Although the conflict between Russia and Ukraine continues, the United States is increasingly focusing its attention on China. At the recent G7 summit, participating countries reached an agreement to raise US$600 billion in investment to "counterbalance" China's "One Belt, One Road" initiative. Although the Group of Seven behaved very seriously, it has to be said that this resolution is really dumbfounding. Because the so-called "counterbalance" must be that both parties are mutually exclusive and hostile, implementing completely opposite measures or policies, similar to the Marshall Plan of the capitalist camp during the Cold War and the Molotov Plan of the socialist camp . But China’s “One Belt, One Road” is just an international initiative, not a strategic plan with strict standards and clear purposes. At the same time, the construction methods of various projects along the Belt and Road are also very complex. There are unilateral investments or market development by China in participating countries, investments and exports from participating countries to China, or cooperation between two or more parties. There is only one core purpose, that is, mutual benefit and win-win results for all, and it does not exclude certain countries or organizations.
In this case, if European and American countries want to join the "One Belt, One Road" initiative, China welcomes it, and if they want to start other international construction plans, China will not object. Therefore, the so-called "confrontational plan" of the Group of Seven will fall into a strange circle from the beginning, that is, it wants to confront but cannot find an opponent.
In theory, European and American countries, led by the United States, should first understand many basic issues before determining the next step. For example, what is the nature of China’s “One Belt, One Road” initiative? How feasible is it to exclude China from global infrastructure construction? And how to define the difference between strategic confrontation with China and general economic competition? If these basic questions cannot be answered, no matter how many plans are launched against China, they will eventually fall into the dilemma of unclear purpose and vague effect. However, the United States and European countries seem more interested in proposing more fancy concepts or plans than in solving the most basic and practical problems. Just at the recent NATO summit, the United States and Germany had a heated argument over China. What is speechless is that the dispute between the two sides is almost a word game.
According to the German Handelsblatt, China has once again become the focus of the German media because a US$600 billion investment project was specifically formulated at the G-7 Summit to counter China's "One Belt, One Road" initiative. German TV channel reported that China was dissatisfied with the resolutions of the G7 summit and issued a boycott signal. Chinese official media pointed out that some European and American countries, led by the United States, have since begun to focus on the G7 summit and strengthen NATO , while the constructive G20 summit has been driven to the sidelines. Regrettably, both the G-7 summit and the eve of the NATO summit in Madrid regard China as a rival or even an enemy. Chinese state media warned that the establishment of geopolitical camps by European and American countries would harm others and not self-interest, and strongly criticized this. China believes that NATO regards other countries as threats, but in fact it is NATO that seriously threatens world peace and security.
Amidst the "attention" to China, the NATO summit was officially held. According to Germany's Handelsblatt, the NATO summit expressed concern about how to position China. When 30 NATO countries determine future security policy in Madrid on Wednesday, they will devote a separate paragraph to discussing China. This alone is an important turning point in NATO's history. However, there is still considerable controversy among NATO countries about what NATO's China strategy should look like. The United States in particular urged NATO to pay more attention to the Chinese government's struggle for power, and received support from the United Kingdom in this regard. But should China be viewed as an adversary or a challenger? NATO is at loggerheads over this. Senior diplomats revealed that there was a fierce dispute between the United States and Germany over this.
In this regard, the German "Focus" weekly believes that the reason why Germany has differences with the United States is mainly because of Germany-China economic and trade relations. The magazine believes that Germany has fallen into the "China trap." Although the German business community's enthusiasm for China has long since disappeared, and Germany is considering rearranging its economic relations with China.At the same time, all new European investments in China have been temporarily frozen, and many people have continued to accuse China of human rights issues, causing some companies to start leaving China. But experts still believe that complete economic decoupling from China is impossible. Although Germany's new China policy clearly states that it will not shy away from pointing out the existence of forced labor in China's industrial chain, experts are worried that pragmatism may still prevail.
In fact, the debate between Germany and the United States has no meaning in itself. Whether they are opponents or challengers, they will have a major impact on the international order led by European and American countries. Even if the challenger sounds more conciliatory, it has no real value. In other words, the focus of debate between Germany and the United States is only the way of expression, and there is no fundamental opposition in views. Even so, German media representatives still argued seriously at the NATO summit. It can be seen from the information leaked by the media that both sides are discussing this as a very serious issue. It seems that this issue will directly determine NATO's future development strategy. But unfortunately, this wordplay-like quarrel just reflects the current embarrassing political and security dilemma of European and American countries.
First of all, the strategic purpose is increasingly "blurred". There was a famous alliance of countries in European history, the Holy Alliance. However, the alliance has been the subject of ridicule for years. Because it has neither a clear strategic purpose nor clear terms of obligations, the entire alliance treaty is full of gorgeous and unclear expressions. For this reason, European and American countries once attached great importance to the signing of the international treaty to avoid a recurrence of Holy Alliance-style incidents. However, after the end of the Cold War, whether it is a large military organization like NATO or a specific country, it has begun to return to the old path of the Holy Alliance in formulating national strategic goals. This approach, which does not draw any lessons from history, cannot but be said to be a kind of The irony of history. For example, the high-frontier strategy that was once pursued by many domestic and foreign experts is the product of the blurred strategic purpose. Although the United States has endowed the high-frontier strategy with many connotations, it has not explained the core issue of the strategy from beginning to end, that is, what purpose the United States wants to achieve. As a result, after blindly investing huge amounts of money, the strategy quickly faded from people's sight.
Today’s debate between the United States and Germany over confrontation with China has also fallen into the dilemma of blurring strategic goals. Both sides have not considered very practical issues such as confrontation methods, specific goals, and practical feasibility. Instead, they are obsessed with the name of China’s role. I am afraid that no one with a little political and economic experience will be optimistic about how practical an agreement formed on the basis of such pragmatic discussions will be.
Secondly, there is a "double decline" in execution ability and organizational ability. Generally speaking, in adversarial plans, discussion of standards and objectives takes precedence because it involves execution and organization. The higher the standard or purpose, the greater the execution and organizational skills required. However, it is not difficult to see from the so-called "confrontation plan" formulated by the G7 summit that they have neither purpose nor standards. And at the NATO summit, the theme of the debate between the United States and the United States has nothing to do with standards or purposes. If such a situation can be called "confrontation" with China, it would undoubtedly be an insult to real international politics researchers.
A very important reason why European and American countries treat strategic political issues with such trifling is that their execution and organizational capabilities are no longer comparable to those during the Cold War. If the standards and goals are too clear, it means that there must be a clearer person in charge and a mature organization and coordination team. But this requires not only investment of time and energy, but also responsibility. Politicians in Europe and the United States simply cannot accept this. In their view, as long as it does not affect their political lives, nothing else matters. This is why when Russia reduced its supply of natural gas to Germany, German leaders bizarrely called on the people to "take less baths" instead of solidly promoting energy import substitution or new energy subsidies. With the current level of political operation in European and American countries, it is very difficult to ensure the effective execution and organization of each member state, let alone the execution and organization of an international military organization like NATO.Therefore, the word games played between the United States and Germany are not so much a serious discussion of NATO's China strategy, but rather a helpless self-pleasure under a political dilemma.
