China and the United States, rivals or enemies? | Opinion

A month ago, General Mark A. Milley said that China would be the main rival of the United States in the next 50 to 100 years. He did so before the Senate Armed Services Committee for being Trump's candidate for command of the United States Chiefs of Staff, the highest-ranking military officer. armed forces and the chief military adviser to the president. Milley took care to define China not as "Enemy" if not how "Competitor", because "The term" enemy "means" to be at war "and" we want peace, not war, with China ". He concluded by affirming "a historian of 2119 will look into this century and write a book and the central theme of history will be the relationship between the United States and China".

However, to qualify as 'Rival' It may not be enough to avoid breaking the peace if the trade war between the two continues to worsen. If, instead of advancing from 100 years to 2119, a century was reversed, the words of September 5, 1919, at the end of the First World War, then President of the United States, Woodrow Wilson, could serve as a guide to the possible consequences . of an intensified trade war:

"If every nation is to be our rival (…) if we say:"[E]We are in this world to live alone and get what we can by using a selfish way (…) what will we get? ¿Paz? But, dear fellow citizens, is there a man or a woman here, let me say that there is even a child here who does not know that the germ of war in the modern world is a industrial and commercial rivalry?

Wilson was fighting for his country to support his League of Nations project, which he said would bring peace to the world on the basis of his liberal perspective. This would not be the case. the Senate would deny it. However, after the Second World War, it would be created as a UN. This would be the beginning of what is believed to be the liberal order that the United States would offer the world as opposed to the Soviet project. The fall of the USSR in 1991 would mark the triumph and the consecration of the liberal model. But he continued to search for "a rival enemy": "The disappearance of the Soviet Union has left a big hole. The "war on terror" was an inappropriate replacement. But China meets all the requirements » Martin Wolf said on June 4 in his article "The impending 100-year conflict between the United States and China" in the Financial Times.

At present, it is its current president, Donald Trump, who is seen as the one who dismantles this liberal order that celebrated its triumph three decades ago. Against Wilson's warning, Trump seeks to reform the world by crushing all obstacles to his selfish crusade whose only content is "America first." The economic-trade conflict with China constitutes increased visibility for the opposition to this claim, but the deepest geopolitical context also includes Russia as rival of the American country.

Recently L & # 39; economist He stressed that China and Russia have strengthened their ties in their common rivalry against the United States. The present meeting of these two nations, whose rivalry was essential at the end of the Soviet Union, after the resumption of relations between Richard Nixon and Mao in 1971, is a product of what Peter Conradi believes to be among several authors. , the emergence of A new cold war. That's why he says: "Just as the United States was convulsed by the question of" Who lost China? "After President Mao's victory over the nationalists in 1949, we must now ask ourselves: Quién who lost Russia?" ".

L & # 39; economist Declare that "There are crucial differences between today's resentment and the deadly struggles of the past. The first is that the Cold War was a struggle on the model that the future represented for the world. The confrontation of today rejects the idea of ​​a singular future. Russia and China justify their authoritarianism on the basis of the difference of civilization. They do not claim that their values ​​are universal; they do not accept Western values ​​as such. ". Indeed, China and Russia do not consider that their civilizations carry the universal values ​​of humanity, but only theirs. But under this position, they question the fact that the values ​​of Western civilization are. Thus, in their visions, the qualification of L & # 39; economist to name their "authoritarian" societies is a hypocritical Western act to impose on them. For example, after the last murder caused by those who identified themselves as part of white supremacy, Radio China International baderted:

"The United States has long used human rights as a means of pressure in other countries. As long as you are not satisfied with any country, you publish a report on the human rights of that country. However, you should think about your own human rights situation before criticizing other countries. For many non-white Americans, the American-American dream 'is actually an American estadounidense nightmare' because white supremacy and hate speech have become so commonplace in the country. "

For its part, in April, Russia today objected to The weather your note "The other plot of Russia" claiming apparently "it's apparently Russia's construction of an" empire of amoral states "around the world, but in truth this common rant is actually a bold propaganda for foreign policy of the United States and its wars aimed at changing the regimes ". More recently, he denounced xenophobia in the Western press, citing a "A recent New York Times article claiming that corruption is in Russian DNA" and that sharing "is not Russian." Before that, there was James Clapper, former director of US national intelligence. UU., Tell NBC that the Russians are "genetically motivated" to lie and cheat. "

The question "having lost Russia" refers to the fact that after the USSR, Boris Yeltsin began to crack for the west, led by Chancellor Andrey Kozyrev. Russia then adopted Western institutions and the recommendations of the IMF and the United States. become a "market economy". But I also thought that would feature in its international pacts, such as NATO and the European Union. After experiencing successive rejections, Kozyrev himself would announce the end of the honeymoon with the West. After the 1998 crisis, his successor, Andrei Primakov, returns to a geopolitical view of foreign policy and announces the interest of approaching China and India. Beginning this year, during which Vladimir Putin made his political debut, Russian GDP had fallen to 71% since 1992. His death rate had soared and reduced his population from 6 million to 10 million. years, half of which was below the national average. The threshold of poverty. Russia then considered that, beyond its wishes, the West had no interest in integrating it and adopted an anti-Western stance. The expansion of the European Union and NATO, incorporating countries of the Soviet Union while excluding it, was understood as a Western plan to stifle it.

For L & # 39; economist, the strength of the Sino-Russian alliance is questioned because of the historical desires of Russia, initiated by Peter "The Great" in the seventeenth century, to belong to the Western world, unlike China. It remains to observe the impetus of this non-Western identification between the two. Mainly because, as the publication points out, there is a big difference in economic power in favor of China. In addition, the Chinese project of "New Silk Road" extends its zone of influence on Central Asia which L & # 39; economist called "Traditional Russian court".

That's why I bet that this junior character, "Junior partner"sooner or later he will again push Russia to look to the west. At that time, he says that whoever is president of the United States should imitate what Nixon did in 1971, when he resumed his relations with Mao, broken up since then. his communist revolution in 1949 and went to Beijing, laying a fundamental blow to the USSR. In this case, he says L & # 39; economist, the president of the USA I should travel to Moscow …