Daniel Drezner expresses concerns about GOP support for an assessment of a new Cold War in the light of a surprise test launch of a new Chinese hypersonic missile:
So, yes, my concern about Chinese intentions has been elevated. But so are my suspicions of this [Financial Times] article. As the New York Times’s David Sanger noted last week, the “cold war” talk about China is equally problematic: “Governments that plunge into a Cold War mind-set can exaggerate every conflict, convinced that they are part of a larger struggle. They can miss opportunities for cooperation, as the United States and China did in battling Covid-19, and may yet on the climate.”
Cold wars can also incentivize hawks to use well-timed leaks to undercut dovish members of a foreign policy team. As CNN’s Natasha Bertrand reported over the weekend, “China’s test of a nuclear-capable hypersonic missile has given new fuel to critics of President Joe Biden’s ambitious agenda to scale back America’s nuclear arsenal.” She goes on to note that “news of the launch is coming to light publicly as the administration nears the end of its nuclear posture review. Biden’s national security team has been working toward a policy of increased restraint and more limited spending on nuclear modernization and production.” This news arrives as one of Biden’s nonproliferation experts has left the Pentagon and another faces GOP opposition for confirmation.
It is worth reading Bertrand’s article in full to see who is quoted sounding hawkish and who is not. GOP congressional staffers sound pretty hawkish. Nonproliferation experts do not. And between these two communities, I tend to trust the nonproliferation experts more.
The question of how to approach a rising China (though maybe not rising for much longer) remains a fundamental foreign policy debate on which reasonable people can disagree. One cannot dismiss the concerns of China hawks out of hand. But I can wonder if reports about the hypersonic missile test are being leaked and hyped for reasons of bureaucratic politics and not national security. [WaPo]
My bold.
I was not aware of this incident, or the Financial Times article, but based on this it’s hard to disagree with Professor Drezner. The fourth- and fifth-raters now resident in the Republican Party, desperate to distract from the many offenses of the former President, Donald Trump, and his adherents, such as Representatives Gohmert, Greene, Boebert, etc., are beating the war drums in hopes of distracting the voters.
What they don’t realize is that a true Cold War would force the Republican Party to moderate its positions and come together with the Democrats to, once again, steer through the choppy waters of foreign diplomacy, as we did during the first Cold War. And they would be asking a base to accept compromise – a requirement for which their base has little patience.
Look for this drumming to swiftly fade away in discord, because asabiyah is not yet permissible.
