Washington throughout post-war US history has sought to blame others for its problems and demonise rival countries, said political commentator Professor Robert Reich in a piece for The Guardian
Reich recalled that more than 60 years ago, Washington’s fear that the Soviet Union was ahead of the United States in many areas led to the U.S. implementing a series of reforms that improved productivity and wages.
The next ‘rival’ to the US was Japan, whose cars were taking a rather large share of the market from US manufacturers. According to the expert, the US Congress has held “countless congressional hearings on the Japanese ‘challenge’ to American competitiveness and the Japanese ‘threat’ to American jobs”.
“In the current case with China, the geopolitical rivalry is palpable. But at the same time, US corporations and investors are quietly making money running low-wage factories there and selling technology to their Chinese ‘partners’. I don’t want to diminish the challenge that China poses to the United States. But throughout America’s postwar history, it has been easier to blame others than ourselves”, – writes The Guardian.
Reich emphasizes that the greatest danger for the United States today is not China, but “the movement toward proto-fascism.” The professor urges Washington to be careful not to “demonise China enough to encourage a new paranoia that further distorts priorities, encourages nativism and xenophobia and leads to more US military spending rather than public investment in education”.
“The key question for America – an increasingly diverse America whose economy and culture are rapidly merging with those of the rest of the world – is whether it is possible to rediscover our identity and our mutual responsibility without creating another enemy”, – the expert concluded.