Make no mistake: China truly is considered The Big One by those in Trump’s entourage responsible for devising foreign policy. While they imagine many international challenges to their “America First” strategy, only China, they believe, poses a true threat to the continued global dominance of this country.

“I feel strongly that the Chinese Communist Party has entered into a Cold War with the United States and is explicit in its aim to replace the liberal, Western-led world order that has been in place since World War II,” Representative Michael Waltz, Trump’s choice as national security adviser, declared at a 2023 event hosted by the Atlantic Council. “We’re in a global arms race with an adversary that, unlike any in American history, has the economic and the military capability to truly supplant and replace us.”

As Waltz and others around Trump see it, China poses a multi-dimensional threat to this country’s global supremacy. In the military domain, by building up its air force and navy, installing military bases on reclaimed islands in the South China Sea, and challenging Taiwan through increasingly aggressive air and naval maneuvers, it is challenging continued American dominance of the Western Pacific. Diplomatically, it’s now bolstering or repairing ties with key U.S. allies, including India, Indonesia, Japan, and the members of NATO. Meanwhile, it’s already close to replicating this country’s most advanced technologies, especially its ability to produce advanced microchips. And despite Washington’s efforts to diminish a U.S. reliance on vital Chinese goods, including critical minerals and pharmaceuticals, it remains a primary supplier of just such products to this country.

Fight or Strike Bargains?

For many in the Trumpian inner circle, the only correct, patriotic response to the China challenge is to fight back hard. Both Representative Waltz, Trump’s pick as national security adviser, and Senator Marco Rubio, his choice as secretary of state, have sponsored or supported legislation to curb what they view as “malign” Chinese endeavors in the United States and abroad.

Waltz, for example, introduced the American Critical Mineral Exploration and Innovation Act of 2020, which was intended, as he explained, “to reduce America’s dependence on foreign sources of critical minerals and bring the U.S. supply chain from China back to America.” Senator Rubio has been equally combative in the legislative arena. In 2021, he authored the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which banned goods produced in forced labor encampments in Xinjiang Province from entering the United States. He also sponsored several pieces of legislation aimed at curbing Chinese access to U.S. technology. Although these, as well as similar measures introduced by Waltz, haven’t always obtained the necessary congressional approval, they have sometimes been successfully bundled into other legislation.

In short, Trump will enter office in January with a toolkit of punitive measures for fighting China ready to roll along with strong support among his appointees for making them the law of the land. But of course, we’re talking about Donald Trump, so nothing is a given. Some analysts believe that his penchant for deal-making and his professed admiration for Chinese strongman President Xi Jinping may lead him to pursue a far more transactional approach, increasing economic and military pressure on Beijing to produce concessions on, for example, curbing the export of fentanyl precursors to Mexico, but when he gets what he wants letting them lapse. Howard Lutnick, the billionaire investor from Cantor Fitzgerald whom he chose as Commerce secretary, claims that Trump actually “wants to make a deal with China,” and will use the imposition of tariffs selectively as a bargaining tool to do so.

What such a deal might look like is anyone’s guess, but it’s hard to see how Trump could win significant concessions from Beijing without abandoning some of the punitive measures advocated by the China hawks in his entourage. Count on one thing: this complicated and confusing dynamic will play out in each of the major problem areas in U.S.-China relations, forcing Trump to make critical choices between his transactional instincts and the harsh ideological bent of his advisers.

Trump, China, and Taiwan

Of all the China-related issues in his second term in office, none is likely to prove more challenging or consequential than the future status of the island of Taiwan. At issue are Taiwan’s gradual moves toward full independence and the risk that China will invade the island to prevent such an outcome, possibly triggering U.S. military intervention as well. Of all the potential crises facing Trump, this is the one that could most easily lead to a great-power conflict with nuclear undertones.

When Washington granted diplomatic recognition to China in 1979, it “acknowledged” that Taiwan and the mainland were both part of “one China” and that the two parts could eventually choose to reunite. The U.S. also agreed to cease diplomatic relations with Taiwan and terminate its military presence there. However, under the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979, Washington was also empowered to cooperate with a quasi-governmental Taiwanese diplomatic agency, the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in the United States, and provide Taiwan with the weapons needed for its defense. Moreover, in what came to be known as “strategic ambiguity,” U.S. officials insisted that any effort by China to alter Taiwan’s status by force would constitute “a threat to the peace and security of the Western Pacific area” and would be viewed as a matter “of grave concern to the United States,” although not necessarily one requiring a military response.

