If you're small, the world will empathize with you, even help relieve your pain if it sees that you're beaten up by someone bigger than you. Such is the case of the Palestinians who are constantly beaten up by America and the armed-to-the-teeth Israel, both of which delight in ganging up on the unarmed simple people of Palestine, and rob them of their meager possessions.
If you're two rivals of
roughly equal strength, and one of you manages to beat the other in a contest
that was conducted fairly and squarely, the world will delight seeing the loser
accept defeat and shake hands with the winner. The world will be overjoyed to
see the loser ask the winner for advice on how to improve his performance. Such
was the case when the Soviet Union collapsed and asked America for advice on
how to become as good economically as it was militarily.
If you're a giant, having
become what you are today because you exercised as called for, and you did all
the right things while growing to your current size and stature, the world that
used to admire you will quickly despise you if you change from being graceful
to being petty. This is the case of an America that has changed from being the
generous athletic sportsman it was, to being the petty crybaby it has become.
Whereas America used to have
Japan as an economic rival, and the Soviet Union as a military rival, it was
able to triumph over both. What happened was that the Soviet Union threw in the
towel when its economy could no longer sustain its military expansion. As to
Japan, it lost the resilience that had powered it to economic stardom post the
Second World War. But what happened shortly after that, was that China
experienced a rapid rise, and filled the shoes of the two previous giants.
Today, China stands at par with America in both the military and economic
fields.
The thing we must not lose
sight of, however, is that America displayed its crybaby character on previous
occasions. It did so when Japan was nearing its peak performance, and was
beating America in the fields of steel, electronics and auto production.
American industrialists in these fields and others, complained about Japan
playing an unfair game by putting all kinds of restrictions on American
products trying to sell in the Japanese market. But nobody that studied the
performance of both, and looked at the quality of the products each was making,
believed the Americans. Their industrialists were labeled crybabies, which
prompted them to take a good look at themselves.
The Americans discovered they
had taken their own supremacy for granted, had grown lazy, flabby and slouchy.
They pulled themselves up by their bootstraps and worked hard to rekindle their
innovative spirit. They invented new ways to making steel, invited foreign auto
companies to open plants in America, and encouraged the likes of Bill Gates and
Steve Jobs to gallop ahead of everyone else in the newly rising cyber related
industries. For a time, America reigned supreme as sole superpower till the
advent of the new China.
Now, America is once again
displaying the predisposition to change into the crybaby which it is at heart,
and reverts to when the chips are down. You can see it in the article that came
under the title: “Xi Jinping Is Using Economic Games to Endanger America's
National Security,” written by Eric K. Hontz, and published on November 29,
2020 in The National Interest.
What's mind blowing about this
article is that the writer began the discussion by saying something which
amounts to this: “The Chinese are so bad they behave exactly like we do. But we
are good and they are not because we are us and they are them.” Here is how
Eric Hontz formulated that incredible thought:
“Xi Jinping's changes have created
a new Chinese domestic economy that's walled off from the rest of the world. It
most closely resembles an app store or an online sales platform: the Chinese
Communist Party (CCP) serves as the gatekeeper and aggregator of the Chinese
domestic market. To enter the Chinese market, Western firms must enter into
joint ventures or share intellectual property with Chinese enterprises. This
requirement is similar to the way many online platforms (Apple, Google, Amazon)
allow sellers on their websites, but then harvest the data to use and resell
themselves”.
And throughout the article,
you are shocked to realize that Eric Hontz ignores the fact that in the same
way the Americans have the right to implement a strategy of America First, so
do the Chinese who might want to think and act in terms of China First. As to
the charge of stealing intellectual property from others, let those who claim
being innocent of the vice, cast the first stone.
And there is something that
only America is known to practice on a large scale. It is to do more than steal
intellectual property; it is to steal live intellects, and lures them to settle
in America. In fact, at the time when America was being challenged by the
Soviets and the Japanese, it was the “brain drain” to America from around the
world, including Canada, that helped America win the Cold War.
Today, people like Eric Hontz
accuse China of playing the game that their predecessors used to accuse Japan
of playing. The Americans were called crybabies at the time, and the charge
forced them to compete better so as to regain their place at the top of the
food chain, which they did for a short while.
Yes, it seems on the surface
that history is repeating itself, but that’s only on the surface. Below the
veneer, however, the structure is changing fundamentally this time. For this
reason, it behooves America not to look for and try to implement the old
solutions.
Were America to treat as foe rather than partner a fifth of humanity, which China represents, it would lose decisively, and this will not even be the end of the story. It will not be because the rest of humanity is coming right behind China and watching attentively to see if America will finally grow up and get rid of its crybaby habits, or try to impose its will on a world it can no longer influence.