Anti-China Crusade

China is the new evil empire, and President Trump is using Reagan's playbook to defeat it

By Harry J. Kazianis

The Trump administration, despite constant criticism at home and overseas, has made the right decision in taking on China. 

And yet, very few pundits and so-called experts understand President Trump’s strategy, the stakes involved and how America will implement it.
I can sum up President Trump’s China strategy in one word: containment. 

And considering it brought down Soviet communism for good, Beijing should be shaking in its boots.
But let’s step back for a second. 

This isn’t your father’s version of containment meant to pull back the iron curtain and deliver freedom to hundreds of millions of people. 

China is clearly not the land of Gorbachev, and it is not a nation that, while large in size and military might, is economically weak and technologically backward.
No, China is a much more cunning and sinister opponent. 

An oppressor at home and a bully abroad, Beijing, now at the height of its economic power with a GDP worth more than $12 trillion and a military budget as high as $250 billion, possesses a one-two punch that the old Soviet Union could only dream of possessing. 

Beijing threatens America’s economic livelihood through mercantilist policies while also building weapons systems designed to attack and destroy our aircraft carriers, cyber infrastructure and more.
The good news is that President Trump is clearly borrowing the playbook from a past and beloved American president who took on the “evil empire” of his time and was largely responsible for its demise.
You guessed it: Ronald Reagan.
Amen.
You shouldn’t be surprised. 

If you consider how Reagan took on the Soviets and compare it to President Trump’s approach on China, the similarities are shocking.
Consider the times in which both men inherited the great power challenge in front of them and how both responded. 

First, just like Reagan, President Trump inherited a crumbling U.S. military that was in desperate need of rebuilding thanks to progressive policies that damaged its ability to deter our enemies. 

Both President Trump and Reagan passed large defense budgets focused on taking on their principal rivals, making key investments that were sorely needed to not only stay ahead of the threat curve, but ensure military dominance. 

And just like Reagan, President Trump seeks to ensure that if a conflict were to break out, America would have the tools to fight — and to win.
We also can’t forget the way each man uniquely communicates the dangers posed by the threats of their era — with great impact, done in a way that America’s foes can’t easily rebut. 

For Reagan, the act of calling Soviet Russia the "evil empire" in 1983, while mocked by Democrat liberals, was a simple but effective way of calling Moscow out. 

It was that simple play on words that gave Russia a label that would stick and made it clear America was on the right side of history.
While President Trump hasn’t labeled China the evil empire just yet, his use of Twitter to constantly convey the state of trade negotiations, to call out Xi Jinping — both positively and negatively — or to convey his anger at Beijing is, just like Reagan, using his own unique style of communication to box his opponent in and force it to respond to something it can hardly refute. 

Unless Chinese dictator Xi Jinping gets on Twitter to rebut President Trump — technically he cannot as Twitter is not allowed in China — China has no effective means to respond. 

What a shame.
Next, both Reagan and President Trump realized that the core foundation of any nation is economic strength, with both doing all they could to ensure that America’s financial foundation is as strong and as vibrant as ever. 

Both leaders passed tax cuts that led to economic growth and higher wages, while reversing the anti-business and burdensome regulations their predecessors enacted. 

And while both men share a similar challenge in growing U.S. debt, the Soviet Union was bankrupted by the time the Cold War was over and China faces a staggering total national debt of over 350 percent to GDP when shadowy loans and faulty financial instruments that Beijing works hard to keep off the books are factored in.
But here is where Reagan and President Trump diverge — and for good reason. 

Soviet Russia was not tied into the global economy like Communist China. 

With Beijing stealing trillions of dollars in U.S. intellectual property, closing off markets and providing illegal subsidies to domestic industries to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars, President Trump confronts an economic juggernaut that Reagan did not.
Thankfully, the administration has made leveling the playing field its mission, slapping hundreds of billions of dollars of potential tariffs on Chinese goods unless Beijing not only abides by its obligations under international law but also stops taking advantage of America’s open markets and consumers. 

President Trump is determined to ensure that no more factories or blue-collar jobs leave for China, a practice that essentially transfers economic wealth to our top geopolitical foe.
And then, perhaps most important of all, were the sacrifices both men knew and expected Americans would have to make in order to win such a struggle. 

