Washington's New Cold War: A Socialist Perspective

by Vijay Prashad, John Bellamy Foster, John Ross

As the American people delude themselves once more into thinking of the United States as a liberating force for peace in the world, Waging a New Cold War invites us, instead, to think for ourselves. Behind the scenes the plans to wage war have been laid—either by proxy, as in Ukraine, or directly, against the U.S.’s old twentieth-century foes. Waging a New Cold War: A Socialist Perspective makes a strong case that, as the official story is laid out by government propagandists, and as the mainstream media provides cover, the aim of this latest set of American military escapades remains the same as ever: Maintenance of U.S hegemony in the global financial system. Foregrounded with an introduction by Vijay Prashad, this cogent collaboration puts forth three essays that illustrate clearly that, while the Cold War against the Soviet Union ended, the “cold war” against the “enemies” of the United States did not. Furthermore, its authors lay out evidence that the U.S. establishment has been willing to risk nuclear winter—in other words, mutual annihilation—to hold onto economic primacy. And they show that, while Russia and China can each be criticized, justifiably, for their violations of human life and dignity, neither, on its own, threatens the eruption of a Third World War and the end of the human race as we know it. Just in time, we have in our hands an intelligent text that strengthens our struggle against the cynical machinations of the American military behemoth and its propaganda machine.

Genres: Politics, The United States Of America, China, Nonfiction, History

98 pages, Kindle Edition

First published December 13, 2022

About the author

Vijay Prashad is the executive director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He is the author or editor of several books, including The Darker Nations: A Biography of the Short-Lived Third World and The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South. His most recent book is Red Star Over the Third World. He writes regularly for Frontline, The Hindu, Alternet and BirGun.

Reviews

[Yens · Rating 3 out of 5]

interessant boekje

[Reid tries to read · Rating 5 out of 5]

After the U.S. housing market collapse and subsequent global recession, China and nations in the Global South moved to build platforms that were not dependent upon the markets of North America and Europe. This included the creation of BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) in 2009 and the start of China’s belt and road initiative (BRI) in 2013. Russia’s energy, mineral, and metal supply drew many countries into working with the BRI to gain access to these exports, including Poland, Italy, Bulgaria, and Portugal, and Germany, who is now China’s largest trading partner in goods. This process of Eurasian integration along with integration of the economic engines of the Global South are a threat to U.S./Atlantic elite power; this threat is the primary motive behind attempts to weaken both China and Russia by isolating the two powers, engaging them in hybrid warfare (proxy wars, sanctions/trade wars, information warfare, etc.), and threatening them with America’s vast nuclear arsenal.

John Ross’ Essay
In Ukraine the United States has intentionally sought to provoke Russia through NATO expansion and induction of Ukraine into NATO, despite Russia’s repeated insistence that this is a red line that cannot be crossed. Since 2014 the United States and its allies have been attempting to peel Ukraine out of Russia’s orbit of control and into the NATO-sphere. That year the United States helped support a coup, backed by neo-nazis, in Ukraine’s capital of Kiev. After the coup Ukraine’s backward military was revamped with the help of the United States, who began training the new Ukrainian military by sending hundreds of American military instructors into the country. “From 2015–2019, Ukraine’s military budget increased from $1.7 billion to $8.9 billion, constituting 6% of the country’s GDP in 2019. Measured as a percentage of its GDP, Ukraine spent three times more on its military than most developed countries in the West.” (p. 16). In 2015 Ukraine had almost no air force, exemplified by the fact that they used almost no air support in suppressing the Donbass revolt at the time. Yet by 2022 the air force was upgraded to a force with 150 fighters, bombers, and attack aircraft. At the same time the overall size of the Ukrainian armed forces also expanded drastically, and by the end of 2021 remuneration for soldiers increased threefold.

