Cold War
The New Cold War | John Mearsheimer | Tom Switzer | CIS
In his new essay for the New York-based Foreign Affairs magazine, Mearsheimer argues that the US and China are locked in a dangerous security competition, more perilous than the first Cold War. In essence, once China grew wealthy, a US-China cold war was inevitable. Had US policymakers understood this logic in the early 1990s, they would have tried to slow down Chinese growth and maximise the power gap between Beijing and Washington.
However, the US did the opposite: it pursued a policy of engagement, which aimed to help China grow wealthier – based on the assumption that China would become a democracy and a responsible stakeholder, which would lead to a more peaceful world. Instead of fostering harmonious relations between China and the US, engagement led to an intense rivalry.
Is Australia and the world in deep trouble? Absent a major internal Chinese crisis, Washington and Beijing are consigned to waging a dangerous security competition. Can we manage on the margins to prevent disaster?
John Mearsheimer is professor of political science and international relations at the University of Chicago and author of The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (2001). He was a guest at the Centre for Independent Studies in 2019.
Host: Tom Switzer is executive director of the Centre for Independent Studies.
Trump cuts all ties with WHO, continues to blast China for COVID-19 response and Hong Kong laws
U.S. President Donald Trump officially cut ties with the World Health Organization, continued to criticize China for its COVID-19 response and blasted the country for a new law targeting Hong Kong. Priviledges granted to Hong Kong to be suppressed.
Donald Trump choisit la guerre froide avec la Chine
Le président américain a acté la cassure en multipliant les gestes de défiance, notamment à propos de Hongkong. Sa détermination tranche avec la mansuétude dont il a longtemps fait preuve à l’égard de la Chine.
Entre la Chine et les Etats-Unis, l’heure est désormais à la guerre froide. Donald Trump l’a acté, vendredi 29 mai, en multipliant les gestes de défiance vis-à-vis de Pékin. Le président des Etats-Unis va ainsi lancer le processus de révocation des exemptions accordées à Hongkong, du fait de la remise en cause de son statut spécial par les autorités chinoises.
« Cette décision aura un impact sur l’ensemble des accords que nous avons avec Hongkong », a assuré Donald Trump, qui a qualifié de « tragédie pour le peuple de Hongkong, pour la Chine, et pour le monde entier » les atteintes contre l’autonomie concédée en 1997 par les autorités chinoises, lors de la rétrocession du territoire à la Chine par la Couronne britannique. Cette autonomie devait s’étendre pendant un demi-siècle. Pékin « n’a pas tenu sa parole », a assuré le président après le feu vert donné à une loi de sécurité nationale par le Parlement chinois. « La Chine a remplacé sa formule promise “un pays, deux systèmes”, par “un pays, un système” », a-t-il ajouté.
China rivalry may put the U.S. back in the coup business
Washington – By all accounts, the U.S. government was not involved in the failed plot this month to overthrow President Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela. One would hope that the Central Intelligence Agency could do better than a farcical scheme that was disowned by the Venezuelan opposition, penetrated by regime security forces and disrupted as soon as it began.
Yet this trivial episode invites us to think seriously about the role of covert intervention and regime change in U.S. policy. Just as the United States sought to undermine or topple unfriendly regimes during the Cold War, it may look to such methods again in its increasingly heated rivalry with China. Caution will be necessary: History tells us that while covert intervention can sometimes be a cost-effective tool of competition, it is fraught with risks and profound moral trade-offs.
Covert action came of age during the Cold War. In the late 1940s, when the CIA and National Security Council were born, the U.S. began developing a global capability for intervention under the cloak of secrecy. Over the succeeding decades, it would seek to destabilize or replace numerous governments that were slipping into the Soviet sphere or softening up their countries for communist influence. Lire la suite »
TANIKO Madagascar 