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| U.S. State Department Policy Planning Director Kiron Skinner signs a document while her boss, Secretary Mike Pompeo, looks on. From Skinner's twitter account |
By Oh Young-jin
Kiron Skinner says the U.S. is fighting a racial war of civilizations pitting the Americans against a non-Caucasian foe in China for the first time.
What about the Pacific War, part of World War II, waged between the U.S. and Japan? So the U.S. State Department's policy planning director is factually inaccurate.
Also her being Afro-American may have tinted her lens, putting the situation in a racial perspective. After all it is plausible that the U.S.-China rivalry, now being expressed in a trade war, is a clash of values, not race, as one of my Western friends argues.
On the surface, my friend's argument may make sense and it looks like Skinner is out of her depth. That is by and large the reaction so far to her remarks at a security forum in Washington in late April, reflecting the "She is wrong but what if she proves right" kind of sentiment.
Rather, a lot of hype has been over her job once held by George Kennan, who perpetuated containment as a policy of the West ― led by the U.S. ― against the Soviet Union at the start of the Cold War. That aspect gives her assessment a life of its own, likely having one go back to it whenever there is a development.
The fear is that if Skinner's argument is repeated often enough, it could turn into a self-prophecy with the sticking power comparable to Kennan's containment.
Her mentor Steve Bannon said she was wrong and the dispute was not a Confucianism vs. Judeo-Christian clash.
The Chinese also poured water (rhetorically) on Skinner's assessment.
Still, some commentators wondered aloud whether it was a mistake or a deliberate U.S. signal of what is to come in its rivalry with China.
The U.S. government did not comment on Skinner's statement.
But I think discounting the Skinner assessment is unwise, however biased it may be. For one thing, the writing is clearly on the wall.
U.S. President Donald Trump, elected on the anger of white male American voters for losing control over their country, has introduced a series of ethnically discriminatory policies such as banning Muslims traveling to the U.S. and blocking waves of refugees from Central and South America.
Muslim bans were put in place during the Obama administration as well but unlike Trump, Obama would be among the last leaders to be accused of being racially discriminatory.
Trump has now turned his gun sights on China in the ever-worsening trade war. The Trump war assumes the aspect of a technology war ― penalizing 5G leader Huawei to prevent China from taking the lead from the U.S. in the most important industrial area that determines leader from loser in the clash of the existing and emerging superpowers.
But can this war be stopped and, if so, before the hegemonic war between the two warriors caught in a Thucycides cage gets out of hand?
And Skinner is like Trump, carrying the racial connotation regarding China.
Whoever looks only at Trump and the U.S., will miss the point in Skinner's clash of civilizations.
The convenient untruth is that China may be taking the blows lying down and everything will somehow return to where it has been.
But China, more specifically its leader Xi Jinping, has long seen the looming confrontation with the U.S. and by extension the West as being an inevitable clash of civilizations.
China's war is one of revenge for its humiliation and disgrace ― the Opium Wars for instance ― brought by the West in the lead-up to the collapse of Qing Dynasty. Xi has referred to it and has vowed in his speeches never to let it happen again.
Combine this with his national modernization and "Belt and Road" project to link the world under China's leadership, there can be no denying that China under Xi wants to remodel the world in its image for Pax Sinica. In it, there would be no coexistence for Pax Americana.
One may call the ongoing superpower dispute ― clash of values (democracy vs. totalitarianism, capitalism vs. (revised) communism or else) ― but at least it may well be a mistake to exclude the racial element.
Those who promote the western values of liberty and human rights, among others, tend to think they are therefore superior, so they would have a better chance of winning a contest for the better. But the better does not always win.
Perhaps, a true test about whether the U.S.-China rivalry is racial clash of civilizations could be how countries like South Korea, which share western values but are more closely associated with China ethnically and historically, would choose between the two superpowers.
Oh Young-jin (foolsdie5@koreatimes.co.kr, foolsdie@gmail.com) is digital managing editor of The Korea Times.