In a similar move in China, the U.S. has sought to peel Taiwan out of China’s orbit of control to hopefully engage China in a similar quagmire to Russia’s Ukraine debacle. Examples of intentional U.S. escalation include:
- “For the first time since the commencement of United States-China diplomatic relations, President Biden invited a representative of Taipei to the inauguration of a U.S. president.” (p. 19)
- “Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi—the third-highest ranking U.S. official in order of presidential succession—visited Taipei on August 2, 2022.” (p. 19)
- For the first time the United States has called for Taiwan’s participation in the United Nations
- The United States has begun selling more military equipment/weapons to Taiwan
- The United States has begun sailing more ships through the Taiwan Strait as part of the U.S.’s pivot to control the South China Sea
- “U.S. Special Operations Forces have trained Taiwanese ground troops as well as Taiwanese Navy sailors.” (p. 20)

The motives driving the U.S. policy towards China and Russia are twofold:
1) the United States has lost its economic dominance on the global stage
2) the U.S. relies on its military for its power and its spending is also mainly funneled into this military-industrial-complex

During the “first'' Cold War, the USSR was consistently around 1/3 to 1/2 of the size of the U.S. economy. Today, China is only between 15-25% smaller than America’s economy and growing at a much more rapid rate than the United States. Since 2007 the U.S. economy has grown by 24% while China’s economy has grown by 177%; this means that China’s economy has grown more than seven times faster than the U.S. economy. “In 2019, the latest available data point, China accounted for 28.7 percent of world manufacturing production, compared to 16.8 percent for the United States. In other words, China’s global share of manufacturing production was more than 70 percent higher than that of the United States.” (p. 22). China's purchasing power parity, which the IMF uses to measure the strength of an economy by accounting for different countries’ price levels, already ranks China as ahead of the United States economically. According to PPP, the United States accounted for only 16% of the world economy (meaning 84% of the world economy is outside of the United States). PPP already ranks China’s economy as being 18 percent larger than that of the United States. By 2026, according to International Monetary Fund PPP projections, China’s economy will be at least 35% larger than that of the United States. With its relative economic strength declining the United States will now move towards more militaristic means to assert its authority on the global stage.

The United States has already used its military to pressure countries such as Germany and the rest of the European Union into adopting more hostile economic policies towards China. With Germany it has also weakened economic ties between them and Russia, exemplified by the fact that: “Within three days of Russia’s intervention in Ukraine Germany expedited the construction of the country’s first two liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals. By 2026, the U.S. will likely become Germany’s top LNG supplier, as it is closer both geographically and politically, thereby eliminating German dependence on Russian energy imports… Germany’s pledge to increase its defense budget will also benefit the U.S. because Germany would in turn ‘share more of NATO’s financial and logistical burden’ that is currently held by the U.S” (p. 30). The U.S. has also pressured countries with previously strong economic ties to China, like Australia, to weaken those ties, which is why it forced Australia to spent hundreds of billions of dollars on U.S. nuclear submarines. These more indirect military coercion methods are being used on top of the direct threat posed by a U.S.-China war over Taiwan that the U.S. intends to continue escalating.

From all this two lessons can be drawn from Ukraine:
1. There is no point in hoping for compassion from the United States. After the U.S.S.R.’s dissolution in 1991, for 17 years Russia pursued a policy of attempting to have friendly relations with the United States. During the early period of Putin’s presidency Russia gave direct assistance to the United States in its invasion of Afghanistan. The U.S. response was to violate every promise it had made that NATO would not advance “by an inch” toward Russia. When the U.S. feels weak history shows it will make concessions, but when it feels strong it will be as aggressive as possible to crush any supposed opposition.

