My Take | Is China the ‘greatest threat’ to the United States?
- Americans, Washington is a far greater threat to your own health and life, your wallet and your children’s future than anything we Chinese can do to you
Washington never gets tired of painting China as the greatest threat to the United States. The latest comes from FBI director Christopher Wray.
“China is engaged in a whole-of-state effort to become the world’s only superpower by any means necessary,” he said. Wow, really?
It’s hard to think of a more meaningless but inflammatory statement from the head of a national security agency.
The US has always needed an enemy. After the Soviet Union’s demise and the containment of militant Islam, it’s now China’s turn to be the bogeyman. But the US is arguably safer than ever, militarily and economically.
Any existential problems it faces is not from other countries or non-state actors; it is its own worst enemy. Uncontrolled Covid-19 spread, anyone?
One of the most famous conclusions of British historian Arnold Toynbee from his masterpiece, A Study of History, is that civilisations, most of them empires, almost inevitably died by their own sword, rather than someone else’s.