Biden and the ‘yellow peril’ – 06/23/2023 – Demétrio Magnoli

Putin is not always wrong. Days ago, the Kremlin spokesman said that, by qualifying Xi Jinping as a “dictator”, Biden highlights the “unpredictability” of US foreign policy. The Chinese leader is obviously a dictator. But the American president illuminates his own geopolitical dilemmas when he uses the label in the wake of the delicate visit of his Secretary of State, a gesture destined to restore some normality in the relations between the two great powers.

The US/China strategic rivalry is the structuring feature of the current international system. The US is engaged in containing the Asian power by curbing the expansion of its semiconductor industry and surrounding it with two insular collars of political-military cooperation agreements in the Pacific. Taiwan, the central node of the first island collar, could set off the spark of a devastating fire.

The original Cold War signaled a four-decade general peace. China’s containment need not evolve into a disastrous confrontation – and to avoid such an outcome, Blinken went to meet with Xi Jinping. The problem is Washington’s “unpredictability”, which emanates from domestic political polarization in the US.

In the past, hysteria about the “yellow peril” has twice spread across the US. In the 1870s, the target was the “hordes” of Chinese, manual workers in the construction of the railroads, who would threaten the jobs of the white workers. Already in the 1920s, echoing German perceptions, the target was the Japanese state engaged in pan-Asiatism and military expansion throughout the Pacific. Trump has reignited the alarm — and has had the Democratic Party’s insane buy-in.

The radical US turn ended the long parenthesis opened by Richard Nixon, in 1972, of Sino-American rapprochement. It was not sudden: the rise of Xi Jinping in 2012, commanding an increasingly confrontational foreign policy, ushered in an era of intense rivalry. Obama tried to manage it along parallel tracks, defined by competition (in the technological and military fields) and cooperation (in the fields of international security and environmental policies). Trump removed the ambiguity, labeling China a strategic enemy.

Sinophobia has poisoned American politics. In the 2020 election, Biden bowed to Trumpian anti-Chinese rhetoric, seeking the easiest shortcut to electoral triumph. From there emerged a rare bipartisan consensus that colors US foreign policy in strong ideological tones.

“Democracies versus tyrannies” – Biden’s catchphrase to sum up his foreign policy orientation has not stood the test of Russia’s imperial war in Ukraine. Faced with the most serious geopolitical crisis of the 21st century, Washington is experimenting with ways to re-establish basic channels of communication with China. However, trapped by anti-Chinese rhetoric and under electoral pressure from Republicans, Biden sabotages his own initiatives. It’s predictable “unpredictability”.

In the end, superpowers do not have the privilege of subordinating their strategic interests to their ideological impulses. Biden has just rolled out the red carpet to India’s Narendra Modi, an increasingly authoritarian leader, in order to enlist India in China’s containment device in the Indo-Pacific area. In this step, Washington pretends to ignore that, under the guise of a false “neutrality”, India has taken advantage of Western sanctions to become the largest importer of Russian oil.

Realism marked US/USSR relations during the Cold War, providing for stable communications between the military of the two superpowers and a series of nuclear arms control agreements. The US/China rivalry takes a more dangerous course, traced by the internal political polarization in the US. The real danger lies in the “yellow peril” rhetoric.

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