The sabotage of the silk road or “the trap of Thucydides”

One of the consequences of the Coronavirus epidemic is that Westerners have become dependent on Chinese manufacturing capabilities. Neither the Europeans nor the Americans were able to make the millions of surgical masks they intended to distribute to their people urgently.

American leadership over the West seems to no longer operate. This is why Washington has decided not to rebalance trade relations with China, but to oppose the construction of the Silk Roads and to help Europeans relocate part of their industry. The partial cessation of the globalization process which had started with the disappearance of the Soviet Union may terminate very soon. This is not an economic decision to question the principles of free trade, but a geopolitical strategy to sabotage Chinese ambitions.

This change of strategy was announced by the campaign not only economic, but also political and military against Huawei. The United States and NATO feared that if Huawei won Western procurement of 5G, the Chinese military could intercept all their signals. Above all, they knew that if the Chinese took these markets, they would technically become the only ones who could take the next step, the 6G.

 Mao Zedong pursued the nationalist dream initiated by the Kuomintang earlier in the 20th century while guiding the Communist Party in a social transformation of the country. However, his objective always and above all remained nationalist as demonstrated by the Sino-Russian war for Zhenbao Island in 1969. In the 1980s, Admiral Liu Huaqing (the one who suppressed Tienanmen's place Zhao's attempted coup Ziyang) devised a strategy to push the US armies out of the Chinese cultural zone. This has been patiently implemented for forty years. Without ever provoking war, Beijing extended its territorial sovereignty to the China Sea and harassed the US navy there. The moment is not far when the latter will have to withdraw, leaving China to recover Taiwan by force.

 After the dissolution of the USSR, President George Bush Father considered that the United States had no more rivals and that it was time to make money. He demobilized a million soldiers and paved the way for financial globalization. US multinationals relocated their companies to China where their products were produced by countless untrained workers, twenty times less paid than American workers. Gradually, almost all the goods consumed in the USA were imported from China. The American middle class became poorer, while China trained its workers and grew rich. Based on the principle of free trade, the movement spread across the West, and then across the world. The Communist Party decided to restore a modern equivalent to the ancient Silk Road and, in 2013, elected Xi Jinping to carry out this project. When it is done, if it were to be done, China could have a virtual monopoly on manufacturing goods around the world.

 By deciding to sabotage the Silk Roads, President Donald Trump is trying to push China out of its own cultural zone. It can count on its "allies", whose companies are already devastated by excellent Chinese products at low prices. Some of them have experienced revolts because of this, like that of the Yellow Jackets in France.

 Contrary to popular belief, China could abandon the silk routes for geostrategic reasons regardless of the amount of its investments. It has done so in the past. China thinking of opening a maritime silk route in the 15th century, had sent Admiral Zheng He, "the eunuch with three jewels", to the head of a formidable armada, as far as Africa and the Middle East, before to withdraw and scuttle its gigantic fleet to never return.

 Mike Pompeo visiting Israel tried to convince the two future prime ministers, Benjamin Netanyahu and his deputy and nonetheless adversary General Benny Gantz to stop Chinese investments in Israel. Chinese companies already control half of the Israeli agricultural sector and are expected to supply 90% of its trade in the coming months. Mike Pompeo should identically seek to convince the Egyptian president, Abdel Fattah el-Sissi. Indeed, the Suez Canal and the Israeli ports of Haifa and Ashdod were to be the terminals of the modern silk route in the Mediterranean.

After various attempts, China has assessed the instability of Iraq, Syria and Turkey and has given up trying to cross them. A tacit agreement has been reached between Washington and Moscow to leave a jihadist pocket anywhere on the Syrian-Turkish border to discourage Chinese investment in the area. Moscow intends to base its alliance with Beijing on silk routes crossing its own territory and not Western countries. This is the project of the "Grand Eurasian Partnership" of President Vladimir Putin.

 We come back again and again to the same dilemma ("the trap of Thucydides"): faced with the rise of a new power (China), the dominant power (the United States) must either wage a war against it (like Sparta against Athens), or give up space to the newcomer, that is to say accept the division of the world.

 Brussels, 19th May 2020

Dr Hubert Silly