The world has already got used to the fact that a tariff war is going on between Washington and Beijing, which periodically approaches the verge of a full-fledged financial war with mutual freezing of assets and other measures to inflict serious economic damage. However, two epidemics – the coronavirus and accusations against China, accompanied by attempts to “hang” China’s obligation to compensate the U.S., Britain or Germany for trillions of dollars in economic damage – make one wonder whether the world will not approach a power confrontation.
Reuters has published an exclusive piece claiming that the main think tank of China’s national security system has produced an analytical report that focuses on the need to prepare for the real (not cold, but hot) war with the United States.
The British agency refers to its own sources in Beijing, who allegedly saw the document but refused to transfer even fragments of it for their own security reasons. However, even a short paraphrase on the ribbon of a reputable agency turned out to be enough to cause shock in the Western information field: after all, the real war is not the most optimistic scenario against the backdrop of a pandemic.
It could have been written off as an infopod on the rich imagination of the London agency, but there are two aspects that prevent it. First, history teaches us that big empires often like to distract the attention of their own populations from crises by directing people’s anger at external enemies, for the sake of fighting (probably armed) which a nation can rally around even a relatively unpopular leader. Secondly, if we cast aside excessive courtesy, we can state that it is quite American to start a war against the background of a pandemic, and the principle “no crisis should go to waste” is quite suitable for describing the style of thinking of Washington strategists. And indeed: China is not Iraq or Iran, but a serious enemy, which will require very serious efforts to fight, and to make sure that a full-fledged war, or at least a tough financial war (with sanctions on the “Iranian model”) is supported by a significant part of society, will not just happen. This means that the Coronavirus epidemic (which, by happy coincidence, was first discovered in China for the “Washington hawks”) can be perceived by supporters of the rigid anti-Chinese line as a unique opportunity, the repetition of which will not be and which should be used in the fastest and most decisive way.
Under these circumstances, it is quite rational to take into account the risk of Washington “scratching its fists” in the form of aircraft carrier groups by the part of the Chinese management elite whose direct official duties include the purchase of national security risks.
If Reuters’ sources have indeed seen such a document, and it is not a fiction, then the very fact of its existence is not a sign of paranoia (in which the Chinese “safe havens” are necessarily accused by the Western media), but rather a pessimistic but rather realistic view of the American political elite. The latter may well consider that even the risk of a nuclear conflict with China is a reasonable price to pay in order to eliminate the main threat to American hegemony.
Reuters’ paraphrase points out that Beijing perceives the rise of anti-Chinese sentiment, which is very skillfully heated by the US, as one of the main factors contributing to the risk of “hot” conflict.
“A report presented earlier last month by the Ministry of State Security to Beijing’s top leadership, including Chairman Xi Jinping, concluded that global anti-Chinese sentiment has reached the highest level (since) the 1989 dispersal in Tiananmen Square, sources (Reuters) said. As a result, Beijing, after the pandemic, will face a wave of anti-Chinese sentiment with the United States as a leader and should be prepared in the worst-case scenario for an armed confrontation between the two world powers.”
The American edition of Vox drew a simpler and more straightforward conclusion: “China believes that a response to (China’s actions during the Coronavirus epidemic) could lead to a full-scale war with the United States”.
It is unlikely that the US will send air strike teams to attack China right now. Practice shows that before any power conflict, a complex media ritual is first performed, whereby a particular country is declared the center of universal evil, and the world is presented with either a “white powder” test tube, or “witnesses” of some terrible crime against humanity committed by another “authoritarian regime”, or, at the worst, some scandal in which the Heilie Lyckeley involved representatives of a State that was supposed to bomb or at least “choke with sanctions”.
There are plenty of potential points for military aggravation with China. These include Hong Kong, Taiwan, and numerous disputed islands (with hydrocarbon deposits) in the South China Sea. If necessary, U.S. diplomats may well add even the European medieval plague epidemic to the list of alleged crimes in the Celestial Empire, declaring it the forerunner of a modern pandemic – the world media promoted more absurd theses in the name of supporting aggressive American foreign policy.
Proponents of a more sober approach to the surrounding reality may still be able to convince the “Washington hawks” that a full-fledged war with China is a very bad idea, if only because it is a nuclear power and the consequences of such a conflict will be the hardest.
But the chances that someone will be able to stop a sanctions rink against Beijing, if such a rink is launched, do not seem very high. If a total sanctions war between the U.S. and China starts, there will be no trace of the current economic system of the planet with its global financial flows and global production chains. The results of such a diplomatic and economic conflict can be predicted in advance, and some American experts are already doing so:
“<…> despite all the efforts of the ideological front fighters in Beijing and Washington, the unpleasant truth is that China and the United States are likely to emerge from this crisis significantly weakened. Neither the new Pax Sinica nor the updated Pax Americana will grow on the ruins. Rather, both powers will be weakened at home and abroad. As a result, a slow but steady drift towards international anarchy will continue in everything from international security to trade and pandemic measures. There is no (global) regulator, and various forms of unrestrained nationalism are replacing order and cooperation. Thus, the chaotic nature of national and global measures against a pandemic is a warning of what could happen on an even larger scale”, – writes the authoritative journal Foreign Policy, which sees in the future world conflicts and world anarchy.
It is quite possible that there will indeed be no winners in this war. But the American hegemony will clearly not survive such a conflict in any event.
Ivan Danilov, RIA