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October 24, 2021
Austin Kuan
Since 1776, Americans have built a country that the rest of the world admires and respects. Because the British Empire is too small in the British Isles' hinterland, its strength must rely on continuous overseas expansion, but the United States does not require it. Its vast territory stretches from the Atlantic coast to the breathtaking Pacific Ocean. It is blessed by nature and does not require colonization. It can have a good life even if it closes the door.
However, because the standard of living in the United States is admired around the world, the cost of operating factories in the United States is rising. As a result, many of its traditional manufacturing industries have been forced to relocate to a variety of developing countries. From 1980 to 2000, the Four Asian Little Dragons, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore, benefited from this. China joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001 and opened its doors to capital from all over the world. China, with 1.3 billion people, outnumbers the Four Asian Little Dragons, which have a combined population of less than 100 million. The United States switched to cheaper Chinese production, forcing the Four Little Dragons to relocate their local production bases to China in order to continue receiving orders from the United States. China quickly learned many key production technologies and corporate management capabilities from American, European, Korean, Taiwanese, and Hong Kong businesspersons in ten years, and its national strength began to grow.
In 2001, the United States' GDP was eight times that of China, and China posed no threat to the United States at all. The valiant United States had always found its adversary in Russia, which had shrunk following the disintegration of the Soviet Union. After all, Russia still had more nuclear warheads than the US, and Russia had geopolitical influence in the Middle East equal to or greater than the US. Russia and the United States were at odds in the oil-rich Middle East between 2001 and 2012. China took advantage of this period to expand rapidly, and US-listed companies profited handsomely from China's growing consumer power. Some in the United States had begun to advance the "China Threat Theory," but while the US was trapped in the Middle East, it made a lot of money in the Chinese market and relied on low-cost Chinese products to satisfy American consumers. Who would be concerned about the "China Threat"?
In 2010, China's GDP surpassed that of the United States by 40%. Since China's average annual economic growth rate is 7-8%, while the United States has been stagnant at around 2%. If this rate of growth continues, China will overtake the United States as the world's largest economy around 2025. The largest country in the world has always had the world's largest economy. Although China's average standard of living lagged far behind that of the United States in 2010, 15 years later in 2025, who knows how far ahead the US can go?
Since 2011, the US has gradually realized that it should begin to stifle China's growth. The US military, on the other hand, remained trapped in Afghanistan, and its global strategic guidelines continued to prioritize the Middle East. With the start of the "Arab Spring" in Tunisia, North Africa, in December 2010, more democratic movements in the Middle East required the covert support of the US. Additionally, a fierce Islamic State has emerged in the Middle East since 2011. The US-backed Iraqi government could be deposed at any time, and the US could not function without the Middle East. How could it cause a squabble with China? A more realistic reason was how the US would suppress China, which allowed it to make money and produce low-cost goods. Of course, the United States had encountered its own major financial problems, namely its global expansion strategy and long-term trade surplus, which necessitated the continuous issuance of bonds to temporarily solve its own financial problems. The United States remained the world's most powerful country, but it was facing an increasing number of internal and external challenges.
When the Islamic State was still expanding its territory in the Middle East in 2013, China's leader Xi Jinping proposed the "Belt and Road Initiative." The reason for this was that, in order to ensure the safety of international crude oil supply, China must ensure that onshore oil pipelines and offshore oil transportation routes were free of external interference. The "One Belt" connected Central Asia to the interior of Europe, while the "One Road" connected Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean to East Africa. China claimed that "The Belt and Road Initiative" served no political purpose and was solely for economic security. However, many think tanks in the United States were gradually sensing that something was not quite right. Since 2015, satellite data has shown that China has been expanding exposed coral reefs in the South China Sea into hundreds of times their size through powerful construction capabilities. China clearly required greater maritime influence, and the United States must finally confront China as a potential threat.
President Barack Obama served in office from 2008 to 2016, but it was not until his second term that he recognized the problem of overemphasizing the direction of the Middle East and Europe. He proposed a "Re-Balance" regional strategy, which would send Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to Southeast Asia to try to reintegrate local countries and the US while reducing China's influence. However, Hillary discovered that China had used its enormous economic interests to entangle Southeast Asian countries, and the US could only instigate Vietnam, which was at war with China. When Obama left office in early 2016, his greatest regret was undoubtedly the realization that the United States could no longer contain China's power.
Trump was inaugurated as President of the United States in January 2016. No matter how insane he was in the past, as President of the United States, he knew he had to withdraw troops from Afghanistan and Iraq and focus his efforts on China. However, if the US military was to withdraw from the Middle East, it would have to first suppress the Islamic State's expansion with all of its might, and the massive arms transactions involving major US corporations could not be halted all at once. Trump could only ban some high-tech components from being sold to important Chinese telecommunications companies, and then gradually imposed high tariffs on Chinese products exported to the US, weakening Chinese competitiveness. However, Trump imposed tariffs on Chinese products, forcing some Chinese production lines to relocate to Southeast Asia, resulting in tariffs being passed on to American consumers. This was not a wise choice. Trump, on the other hand, declared victory. Politically, Trump declared to the world that the United States' true adversary had shifted from Russia to China.
Then, Trump launched a grand strategy that Obama was unable to implement in time. That is, if Southeast Asia refused to be an enemy of China, the US also had a filed "Indo-Pacific Plan" that would prevent China from expanding its circle, and the three countries, India, Australia, and Japan formed a larger circle. India and China have always been at odds. After its prosperity, Japan feared that China would resurrect old accounts of the Sino-Japanese War. The remaining Australia shared the same origins as the United States and the United Kingdom, so dealing with it was simple. The blockade of the "Indo-Pacific Plan" was, however, too strong. To fully implement it, the US would have to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan and Iraq, drastically reduce its investment in the Middle East, and focus its efforts on the East China Sea, the Taiwan Strait, and the South China Sea to suppress China's military operations in order to persuade the major countries to participate in the "Indo-Pacific Plan" that the US was serious about.
By the end of 2020, China's GDP had reached 65% of the United States’, and the Islamic State had been defeated for three years, but Trump was defeated in the election. Despite the fact that the newly elected President of the United States, Joseph Biden, was from a different political party, he chose to accelerate the implementation of the "Indo-Pacific Plan" and to withdraw troops from the Middle East. The Middle East was insignificant in comparison to the threat posed by China.
The United States officially withdrew from Afghanistan at the beginning of July 2021. The United States has invested two trillion dollars in Afghanistan over the past 20 years, and the US military has lost at least 2,400 soldiers, but in the end, control of Afghanistan returns to the Taliban. What progress has the United States made in the past 20 years? The killing of Bin Laden is perhaps the most visible result, but it has been replaced by hostility or mistrust between the Islamic world and the United States. The Taliban and Al-Qaeda organizations in Afghanistan contribute to the rise of the Islamic State, trapping the US not only in Afghanistan but also throughout the Middle East, allowing China to accelerate its growth during the 15-year gold acquisition period from 2001 to 2016.
Afghanistan has been described as the empire's cemetery on numerous occasions throughout history. Perhaps it is more accurate to say that the cemetery is not necessarily in Afghanistan, but the Afghans are capable of leading any powerful empire to an invisible cemetery where national power has declined. Of course, even after leaving Afghanistan, the United States remains the world's most powerful country. It will try to forget Afghanistan entirely, and Afghan news will gradually fade out of the mainstream media around the world. However, the superpowers' mistakes, as reflected in the mirror of Afghanistan, will always allow you to clearly see the cost of each painful lesson from the complex world situation. This could be Afghanistan's most important mission. (The end.)