Nations rise and fall. For 400 years, white powers dominated the world. Suddenly today, China is challenging their dominance.
Hark back only a 100 years. Britannia ruled the waves. But the Germans were rising. They gave such a body blow to the English that the English never recovered. Closer home, Pakistan was ahead of India. But it got mired in 1965 and 1971, and practically collapsed. Today it is at least 50 years behind India.
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Nations make mistakes and in many cases these are irrecoverable. The Vietnam war turned America against war and towards growth. But a facile victory in the first gulf war and the concomitant destruction of the Soviet Union gave it a hubris that it could do anything, conquer anyone.
Post 9-11, America went after Afghanistan, without pausing for a minute to think that Afghanistan was the graveyard of empires, first the British, then the Soviet. America got lost in Afghanistan. The newcons who ruled Washington then wanted a quick victory.
Iraq presented such a prize. Paul Wolfowitz, then America’s deputy secretary of state, said that Iraq was swimming in a sea of oil and America must have it. Today America neither has Iraq nor its oil.
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Some whispers started emanating from Washington that China was rising while the US was mired in war. But so blinded with rage were the powers that be in Washington that they didn’t care to listen.
China got a few things right. It powered its growth to a screeching 8-10%. It struck deals with almost all of Africa to develop the latter’s infrastructure. West Africa was traditionally a French stronghold. China displaced it from there. Some westerners cribbed that China was colonizing Africa, but the Africans, in general, were for sure not cribbing.
President George W. Bush led the war efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan and would have still been there if he had remained in power. President Obama made a rapid-fire exit from Iraq, giving rise to ISIS, but stayed put in Afghanistan, looking forward to some kind of perfect solution there.
The Middle East erupted in the meantime. From Syria to Libya to Yemen, the US was at a loss what to do. All of its engagements in these countries backfired. Prominent American commentators like the New York Times columnist, Maureen Dowd, wailed that the US couldn’t win a war. For every loss in battle, American generals seemed to pin two medals on themselves. War fever that had overtaken the country after 9/11 now gave way to war fatigue.
And suddenly from its war haze, America was able to discern that a new 800-lb gorilla in China had risen. All the 20 years or so that America had been continuously at war, the Chinese had beefed themselves. The American-Chinese confrontation seemed very much like that between the British and the Germans in the last century.
But America was not about to give up so easily. President Biden warned China that he would send troops to protect Taiwan in case the Chinese invaded the island. But after suffering defeat upon defeat, Americans troops are demoralized. They couldn’t take on a small country like Iraq; did you expect them to take on a behemoth like China.
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America formed the Quad. China, with over 300 warships, has the biggest navy in the world. Plus it would be fighting near its own waters and refueling ports. America would have to bring its ships from far. The Quad consisted of America, Japan, India and Australia.
Japan’s got a non-existent navy. The Australians’ is too small, and the Indians only middling. America needed to open a second front against the Chinese. It goaded the Indians to battle the Chinese in Ladakh. Sure, the Indians would have given a black eye to the Chinese there, but India didn’t seem ready for the fight.
India was too preoccupied with its own growth and development rather than get enmeshed in a bruising war with the Chinese. Plus, while it had boundary disputes with China, these were not sufficient reason for it to go to war against China.
The Americans were exasperated. The Quad was flailing. Now no one knows what will happen except it seems a certainty that America and China will go to war. America will never let China to become the world’s prima donna, or at least will try its hardest not to.
Some people bewail China’s slowing growth rate of 5-8%. But China is almost a developed country. Developed countries slow down. America grows at 1-3% and Germany at 2-4%. China is a $18 trillion economy and the US is $23 trillion. Soon the Chinese will overtake America.
So both militarily as well as economically, China has a chokehold on America. America will no longer be number one. That’s the fall of America.
Source: https://t-tees.com
Category: WHEN
