Yale history professor and author of The Global Cold War Odd Arne Westad, writing in Foreign Affairs, sees dangerous similarities between the British-German geopolitical rivalry before the First World War and today’s geopolitical rivalry between the United States and China. He notes the major “structural factors” that motivated the Anglo-German collision in 1914 — economics, geography, ideology — and sees similar structural factors at work with what he views as the impending Sino-U.S. collision in the South China Sea and western Pacific. He notes, however, that in 1914, it was the decisions of individuals, not structural factors, that ultimately determined whether war resulted between the rival antagonists. Just as today, it will be the decisions of individuals that will determine whether the United States and China go to war. And one of the great lessons of history is that expansionist communist powers cannot be appeased without dire consequences. The great British geopolitical thinker Sir Halford Mackinder believed that great statesmen — Bismarck was an example — possessed “an insight into the minds of other nations than his own.” Professor Westad attempts to do that in his essay, but in doing so he walks on the edge of imputing a moral equivalency between the United States and the Chinese communists. He treats China as just any other great power that wants its place in the sun but that sees the United States as trying to deprive it of its rightful status as an equal global power. There is no mention of communism as a motivating factor for China’s policies in Westad’s essay. Some of his “insights” into Chinese leaders’ minds could be written by a CCP hack at the Global Times. His understandable fear that both nuclear-armed powers are “sleepwalking” into World War III leads him to approach this new Cold War with a “moral equivalency” reminiscent of those Western observers and thinkers who viewed the United States and the Soviet Union as equally responsible for the first Cold War. (READ MORE from Francis P. Sempa: Spare Us the Advice From Down Under) That is the clear message of Westad’s essay. He is equally critical of U.S. and Chinese policies, and his essay lends a certain credibility to what he views as China’s wariness of the U.S. “hegemon.” Westad notes that after being sort of allies at the end of the first Cold War, the geopolitical dynamic in Sino-U.S. relations changed due to “China’s unrivaled economic success.” Yet, Westad acknowledges that until the presidency of Donald Trump, U.S. political and business leaders welcomed and even helped facilitate China’s rise, some acting under the belief that China had abandoned communism for state-capitalism while others acted out of pure greed. The Clinton, Bush 43, and Obama administrations all welcomed China’s “peaceful rise.” Trump changed course, veering in the direction of confrontation, which Westad criticizes. Westad contends that “China’s view of the United States began to darken” when America invaded Iraq. “[W]hat really shocked Beijing,” he writes, “was the ease with which Washington could dismiss matters of sovereignty and nonintervention, notions that were staples of the very international order the Americans had coaxed China to join.” So, according to Westad, China doubled its military budget in response to America’s behavior abroad. Westad views China’s military buildup as a reaction to U.S. hegemony rather than a normal accompaniment to Communist China’s economic rise. “[T]he timing of Beijing’s expansion,” Westad writes, “was clearly linked to its fear that the global hegemon had both the will and the capacity to contain China’s rise if it so chose.” China, like Germany in the early 1900s Westad contends, feared the U.S. just like Germany supposedly feared Great Britain. “China today,” he explains, “shows many of the same signs of hubris and fear that Germany exhibited after the 1890s.” That is what caused China to be more assertive towards its neighbors in the western Pacific and East Asia. Communism apparently had nothing to do with it. This got worse, according to Westad, when Trump became president because Trump “appealed to voters by conjuring China as a malign force on the international stage.” The use of the word “conjuring” is revealing. Conjuring means to bring something into existence. So in Westad’s view, Trump conjured the China threat and directed a military buildup “against China” and launched trade wars against China “marking a clear brake from the less hostile policies pursued by … Barack Obama.” Again, according to Westad, China responded to Washington’s “hard-line shift” by manifesting both ambition and insecurity.” And Biden made the mistake, Westad writes, of continuing some of Trump’s confrontational policies. Westad deems as “meaningless” China’s statements regarding its international ambitions. There is no mention in his essay of China’s geopolitical offensive known as the Belt and Road Initiative. We saw this throughout the first Cold War when liberal Westerners simply refused to believe that their communist adversaries meant what they said about world domination and the final victory of communism over capitalism. We should stop trade wars against China, Westad writes. China should not stand-by its “strategic partner” Russia in the Ukraine war. And tensions over Taiwan must ease. To that end, Westad recommends continued adherence to the Shanghai Communique of 1972. Washington must refrain from supporting Taiwan’s independence. Beijing should adhere to its stated goal of “peaceful reunification” with Taiwan. And there is a “desperate need” for arms control between the U.S. and China. During the first Cold War, moral equivalency Westerners were the biggest supporters of arms control in spite of Soviet cheating and a Soviet military doctrine that called for winning a possible nuclear war. Westad acknowledges that the First World War might have been avoided had Germany “not been so brazen about altering the naval balance of power.” China has done likewise in the western Pacific, but Westad treats that development as a reaction to U.S. confrontational policies instead of communist expansion. Westad near the end of his essay briefly mentions the need for believable deterrence, and recommends that the U.S. concentrate its military power in the Indo-Pacific. But a military buildup in the Indo-Pacific was the Trump administration’s policy that Westad previously described as provocative. Remember, it was Trump, according to Westad, that “conjured” the China threat. (READ MORE: Joseph Nye, Useful Idiot) One can agree with Westad that learning the lessons of history can help diplomats and leaders avoid great power wars. A U.S.-China war would indeed be catastrophic. And one of the great lessons of history is that expansionist communist powers cannot be appeased without dire consequences. The sources of China’s global ambition are to be found within the Chinese Communist Party, Mao Zedong Thought, and now Xi Jinping Thought. They include China’s goal of reversing the “century of humiliation” at the hands of Western powers. They even go back to pre-communist China’s perception of itself as the world’s “middle kingdom” to which all other countries must pay tribute. China’s geopolitical rise — which the United States aided and abetted for decades — was not a response to American hegemony. It is built into the communist world view and China’s historical DNA. Attempts at moral equivalency cannot change that reality. The post US vs. China: No Moral Equivalence appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.