When someone states the obvious but states it in a distorted way, is he still stating the obvious? We can have fun trying to answer this question by analyzing the Peter Skurkiss article that came under the title: “China and its apologists,” published on September 5, 2020 in The American Thinker. Or we can extract from the article a more sober set of realities that will help us determine how things work in the real world today.
Let's go with that second
proposition. Early in his article, Skurkiss leveled the following reprimand
against China: “The Chinese intend to, if not rule the world, then at the very
least dominate it.” He did so, having complained that the US Chamber of
Commerce and a number of leading politicians advise against decoupling the US
trade practices if not the economy as a whole from China.
What is obvious is that the
American and Chinese economies are interlinked to a high degree. What is
distorted is the way that Peter Skurkiss paints the larger picture, which
includes the vision that is stated by the Chinese concerning the stronger
country they endeavor to build in the future. What Skurkiss fears is what their
effort will entail when fully realized and heaped on the rest of the world.
To verify if there is
substance to the Skurkiss view, we need to recall that since the start of
Civilization, empires were formed and went on to dominate the world known at
the time. The empires lasted thousands of years before they fell and were
replaced by someone else. As the human species progressed, and life became more
hectic, empires lasted only hundreds of years before they fell and were
replaced by others. The last of those being the British Empire that was
replaced by no one. Thus ended the first phase of the human attempt to organize
itself into a stable and lasting system of governance.
Even though the British Empire
did not fall until the middle of the Twentieth Century, the seeds of its demise
were sown a century earlier when the Industrial Revolution began to transform
the economics, politics and way of life that people used to enjoy, into
something different. That was and remains the current systems which people have
no choice but to embrace, endure, revolt against, hold their noses and accept
or bask in their glory.
While this was happening, the
method of ruling the world was also transforming. It went from what it was in
the ancient era when the rulers were thought to derive legitimacy from the
gods, or were themselves considered gods––to what is happening now. And what’s
happening now, is what Skurkiss is distorting because he misses something
important. He misses what went on in the period between that of the ruling gods
and now. This knowledge, however, is crucial to fully understand how the world
is run today.
Here is what Skurkiss needs to
know. It was during the Middle Ages that the feudal lords, and later the
monarchs, expanded their dominions by conquest and by intermarriage. This is
how a system of governance was transferred from one province to another and
from one kingdom to another. It took place regularly throughout Europe and
lasted till the era when colonization began, a time when something new was
added.
Whereas intermarriage
continued in Europe, the royal families of the Continent did not intermarry
with those of Africa, Asia or the new worlds they had conquered. However, they
formed family-like bonds with the ruling maharajahs of India for example, as
well as the pashas of Egypt and the ruling elites of the nations they conquered
as well as those they did not.
While this helped to preserve
the dynastic rule of monarchs everywhere it existed, the transformation that
was brought about by the Industrial Revolution, was reaching its apogee in
Europe. The principles of socialism took hold, and when they reached Russia,
they made possible the rise of the first communist nation whose ambition was to
export and spread the new system of governance throughout the world.
Whereas communism helped the
Soviet Union survive the Second World War and go on to become a military
superpower, it proved deficient in the economic sphere. It lost out in the
competition against the capitalism that was fashioned by the British East India
Company centuries earlier and had matured by the twentieth century. It was the
system practiced in America, the de facto heir to the British Empire.
While that competition was
ongoing, however, other economies, most notably Japan, that had adopted the
capitalist system, were thought to be on their way to “dominate” the world. But
the reality turned out to be that the capitalists of every nation, including
those of Japan, were beginning to form bonds among themselves in the same way
that the lords and monarchs of the Medieval era and later the colonial era, had
formed bonds between them.
In fact, the capitalists
everywhere worked hand-in-hand to benefit themselves and benefit each other
rather than work to benefit the countries that made their enterprises possible.
The result is that we now have several versions of one and the same economic
system called capitalism, vying to rule the world.
Some commentators even argue that capitalism––be it the American, the Chinese or any other––has already supplanted the political systems which used to rule the world but were rejected by the wave of populist movements sweeping the globe today.