British historian Neil Ferguson called Chimerica fifteen years ago the symbiosis of the economies of the United States and China. The name stuck: composed of the names of both countries (China + America), it unequivocally hinted at the unnaturalness of the alliance between the leader of the capitalist world and the largest communist power. After all, a chimera is, as you know, a mythical creature with the head of a lion, the body of a goat and the tail of a snake, that is, by and large, something completely impossible.
Nevertheless, Chimerica was a reality for many years: the United States willingly transferred factories and factories to the PRC, where unrequited and trouble-free Chinese workers worked, deprived of the protection of the powerful American trade unions, and China accumulated huge foreign exchange reserves and invested them in government securities of the American treasury. The constant influx of Chinese money provided the US Federal Reserve with the opportunity to maintain a low interest rate (even artificially low), which, of course, stimulated economic growth, but more and more tied Washington to Beijing. By 2006, this amazing symbiont accounted for about a quarter of the world's population, about a third of the world's GDP and, according to the calculations of the German economist Moritz Schularik, Chimerica provided more than half of the world's economic growth.
In fact, the matter was not limited to one economy: an informal (that is, not clothed in organizational forms), but an influential alliance between Washington and Beijing, whose purpose was to limit the influence of the USSR in the Middle East, Asia and Africa, was held on a powerful economic basis. In fact, Chimerica was originally created for this very purpose - in full accordance with the strategy of US President Richard Nixon and his Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Unfortunately for our country, this strategy proved extremely successful and eventually led to the weakening of the Soviet Union and its defeat in the Cold War.
Now, half a century after Kissinger’s shuttle diplomacy and Nixon’s strategic thinking made possible a seemingly unnatural alliance, another US president’s secretary of state, Michael Pompeo, delivered a speech in which he declared China America’s main adversary, and thus summed up the fat line under the project "Chimerica". In the best traditions of the Cold War, Pompeo's speech bore the pompous title "Communist China and the Future of the Free World."
Pompeo delivered this speech, surprisingly, at the Nixon Memorial Center, which includes a library named after him and his museum, in the hometown of the 37th President of the United States - Yorba Linda, California. And, of course, speaking in a place where the spirit of Nixon soars, Pompeo could not do without curtsies in his address: “Before it seems that I want to break too abruptly with the legacy of President Nixon, I would like to clarify: he did what he considered best for the American people at the time, and quite possibly he was right. "
After the proper reservations were made, Pompeo got down to business, taking the bull by the horns: although Nixon “nobly strove for a freer and safer world and hoped that the Chinese Communist Party would respond in kind,” the Chinese communists were ungrateful liars. “The rapprochement we have made has not brought about the kind of change within China that President Nixon hoped to induce. The truth is that our policy ... has revived China's inefficient economy only for Beijing to bite the hands of the international community that fed it, ”he said.
To call the first economy in the world (and China has already overtaken the American economy in a number of parameters) ineffective is quite bold.
But Pompeo did not stop there and painted an eerie image of China as a force acting from behind the curtains to which the countries of the "free world" bow. China sent its "propagandists to our press conferences, to our research centers, to our universities and colleges, and even to parent-teacher meetings" (no joke - Pompeo did say, "... And even into our PTAmeetings"). Under the influence of Beijing, Washington "pulled away from our friends in Taiwan", China forced the largest American airlines to remove any mention of Taiwan from their corporate websites, intimidated "the epicenter of American creative freedom" - Hollywood, which now "self-censors everything that can even in passing be considered a reference to China in a malevolent spirit. "
In general, according to Pompeo, America is so bent under China that the next step could be to open a branch of the CCP in Washington. But this tortured loyalty was not rewarded. “China has plundered our precious intellectual property and trade secrets, at the cost of losing millions of jobs across America. He took supply chains off American shores and took advantage of slave labor. It made the world's most important sea transport routes less secure for international trade, ”said the Secretary of State.
Having painted this unattractive picture, Pompeo concludes: what happened was what Nixon feared - by opening the world to the Chinese Communist Party, he created the "monster of Frankenstein."
