{"id":34544,"date":"2021-10-26T20:40:59","date_gmt":"2021-10-27T01:40:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=34544"},"modified":"2021-10-26T20:43:42","modified_gmt":"2021-10-27T01:43:42","slug":"that-sleight-of-hand-slight-of-moral-position","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2021\/10\/26\/that-sleight-of-hand-slight-of-moral-position\/","title":{"rendered":"That Sleight Of Hand, Slight Of Moral Position"},"content":{"rendered":"

Daniel Drezner expresses concerns about GOP<\/em><\/strong> support for an assessment of a new Cold War in the light of a surprise test launch of a new Chinese hypersonic missile<\/em>:<\/p>\n

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\u2019s David Sanger<\/a>\u00a0noted last week, the \u201ccold war\u201d talk about China is equally problematic: \u201cGovernments 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cold wars can also incentivize hawks to use well-timed leaks to undercut dovish members of a foreign policy team. As\u00a0CNN\u2019s Natasha Bertrand\u00a0<\/a>reported over the weekend, \u201cChina\u2019s test of a nuclear-capable hypersonic missile has given new fuel to critics of President Joe Biden\u2019s ambitious agenda to scale back America\u2019s nuclear arsenal.\u201d She goes on to note that \u201cnews of the launch is coming to light publicly as the administration nears the end of its nuclear posture review. Biden\u2019s national security team has been working toward a policy of increased restraint and more limited spending on nuclear modernization and production.\u201d This news arrives as one of Biden\u2019s nonproliferation experts has left the Pentagon and another faces GOP opposition for confirmation.<\/p>\n

It is worth reading Bertrand\u2019s article in full to see who is quoted sounding hawkish and who is not. GOP congressional staffers sound pretty hawkish. Nonproliferation experts do not<\/strong>. And between these two communities, I tend to trust the nonproliferation experts more.<\/p>\n

The question of how to approach a rising China (though\u00a0maybe not rising for much longer<\/a>) 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<\/strong><\/a>]<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

My bold<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

I was not aware of this incident, or the Financial Times<\/em><\/strong> 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Look for this drumming to swiftly fade away in discord, because asabiyah<\/em> is not yet permissible.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34544","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34544","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34544"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34544\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34547,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34544\/revisions\/34547"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}