Chen Ping on America's Global Strategy

Chen Ping, “What’s Wrong with America’s Global Strategy?”[1]
 
Introduction and Translation by David Ownby
 
Introduction
 
Chen Ping (b. 1944) is a retired professor of economics with a background in physics, and is now a senior researcher at the China Institute attached to Fudan University in Shanghai.  Chen’s academic career is quite interesting, as he appears to have applied ideas derived from the world of physics to economics in ways that are quite innovative (see this interview with Chen for an overview; an English-language CV conveys some of the same information; his 2010 English-language book, Economic Complexity and Equilibrium Illusion:  Essays on Market Instability and Macro Vitality, probably covers much of the same material).
 
I have no idea how Chen Ping wound up writing for the Global Times, the nationalist newspaper in which this text was published, or working at Zhang Weiwei’s China Institute, both of which champion the China model and trash the United States.  He had not been on my radar until recently, when I happened to read an online discussion of who Chinese readers think the best defenders of the China model are.  Chen was listed along with Zhang Weiwei, Jin Canrong, and a handful of others, so I thought I would expand my knowledge base.
 
If this is a representative example of Chen Ping’s work at the China Institute, I don’t think I need to read much more.  It is a brief editorial on how the U.S. has lost its way, and has no global strategy.  It appears to be prompted by no particular event, nor based on any new knowledge, so I can only assume that it met the propaganda needs of the moment.  As propaganda goes, I have certainly seen worse, but there is not a great deal of depth here, and I imagine the piece was written in one sitting.  Not that you can’t find US op-eds on China that work from the same playbook to criticize China… 
 
Translation　　
 
U.S. President Joe Biden is coming to the end of his first year in office. Before he took office, the image of the United States in the international community had reached a record low. In 2020, when Trump was still president, a Gallup poll conducted in 60 countries and regions showed a median approval rate of only 22 percent for U.S. leadership. The first few months of the Biden administration did manage to improve the U.S. image, with the median approval rate for U.S. leadership rising to 49 percent, according to a Gallup poll of 46 countries and territories conducted in August of this year. But the Biden administration's ability to control the global situation was revealed immediately after the disastrous U.S. retreat in Afghanistan. 
 
Not only have there been problems with U.S. strategy in Afghanistan and the Middle East, but the U.S.-British-Australian AUKUS alliance has also caused disagreements between the U.S. and Europe. In terms of China and Russia, the Biden administration has also failed to change the situation, and domestic problems remain unresolved, some having even deteriorated. What has gone wrong with U.S. global strategy? 
 
In his new book, Has China Won?  The Chinese Challenge to American Primacy,[2] former Singaporean diplomat Kishore Mahbubani offers many excellent insights, and argues that there are many problems with the U.S. strategy toward China. My observations are both the same and different from Mahbubani’s. My view is that that the United States is not really good at global strategy, and that the only thing it believes in is the "balance of power." Any diplomatic agreement reached with the U.S. these days is likely to be unreliable. We need to develop our own economy, national defense, and science and technology, and continue our tit-for-tat approach to diplomacy, because the idea that we can get the U.S. to leave well enough alone through concessions and displays of weakness is impossible.  
 
Why is it that the United States does not have a true global strategy?　
 
First of all, America’s goal is to expand, but it never considers strategy, and one big reason for this is that it encountered no real adversaries on its initial rise. In terms of geopolitics, the United States has very unique natural advantages. Since its founding, the United States has never been surrounded by truly formidable adversaries. If the United States' neighbor to the north was not Canada but Russia, and its competitor to the south was not Mexico but China, would it be possible for the United States to operate the way it does? The United States' historical rival, Great Britain, was mainly focused on fighting for hegemony in Europe, and did not have enough strength to intervene in the independence of the North American colonies. 
 
