“America is twenty years ahead of key technologies that have a military profile. And in fact, China has no intention of having a military confrontation with the US. It is true that China has made many strides in recent years, for example with hypersonic missiles capable of sinking an aircraft carrier. The discourse is different on those technologies that are pushed by the mass of consumers, therefore on the civil market. China builds second-tier technologies, which give industrial and financial power. There is therefore a maintenance of US technological supremacy over confidential technologies that have military significance. On many other technologies, where the civilian element then becomes also military, China is very competitive. And this is the reason why the US has decided to block China ”. Word of Carlo Pelanda,
The ongoing war between the United States and China is not just a trade war. And, to use the words of Carlo Pelanda, analyst and professor of economic geopolitics, the re-edition of the clash between Rome and Carthage. A duel in which the hegemonic superpower has decided to settle scores once and for all with a rival who, with the improper weapon of an economy drugged by the preponderant role of the State and a large series of misconduct head to unseat her.
In Pelanda’s eyes, the crisis in which the United States and China have screwed up with tariffs and counter-duties is just one of the manifestations of an all-out geopolitical confrontation whose stakes are, explains the professor, “the domination of all the standards – economic, technical, legal – in the world system “.
But also, adds Pelanda, the belated reaction of the American empire to the “creeping Pearl Harbor” provoked by a country that for a quarter of a century has, to use the expression used by Donald Trump in the 2016 election campaign, “raped “The economy and workers of the States.
If the trade negotiations are derailed, Pelanda observes, it is mainly due to China’s reluctance to give up, as the Trump administration claims, those illicit economic behaviors – from the forced transfer of technology to dumped exports – that have played so much. in making it obtain, without really deserving it, its current status of n. 2.
At this point, according to Pelanda, China is faced with a dilemma: to maintain the status quo, while undergoing the counter-offensive of an America determined to contain its rise; or surrender, with the risk, for Chinese President Xi Jinping, of suffering an internal revolt. So, professor: the trade talks between the US and China were proceeding smoothly and it seemed that an agreement was around the corner. But then Trump suddenly resorted to the “nuclear option”, raising and extending tariffs. China’s response came in the form of new tariffs on $ 60 billion worth of US goods on Monday. How did it come about?
Reaching an agreement proved impossible
We know, based on what filtered through the negotiating table, that there were six chapters. On the more commercial ones, for example on the reciprocal opening to trade flows without duties, the Chinese have focused a lot on American exports, especially agricultural ones. But on the more political chapters, China continued to postpone. On the other hand, she was asked to change her political model, for example by renouncing the support of the state for dumped exports. And then there were some elements of renunciation, as on the question of technology transfer. This part the Chinese have tried to postpone. Because for them it is simply unacceptable. If on the other hand Xi Jinping had accepted, he would have been ousted by his, who certainly do not love him, especially the military, to which he made the war by depriving them of all privileges. The thing we should think about, however, is another.Or
We have to ask ourselves why the United States included so many political elements in the trade negotiations, knowing in advance that China would never accept them. It is as if America had told Xi Jinping: if you want to avoid an internal economic crisis, you have to give up. And if you don’t, we go to war on you. This, let’s not forget, is a Rome-Carthage confrontation. Americans think they are experiencing a new Pearl Harbor, albeit a slow one. To which we must respond with a war. There is not only a problem of trade rebalancing. It is a geopolitical confrontation. In terms of Grand Strategy, the US goal is to reduce China’s area of influence in the world, to affirm a larger area of influence for the American empire. The ultimate goal is the domination of all standards – economic, technical, legal – in the world system. To achieve this, the real dissuasive action that the Americans are taking is not so much against China, but against its allies, those of the Eurasian bloc in particular. And here the American analysts have identified a Chinese vulnerability, which I can explain with a few examples.Please.
Pakistan has accepted a relationship with the IMF for its debt which makes it clear that it does not want to be part of the Chinese bloc. Russia is giving increasingly clear signals that its agreement with China is only of a tactical nature: it does not want to fall into excessive dependence on China. India negotiates with China, but understands that it can play a global role simply by opposing China. Only Iran, for reasons of contingent necessity, is very open to the Chinese. What all this tells us about the US Grand Strategy
It tells us that America aims at an internal and external suffocation of Chinese power. Which makes us understand, again, that this is not a trade clash, but a geopolitical clash.Steve Bannon – who is no longer in government, but still represents the mood of a certain part of the US ruling class – said that this “is not a trade war”, but “an economic war” that China “has waged against us for 25 years “.
