My Take | A divided US needs an ‘enemy’ like Beijing more than it ever did
- When something becomes too complicated, psychologists say we go for ‘rules of thumb’. In Washington today, that rule is ‘the China threat’
America’s political elite are worried that domestic polarisation is undermining its ability to counter an “existential threat” like China, or as they prefer to call it nowadays, the Chinese Communist Party. They needn’t worry; they have got things – cause and effect – reversed.
By contrast, Beijing has steadfastly refused to publicly label the United States as a mortal threat, an enemy or a pacing challenge, even though it clearly is; there lies their fundamental political difference.
The more fractured American body politic becomes, the more it needs an enemy like China. The more stable and shared its political-social norms were – now a distant memory unlikely to return – the less America had needs for a common threat. That’s why a polarised US on the verge of civil war will be more dangerous to the world than ever. It’s analogous to the last financial meltdown in the US, beginning with its real estate market collapse, which led to the global financial crisis.
It’s perhaps not by accident that two current articles in Foreign Policy and Foreign Affairs both address the same topic. Writing in Foreign Affairs, former secretary of defence Robert Gates argues that paralysis and infighting in Washington could not have come at a worse time.
As examples, he cites the just avoided government shutdown, a partisan impeachment inquiry against Joe Biden, and multiple felony charges across four criminal cases against Donald Trump, whose presidential election campaign will likely further fracture US politics. There are longer-term problems he didn’t mention: race relations, gun violence, the migration crisis, the fentanyl and other drugs crises, the rise of the basically fascist alt-right.
Arguing in a similar vein in Foreign Policy, Raja Krishnamoorthi wrote that “the US cannot afford to lose a soft-power race with China”. Krishnamoorthi is a Democratic congressman and ranking member of the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party.