![]() The Chinese certainly have not, but a balanced view allows for both perspectives. One should never forget the extraordinary exploits of certain Americans, for example the famed Flying Tigers. If McMaster wanted to attempt strategic empathy, he might try to imagine Chinese Navy gunboats patrolling the Mississippi for almost a century after 1854. If McMaster were ever to go to Wuhan, the newly famous industrial hub deep in the interior of China, he would see such a bund and maybe even realize that American gunboats were a common sight anchored off that city during the early twentieth century. ![]() ![]() Indeed, Americans played a major role in the “treaty port system,” which as Fairbank described, had the obligatory “institutions … the club, the race course, and the Church … protected by squat gunboats moored off the bund.” role in trading opium in China before and after the Opium War (1839-42). Fairbank, by contrast, wrote about the considerable U.S. McMaster likewise pays lip service to the “ Century of Humiliation,” but seems blithely unaware of any American role in that sordid enterprise. Were the general to do so, he might understand Fairbank’s key conclusion that, overall, “the man of violence was of course looked down upon” by Chinese culture in rather a clear contrast to both Japanese and most Western societies. He has the obligatory quote from the “godfather of American sinology” John King Fairbank, but McMaster might wish to read Fairbank more carefully. Others have rightly pointed out the irony that McMaster himself calls in the essay for “strategic empathy,” but evinces little in his own analysis. Most importantly, the general is silent on the most obvious of national security indicators: China has not resorted to the use of large-scale armed force against another state since 1979 - a rather remarkable record of restraint for a great power. Those deeply familiar with bottlenecks in the developing world, moreover, know that Chinese infrastructure is making a definite contribution to decreasing global poverty. It has provided foundational support for the establishment of the Africa Center for Disease Control (CDC). peacekeeping, including in some rough locales, such as Sudan and Lebanon. Therefore, a few examples are furnished here to make the point.Ĭhina is one of the leading contributors to U.N. So blinkered is the retired general that he cannot muster a single, positive word about China. Such one-sided argumentation that becomes a college essay generally does not receive good grades and neither should McMaster’s. This demonstrates a peculiar disregard by McMaster for what most consider to be the most salient role of the national security adviser: seeking to prevent, but also preparing to win the nation’s wars.Īs scholars know well, polemics are of a limited utility, seeing as they focus on just one side of the story. Perhaps most disturbing is the focus on trivial matters like tweets, and basketball games. It represents a mere polemic, lacking in balance or historical perspective. national security, the essay is dismal failure. As a viable strategy for approaching China in the twenty-first century from a leading thinker on U.S. ![]() The essay may succeed as a catalogue of heartburn that Americans harbor against China (that rather incongruously does not mention COVID-19), but unfortunately it is no more than that. McMaster concludes the essay by urging Americans to “compete aggressively,” because “many beneath heaven” do not wish to be ruled by Beijing. Thus, he seems particularly irate that Beijing would dare cancel the broadcast of a Houston Rockets basketball game in China based on a tweet critical of the Chinese government by the team’s general manager. His main problem with China does not seem to concern military strategy, but rather commercial and ideological issues like technology theft and information warfare. Upon observing the design motifs of the Forbidden City during his visit to Beijing with President Trump in November 2017, he concludes that China seeks to rule “everything beneath heaven.” McMaster sees Chinese foreign policy as an attempt to reconstruct a “tributary system,” in which countries enjoy peace with China “in return for submission.” In a recent piece by McMaster entitled, “ How China Sees the World,” he asserts that China is “leading the development of new rules and a new international order that would make the world less free and less safe.” McMaster was formerly described as “one of the adults” in the current administration. As a trusted member of the foreign policy establishment, retired U.S. Americans had better pay attention when a former national security adviser weighs in on China policy.
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