Cold War inevitably morphs into hot war as it did in Korea and Vietnam. Hot war in this day and age threatens to go nuclear either by intent or accident. The U.S. Cold War with China, begun under Trump and now escalating under Biden has pushed the Atomic Scientist’s Doomsday Clock to within 100 minutes of midnight.
It was a little over a month ago that Biden had his V.P. Kamala Harris standing on a U.S. combat ship at the Changi naval base in Singapore warning China to end its "incursions" into the South China Sea. The irony wasn’t lost on those living in the region. Harris’ attempt to rope Vietnam, Singapore, and other nations into an anti-China bloc ended in failure.
Her trip was followed by the unleashing of AUKUS, a white, Anglo-speaking front made up of the U.S., Australia, and the U.K. aimed a confronting China with nuclear submarines in its own backyard.
On Saturday, one of those subs reportedly crashed into an unnamed object in the South China Sea, sustaining damage and injuring crew members. While the damage appears to be minor (we haven’t been told if the crash caused a nuclear fuel leak or caused damage to marine life) it served as a reminder of the growing threat of nuclear confrontation in the region.
Recently, some critical voices have emerged from inside and outside the administration, calling for a foreign policy shift away from cold war. It’s too soon to tell whether or not they will result in any significant changes.
An op-ed in Tuesday’s Guardian by Lt. Col. (retired) Daniel L Davis, warns Biden and the military leadership not to get “drawn into a no-win war with Beijing” over Taiwan.
The most likely outcome would be a conventional defeat of our forces in which China ultimately succeeds, despite our intervention – at the cost of large numbers of our jets being shot down, ships being sunk, and thousands of our service personnel killed. But the worst case is a conventional war spirals out of control and escalates into a nuclear exchange.
It should be mentioned that Davis isn’t some left-wing anti-war protester (like me). Not hardly. He’s a senior fellow at the Defense Priorities Foundation, a libertarian think tank started by Charles Koch and Rand Paul. But his points here are well-taken.
Two other points should also be made here. First, the threat of China “invading” Taiwan is a provocative bogeyman scenario, cooked up by the cold-warriors in the same way Trump cooked up the so-called China virus story. Second, neither the PRC nor Taiwan have any interest in a war provoked by the U.S. For one thing, China is Taiwan's largest trading partner and increased tensions in the region are damaging to both economies.
On an optimistic note: The two sides may finally be trying to tamp down tensions that date from the Trump administration.
AP reports that a closed-door meeting in Zurich on Wednesday between senior Chinese foreign policy adviser Yang Jiechi and White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan was not accompanied by the public acrimony on display at earlier meetings.
I realize that that’s a pretty low bar and that it’s too early to tell whether this marks a retreat from aggressive hard-line Biden administration policy or simply a recognition that cooperation on things like Covid and global warming are necessary and possible.
After the six-hour talks, there was an agreement in principle on organizing a virtual summit between Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping by the end of the year. The two have talked by phone twice since Biden became president in January but not held a formal meeting.