Indeed, after his resignation, Nixon several times voiced concerns about China's growing power. In his memoirs, he wrote: “We must educate China for the next few decades while it is still learning to develop its strength and potential. Otherwise, one day we will face the most formidable enemy that has ever existed in world history. " And shortly before his death, in 1994, in an interview with his former speechwriter William Safir, "old realist" Nixon admitted that his visit to China, which he, raising a toast at a banquet with Mao in Beijing, called "the week that changed the world." perhaps changed it for the worse. It was then that from the lips of Nixon - according to Safir - the phrase about the "monster of Frankenstein" sounded.
However, let us note in parentheses, this did not at all prevent the United States from making mutually beneficial friendships with the "monster of Frankenstein" - first because this friendship was seen as a key factor in the victory over another "monster", the USSR, and then because it was too profitable. “Perhaps,” Pompeo complains in his speech, “we were too naive about the survivability of the communist virus in China, too happy about our victory in the Cold War. They persecuted capitalist profits too cowardly and hung their ears too much listening to Beijing's talk of "peaceful development."
But this could not go on forever. And the day came when President Trump said, "Enough!"
The further speech of the Secretary of State is altogether reminiscent of propaganda from the times of the struggle against the "evil empire": “We must remember: the power of the CCP is a Marxist-Leninist regime. Secretary General Xi Jinping is a staunch supporter of a failed totalitarian ideology. " The conclusion from all this is simple: the United States needs to reconsider its policy towards China. Here Pompeo again did not do without reference to his great predecessors: “President Reagan said that he interacted with the Soviet Union on the principle of 'trust but verify'. When it comes to the Chinese Communist Party, I say: "Do not trust and check!"
So, henceforth, the main enemy of the free world is the CCP. Today's China is worse than the former "great enemy", the USSR, because it disguises itself as a capitalist economy:
“The USSR was cut off from the free world. Communist China is already within our borders. " To fight the new "great enemy", the Trump administration is taking "unprecedented measures" - for example, it created the Space Force to keep China "from aggression at this last frontier" (SDI smelled noticeably, the notorious "Star Wars" of the Reagan era, isn't it ?). And on earth, a glorious victory over Chinese diplomats was won: “Just this week we announced the closure of the Chinese consulate in Houston, because it was a nest of espionage and theft of intellectual property” (that in response, the Chinese closed the American consulate in Chengdu, Pompeo didn't say a word.)
“We called on China to align its nuclear capabilities with the strategic realities of our time,” he said. And this is true. But Pompeo did not mention that the Chinese responded by saying, "If the United States is ready to reduce its nuclear arsenals to Chinese levels, then China will be happy to join the talks."
We must give the Secretary of State his due - he admits that the United States alone will not have enough strength to deal with China. Therefore, he called for a "new union of democracies": if the UN, NATO, the G7 and the G20 pounce on China all together, then the "Frankenstein monster" will be crushed, as the USSR was once crushed. There will be a place in this "new alliance" for Russia too - perceived as a shadow of the former giant, it is not so terrible for Washington strategists as mighty China that grew up in the nutrient medium of Chimerica. The very first question Pompeo asked after the end of his "historic" speech was whether it was possible to involve Russia in the battle with the CCP on the side of the United States, as Nixon did with China in 1972.
Pompeo's answer was extremely frank: yes, there is such an opportunity, it “is born from the natural relationship between Russia and China. “And we can do something too ... We can work with the Russians,” the Secretary of State said (for the liberal part of American society, this sounds something like a recognition of the papal cardinal in the possibility of cooperation with Lucifer). Here is just one problem: a condition for mutual cooperation will be an unambiguous choice of side in the confrontation between the United States and China - of course, in favor of the United States.
Russia responded to this "test balloon" by Pompeo immediately. “Moscow never takes part in alliances against someone. We are not friends against anyone, ”the press secretary of the Russian president Dmitry Peskov commented on the words of the US Secretary of State.
It's hard to add anything to these words.
The author's point of view may not coincide with the position of the editorial board.