2. The war in Ukraine is as much about China as about Russia. Russia is the only nation on the planet with the same amount of nuclear weapons and nuclear armament capabilities as the United States. Strong relations between China and Russia are therefore a major deterrent for the U.S. not to adopt any policy of a direct attack on China. The aim of the U.S. in Ukraine should be seen as an attempt to install a government in Moscow which no longer defends Russia’s national interests—and one which is hostile to China. To quote Sergei Glazyev, a Russian commissioner on the executive body of the Eurasian Economic Union: “After failing to weaken China head-on through a trade war, the Americans shifted the main blow to Russia, which they see as a weak link in the global geopolitics and economy.” (p. 33)

As the U.S. continues to use military action to overcome economic decline and fight China, its actions will result in immiseration for millions across the globe, which could act as a counterweight to America’s military actions. For example:
- “U.S. provocation of the war in Ukraine has helped create a massive increase in world food prices because Russia and Ukraine are the world’s largest international suppliers of wheat and fertilizer.” (p. 41)
- U.S. pressure to force Germany to buy U.S. liquefied natural gas, instead of Russian natural gas, has raised energy prices in Germany and across Europe.
- The U.S. banning the Chinese telecommunications company Huawei from participation in 5G telecommunications development means that the inhabitants of every country that agrees to the U.S. ban pays more for their telecommunications.
- “U.S. tariffs on China’s exports raises the cost of living for U.S. households.” (p. 42)

In sum, the majority of the world are being held hostage by U.S. militarism at their own detriment. It is therefore imperative that China and the majority of the world which opposes U.S. interests, including much of the Third World, be integrated into a United front against overt American imperial military aggression. “The degree to which U.S. military-based aggression, both direct and indirect, will intensify depends on how much the United States is defeated in individual struggles. The more it is successful, the more aggressive it will become; the more it is weakened, the more conciliatory it will become.” (p. 44)

Deborah Veneziale’s essay
Under the Biden administration 2 of America’s main groups of elite foreign policy hawks, the liberal-hawks and the neocons, have come to a consensus that war with China in order to bring down their threat to American hegemony is America’s number 1 priority. This is matched by the views of the big bourgeoisie in general, who believe it is in their long-term interests to open China up for their own economic gains.
After the dissolution of the USSR the neoconservatives, led by Scoop Jackson and Paul Wolfowitz, became the ideological heads of American foreign policy and promoted a strategy of preventing the reemergence of Russia as a great power through the “expansion of U.S. military power into the former Soviet Union’s sphere of influence” (p. 49). Around 2008 the neocons began shifting their focus from Russia towards China. At the same time Hillary Clinton, then secretary of state, led the implementation of an imperial pivot to Asia to the praise of the neocons. Under Biden the consensus between these two groups, which had been somewhat interrupted by Trump’s “America First” shrinking away in foreign interventions (this is definitely a dubious claim imo) solidified. These groups seek to establish a “rules-based international order” that promotes “freedom and democracy”, in the words of Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, at the cost of removing hostile governments who oppose this hegemony by any means necessary. Blinken’s thinking was also espoused by the NATO think tank the Atlantic Council. Overall this group of big bourgeoisie think tanks and foreign policy warmongers advocate for:
- Nuclear brinkmanship
- Strengthening U.S. control/dominance over NATO leadership to use the alliance as the primary mechanism for U.S. foreign policy (bypassing the UN)
- provoking adversaries to war by not recognizing claims over sensitive regions (Taiwan, Ukraine)
- imposing hybrid warfare to ensure enemies are toppled
If these measures work in Ukraine it will almost certainly be tried on China next. Ukraine is the dress rehearsal for Taiwan.