This is not simply Bannon’s thinking. It is the official language of American institutions. These are the things that were said in the Pentagon Scenarios Office in 1994 when I was working there too. The imperial bureaucracy has long been aware of the Chinese danger, understood as aggression and the possibility of becoming stronger than America in the space of twenty years. A problem that all administrations have measured in different ways. The Clinton administration (1993-2001) actually left China alone, it is not clear whether because of the globalist ideology or because there was strong pressure from the Chinese. In fact, however, there was a disconnect between the imperial bureaucracy and its president. And under the presidency of George W. Bush (2001-2009)
Bush had decided to tackle this issue but then, after 9/11, he was forced to put the war on jihadism as a priority. He pushed the Chinese question aside because he needed the consent of China (and Russia) to make war on Osama bin Laden. And Beijing is taking the opportunity to expand, given that Bush had reduced the garrison in various areas including Africa. Obama took yet another approach. Which
In the first phase of his administration, Obama seeks a compromise with China. He also did it because in 2010 the Chinese greatly helped America and Europe in trouble. pulling the global demand a lot. We must not forget that, at the time, the Chinese military went into the fields with guns aimed at forcing the peasants to buy refrigerators. Thus the G20 was born in 2009, with the American idea of creating a G2, that is, a container for an imperial partition agreement between China and America. But Obama was convinced that China could not have become stronger than America. Obama saw that he was not alone in his second term. What did he do then
There was a compromise between the imperial bureaucracy, which wanted to rebuild the empire, and the president. The result is the Treaty in the Pacific (TTP) to build an American-centric free trade area with which to block China. And the same was done with Europe, with TTIP. However, this implies a yielding on the part of the US towards multilateralism. Which then Trump, who listens to the toughest factions of the imperial bureaucracy, has completely overturned. For Trump, China is the enemy, no more and no less than Nazi Germany. And he acts accordingly. So, if we want to summarize the parable of this quarter century, we can say that the United States has decided to react to the new creeping Pearl Harbor caused by China.The tariffs seem to be fine for Trump: he says that they make the US Treasury collect a lot of dollars. But his economic adviser Larry Kudlow had to admit that the price of tariffs is also being paid by the US. And “Politico” notes that what the “duty man” Trump does is in contradiction with the priorities of the “Dow Man” Trump who is playing the re-election on the numbers of an economy that could suffer from the trade war. So this is a war that Trump cannot win
In this calculation, the US has the belief that China is in more trouble than America can. Trump is however the first to be aware that there is a problem. His government has certainly taken a risk, which is that of the stock exchanges. However, what is more important is that the stock markets rise strongly in the six months before the elections. This is also, as it has been defined, a technological cold war for supremacy in the technologies that define our era and above all will define the future, such as 5G and AI. China is truly capable of outperforming the US in hi-tech
Does not exist. America is twenty years ahead of key technologies that have a military profile. And in fact, China has no intention of having a military confrontation with the US. It is true that China has made many strides in recent years, for example with hypersonic missiles capable of sinking an aircraft carrier. But, I repeat, they are twenty years behind. The discourse is different on those technologies that are pushed by the mass of consumers, therefore on the civil market. China builds second-tier technologies, which give industrial and financial power. There is therefore a maintenance of US technological supremacy over confidential technologies that have military significance. On many other technologies, where the civilian element then becomes also military, China is very competitive.What should we expect at this point
Trump, it must be said, has created a stage of extreme respect for the Chinese delegation. This is because he doesn’t want to make Xi lose face, knowing how weak he is. On the other hand, Trump does not want the destabilization of China. He does not want the military to carry out a coup d’état and then irrationally unleash their military potential. What Trump wants is for China to agree to be the No. 2. He wants a partition agreement in which China is a regional power and America returns to being a global power. Obviously, when you play these games, it can go wrong. Here, the probability that it will go wrong has increased. But this war game still prevails in which you want to force the opponent to surrender without going to the extreme consequences. China must therefore surrender.In this clash of superpower n. 1 and n. 2, which makes Europe Europe
too must surrender in the trade negotiations that are underway between it and the US. Otherwise America might think about splitting it. The Trump administration is sending very strong signals on this point. The Germans went crazy when Secretary of State Mike Pompeo last week, while in Europe, canceled a meeting with Angela Merkel to go to Iraq instead. I also remember that last summer Juncker went to kneel before Trump to dissuade him from introducing tariffs against Europe.Speaking of Europe, the US asked everyone to line up and ban Huawei. But the answer was negative, and now Great Britain is also in the process of entrusting Huawei with the construction of at least part of the 5G infrastructure. There is a risk, pointed out in these pages by General Jean, of US retaliation, perhaps in the form of a ban on the transmission of classified information
. The Americans are already doing this. The deterrence is underway, even if it does not concern the aspects of the terrorist threat.
