He writes: “Cold War II is already here, and when one compares the two cold wars, it becomes apparent that the US-China rivalry is more likely to lead to a shooting war than the US-Soviet rivalry was.” He adds, “Not only is a great-power war more likely in the new cold war, but so is nuclear use.” In the November-December issue of Foreign Affairs, John Mearsheimer, a prominent scholar of international relations, highlights how far advanced is the danger of a global war. Looking to find a means of deflecting and suppressing the class struggle, American capitalism targets China. The soaring death toll from the COVID-19 pandemic, skyrocketing inflation and the explosive emergence of open class struggle in the United States have only added fuel to the geopolitical recklessness of Washington. The CCP seeks, by means of diplomacy, investment and military deployment, to expand and strengthen the bourgeois class in China.
These interests impinge and intrude upon the established interests of the major imperialist powers, particularly those of the United States. The capitalist class in China has its own global economic interests. Xi told Biden that the moves by “the Taiwan authorities to look for US support for their independence agenda as well as the intention of some Americans to use Taiwan to contain China” were “extremely dangerous and are just like playing with fire.” “Whoever plays with fire,” he warned ominously, “will get burnt.” Taiwan is crucial to the economic and geostrategic interests of the rising bourgeoisie in China, and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) regime that represents its interests has made clear that it is a red line. These moves have effectively undermined what had been a core principle of geopolitical stability over the past half-century-the One China policy. Biden publicly declared that the United States was committed to the defense of Taiwan against mainland China, and Taiwanese president Tsai Ing-wen confirmed that Washington had deployed troops to the island to stage training drills with Taiwanese forces. Washington has deliberately targeted the most sensitive aspect of Chinese foreign relations: Beijing’s claim to Taiwan. Over the past year, the Biden administration has brought these simmering tensions to the brink of open conflict. Both the “pivot to Asia” of the Obama administration and the trade war measures of the Trump administration pursued this common end. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)įor over a decade, Washington has systematically tightened the screws on Beijing, seeking by military threats and economic sanctions to contain China’s rise and subordinate it to the interests of US capitalism.
US President Joe Biden meets virtually with Chinese President Xi Jinping from the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, November 15, 2021. The drive to war expresses the struggle by rival capitalist nations to redivide the global economy by military means. Capitalist economy is an integrated global whole, but the capitalist class exercises its rule through the nation-state. The ruling classes in the United States and China are being driven towards conflict by the inherent contradictions of capitalism. The summit was an impotent, ritualized gesture, mouthing phrases of restraint and conducting diplomatic maneuvers as the two powers stumble headlong towards war. The tensions between the two powers were so sharp, and Washington in particular so intransigent, that the summit ended without any major announcements or even a joint statement, the clearest indication of the historic failure of a summit. The discussion never moved beyond stiff, translated formalities, as Biden, in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, and Xi, from the East Hall in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, spoke at each other. The event, staged as Washington has brought the threat of war between the two countries to historically unprecedented levels, resolved nothing. US President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping held their first formal summit, conducted as a three-and-half-hour virtual meeting, on Monday evening.
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