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For decades, one president after another reaffirmed the “one China” policy while also providing Taiwan with increasingly powerful weaponry. For their part, Chinese officials repeatedly declared that Taiwan was a renegade province that should be reunited with the mainland, preferably by peaceful means. The Taiwanese, however, have never expressed a desire for reunification and instead have moved steadily towards a declaration of independence, which Beijing has insisted would justify armed intervention.

As such threats became more frequent and menacing, leaders in Washington continued to debate the validity of “strategic ambiguity,” with some insisting it should be replaced by a policy of “strategic clarity” involving an ironclad commitment to assist Taiwan should it be invaded by China. President Biden seemed to embrace this view, repeatedly affirming that the U.S. was obligated to defend Taiwan under such circumstances. However, each time he said so, his aides walked back his words, insisting the U.S. was under no legal obligation to do so.

The Biden administration also boosted its military support for the island while increasing American air and naval patrols in the area, which only heightened the possibility of a future U.S. intervention should China invade. Some of these moves, including expedited arms transfers to Taiwan, were adopted in response to prodding from China hawks in Congress. All, however, fit with an overarching administration strategy of encircling China with a constellation of American military installations and U.S.-armed allies and partners.

From Beijing’s perspective, then, Washington is already putting extreme military and geopolitical pressure on China. The question is: Will the Trump administration increase or decrease those pressures, especially when it comes to Taiwan?

That Trump will approve increased arms sales to and military cooperation with Taiwan essentially goes without saying (as much, at least, as anything involving him does). The Chinese have experienced upticks in U.S. aid to Taiwan before and can probably live through another round of the same. But that leaves far more volatile issues up for grabs: Will he embrace “strategic clarity,” guaranteeing Washington’s automatic intervention should China invade Taiwan, and will he approve a substantial expansion of the American military presence in the region? Both moves have been advocated by some of the China hawks in Trump’s entourage, and both are certain to provoke fierce, hard-to-predict responses from Beijing.

Many of Trump’s closest advisers have, in fact, insisted on “strategic clarity” and increased military cooperation with Taiwan. Michael Waltz, for example, has asserted that the U.S. must “be clear we’ll defend Taiwan as a deterrent measure.” He has also called for an increased military presence in the Western Pacific. Similarly, last June, Robert C. O’Brien, Trump’s national security adviser from 2019 to 2021, wrote that the U.S. “should make clear” its “commitment” to “help defend” Taiwan, while expanding military cooperation with the island.

Trump himself has made no such commitments, suggesting instead a more ambivalent stance. In his typical fashion, in fact, he’s called on Taiwan to spend more on its own defense and expressed anger at the concentration of advanced chip-making on the island, claiming that the Taiwanese “did take about 100% of our chip business.” But he’s also warned of harsh economic measures were China to impose a blockade of the island, telling the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal, “I would say [to President Xi]: if you go into Taiwan, I’m sorry to do this, I’m going to tax you at 150% to 200%.” He wouldn’t need to threaten the use of force to prevent a blockade, he added, because President Xi “respects me and he knows I’m [expletive] crazy.”

Such comments reveal the bind Trump will inevitably find himself in when it comes to Taiwan this time around. He could, of course, try to persuade Beijing to throttle back its military pressure on the island in return for a reduction in U.S. tariffs — a move that would reduce the risk of war in the Pacific but leave China in a stronger economic position and disappoint many of his top advisers. If, however, he chooses to act “crazy” by embracing “strategic clarity” and stepping up military pressure on China, he would likely receive accolades from many of his supporters, while provoking a (potentially nuclear) war with China.

Trade War or Economic Coexistence?

The question of tariffs represents another way in which Trump will face a crucial choice between punitive action and transactional options in his second term — or, to be more precise, in deciding how severe to make those tariffs and other economic hardships he will try to impose on China.

In January 2018, the first Trump administration imposed tariffs of 30% on imported solar panels and 20%-50% on imported washing machines, many sourced from China. Two months later, the administration added tariffs on imported steel (25%) and aluminum (10%), again aimed above all at China. And despite his many criticisms of Trump’s foreign and economic policies, President Biden chose to retain those tariffs, even adding new ones, notably on electric cars and other high-tech products. The Biden administration has also banned the export of advanced computer chips and chip-making technology to China in a bid to slow that country’s technological progress.