In terms of "strategy," the United States is far less "divide and rule" than the United Kingdom, nor is it as far-sighted as Peter the Great of Russia in his search for sea ports on the east and west, because the United States already had such sea ports and had no incentive to think about it the issue.  Nor does the U.S. feel the urgency of being surrounded by possible enemies, like Germany, because great oceans to the east and the west keep her opponents at a distance.  So all America cares about is “power” and the game America plays is the “balance of power game,” where “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” 
 
When the U.S. has the strength to control the situation, Washington can still call the shots. But when this strength is in gradual decline, the result is the constant creation of new "adversaries." Many American "adversaries" are allies that the U.S. once supported to deal with another adversary. This is because once a country that has received support becomes strong, it naturally wants independence and autonomy, and no longer wants to be controlled by the U.S., which means that an ally turns into a new and more powerful American “adversary.”  In the Middle East, for example, both Iraq and Iran, as well as Egypt, have had this experience. In order to maintain its own hegemony, interactions between the United States and other countries are never mutually beneficial, but instead wind up being asymmetric games through which the U.S. imposes its control. How do they achieve this control? In addition to military intervention, two of the more common means employed by the U.S. are economic and financial.
 
Second, because it is easy to fall into the habit of “opposing for the sake of opposing," the American system makes it difficult to arrive at a long-term strategy. The U.S. government is a presidential system, but the president's party does not necessarily hold the majority in Congress. And unlike in Europe, where there are many political parties, there are only the Republican and the Democratic parties in the U.S., and third parties cannot really get off the ground.  Competition between the two parties is often quite irrational, and opposition is merely for the sake of opposition. For example, the Republican Party was committed to infrastructure development during the Trump administration, and the Democrats opposed it; once Biden took power, the Democrats promoted infrastructure plans, and the Republicans are against it. Everything is about partisan interests and electoral goals. 
 
For example, after World War I, U.S. President Wilson proposed the establishment of the League of Nations, hoping to bring permanent peace to Europe, but the program was rejected by the opposition party in Congress, and as a result, the U.S. did not itself participate in the League of Nations. Later, when it was hoped that the League of Nations would stop a new world war, it was found to be ineffective. This institutional weakness has been discussed and reflected upon by American scholars and politicians for decades, but no one has been able to change it. Today, as class tensions intensify, ethnic groups become increasingly divided, and political rivalries intensify, the downside of "opposition for opposition's sake" is more prominent than ever in the United States, as evidenced by the record turnout in the 2020 U.S. elections. 
 
Moreover, multiple factors have made U.S. diplomatic strategy increasingly absurd. In the past, in the U.S. and in other Western countries like Britain and France, if a person ran for president or member of parliament without a high level of education, good speaking skills, and an excellent resume, he or she would have very little chance of winning the votes of ordinary people. However, today's elections in the United States are just the opposite. The issues in local elections in the United States are often quite mysterious, and the people elected are mostly people who are good talkers. A typical feature of American political life, it seems to me, is that they are no longer comparing people in terms of their insights or political accomplishments, but are instead choosing the lesser of two evils, because all candidates do is dig up dirt on their opponents.  This means that truly capable people do not want to run for office, to avoid being pushed into that cesspit. 
 
In addition, in American public schools today, teachers treat students like customers, which means that they can only praise, and not criticize, whatever the student’s performance might be.  This is because if the parents of a student criticized by a teacher turn out to be rich and white, they give the school principal a call, and the teacher trying to help the student may wind up getting fired.  So basic education in the United States is going downhill, and the students are basically coddled, the results being that they are not as smart as they think they are and have little talent or learning. 
 
This is why there is a growing number people at the base of American society holding anti-science and anti-elite views. This, together with the electoral system of American-style democracy, prevents American diplomacy from taking a long-term view and learning the lessons of history. Even if some of America's best economists, political scientists, and strategists make it to the cabinet, most of the politicians in power are headstrong and opinionated, meaning that U.S. diplomatic strategy winds up being off-kilter.

Notes

[1]陈平, “美国全球战略出了什么问题?” published in the online version of Global Times/环球时报 on December 22, 2021, subsequently widely republished. 

[2]Translator’s note:  Interestingly, the title of Mahbubani’s book in Chinese is less provocative than in English:  China’s Choice:  Sino-American Competition and Strategic Decisions  中国的选择：中美博弈与战略抉择.