Veteran US diplomat: US confronts China to protect supremacy, not security

Pushback with Aaron Mate

Pushback with Aaron Maté

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4.7 • 594 Ratings

🗓️ 26 December 2020

⏱️ 40 minutes

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Summary

Support Pushback at Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/aaronmate Veteran US diplomat Chas Freeman says that despite talk of a New Cold War between the US and China, the US in reality is reacting aggressively to a rising Chinese power whose economic gains threaten US global supremacy. Freeman, who served in top State Department positions and as Richard Nixon's chief interpreter on his historic 1972 visit to China, discusses the state of US-China relations and flashpoints such as Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the repression of Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang. "Since around 1870, we have been the preeminent society on the planet -- the wealthiest and technologically most advanced, the most influential. And China's overtaking us," Freeman says. "So there's a psychological issue here. The good deal of what we're doing is better explained by psychology than by statecraft. China does threaten American economic supremacy, may have already passed us in many ways... Whether that's a threat or not depends on your perceptions. We've chosen to treat it as a national security or a military threat. It'll be very good for the military industrial complex for a while." Guest: Chas Freeman. Veteran U.S. diplomat and public servant who has served in many senior positions, including as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Director for Chinese Affairs at the U.S. Department of State, and as the principal US interpreter during President Nixon’s historic visit to China in 1972.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to pushback. I'm Aaron Mate.
0:05.0	Joining me is Ambassador Chaz Freeman. He is a visiting scholar at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University.
0:15.0	He is a veteran, U.S. diplomat, and public servant who has served in many positions, including as the Assistant Secretary of
0:23.2	Defense for International Security Affairs, the U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, the director
0:29.4	for Chinese affairs at the U.S. State Department, and as the principal U.S. interpreter
0:34.9	during the late President Nixon's historic visit to China in 1972.
0:41.1	Ambassador Freeman, welcome to pushback.
0:43.7	Glad to be here.
0:46.2	So your experience as the interpreter for Nixon and China, I think, will be very relevant for
0:52.0	the topic I wanted to discuss with you today,
0:54.7	and that is China. There is a lot of talk now of the U.S. now being in a new Cold War with China.
1:03.3	Do you think that that is an accurate term to use?
1:07.5	No, I don't think so. The Cold War was an ideological struggle as much as a strategic one. There's
1:14.5	no ideology that China is pushing on anyone. The Cold War was also a struggle between two
1:22.6	blocks of states. We called ours the Free World. The Soviets had their camp. But China doesn't have
1:32.0	any allies. It doesn't believe in them. It considers them liabilities. So this is very much
1:39.5	not the same sort of thing. And more importantly, China is not the Soviet Union in any respect.
1:48.0	It has an economy that is about the size of ours, slightly smaller in nominal currency exchange
1:56.0	terms, quite a bit larger in purchasing power terms. It's not failing.
2:02.6	Its military expenditures are low.
2:06.6	We arguably spent the Soviet Union into bankruptcy through our arms race with it.
2:14.6	Unfortunately, if we get into a full arms race with China, we're more
	...

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