Accordingly, when Trump reassumes office on January 20th, China will already be under stringent economic pressures from Washington. But he and his associates insist that those won’t be faintly enough to constrain China’s rise. The president-elect has said that, on day one of his new term, he will impose a 10% tariff on all Chinese imports and follow that with other harsh measures. Among such moves, the Trump team has announced plans to raise tariffs on Chinese imports to 60%, revoke China’s Permanent Normal Trade Relations (also known as “most favored nation”) status, and ban the transshipment of Chinese imports through third countries.

Most of Trump’s advisers have espoused such measures strongly. “Trump Is Right: We Should Raise Tariffs on China,” Marco Rubio wrote last May. “China’s anticompetitive tactics,” he argued, “give Chinese companies an unfair cost advantage over American companies… Tariffs that respond to these tactics prevent or reverse offshoring, preserving America’s economic might and promoting domestic investment.”

But Trump will also face possible pushback from other advisers who are warning of severe economic perturbations if such measures were to be enacted. China, they suggest, has tools of its own to use in any trade war with the U.S., including tariffs on American imports and restrictions on American firms doing business in China, including Elon Musk’s Tesla, which produces half of its cars there. For these and other reasons, the U.S.-China Business Council has warned that additional tariffs and other trade restrictions could prove disastrous, inviting “retaliatory measures from China, causing additional U.S. jobs and output losses.”

As in the case of Taiwan, Trump will face some genuinely daunting decisions when it comes to economic relations with China. If, in fact, he follows the advice of the ideologues in his circle and pursues a strategy of maximum pressure on Beijing, specifically designed to hobble China’s growth and curb its geopolitical ambitions, he could precipitate nothing short of a global economic meltdown that would negatively affect the lives of so many of his supporters, while significantly diminishing America’s own geopolitical clout. He might therefore follow the inclinations of certain of his key economic advisers like transition leader Howard Lutnick, who favor a more pragmatic, businesslike relationship with China. How Trump chooses to address this issue will likely determine whether the future involves increasing economic tumult and uncertainty or relative stability. And it’s always important to remember that a decision to play hardball with China on the economic front could also increase the risk of a military confrontation leading to full-scale war, even to World War III.

And while Taiwan and trade are undoubtedly the most obvious and challenging issues Trump will face in managing (mismanaging?) U.S.-China relations in the years ahead, they are by no means the only ones. He will also have to decide how to deal with increasing Chinese assertiveness in the South China Sea, continued Chinese economic and military-technological support for Russia in its war against Ukraine, and growing Chinese investments in Africa, Latin America, and elsewhere.

In these, and other aspects of the U.S.-China rivalry, Trump will be pulled toward both increased militancy and combativeness and a more pragmatic, transactional approach. During the campaign, he backed each approach, sometimes in the very same verbal outburst. Once in power, however, he will have to choose between them — and his decisions will have a profound impact on this country, China, and everyone living on this planet.

Copyright 2024 Michael Klare

Via Tomdispatch.com

“Declaring faculty members as persona non grata appears tantamount to a summary suspension…. The AAUP has long considered denying faculty members the right to carry out their key duties as a major sanction, second only to dismissal in severity. An administration should take such a step only after demonstrating adequate cause in an adjudicative hearing of record before an elected faculty body. No such hearing has taken place [at NYU]. These actions by NYU administrators are part of a pattern of college and university administrations responding to protests by imposing harsh and broadly chilling restrictions and sanctions. As the AAUP warned at the start of the fall semester, such severe limits on speech and assembly discourage or shut down expressive activity of faculty, students, and other members of the campus community and undermine the academic freedom and freedom of speech and expression that are fundamental to higher education.” 

(The Conversation) – The lightning-fast collapse of the Assad regime in Syria has sent shock waves across the Middle East. The disposal of the dictator whose family had ruled the country with an iron fist for more than half a century has triggered a potentially seismic shift in the balance of power in the region.

But there are also important repercussions beyond Syria and its neighbourhood – with Russia one of the more significantly affected powers.

Back in 2015, Assad’s regime had been on the brink of collapse. It was saved by a Russian intervention – with support from Iran and Hezbollah. Launched in the context of a growing threat from Islamic State, Russia enabled Assad’s regime to push back other rebel forces as well.

Over the years that followed, it enabled Assad to consolidate control over the capital, other key cities, and in particular the coastal region where Russia had two military bases.

