No, China Is Not an 'Existential Threat'

Whenever someone claims that another state is an “existential threat,” that is a reliable indicator that the analysis that follows will be shoddy and inaccurate.

Mitt Romney dials up the threat inflation to 11:

Despite its evident assent [sic] and horrific practices, we nod and look the other way. In his recent address to Congress, President Biden devoted a few words to China’s existential threat [bold mine-DL], then moved on to promise two years of free pre-K and community college.

Romney has a poor track record on foreign policy, and his fearmongering about an “existential threat” from China is not going to improve it. He asserts that China has a “hegemonic agenda,” which suggests that he thinks that China aspires to a position of global dominance. He never supports this claim with anything resembling evidence, but that doesn’t stop him from trying to frighten people with the possibility.

Whenever someone claims that another state is an “existential threat,” that is a reliable indicator that the analysis that follows will be shoddy and inaccurate. There is almost nothing in the world that is an “existential threat” to the United States. While the Chinese government is powerful, it does not threaten our continued survival. Romney likes to present himself as something of a responsible elder statesman of the Republican Party, but with his alarmism about China he is falling back into the same pattern of hawkish hyperbole that made him such a ridiculous presidential candidate. The candidate of “omni-directional belligerence” was wrong about the world nine years ago, and he is still wrong today.

As an aside, I noticed that Romney weirdly misspells the word ascent as assent more than once in the column. That’s an odd, sloppy mistake to make, and it reinforces the impression that the piece was phoned-in and not given much serious thought.

Romney argues that the U.S. may still be able “to divert China from its malevolent path,” and he urges us to listen to “the best thinking of our most experienced strategists.” But if we were to listen to the best thinking about China, we could not take the rest of Romney’s argument seriously. He is proposing that the U.S. ramp up its hostility to China across the board. He wants Olympic boycotts, economic warfare, more military spending, and expanded propaganda efforts. In short, Romney is calling for something very much like a new Cold War, but he just doesn’t use that label for it. He hasn’t demonstrated that intensifying a rivalry with another major power is necessary or in the best interests of the country. He defaults to endorsing confrontational policies because this is all he has ever known how to do.

The senator’s throwaway line about reining in national debt at the end is amusing given that he is proposing that the government commit to massive new expenditures in a number of areas. Romney calls for “investment, sacrifice, and political courage,” but he shows none of the latter and isn’t prepared to spell out what he is prepared to sacrifice for the sake of his costly anti-China policy. He doesn’t even gesture at how any of it would be funded, so we can safely assume that he would pay for his new Cold War with hundreds of billions and probably trillions in additional borrowing. Republican hawks have never been fiscally responsible before, and there is no reason to expect that they would be when they need more money to fuel another pointless conflict.