by Chris Black
Viktor Orbán recently gave a speech in which he predicted that the United States will go to war with China to preserve its hegemony.
Speaking of historical patterns, one of the strongest is the unwillingness of a dominant hegemon to cede wealth, power and influence to a rising challenger.
It feels like we are sitting on a smoldering volcano and there are all sorts of reasons why I feel this way.
The shift in the global balance of power away from the West and toward China, which is being accelerated by the fallout from the war in Ukraine, is another major reason why the demise of the post-World War II liberal world order is inevitable and why war is increasingly likely.
A war with China could solve another of problems.
First, we should have no doubt that America’s political class on both sides is dumb enough and reckless enough to go there, as Kevin McCarthy’s recent grand standing with the president of Taiwan illustrated.
Saber rattling against China is one of the few issues that unites our elites.
Second, America’s domestic politics could soon get bad enough that our liberal elites might see a war with China and Russia as a way out. This is the road that FDR took when he got into the war with the Axis Powers because his policies had failed to get us out of the Great Depression.
Third, the liberal rhetoric of the global struggle of “liberal democracy” against “authoritarianism” is already being used to describe both domestic groups and foreign adversaries.
Finally, such a huge shift in global wealth and power rarely occurs without a major war and the war has already started over a year ago in Ukraine.
Could Joe Biden pull an FDR and start a war with China to get the GOP off his back after sending Trump to prison?
Incredible speech by @PM_ViktorOrban in Tusvanyos. No Western politicians speaks with such intelligence and insight. Terribly worrying, his forecast of coming war between China and the US. Here is the English translation: t.co/uBZFsanoBV
— Rod Dreher (@roddreher) July 24, 2023
NEW – Germany's manufacturing PMI plummeted to 38.8, twelve consecutive months of contraction. pic.twitter.com/924U1wgDQI
— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) July 24, 2023
🌍The dynamics of GDP growth of the BRICS Union (Russia, Brazil, India, China, South Africa) and the fall of the G7. pic.twitter.com/MKuXq8zbta
— Zlatti71 (@djuric_zlatko) June 2, 2023
Talk of civilisations is no accident. President Xi Jinping recently unveiled a Global Civilisation Initiative. That builds on his argument that China’s growing strength and prosperity demonstrate that “modernisation does not equal Westernisation”. Under Mr Xi, Chinese officials and state media have taken to arguing that a declining West’s insistence on defending an “international rules-based order” amounts to a form of chauvinism. Chinese officials and scholars compare Western governments fussing about multi-party elections, independent courts or free speech to missionaries, as if the West is telling faraway peoples which god to worship.
China is now applying that argument—in effect, that “universal values” are a form of racism—to the war in Ukraine. At the forum Chinese officials praised countries of the “global south”, meaning Africa, Asia and Latin America, for assertively questioning an international order crafted in 1945 by the winners of the second world war—before, they claim, most modern states even existed. They were echoed by speakers from the developing world, among them Dilma Rousseff, a former president of Brazil. She now runs the Shanghai-based New Development Bank, a multinational lender founded by the brics grouping of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. Accusing America and “the global north” of hoarding wealth and of seeking to contain such rivals as China, Ms Rousseff condemned Western powers for dismissing diversity and trying to impose one model of democracy. “If you don’t accept this imposed value system, you will be punished accordingly, or face measures such as war, coups or sanctions,” she charged.