempting to take advantage of the widening
U.S.-EU rift as a lever to secure favors from both. I suspect that the
likely invasion of Iraq will push Russia more decisively into the EU camp (a
preview of this, of course, is French-Russian collaboration over the wording
of the UN resolution).

4) Here is a novel contribution I have to make: the deepening of relations
b/w the U.S. and the PRC will be one of the factors further pushing Russia
into the EU camp. The novelty of my argument is this: the deepening of
U.S.-PRC ties is predicated on the commitment of CCP elites to the deepening
of neo-liberal economic restructuring. While the latter may continue to
yield the GDP growth necessary for the CCP's
political legitimacy, it will also exacerbate the uprooting of the
peasantry, and the joblessness of the state-owned enterprise labor force.
These effects may not be severe enough to undermine social stability in the
country as a whole, but they will be experienced most acutely in Northeast
China, because of the predominance of  "inefficient" (by capitalist market
standards) grain growers and heavy industry in this region. Far East Russia
borders Northeast China and will absorb heavy migration streams of displaced
peasants and SOE workers, piquing local resentment about the "Chinese
threat," resentment that will be transmitted westward to Moscow. To
speculate wildly, I suspect that Bush naming North Korea as a member of the
"axis of evil" and the recent leak about developments in the North Korean
nuclear program has something to do with justifying enhanced U.S. military
presence in the region, such that coming cross-border tensions between China
and Russia can be steered in the direction of U.S.-Chinese and hence U.S.
interests.

5) The prospect of a nation-wide insurgence by Chinese peasants and workers
exceeds the prospect of an EU-Russian alliance as a threat to
U.S. hegemony (just as a successful Taiping Rebellion might have
hastened the end of British hegemony 150 years ago). It is impossible to
know if this will or will not happen, but what is relatively certain is that
the current model of Chinese development (to which the CCP elites and
increasingly U.S. ruling groups are wedded) is riven with fundamental
environmental contradictions that will eventually stem increases in the mean
standard of living (measured both quantitatively and qualitatively), which
may or may not translate into mass social and political upheaval.

John Gulick

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