The future of these bases is now uncertain. The Russian naval base in Tartus – which dates back to Soviet times – as well as an air base at Khmeimim, established south-east of Latakia in 2015, were vital assets for Russia to project military force in the Mediterranean sea and bolster the Kremlin’s claim to Russian great-power status.

Given the importance of the bases for Russia and the significant investments made over the years in propping the regime, Assad’s fall reflects badly on Russia’s capabilities to assert credible influence on the global stage.

Even if Russia somehow manages to negotiate a deal with Syria’s new rulers over the future of its military bases, the fact that Moscow was unable to save an important ally like Assad exposes critical weaknesses in Russia’s ability to act, rather than just talk, like a great power.

There are clear intelligence failures that either missed or misinterpreted the build-up of anti-Assad forces by Qatar, and Turkey’s tacit support of this. These failures were then compounded by diminished Russian military assets in Syria and an inability to reinforce them at short notice. This is, of course, due to Russia’s ongoing war against Ukraine.

The depletion of the military capabilities of two other Kremlin allies in the region — Iran and Hezbollah — further compounded the difficulties for Assad and exacerbated the effect of Russia’s overstretch. This also raises the question of whether Russia strategically misjudged the situation and underestimated its vulnerability in Syria.

But even more so, it highlights Russia’s own dependence on allies who do not simply acquiesce to Moscow’s demands — as Assad did when he provided Russia its military bases — but who actively support a wannabe great power that lacks some of the means to assert its claimed status – as Iran and Hezbollah did in 2015.

Where’s China?

Missing from this equation is China. While Beijing had sided with Assad after the start of the Syrian civil war, this support was mostly of the rhetorical kind. It was mainly aimed at preventing a UN-backed, western-led intervention akin to the one in Libya that led to the fall of Gaddafi and has plunged the country into chaos ever since.

A high-profile visit of Assad to China in September 2023 resulted in a strategic partnership agreement. This seemed to signal another step towards the rehabilitation of the Syrian regime, in Beijing’s eyes at least. But when push came to shove and Assad’s rule was under severe threat, China did nothing to save him.

This raises an important question about Chinese judgment of the Syrian regime and the evolving crisis. But there is also a broader point here regarding Russian great-power ambitions.

“Diminished,” Dream / Dreamland v3, 2024

For all the talk of a limitless partnership between Moscow and Beijing, China ultimately did nothing to save Russia from an embarrassing defeat in Syria. Where Russia needed a military presence to bolster its claims to great-power status, Chinese interests in the Middle East are primarily about economic opportunity and the perceived threat of Islamic fundamentalist terrorism.

This has clearly limited Beijing’s appetite to become more involved, let alone to bail out Assad.

Putin diminished

Russia’s position in the Middle East now is in peril. Moscow has lost a key ally in Assad. Its other main allies, Iran and Hezbollah, are significantly weakened. Israel and Turkey, with whom the Kremlin has not had easy relations over the past few years, have been strengthened.

This exposes the hollowness of Russian claims to great-power status. It is also likely to further diminish Russian prestige and the standing that it has in the eyes of other partners – whether they are China or North Korea, members of the Brics, or countries in the global south that Russia has recently tried to woo.

The consequences of that for Ukraine – arguably the main source of Russia’s over-stretch – are likely to be ambivalent. On the one hand, the ease with which Assad was deposed demonstrates that Russia is not invincible and that its support of brutal dictatorships has limits. On the other hand, there should be no expectation of anything but Russia doubling down in Ukraine.

Putin needs a success that restores domestic and international confidence in him —and fast. After all, Donald Trump does not like losers.

Stefan Wolff, Professor of International Security, University of Birmingham

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The officers of the new government have said various things. BBC Monitoring reports that on December 14, the new minister of defense, Col. Hasan al-Hamada, said on Telegram that the new Syria would not enjoy security until it terminated the “separatist schemes” of what he termed the “PKK” (Kurdistan Workers Party or Partiya Karkeran Kurdistan), which he said held sway over the east of the country. The PKK began as a Marxist separatist faction in the late 1970s and is still viewed as a terrorist organization by the US, Turkey and some European countries.

Since the PKK is based in Iraq and Turkey’s eastern Anatolia, al-Hamada was likely instead referring to the YPG or People’s Protection Units (Yekîneyên Parastina Gel) in northeastern Syria, the paramilitary for AANES, which denies any relationship to the more radical PKK. His words were ominous for the Kurdish regions, and reflected the desires of the patron of the ruling faction in the new Syria, Turkey, which wants to see the YPG disarmed.

