Why We Fight
Why We Fight
The Role of Ideology in Sino-American Competition and American Free Will
Ideology is impetus.
To embody the American ideal is to subscribe to the most basic of ideologies: that the individual runs their life, that your rights aren’t for sale or on loan from the government, that you make your own choices so long as they do no harm to your fellow humans, that prosperity and equality are not determined by bloodline, status, or political loyalty. In other words, to be American is to embrace free will. Choice is our ideology. The political fights we have over what exactly that means in America is part of the great democratic debate that is the natural evolutionary process of governance. It’s a feature, not a flaw.
As to how that applies to foreign policy, we are neither an empire of mercantilists nor an island of pious isolationists and that comes with certain costs. The American ideology of free will means we are bound by moral obligations to our citizens and to our neighbors, and it means we will inevitably come into conflict (at home and abroad) with those who at their most basic simply do not believe in free will, or as most call it: authoritarianism. Depending on the day and the region you’re in, the flavor of authoritarian can be communist, fascist, ultranationalist militarist, racial supremacists, religious extremists, the weird eco-fascists in Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six, and so on. No matter the name or section in the library, authoritarians are all the same at their core: they are a virus plaguing free humanity in perpetuity. They are a pox upon the human condition, not an upgrade. I don’t speak from an ideological perspective often, because this blog is about developing and executing policy, military operations, and technology. But as the US-China cold war carries on and policymakers and pundits still want to hide from the ugly truth, I wanted to clarify something: to separate US-CCP competition from humanity’s most basic struggle; to say there is not an ideological component to this cold war, is to be grossly ignorant to the conflict itself.
I’ve touched a bit on this before in my Counter-CCP strategy Plan Noble, and recently on China discourse in 2024 but I want to now take the time to explicitly focus on why the US-China conflict is ideological, why the Soviet Cold War lens is incorrect for viewing our present ideological conflict, and what that implies for policymaking. Let’s get started.
As part of my China policy work and studies, I’ve had to read a lot of Marxist theory, party documents, and analysis; probably more than most actual Marxists (thanks, Tanner Greer). It is incredibly dense, repetitive, philosophical material. And while the academics can argue over what brand of Marxism Xi and the CCP subscribe to for analysis purposes, it is an authoritarian ideology plain and simple. It is a means by which power can be concentrated, the people stepped on, and inexplicable crimes committed in the name of a better tomorrow that will come…eventually. The CCP has, before the current regime under Xi, killed tens of millions in the name of the revolution. It has brutalized, tortured, starved, bombed, castrated, and imprisoned its opponents by mob and by policy. Under Xi, the Uyghurs have suffered genocide and a cyberpunk dystopia of oppression, Hong Kong fell under the boot of Beijing, countless have been disappeared, tortured, killed, and more for the state. Should Taiwan fall, the toll in bodies will be immeasurable as pacification and CCP propaganda-fueled score-settling of a civil war that never quite ended and by which the CCP sees as the last real challenge to its claim to power. Taiwan is a wealthy, ethnically Chinese democracy which by mere existence disproves the CCP’s argument that Chinese can only live under dictatorship if they want to prosper. In Beijing’s eyes, the Taiwanese identity therefore cannot be allowed to live past the invasion.
Of course, the threat of the CCP doesn’t stop with Taiwan. Recent CCP national security legislation is aimed at extending CCP law to the whole world. That seems silly, right? Sure, if you believe in sovereignty…which the CCP doesn’t. We’ve already seen cases where the CCP will lean on its economic influence with partners to extradite political dissidents and enforce offenses of speech against the Party. And when the Party doesn’t get what it wants that way, it sets up quasi-police stations even here in the United States to threaten and rendition dissidents. These aren’t the hysterics of fringe groups either, the FBI is currently prosecuting CCP operatives for these cases! To allow these operations to continue is to erode our own democratic values and perpetuate the CCP’s current brand of authoritarianism: Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era (or Xi Jinping Thought for short). Now, part of the purpose of Xi Jinping Thought is to build a cult of personality around Xi and place him up there with Mao among China’s revered leaders (ideologically). As China grows in influence around the world and as the CCP seeks to solidify its power for the long-term, that requires executing a foreign policy that adheres to Xi Jinping Thought and thus…foster a global community that is accepting of that ideology and its tenets (including rendition, suppression of free speech, digital surveillance, bio-tracking, genocide, and tribute to Beijing).
While the First Cold War with the Soviets is a somewhat adequate comparison for some aspect of the second cold war in terms of the need to develop long-term strategies, the ideology lens is inaccurate. Whereas the Soviets specifically wanted to spread Soviet ideology (this clashed with Maoist and other interpretations of Marxist theory even during the first cold war!), the CCP under Xi is less concerned about spreading a specific kind of authoritarianism so long as they bend to the wishes of the CCP. Now, you may ask, can’t a democracy answer to the CCP? Well, if the democratic nation is suppressing free speech, arresting political dissidents, deporting Uyghurs to suffer concentration camps, and installing CCP surveillance systems…that’s not very democratic of them, now is it? This is where the conversation becomes uncomfortable for many in elite circles because if enabling an authoritarian regime’s interests makes you complicit then not actively working to combat the CCP, the Main Enemy, is complicity by silence. Hmm. Sound familiar? If it does, because this was remarkably similar to the political fight between isolationists (some of whom were fascists in their own right) and liberals prior to the US’ entry into WWII.
Ideology is impetus. It should be the glue that holds us together as we work to develop foreign policy. It is convenient to write off ideology as irrelevant to the US-China fight because if it were an existential, ideological fight between democratic free will and authoritarian brutality, a lot more people would feel guilty about not doing more or even spending years if not decades, enabling the rise of regime committing genocide and hoping to make the world safe for its brand of dictatorship via military and economic leverage. If there’s no ideology, then we can trade without distrust, we can work on our own little hobbies elsewhere in the world, and we can pretend that there isn’t a global rise in authoritarian behavior whose most malignant bodies hosts in Moscow and Beijing. And who, if we’re not careful, will amplify that same hate and brutality in the Western world to unstoppable levels. We faced the same problem in the 1930s as fascism rose around the globe here and abroad. And it’s hard to deny they’re not already doing so.
Authoritarianism has no single host or vector; it is the same virus that rides under the white sheet of the Klan, a Z-marked tank, or a hypersonic missile aimed at Taipei. We ignore it in ourselves, our neighbors, and in the Main Enemy, at our own peril. Embrace the ideology of free will, of choice, of democracy, and take the fight to the CCP and its partners around the world. We fight because the alternative is annihilation of the American idea.
If you would like to read more about the future of US-China conflict, check out my novel, EX SUPRA, about the world after the fall of Taiwan, an isolationist and hyper partisan America, and World War III. It was nominated for a Prometheus Award for best science fiction novel and there’s a sequel in the works! If you have any suggestions for topics for future newsletters, please send them my way on Twitter @Iron_Man_Actual. And don’t forget to subscribe!