How the U.S. and China Fought Over the Third World
By Timothy Nunan
FOREIGN AFFAIRS - October 10, 2017
In an August interview with The American Prospect, then White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon said that the United States is “at economic war with China. It’s in all their literature. They’re not shy about saying what they’re doing. One of us is going to be a hegemon in 25 or 30 years and it’s gonna be them if we go down this path.” If the United States continues to lose the economic war, Bannon said, “we’re five years away, I think, ten years at the most, of hitting an inflection point from which we’ll never be able to recover.” Seemingly in line with these comments, U.S. President Donald Trump, who campaigned on an agenda of economic nationalism, has launched investigations into Chinese intellectual property theft that could lead to U.S. tariffs on Chinese imports. At the same time, however, U.S. officials have sought to win Beijing’s cooperation in taming an increasingly belligerent North Korea.
