This WaPo article is unreal: they unironically mock China for not being imperialist and failing to use force to defend its interests, arguing that they’re losing out to the U.S. (in Venezuela, Panama, etc.) which does precisely that.
In essence the article can be summarized as: “You Chinese losers thought you could gain influence by actually building things? The only thing that actually works is bombing people.”
I’m not even exaggerating. The author literally writes that “China can spend all the money on infrastructure it wants… But in a crunch, it is only military force that counts.”
He argues that China’s approach was “a colossal waste of money” because “control of infrastructure can be changed” with a US-led “change of regime” and “ownership of any asset can be overturned.”
His article’s conclusion? “You can’t buy an empire, nor can you purchase global influence. It is only hard power that counts for anything.”
As cynical and brutish as the article is, it’s also refreshingly honest. It is factual that China’s strategy was to win over the Global South by investing in their infrastructure and development, while the U.S. maintains its influence through regime change, various forms of coercion, and the threat (or use) of force.
The conclusion that it is China that should feel embarrassed by this as opposed to the U.S. is, however, completely insane.
Every sane person on earth should hope that it is China’s approach that ultimately prevails, for the sake of our collective future as humanity. China is ultimately trying to prove that one can prevail geopolitically without violence, by building instead of destroying: don’t be like this idiot WaPo writer and root for the answer to be “no”.
From: https://xcancel.com/RnaudBertrand/status/2026542244631818527
Same. Every action comes with a reaction. The more aggressive the US gets the more pushback there will be. They are accelerating their own imperial decline.
There are good reasons why, for so long, the US largely refrained from blatant aggression (except where they could weave a credible narrative to justify it as “defensive”) and direct use of hard power coercion, and preferred soft power subversion instead.
It wasn’t because they couldn’t use hard power - if anything they were more militarily dominant in the past - but because domination through economic superiority is preferable. It creates much less resistance.
The imperialists of the past were no less brutal or ruthless, but they weren’t stupid. They understood that maintaining western hegemony depended on the illusion of international law.
The fact that they are now having to resort to direct aggression is the opposite of a sign of strength, it’s a sign of weakness and desperation.