History is not a human being, therefore cannot repeat itself
by some deliberate act, and cannot copycat someone or something. What happens
at times, however, is that an individual would look back in history and try to
emulate someone or recreate an event. Depending on several factors, the attempt
can have a good, a bad or an indifferent result.
Because we are members of the animal kingdom, we learn by
observing individuals from our own species and from the other species. This is
a trait that makes us natural copycats; an attribute around which a great
number of stories were told. They concern individuals that grew up in the
footsteps of a parent or a mentor, and turned out well; and they are stories
that concern individuals who did badly. If the individual turns out to be a
historic figure, their attempt to recreate the past can leave its own mark on
history – good, bad or indifferent.
Another category of people we call opinion makers draw on
their understanding of history trying to influence the course of society by
nudging those in power to move in one direction or another. In doing so, they
can be a good influence or a bad one depending on several factors. Thus, in
assessing the validity of what they recommend, we must try to gauge the clarity
with which they see current events, and how they compare what they see with the
historical record.
One of these people is John Bolton who is known to take
“hawkish” positions when it comes to influencing the foreign policy of the United States .
His latest work in this vein is an article he wrote under the title: “How to
Answer China 's
Muscle-Flexing” and the subtitle: “A freshly aggressive tone from Beijing greets Joe Biden on his week-long trip to Asia .” It was published in the Wall Street Journal on
December 5, 2013.
When you read the article, you are taken aback at the start,
seeing the author attack his own administration and suggesting that a better
course for America
should be inspired by what the perennial losers of history think. In fact,
speaking of Prime Minister Abe of Japan, Bolton says that if he “wants to know
how the Obama administration treats American allies, he can call Bibi
Netanyahu,” This would be the Prime Minister of the Israelis, a people that got
it wrong each and every time for something like four thousand years.
Bolton then describes the situation in the South
China Sea the way he sees it, and starts attacking the character
of the Chinese. He does that by first chiding the “American business and political
leaders [who] accepted the notion that China is engaged in a 'peaceful
rise' to become a 'responsible stakeholder' in world affairs.” And so he
recommends that people stop “fantasizing” about what China might become, and start
designing a response to a range of possible scenarios that may unfold in the
future. He does not say how that is different from fantasizing about what China
might become, but engages in his own fantasy about the different scenarios that
China may play – one being the polar opposite of the “peaceful rise of a
responsible stakeholder” that American business and political leaders thought
about. You see, my friend, when it comes to John Bolton and to people like him,
it is always a case of: my fantasy is better than your assessment.
And so, he tells the reader why his fantasy is good. To this
end, he writes in detail about “Beijing 's
increases in military budgets,” and adds: “These aren't the marks of a
'peaceful rise.'” And this, my friend, is when you get it in the face. Wham!
The man just repudiated everything that Ronald Reagan did when arming America in a drive to engage the Soviet Union in an arms race that the latter could not
sustain. Given where the American and Chinese economies stand today, and where
they are going, you wonder if the Chinese are not doing to America what Reagan did to the Soviet
Union .
Whether or not this is a deliberate game that the Chinese
are playing, Bolton puts down a strategy for America that resembles the one
followed by the Soviets. Thus, you see him recommend that America try to forge an alliance “among friends
and allies” in Asia . It would be one that will
look like the Warsaw Pact which the Soviet Union
forged with the Eastern European countries.
The trouble is that Bolton fails to understand how the
economic considerations in Eastern Europe helped Reagan and the Pope bring down
the Soviet Union . It was in a Polish town
called Gdansk that the cry for a better economic
situation was heard; a cry that reverberated all the way to the Berlin wall in Germany . The Soviet satellites fell
one after the other, and the Russian
Federation under Yeltsin had no choice but
to shed the remaining satellites thus free itself of the shackles that tethered
it to a system it was itself now rejecting. Likewise, the economic situation as
it is shaping in Asia at this time will make the nations there stick with China more tightly than America .
This being conjecture, how can we tell if Bolton 's
view is right or wrong? Well, if it can be said that the jury is out on whether
or not the Asian nations will fall into America's orbit, we do not need a jury
to tell us he is wrong in what he says next … especially in view of the fact
that what he says next is but an extension of what he just said. Not only does
he believe that America can
bring the Asian nations around it to go against China ,
he also believes that America
can bring China around it to
go against nations like North Korea
and Iran .
Speaking of fantasy, what can be more fantastic than that?
He ends the article the way he started it by attacking his
own American administration, and lauding the position of the perennial losers.
He says Israel
lives in the real world, and Obama lives in a bubble because he is directing
“his efforts to reshape American society.” How bad, the man who does what he
was elected to do! Which is why Bolton takes consolation in the fact that “China 's
air-defense zone move has pierced the bubble.” He can breathe easier now.