Date: Wed, 8 May 2002 10:17:02 -0700 To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com From: Bradford DeLong <jbdelong at uclink.berkeley.edu> Subject: Re: It's Official: Oiligarchy Really Is Nuts
>On Tue, 7 May 2002, Doug Henwood wrote:
>
>> Why are they so obsessed with these pipsqueak "rogue states" when the
>> real long-term imperial rival is China? They too eager to do business
> > with China to care?
Our "real, long-term, imperial rival" would never be China. Our "real, long-term, imperial rival" *will*I *not* be the Chinese government *if* China's polity follows the "natural," "normal," "typical," "Anglo-French path" of increasing democratization, increasing individual liberties--political and economic--and the growth of the social insurance state.
If, however, Chinese political development follows a *sonderweg*, a *German* path from which emerges... ahem... call it "Chinese socialism with nationalistic and workers' characteristics" then we have a real huge problem.
It was the decision of the Clinton NSC that the dangers for the 21st century were minimized by following a grand strategy of *engagement*--maximize economic integration, maximize cultural contact, maximize social contact, hold up our political system as a model for a rich, happy, and free country in which you didn't have to worry about starving to death because some cadre in the nearest city told Mao the harvest was huge and the province could afford to ship unheard-of quantities to the urban coast. It seemed that this grand strategy posed risks--in China as well as in Japan, rich country, strong army. But it also seemed highly likely to produce overwhelming benefits.
Any ideas for an alternative grand strategy likely to be more successful would be welcome.
And there is the problem that today the Bush NSC has a very different grand strategy: maximize tension with China in the interest of producing a "yellow scare", rally America behind Republicans who can promise to keep America safe in a dangerous world, and keep the Chinese as poor and barefoot as possible for as long as possible. It does not seem to have penetrated their brains, or the brains of their lumpen-intelligentsia-running-dogs at places like the _Weekly Standard_, that speaking loudly and carrying a small stick makes the world orders of magnitude *more* dangerous...
Yet another example of how perceptive Ralph "not a dime's worth of difference between Democrats and Republicans" Nader is.
Brad DeLong