The hawks that speak loudest about the importance of great power competition don’t have the first clue what the U.S. needs to do to remain competitive against other major powers. This has become impossible to miss in the growing push for pursuing a confrontational China policy.
“Great power competition” has become the slogan that hawks now use to justify never-ending increases to the military budget without paying any attention to the importance of developing the social, intellectual, and economic resources at home that the U.S. would need to stay competitive. That development would require substantial increases in spending on infrastructure, education, and research, but when it comes to those things the China hawks are typically nowhere to be found. The sectors that the U.S. has shortchanged for decades desperately need major investments simply to bring them up to date, but there is no evidence that the new Cold Warriors desire to do any of this. The path that many of these China hawks would have us take is instead one of overextension, exhaustion, and bankruptcy.
Perhaps the loudest of all these hawks has been Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton. He has typically been the first to advocate punishing China in response to the pandemic, and he has a record of backing the most inflammatory and provocative measures against whichever country is unfortunate enough to be caught in his crosshairs. Last week, Tom Cotton introduced a bill that would bar the granting of visas to Chinese students working in STEM fields. This legislation, the so-called SECURE CAMPUS Act, would have the effect of devastating American research universities by depriving them of a huge number of their prospective students and the tuition payments that come with them.
While Cotton claims to be doing this to safeguard U.S. research from being exploited by the Chinese government, the end result would be to kneecap our own institutions through short-sighted government interference. An effective ban on Chinese nationals studying at U.S. universities in STEM fields would also redound to the Chinese government’s benefit in another way. Instead of drawing talented Chinese science and engineering students to the U.S. where many of them would end up relocating and working, Cotton’s bill would guarantee that they never come to study here. Like so many other hard-line stunts that Cotton has pulled over the last decade, this legislation is clumsy and self-defeating. Even if it never becomes law, this bill represents the sort of blinkered thinking that prevails among so many proponents of a Cold War-like rivalry with Beijing.
While Cotton claims to be doing this to safeguard U.S. research from being exploited by the Chinese government, the end result would be to kneecap our own institutions through short-sighted government interference. An effective ban on Chinese nationals studying at U.S. universities in STEM fields would also redound to the Chinese government’s benefit in another way. Instead of drawing talented Chinese science and engineering students to the U.S. where many of them would end up relocating and working, Cotton’s bill would guarantee that they never come to study here. Like so many other hard-line stunts that Cotton has pulled over the last decade, this legislation is clumsy and self-defeating. Even if it never becomes law, this bill represents the sort of blinkered thinking that prevails among so many proponents of a Cold War-like rivalry with Beijing.
China hawks are currently ascendant because they can tap into public anger over the pandemic and the Chinese government’s serious abuses, but as ever the remedies they propose are the foreign policy equivalent of snake oil. We see this with Cotton’s anti-China raving and Billingslea’s arms race rhetoric, and we can expect much more of it in the years to come. Like any demagogue, Cotton can both stoke fear and exploit frustration, but he cannot offer a solution that won’t make things worse.
Bonnie Kristian recently made the case for a smarter, more restrained response that focuses on securing American interests rather than carrying out a vendetta against China:
We need not deny or downplay that reality to avoid making a colossal mistake of our own. Recklessly reacting to Beijing’s failure will backfire for our prosperity and peace.
There is understandable anger at the Chinese government for its delayed response to COVID-19 and its suppression of important information at the beginning of the outbreak, but anger distorts judgment and warps perceptions to the detriment of those that succumb to it. Hard-liners thrive on anger and suspicion because these feelings short-circuit careful deliberation and encourage us to indulge our worst instincts. Giving in to that anger has led to some of our most disastrous foreign policy blunders, and it blinds us to the alternatives to confrontation and conflict that are always available to us. Post-9/11 anger led to a colossal error and massive crime in the Iraq war, and we can only guess at how ruinous a similar fit of anger would be when it involves a major power.
‘Great Power Competition’ Is A Cheap Slogan Justifying Cold War
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/great-power-competition-is-
a-cheap-slogan-justifying-cold-war/
The fact is, we cannot afford a confrontation with China, no matter how it
is packaged.