The good news is that both men get the idea that such threats, if left unchecked, will only grow. 

And in the case of China, nothing could be worse than a rogue state with an economy someday larger than America’s that has the military prowess to defeat Washington both economically and militarily.
Combine that with China’s ability to stifle its own people’s human rights — and sell the technology to do it to other rogue states. 

America must continue to ensure China’s vision for the 21st century, with a totalitarian Beijing atop the global pecking order, does not come to pass.

Grand bargain with China over North Korea would make U.S. a paper tiger

As frustrating as it may seem, our long-standing strategy of containment and deterrence toward North Korea remains our best hope.
By Michael Auslin

With North Korea’s latest test of an intercontinental ballistic missile, one apparently capable of reaching the U.S. West Coast, the American foreign policy community is struggling to find a way — short of war — to end the threat from Pyongyang. 

In the media and behind closed doors, some are suggesting that the U.S. should approach China for a grand bargain.
The idea is deceptively simple: China would intervene in North Korea, most likely by removing Kim Jong Un from power and installing a puppet in his place. 

In return, the U.S. would withdraw or significantly reduce our forces in South Korea and potentially forces farther afield in Asia.
This may sound like an effective, realpolitik means of breaking a decades-long stalemate. 

After all, American presidents have been saying for years that China is the key to solving the North Korea puzzle. 

Such a pact would force Beijing into taking action rather than offering platitudes. 

It would also end the charade of American sanctions, which are regularly watered down or undercut by China and Russia. 

Most of all, it would rid the world of Kim — a brutal, dangerous despot — and end his family’s absolute rule.
But in reality, a grand bargain with China is likely to destroy America’s global influence, making it impossible for Washington to maintain stability in strategic areas, particularly in Asia and Europe. Indeed, merely proposing an agreement of this sort would make the U.S. into a paper tiger and compromise American credibility in Asia and around the world.
A grand bargain would effectively transfer America’s dominance to China. 

No matter how the White House spun such a deal, world leaders would infer that the U.S. had gone hat in hand to China. 

Recognizing China as the true foreign power on the peninsula, South Korea and other Asian nations would tilt inevitably toward Beijing. 

It’s also possible that South Korea and Japan, among other countries, would decide that they had no choice but to develop nuclear weapons for their own national defense.
Moreover, having seen the U.S. kowtow, Beijing would likely take a more assertive posture in the South China Sea and push Washington further, demanding a more comprehensive drawdown of American military forces from East Asia. 

Even if Washington refused to buckle, Sino-U.S. relations would enter a period of heightened tension and antagonism, undoubtedly encouraging both Moscow and Tehran to double down on their destabilizing behavior.
In short, a bargain would spell serial diplomatic failure for the U.S. 

As frustrating as it may seem, our long-standing strategy of containment and deterrence toward North Korea remains our best hope.

This strategy will test our patience, but there are a few policies the White House can adopt to make its position more credible.
First, Washington ought to acknowledge openly that North Korea is a country with weapons of mass destruction that can strike not just other Asian countries, but also the continental United States. Washington also needs to end the fantasy of North Korean denuclearization, which, short of all-out war, will never happen. 

That will at least free up American diplomats from endless, meaningless negotiations. 

It is better to be feared by Pyongyang than held in contempt for our willingness to believe that it might one day give up its nuclear program.
Second, the U.S. should announce an assured destruction policy in response to any use of nuclear weapons by the North. 

If Pyongyang has no intention of using its weapons, then we have little to worry about. 

But if Kim is tempted to do so, our threat may give him pause, or create rifts within the elite that could result in Kim being neutered. 

This move would also outflank any attempts at nuclear blackmail by Kim, since Washington would make clear that the use of nuclear weapons would result in the complete destruction of his regime.
Finally, the Trump administration would be wise to commit to a comprehensive missile-defense program in order to defend against North Korea’s relatively limited, though lethal, ICBM capability. 

The cost of exploring all possible means of missile defense, including air-based and space-based directed-energy weapons, is a small investment next to the potential of a catastrophic war.
Acknowledging our diplomatic failures and taking these steps would increase our chances of containing North Korea. 

The alternative — a misguided and rushed grand bargain with China — would do little to end Pyongyang’s threat, and almost certainly would spell the end of American global primacy, leaving the world a far more uncertain and unstable place.