By Tom Fowdy
When U.S Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan island last week, she triggered an unprecedented crisis in the diplomatic relationship between China and the United States by deliberately, and provocatively, undermining America's commitment to the One China Policy and the three communiques. The Biden administration, despite publicly voicing that such a trip was a "bad idea" ultimately approved the trip in the end, setting off an escalation of tensions in which they have also sought to unilaterally blame on Beijing, a sentiment echoed by the mainstream media. If you read rhetoric and statements by US officials, as well as the allies it has co-opted, one might be inclined to believe that nothing the United States has done throughout this saga could ever be possible to blame for the crisis, and that it is purely China who represents a "threat" to peace, stability and global order.
Anyone who is prudent enough to follow US foreign policy, over a long-term period, will find this kind of rhetoric uncomfortably familiar. Despite starting more wars than any other country in history, the US never associates itself with the term "aggression", it is always someone else's doing. Every conflict America involves itself in is always framed with and understood by an overarching assumption of myriad justice, as if the country is only capable of serving a foreign policy based on "good intentions" as opposed to the more realistic pursuit of "national interest". Just how does it manage to get away with such a grand deception?
The United States has been more successful than any other country in how it has fused identity, ideology and narrative into the legitimation of what is in explicit terms, global military domination. The US seeks to constantly maximize its footprint as it sees fit in regions of specific interest, encircling potential adversarial states, provoking a "security dilemma" and a respective arms race. Then, when those states respond by taking their own measures, it brands them as threats to international peace and the system as a whole. The US claims unlimited right in what it itself does, but does not extend that logic to others.
It deliberately crises, actively denies responsibility in such (as we are seeing with the reaction to Pelosi's visit), but then uses these respective outcomes to demand the participation and support of others, framing itself as the champion of peace, progress and morality, having the luxury of a number of allies who never, under any circumstances, seem to question or critique the intentions of the United States. Such a playbook is seemingly ageless, and has been applied to Russia, Iran, North Korea, Iraq under the rule of Saddam Hussein, and for that matter any other state which has posed to challenge US hegemony in some way, be it direct or indirect. Now it is China's turn.
Why is the United States like this? America's foreign policy from the 20th century onwards has sought to justify the structurally imperialist and hegemonic traits of European Empires, whilst nonetheless repackaging them under the new ideological guise of "American exceptionalism" which would justify expansionist policies under the moral requirement to evangelize America's values and system to the rest of the world and being a champion of "self-determination" and "free people", drawing a contrast with powers such as Germany, France and Britain. It was once these Empires were discontinued following the first and second world wars that the United States subsequently attained "global leadership" and took the liberty of framing its own interests as the interests of all.
In doing so, the United States always portrays its human policy as the moral imperative of the whole world, and apparently never acts out of self-interest. In framing its national interests in such a universalist way, it then proceeds to legitimate its foreign policy on the premise that perceived threats to America, are in fact threats to the entire world concurrently, and frames every foreign policy issue into a myopic binary struggle of "good vs. evil". This allows America to drive its foreign policy goals by deliberately igniting crises and then coming in to "save the day", calling for global urgency. As it does this, it concurrently instills fear in its own population that America's freedoms at home are continually "under threat". All of this allows the United States to be a global aggressor in practice, whilst appearing otherwise not to be.
The Nancy Pelosi trip to Taiwan is the most explicit, but not exclusive, weaponization of this foreign policy playbook against China to date. It involves a sheer disregard of diplomatic commitments made against China, a deliberate crossing of its red line and then when a known response is weaponized, a predictable lambasting China's behavior as being "irresponsible" and "provocative". The fact that the US could have pursued actions which aggravated tensions is deemed as simply impossible in the American exceptionalist playbook, as above all it assumes its ideology, and by extension its foreign policy and national interests, are beyond any possible question or accountability.
In view of this, China must surely be aware that if it is "baited" into the next steps (which it refrained from doing, above all), the United States would establish greater political space for itself in lock stepping allies towards containing its rise. Whilst the rhetoric points fingers at Beijing, it should be plainly obvious that there is no other country who loves to ignite a crisis and utilize "wedge politics" than America itself, anyone who sees the conflict in Ukraine right now should realize that. This means that whilst China ought to be firm and persevering over its red-lines, it must also not "take the bait". Beijing might feel comfortable over the fact that beyond Japan, no other Asian country involved themselves in this saga and South Korea even proceeded to even snub the US. America is the provocateur, and their strategic traps must always be understood.
The author is a well-seasoned writer and analyst with a large portfolio related to China topics, especially in the field of politics, international relations and more. He graduated with an Msc. in Chinese Studies from Oxford University in 2018.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of DotDotNews.
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