Yao Yao: Don't simplify the US election campaign with "moral superiority"

Source: Global Times

The United States is the number one military power, and the total economic volume is also the largest (although consumption rather than production is the majority of it), and the resulting global influence has made it impossible for the presidential election to become a global focus, and it is indeed worth the continuous attention and study of trends Chinese. However, in the midst of the clamor, it is misleading to judge American politicians with the simple label of good or evil, and then to plant a flag between the American establishment and the populists.

First, to reduce populists to rural contempt will misdiagnose the root cause of American politics. The fundamental difference between populists and establishments is whether America's overseas expansion hegemony — capital expansion versus military expansion — should be sustained or contracted. Behind Trump is a consortium of american industrial enterprises. On the one hand, local industrial consortia require capital to return to the United States for investment, while transnational financial consortia require capital to flow to the world to multiply. After the end of the Cold War, transnational financial capital led the deindustrialization of the United States, but its global profits did not benefit the NATIONAL TREASURY AND PEOPLE's livelihood of the United States, but instead significantly increased the gap between the rich and the poor, which increasingly triggered the psychological gap and emotional anger of the out-of-power people. These crowds are the voter base of Trump's victory in 2016, and even if he hangs up the crown next year, the more than 70 million voters behind him will not disappear out of thin air. On the other hand, the local industrial consortium demanded that overseas military investment be reduced, but the military-industrial complex insisted on continuing strategic expansion. As Kennan, the architect of the Cold War, confessed in his later years, "complex and extremely harmful ties have been forged between producers and sellers of munitions and Washington buyers," millions of people have become accustomed to making a living from the vast military-industrial system and treasury appropriations. After Trump took office, to a certain extent, he advocated strategic contraction overseas, and the trend of "withdrawing from the group" in hot spots and military alliances reflected the policy propositions of local industrial consortiums.

Second, touting the establishment as a humble gentleman would misread the essence of the American elite. The rise and rise of populists to power is only a symptom of a series of problems, not the root cause. What is the root cause of the disease? After World War II, especially after the Cold War, the American establishment, which is increasingly tied to transnational consortia, including both the Democratic Party establishment with close ties to the financial consortium and the Republican establishment with close ties to the military-industrial complex, should bear greater responsibility. If Trump is powerless to solve America's chronic disease, the establishment's attitude is blind. This is why Trump shouted "Make America Great Again", but McCain, a big man in the same party and a spokesman for the military industry group, insisted that "America does not have to be great again, because she has always been great." In this regard, the Democratic establishment and the Republican establishment have great similarities in their hearts. During Obama's presidency, the United States not only led or participated in creating a new chaos in the Middle East, but also implemented the "Asia-Pacific rebalancing" strategy around China, while maintaining close alliances with transnational financial conglomerates eager to break through the sovereignty control of other countries and emerging technology consortia that shout for racial equality but avoid talking about the gap between the rich and the poor. Biden' close friends with McCain and Obama remains to be seen whether his long-term political experience as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and vice president will return him to the old path of pro-establishment expansion, or forced to move closer to the Democratic populists represented by Sanders.

Third, to regard Sino-US relations as a central issue will misjudge the trend of US diplomacy. There is always wishful thinking that the core issues of the presidential campaign are related to The Sino-US relationship. In the past few days, Trump has fired a number of senior Pentagon officials, some of whom have spoken of his intention to "prepare for re-election by war", but completely ignored the interest group disputes behind the appointment and dismissal case. In fact, the dismissal of Defense Secretary Esper occurred exactly one day after the Republican establishment leader and former President George W. Bush congratulated Biden, and as long as you pay a little attention to Esper's political resume, it is not difficult to know which fairy front-line spokesman he is. The US president is only the coordinator of various interest groups, even if he is not tamed like Trump, his cabinet members have been in and out like a marquee for four years, which reflects more complex games and repeated tug-of-war between different interest groups.

The United States has long been ill, internal contradictions are prominent, external beggars are enemies, Trump appeared in the name of curing diseases, but he could not shake the deep-rooted political and economic structure at home, and could only embark on the road of trade blackmail that forced other countries to take medicine, and the final result could only be that the old disease had not been eliminated and the new disease had been suffered. The Trump administration pursues unilateralism, and its current secretary of state is constantly making vicious remarks about China, which is certainly disgraceful; if the establishment faction is gentle and re-raises the banner of "liberalism", will the world be able to move towards datong? It must be clearly seen that whether it is the establishment or the populist, it is just the AB side of the American face, which is the object of communication that we must understand deeply, dialogue and communication, and promote peace. As far as China is concerned, we must have ideals, but we cannot be idealistic, and in the face of contradictions, pulls, and struggles between different interest groups in the United States, we have to "take advantage of the situation and paint according to the times" and promote the overall situation of Sino-US relations based on coordination, cooperation, and stability amid changes in the people's minds. (The writer is Director of the National Soft Power Research Center of the China Foreign Affairs University)