In contrast, the leader of the new government, Ahmad al-Shara (nom de guerre Abu Mohammad al-Jolani), has been more conciliatory. BBC Monitoring reports his remarks this weekend to Istanbul-based Syria TV, which is Qatari-owned. He made a distinction between the “Kurdish community” and the “PKK organization.”

On Sunday on a Syrian Telegram channel, al-Shara said that Kurds are a fundamental component of the coming Syria. He added, “The Kurds are a part of the homeland, and were exposed to tremendous injustice, as we were. With the fading of the regime, it may be that the injustice that befell them will fade as well.” He stressed the importance of “justice and equality for all,” such as would ensure “new regulations and a new history in Syria.”

The sweep of HTS forces from Idlib to Aleppo had caused the displacement of some Kurds in the Afrin region. Al-Shara pledged, “We will seek to return our people there to their villages and regions.” If he is sincere and has the power to make this happen, it would be a significant development and would cross his Turkish patrons, who want to break up the band of Kurdish habitation along the Syrian-Turkish border in the north.

Al-Shara’s remarkable statements on Sunday were hailed by the Iraqi Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani, head of that country’s Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), which rules the Kurdistan Regional Government or super-province of northern Iraq.

Barzani said, “We have seen a statement by Ahmed al-Sharaa about the Kurdish people in Syria, in which he described the Kurdish people as part of the homeland and a partner in the future of Syria.” He added that “this vision of the Kurds and of the future of Syria is a source of joy and is welcome to us, and we hope that it will be the beginning of a correction of the course of history and of ending the wrong and unfair actions that were taken against the Kurdish people in Syria.”

Barzani continued that “such a perspective represents a starting point that paves the way for building a strong Syria; and the Kurds, Arabs and all other components of Syria must seize this opportunity to participate together in building a stable, free and democratic Syria.”

Barzani’s reaction is important for a number of reasons. Kurds in Iraq have had their own experience in reintegrating into a largely Arab country after the fall of a Baath regime, and have found ways to be influential in Baghdad while keeping some semi-autonomy. They are sometimes portrayed as the Quebec of Iraq.

Additionally, if the HTS were to move aggressively against the Syrian Kurds, Barzani could push back militarily. Both the KRG military force, the Peshmerga, and the thousands of PKK fighters hiding out in Iraq’s Qandil mountains could make a lot of trouble for the new Syria if it moves aggressively against the Kurds, as new Defense Minister al-Hamada seems to have envisioned. Further, Iraqi Kurds have influence in Baghdad, where Shiite leaders view al-Shara and his colleagues as little better than ISIL.

Moreover, the European Union, individual European countries and the US are watching the HTS-led government carefully to see if it takes the route of human rights, before they will consider lifting sanctions on Syria. The country desperately needs sanctions relief, and avoiding the Arab nationalist mistakes of the past with regard to the Kurds may be one of the prices Damascus has to pay. It won’t make Turkey happy, but Turkey itself would vastly benefit from a lifting of Syrian sanctions, since otherwise Ankara will have to carry the Syrian economy itself and Turkish firms could face sanctions for investing there.

The autonomous Kurdish AANES is for the most part civilly administered by the Democratic Union Party (Partiya Yekîtiya Demokrat), which follows the left-wing cooperativist philosophy of Brooklyn thinker Murray Bookchin. It rules over roughly 2.4 million of Syria’s 24 million people.

As noted, the paramilitary of the Democratic Union Party is the YPG or People’s Protection Units. They form the core of the Syrian Democratic Forces, which have been backed by the US Department of Defense and which played the major role in defeating the ISIL (ISIS, Daesh) terrorist group that briefly ruled parts of Syria and Iraq 2014-2018. US special operations troops embedded among them.

In 2019, President Donald J. Trump was widely blamed for giving Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan the green light to invade the Kurdish regions of northern Syria and to establish a military buffer zone, which led to the displacement of tens of thousands of Kurds and the deaths of SDF fighters who had saved America’s bacon in the fight against ISIL.

The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces kicked the Baath Party of Bashar al-Assad out of the northeast in 2011 and in recent times had an uneasy truce with it, as long as it respected their semi-autonomy. Arab nationalist Syria had never known what to do with the country’s Kurds, who are not Arabs, and had stripped them of citizenship in 1963.