Is It a New Cold War?

Surely, you remember the halcyon days of the Cold War. It was capitalism versus communism, or else, democracy versus totalitarianism. The war had a few heated moments, but in the end we won. And in warfare, that most assuredly matters.

Now, if we are to believe Niall Ferguson, we are engaged in Cold War II. Unfortunately, the sides are not as clearly defined. We like to think that it’s still Us vs. Them, the democratic west versus the totalitarian east. Or else, we can imagine that it’s our free enterprise system versus their government-run industrial policy.

Whereas Cold War I played itself out in a certain number of small wars, from Korea to Vietnam, Cold War II seems to be playing itself out in Eastern Europe and even in the Gaza strip.

Dare I mention that the conflict in the Middle East has now arrived at America’s campuses. Those who favor democracy are in some considerable chagrin over the fact that in a war between Israel and Islam, Israel is largely outnumbered. You certainly do not want to deal with the dispute by taking a vote.

As for the current competition between the Judeo-Christian West and Islam, that conflict ought effectively to have been resolved, with the West having won and Islamic nations working to catch up and to compete in the clash of civilizations.

Yet, certain segments of the Muslim world would rather terrorize and extort than compete.

Then again, as China ramps up its naval activity in the South China Sea, our foreign policy elites are agonizing over the prospect of another conflagration, perhaps in Taiwan, the leading producer of a certain kind of semiconductors.

And let us not overlook the fact that the Biden administration has been allowing a full scale invasion of our Southern border, led by the peoples of Central and South America, peoples who do not have the same commitment to democracy or capitalism. 

Worse yet, in the civilizational clash between North and South America, the North has emerged victorious. So, when people see a mass illegal migration from South to North they are right to ask themselves whether these new migrants are here to work to compete or have come for the generous welfare. Do they want to earn their way or do they want to be coddled and swaddled, cared for from cradle to grave?

One understands that Western Europe is better known today for its welfare states than for its military prowess. These countries have spent far more on welfare than they have spent on building their armies and navies. As you know, President Trump excoriated them for making the American taxpayer underwrite their defense. It hurt their feelings….

Of late, led by Joe Biden himself, these same weak sisters in the Western alliance have been throwing fits at the spectacle of Israel fighting to defend itself. Israeli behavior is too manly for their delicate and effeminate tastes. 

The same applies to more than a few college students, who were taught to live in a matriarchal culture, and who are now horrified at the spectacle of a war.

So, if the West is going to compete against the authoritarian East it will need to do better at defining itself as something other than a charity provider.

Surely, this contrast is at play in the war between Russia and the Ukraine. One sympathizes with those who insist that Ukraine must win this war, but Ukraine is not winning the war. Worse yet, it is inconceivable that Vladimir Putin, autocrat extraordinaire, would ever allow Russia to lose a war against a country whose leader got his start on Dancing with the Stars.

It is nice to think that the Ukrainians are fighting for democracy, but still, theirs is basically a lost cause. One suspects that Putin will level the country before he concedes victory to an undistinguished leader.

The political argument about funding Ukraine is more about whether we should fund a lost cause at the expense of America’s open borders. 

Evidently, Hamas is not quite a charity, but it insists on taking what others have built. It blames others for the misfortunes that befall the Palestinian people and they never recommend working to earn what they want to enjoy.

Terrorism is an admission of failure, of an inability to build.

Students throwing tantrums are not ready to compete in the marketplace. They want to be given something they did not earn. It’s more about having a right to a living and less about earning a living. The Western world will need to discover whether it wants to function as a welfare state charity or whether it wants to do what is necessary to compete in the marketplace and on the battlefield.

Dan Hannan in the Washington Examiner looked at the demands that the pro-Hamas child protesters are making and found that they want to be taken care of:

But something has changed. Student radicals were always angry, usually illogical, and often violent. What is new is their whiny hypersensitivity. Can you imagine anti-Vietnam activists complaining because the authorities were insufficiently respectful of someone’s banana allergy? Or demanding that the college authorities send them food?

There is something quite comical about the juxtaposition, demanding the right to disrupt and destroy while simultaneously insisting that everyone else defer to their minutest delicacies. The protesters at UCLA even stipulated vegan and gluten-free food (but, naturally, no bagels already).

As for China, the enigma that is tormenting more than a few serious minds, one understands that many people would prefer returning to Cold War I, when we knew that Communist China was our enemy. Unfortunately, history does not always repeat itself and analogies are often less than perfect.

Here is the problem. Over the past four or so decades China has produced a record economic growth, wealth production and poverty reduction. Unless you want to grant credit to Communism for having produced Chinese prosperity, you would do well to stop sounding like a shrieky school girl ranting about the CCP.

And yet, China produced its economic development without the benefit of liberal democracy. It did not have elections and did not respect human rights. It was authoritarian without being totalitarian. In 1989, when student demonstrators decided that they needed to add democratic reforms to the economic reforms, the nation’s leaders demurred-- forcefully. 

In some ways, China is a living reproach to the commonly-held belief that the advent of liberal democracy will involve both free enterprise and democracy. For that many of our intelligentsia will not forgive it.

As for competing with China, we are now engaged in something like a Cold War. We are imposing sanctions and tariffs on China, the better to undermine its economy. And we have launched a propaganda war to undermine China’s reputation.

To some extent it has worked. China’s economy is doing less well than it might. To another extent China has adapted by sending products through third parties like Mexico.

It is fair to mention that China has not taken it all lying down. From the fentanyl epidemic to the shortages in certain medications, China has been trying to give as good as it is getting. And, dare we say, onshoring and tariffs produce inflation in America. How much do you like that?

In the end, however, sanctions and tariffs are not likely to prevail. If we want to compete against China we will need to build our own industries. We will have to learn to produce, more efficiently and more effectively. 

Surely, the current sanctions regime has empowered the Huawei Corp. to produce its own semiconductors and to seriously damage Apple’s market for iPhones. How much do we like that? We need to keep in mind that our countries are interdependent and that our sanctions provoke retaliatory sanctions.

If we are distraught to see Russia and China form an alliance, rightfully so, we might consider the old Nixonian policy of detente, and break the alliance by improving relations with China. It is bigger and more advanced than Russia. To imagine that we are going to compete by undermining it is childish thinking.

Please subscribe to my Substack, for free or preferably for a fee.