America’s War on Chinese Technology — Jeffrey D. Sachs

In the run up to the Iraq War, then-US Vice President Richard Cheney declared that even if the risk of weapons of mass destruction falling into terrorist hands was tiny, say 1%, we should act as if it were certain by invading. The US is at it again, creating a panic over Chinese technologies by exaggerating tiny risks....

With all respect due, Professor Sachs is simply wrong about the logic here. The logic for attacking Iraq had to do chiefly with control of the Middle East, the center of global energy. The logic for "containing" China the ultimate goal of which is to force China into the same fate as the USSR, is the Wolfowitz doctrine of permanent global domination.

The rationale put forward by then Vice-President Cheney to justify the invasion of Iraq on false pretenses was part of the larger rationale put forward at the time. This was only the national security reason. There were others, such as justifying liberal interventionism.

However, I will grant that the rationale for containing (and eventually defeating) China follows a similar pattern. It is apparently put forward as a proven strategy.

Project Syndicate
America’s War on Chinese Technology

Jeffrey D. Sachs | Professor of Sustainable Development and Professor of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University, ands Director of Columbia’s Center for Sustainable Development and of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network