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| China-Japan-Koreas |
| Sanctions madness: Xi has the U.S. over a barrel-- can aid Russia, posture as peace broker, subsidize Russia's invasion, threaten US with war on two fronts... |
| 2022-03-29 |
| [Claremont] Before President Biden’s two-hour conversation last week with Chinese president Xi, the exchange was being billed as having “seismic ramifications.” Biden was going to make it clear that China would suffer “severe consequences” for any financial or military aid it provided Russia in the face of U.S. sanctions. But it doesn’t appear that Biden threatened Xi with “severe consequences” at all. And if he did, Xi blew any such warnings away. Instead, China admitted to nothing, implicated the U.S. and NATO in causing the war, insisted that Russia’s security needs to be addressed, and pressured Biden to help negotiate a settlement. According to the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Xi told Biden: The US and NATO should … have dialogue with Russia to … ease the security concerns of both Russia and Ukraine. … Sweeping and indiscriminate sanctions … [i]f further escalated, … could trigger serious crises in global economy and trade, finance, energy, food, and industrial and supply chains, crippling the already languishing world economy and causing irrevocable losses. Even before the conversation, China was speaking softly but carrying a big stick: it sent an aircraft carrier through the Straits of Taiwan. And to rub in the point, China’s vice foreign minister, one day after the presidents talked, denounced NATO and condemned U.S. sanctions. In other words, Biden’s call was a flop, like everything else he does. How could it not have been? Our foreign policy is incoherent. On the one hand, a major purpose behind Biden’s Ukraine policy is to signal to China that it dare not invade Taiwan. On the other hand, Biden needs China’s support if sanctions on Russia are to work. He is therefore both threatening China and conceding dependence on it. You cannot be unflinching and abject all at once. WHY BIDEN CANNOT SANCTION CHINA Xi knows that the U.S. will not impose any serious secondary sanctions. Biden is heading into a November midterm election, and the U.S. is in dire shape economically. The national debt stands at about $30 trillion. Inflation is devastating not just the poor, but now the middle class. Yet if the Federal Reserve Board seeks to tame inflation by raising interest rates, financial experts warn that the stock and housing markets may collapse. If to this witches’ brew we added significant trade and financial sanctions on China, our action might well precipitate a deep recession globally and at home. The World Bank forecast late last year that China’s growth would slow sharply in 2022, and our own growth is declining as well. Depressing already slow growth while further inflating prices would mean a historic defeat for Democrats in November. Both Xi and Biden know that. Xi has the U.S. over a barrel. He has nothing to fear from us. He can unobtrusively aid Russia (while denying that he does) but posture as a peace broker. He can subsidize Russia’s invasion while insisting on the sanctity of international borders. He can blame the war on the U.S. but also embarrass it if it does not encourage its Ukrainian satellite to accept a settlement. He has outflanked the U.S. (much as Nixon outflanked the USSR) by raising the specter that we might have to fight a war on two fronts — in Europe and the Pacific. If we sanction him, it only hastens the day when he and Russia develop a de-dollarized payments system and create a Eurasian trading bloc. And the U.S. already overuses its sanctions: one in ten countries in the world is now subject to them. At the same time, we expect foreign creditors to continue to buy our Treasury bills (even as the national debt soars) and foreign traders to transact in U.S. dollars. Our policies simply do not cohere. They are reckless. |
| Posted by:Snosing Ebbealing8962 |
| #3 They're not the only ones. We just removed all the tariffs Trump imposed last week. |
| Posted by: Thing From Snowy Mountain 2022-03-29 09:29 |
| #2 Actually, removes the smoke and mirrors that Russia has declined into a Chinese vassal state. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2022-03-29 08:22 |
| #1 Reckless. Incoherent. Ruinous and self-destructive. But so very virtuous! Now that makes up for everything. |
| Posted by: Flose Gonque3266 2022-03-29 00:29 |