US & China: Cold War or Cold Peace?

By Peter Huessy, Senior Warrior Nuclear Weapons Analyst

Foreign Policy is a journal of international affairs that likes to take issue with what it sees as conventional wisdom. This month they publish an essay taking issue with the growing concern in the United States—deemed not justified—over the direction of the Chinese government under the leadership of Xi Jinping. Michael Hirsch a columnist for the Journal worries Washington is unnecessarily headed toward a cold war with China rather than an alternative cold peace.

Hirsch admits of Chinese aggression against the United States but dismisses it as any sign China wants to dominate the competition between the two nations, let alone seek hegemonic primacy. As evidence he advises Xi apparently “pleaded” with US industrial leaders to make investments in China (now declining for the first time in decades), on top of a near $700 billion in annual trade, and that these are indicators China is totally accepting of the current international economic system (which many believe China has been trying to undermine and destroy.)

What Hirsch dismisses is the long ago adopted unrestricted warfare strategy of the CCP against the United States. Apparently, the reports of its adoption were fables.

Hirch tells us the surveillance and sky balloons hovering over top US strategic nuclear facilities were “errant”—not designed to surveil the USA and just coincidentally crossing the entire United States and “spying” on our most sensitive military bases.

The author also writes that the United States strategic modernization program is in “response” to the Chinese nuclear buildup—implying the build is also errant because the Chinese nuclear build-up is obviously being exaggerated.

Actually, the strategic modernization was fully agreed to in 2010 at the time of the New START agreement not in response to China but to replace an aging and rusting strategic nuclear deterrent, and one strictly limited by arms control limits. The companion Nuclear Posture Review of 2010 in fact hardly thought of China as a nuclear threat, emphasizing the cooperative nature of the relationship with both nations, especially in dealing with nuclear threats from terrorist organizations.

At that time, experts such as Rick Fisher, Mike Pillsbury and Brad Thayer were warning about the emerging Chinese threat and were largely ignored by the drive-by media.