事实是，无论如何包装，我们都无法与中国对抗。
The hawks that speak loudest about the importance of great power competition don’t have the first clue what the U.S. needs to do to remain competitive against other major powers. This has become impossible to miss in the
growing push for pursuing a confrontational China policy.
“Great power competition” has become the slogan that hawks now use to
justify never-ending increases to the military budget without paying any
attention to the importance of developing the social, intellectual, and
economic resources at home that the U.S. would need to stay competitive.
That development would require substantial increases in spending on
infrastructure, education, and research, but when it comes to those things
the China hawks are typically nowhere to be found. The sectors that the U.S. has shortchanged for decades desperately need major investments simply to
bring them up to date, but there is no evidence that the new Cold Warriors
desire to do any of this. The path that many of these China hawks would have us take is instead one of overextension, exhaustion, and bankruptcy.
Perhaps the loudest of all these hawks has been Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton. He has typically been the first to advocate punishing China in response to the pandemic, and he has a record of backing the most inflammatory and
provocative measures against whichever country is unfortunate enough to be
caught in his crosshairs. Last week, Tom Cotton introduced a bill that would bar the granting of visas to Chinese students working in STEM fields. This legislation, the so-called SECURE CAMPUS Act, would have the effect of
devastating American research universities by depriving them of a huge
number of their prospective students and the tuition payments that come with them.
While Cotton claims to be doing this to safeguard U.S. research from being
exploited by the Chinese government, the end result would be to kneecap our own institutions through short-sighted government interference. An effective ban on Chinese nationals studying at U.S. universities in STEM fields would also redound to the Chinese government’s benefit in another way. Instead
of drawing talented Chinese science and engineering students to the U.S.
where many of them would end up relocating and working, Cotton’s bill would guarantee that they never come to study here. Like so many other hard-line stunts that Cotton has pulled over the last decade, this legislation is
clumsy and self-defeating. Even if it never becomes law, this bill
represents the sort of blinkered thinking that prevails among so many
proponents of a Cold War-like rivalry with Beijing.
While Cotton claims to be doing this to safeguard U.S. research from being
exploited by the Chinese government, the end result would be to kneecap our own institutions through short-sighted government interference. An effective ban on Chinese nationals studying at U.S. universities in STEM fields would also redound to the Chinese government’s benefit in another way. Instead
of drawing talented Chinese science and engineering students to the U.S.
where many of them would end up relocating and working, Cotton’s bill would guarantee that they never come to study here. Like so many other hard-line stunts that Cotton has pulled over the last decade, this legislation is
clumsy and self-defeating. Even if it never becomes law, this bill
represents the sort of blinkered thinking that prevails among so many
proponents of a Cold War-like rivalry with Beijing.
China hawks are currently ascendant because they can tap into public anger
over the pandemic and the Chinese government’s serious abuses, but as ever the remedies they propose are the foreign policy equivalent of snake oil. We see this with Cotton’s anti-China raving and Billingslea’s arms race
rhetoric, and we can expect much more of it in the years to come. Like any
demagogue, Cotton can both stoke fear and exploit frustration, but he cannot offer a solution that won’t make things worse.
Bonnie Kristian recently made the case for a smarter, more restrained
response that focuses on securing American interests rather than carrying
out a vendetta against China:
We need not deny or downplay that reality to avoid making a colossal mistake of our own. Recklessly reacting to Beijing’s failure will backfire for our prosperity and peace.
There is understandable anger at the Chinese government for its delayed
response to COVID-19 and its suppression of important information at the
beginning of the outbreak, but anger distorts judgment and warps perceptions to the detriment of those that succumb to it. Hard-liners thrive on anger
and suspicion because these feelings short-circuit careful deliberation and encourage us to indulge our worst instincts. Giving in to that anger has led to some of our most disastrous foreign policy blunders, and it blinds us to the alternatives to confrontation and conflict that are always available to us. Post-9/11 anger led to a colossal error and massive crime in the Iraq
war, and we can only guess at how ruinous a similar fit of anger would be
when it involves a major power.