Supporting these warhawks is the U.S. big bourgeoisie, who see the short term pains of decoupling from China as worth it for the long term gains of Chinese regime change and access to their markets. The biggest sectors of the U.S. economy have relatively no access to China’s markets. For example, “Boeing, Caterpillar, General Motors, Starbucks, Nike, Ford, and Apple (at 17 percent) obtain less than 25 percent of their revenue from China.” (p. 62). 9/10 of the richest Americans are in the tech industry (the 1/10 is Elon Musk, who was born in the tech industry and remains heavily involved in it). Tech is the new oil/gold rush for America, and its biggest conglomerates like Google, Amazon, and Facebook have virtually no market in China, while companies like Apple and Microsoft face increasing difficulties (China’s own telecommunications corporation Huawei surpassed Apple in terms of market share within China over the past 10 years). A regime change in China would be necessary for the tech giants to gain access to China’s vast markets, which is why the big tech bourgeoisie support Washington’s hostile foreign policies towards the rising superpower. “Eric Schmidt, the former CEO and executive chairman of Google, led the establishment of the U.S. government’s Defense Innovation Unit in 2016 and the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence in 2018. His fervent promotion of the “China Threat” theory reflects the prevailing opinion of the U.S. tech community, which also shapes public discourse. Twitter and Facebook have partnered with U.S. and Western governments to increasingly censor criticisms of their foreign policy and influence discussion around key issues” (p. 64).
For U.S. finance, China’s capital markets also do not appear to be sufficiently penetrable. With the CCP strengthening capital controls and delisting various Chinese stocks from the U.S. stock exchange, it would appear sufficient neoliberalization (in the eyes of U.S. finance capital) would only be possible through regime change. Retail and consumer industries are also being squeezed out in China, which is what prompted Nike (who is losing market share in China to the Chinese brand Anta) and others to boycott Xinjiang cotton on the basis of the completely fabricated “slave labor” claims drummed up by U.S. media about the region.
Entertainment industries also are flopping in China, which is why domestically produced films account for 85% of the Chinese box office to the chagrin of staples like Marvel, who were banned from Chinese theaters in 2021. The trade off of these consumer brands between trying to edge into the Chinese market while also being propaganda arms of the U.S. military appears to be coming to a head on collision.

America’s military-industrial-complex is the glue holding America’s biggest economic sectors together and uniting them towards furthering imperialism. “In 2021, the top six military contractors in the world—Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon Technologies, BAE Systems, Northrop Grumman, and General Dynamics—had combined sales of over $128 billion to the U.S. government” (p. 68). Big tech companies have signed hundreds of contracts, worth billions upon billions of dollars, to collect and sell their data to various U.S. intelligence agencies. Like a revolving door, members of the elite go from high level board positions in companies into the U.S. military and vice-versa. “upon leaving office, former public officials are frequently hired as paid employees, board members, or advisors with the same firms that they had previously advocated on behalf of, provided favorable voting for, or awarded government contracts to as public officials.” (p. 69). Some examples of the revolving door between M.I.C. Companies and the institutions of power include:
- “Lloyd Austin, the secretary of defense under President Biden, formerly served on the board of directors of several military-industrial companies such as United Technologies and Raytheon Technologies.” (p. 70)
-“Between 2009 and 2011, over 70 percent of top U.S. generals worked for military contractors after retiring from their position.” (p. 71)
- “the Biden administration has appointed more than 15 senior officials from the corporate consultancy firm West-Exec Advisors… (including) Secretary of State Blinken, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines, Deputy Director of the CIA David Cohen” (p. 71-72)
The amount of direct appointees of members of these corporations into positions of power leaves little doubt that the profiteers of warmongering have direct control of much of the American state. It should leave little doubt that war with China, which would be immensely profitable for them, is a top priority for the M.I.C. With the strategy of the two viewpoints of American Warhawk foreign policy aligning for a new Cold War, the coordination of the big bourgeoisie through the military-industrial-complex, and a lack of any real mass resistance internally, the American establishment seems undeterred in its efforts to provoke conflict with China and prevent any threat to Pax Americana.

[Gabriel Rojas Hruška · Rating 4 out of 5]

While I sympathize with much of the criticism and appreciate much of the connective tissue of the argumentation and the actual data on public-private association, I feel there is a terrifyingly uncritical perspective of both China and Russia in this text.

[Toon Melis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good book but a bit short in ny opinion

[Andy Febrico Bintoro · Rating 4 out of 5]

Conspiracy

A bit of a conspiracy theory, but it could also posed as an alternative possibility about what's happened in the underground.

[Sophie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very useful for baby socialists in their first steps to understand the world we live in. Still a great read for someone used to the marxist terminology.