Only the future can answer this question. But that doesn’t mean it’s not worth asking.
On Friday, The Commerce Department published a 100 plus page set of rules sharply restricting China’s access to advanced semiconductor technology. I’m unqualified to opine on the technological and supply chain implications of the new rules. But across a wide spectrum of publications, those who do know what they’re talking about believe the new rules are a huge blow to China’s economic and military ambitions as well as uniquely provocative in the context of our recent relationship with China.
That’s because semiconductors now rival energy as the most important resource in the economy. And the most advanced semiconductors, the smallest ones, require equipment made by a handful of Western companies; and 90% of the production of the most advanced semiconductors are made in Taiwan.
I’m not in a position to say that the Commerce rules were not the right strategy. But the timing is suspicious to me given where we are in the political calendar, so close to the midterm elections.
I watched the Ohio Senate debate this week between Democrat Tim Ryan and Republican J.D. Vance. The two candidates competed as to who could be tougher on China. Maybe I’m missing it, but I can’t find any national candidate that isn’t bashing China in some way. It’s a winning pitch to blame China for a wide range of ills, including lost jobs and the fentanyl crisis.
According to a September Pew poll, more than 80% of Americans have an unfavorable opinion of China. The polls of Chinese views of America are not strictly analogous as the questions are different and more nuanced than like/don’t like. That said, it’s clear that Chinese attitudes toward America are increasingly hostile.
The historical analogy I’m tempted to reach for is the 1940 American oil embargo on Japan. But the only real lesson from that is economic war can lead to real war.
The other lesson from recent American history is that except for very short periods of time, the ideal of foreign policy being detached from domestic politics is unrealistic. During the very early days of the Cold War, a leading Republican Senator said, “we must stop partisan politics at the water’s edge.” In that case, there was bipartisan support for a vigorous and laudable response to the Soviet Union’s attempt to expand its dominion over Europe.
In a short matter of time, however, that unity turned into Republican accusations of Democrats having “lost” China to Communism, to the scourge of McCarthyism, and ultimately to the notion that no Democratic president could afford to look weak in combatting Communism around the globe. That was a major factor in leading Kennedy and then Johnson to escalate the war in Vietnam.
My concern is that I’m not seeing much attention being paid in the media to the new Commerce rules. Or to what China might do in response to this escalatory economic policy or what the second or third order effects might be. How, for example, does the policy affect the global economy, or China’s potential timetable for uniting with Taiwan, or China’s relationship with Russia?
A wonderful, though morbid term used by the brilliant social scientist Daniel Kahneman is a “pre-mortem.” Before making a decision, you try to figure out all the ways the decision could backfire and lead you to regret it.
I’m not confident that the Biden Administration conducted a pre-mortem. Instead, I suspect this was all about giving cover to Democratic Congressional candidates to help them compete with Republicans in China bashing.
And I’m wondering if long after the 2022 midterm elections are forgotten, we will look back on this policy as the defining moment in the final rupture of U.S relations with China.
I agree about China's economic sins against us.
I also agree that Japan was already conducting brutal war in Asia before the oil embargo.
And I'm not claiming that the 1940 oil embargo was the wrong policy, either. Just that economic war can lead to real war.
My main purpose was to question whether this policy, clearly escalatory, was carefully thought through and timed from a strategic point of view or was motivated by the midterms.
You've raised a good awareness about China.
I think however, China has long been conducting a war with the US. Stealing patents, IP, Research both academic and industrial.
"The historical analogy I’m tempted to reach for is the 1940 American oil embargo on Japan. But the only real lesson from that is economic war can lead to real war."
I think you misread the history here. Japan was a national terrorist organization that made Al-Queda, the Taliban, ISIS and the sum total of all Islamic terrorists combined look like a group of 3rd grade schoolchildren.
The Japanese invaded China (Manchuria) in 1931 and full on war from 1937. The Japanese Army was barbaric and genocidal.
The Japanese army killed 1 to 4 Holocausts of Chinese.
So... the oil embargo is really a kind of an excuse used by Japanese. The reality is they were a monstrous peoples convinced about their density. They killed innocents with impunity.
So, the real failure of America's so called Greatest Generation (it was not), was their fear and cowardice in NOT arming in the early 1930s and going to the military aid of China and the Jewish peoples in the mid 30s Such a strong military built 5 years before Pearl Harbor might have easily deterred the Japanese, and possibly Hilter.