The Perils of 'Shambaughism' in US Foreign Policy

Twilight of the CCP...AND Shambaughism?

Peter Lee at China Matters weighs in on an article published on March 6 in the Washington post by David Shambaugh, the leading US pundit on China. Shambaugh claimed that "the endgame of Communist rule in China has begun, and Xi Jinping's ruthless measures are only bringing the country closer to a breaking point."

Shambaugh was a proponent of U.S. engagement with China - and of a Chinese integration into the American-led liberal international order. Shambaugh and his colleagues envisioned a China that would, as Lee put it, "integrate itself into that order by means of suitable domestic and international liberalization, and by not pulling dick moves on human rights, nuclear non-proliferation, climate change, etc."

Shambaugh is no longer optimistic about this happening, and it important because Shambaugh's views tend to be opinion setters for America's pundits, politicians, and people. Shambaugh blames China under Xi Jinping for being "truculent, narrow-minded, and hypernationalist." As he puts it, China has not been acting as a 'responsible stakeholder'.

Lee criticizes 'Shambaughism' by pointing out a series of "dick moves" the United States has pulled on China during the years of engagement. As Lee puts it, "all great powers and wannabe great powers are truculent, narrow-minded, and hypernationalist - including the United States."

He attacks the Shambaugh model as pretending that the United States has no agency, that it never starts anything, that it never sets out to do anything to or in regards to China - that it is purely reactive, never proactive, "merely reacting to whatever crap the CCP panda flings out of its cage at the global order...Shambaughism," says Lee, "implies that the US is a passive observer of these unprovoked offenses."

Lee goes on to give his own predictions about China's future and his own interpretation of what Xi Jinping is up to, and it is well worth reading. However, I'd like to take something more broadly applicable away from this as well.

Our relations with China are not the only ones we view through the tainted lens of Shambaughism. The most pressing example is that of Russia. The American consensus places the entire crisis in Ukraine in the hands of Putin, labeling him as a destabilizing megalomaniac who threatens the entire world because he attacked Ukraine just because he is destabilizing megalomaniac - so naturally he might do the same thing anywhere else he pleases.

The American consensus on Russia is Shambaughism gone rampant. Russia's entire strategy in Ukraine has been reactive, not proactive. It was a reaction to an American-orchestrated overthrow of Ukraine's elected (and highly corrupt) pro-Russian government, which the United States backed in order to install a pro-European, anti-Russian (and also highly corrupt) regime.

The United States claims it supported the overthrow of Yanukovych only in reaction to violence against protestors. This is of course at odds with the facts: years of involvement and billions of dollars were put into organizing the anti-Yanukovych, anti-Russian opposition and assembling the Maidan protests - which was done as a proactive policy in order to flip Ukraine and weaken Russia.

The United States, in essence, dared Putin to respond forcefully to its anti-Russia regime change operation in Kiev, not expecting their bluff to be called. It was. The United States has ever since been condemning Putin as the next Hitler for taking over the highly strategic Crimea (and its pro-Russian, anti-Ukrainian population) and sustaining a rebellion by the pro-Russian Ukrainian opposition in the Donbass.

Shambaughism is blinding Americans to the fact of their own country's hegemonic and intrusive foreign policy, which continually provokes conflicts with rising powers like China, Russia, and Iran. "What did we ever do to Putin?" ask Americans deluded by Shambaughism.

Overthrow a pro-Russian government in Ukraine and replace it with one that has tried to ban the use of the Russian language (which half of Ukrainians speak as their first language) in public institutions. That's only the latest in a line of grievances that include:
- Making deals with Russian oligarchs in the 1990s that looted hundreds of billions of dollars from the country during its disastrous transition from communism to a market economy, while the Russian life expectancy and living conditions plummeted from economic disaster.
- Idolizing these oligarchs in the American media as "reformers" and "liberals" and overlooking their corruption and ties to the mafia.
- Bombing Russian ally Serbia in 1999 over a supposed genocide in Kosovo that had never happened (2,000 Kosovars, half of them rebel fighters, were killed in a counter-insurgency operation. That is not a genocide).
- Admitting the nations of Eastern Europe to NATO after assuring Russia when the Soviet Union was falling that it would not.
- Supporting fanatical Islamist Chechen separatist fighters who have committed horrific acts of terrorism against Russians and ran an economy based on kidnapping Russian people for ransom.
- Orchestrating protests that put the anti-Russian Saakashvili government into power in Georgia, building up the Georgian armed forces, blaming Russia for starting the war in 2006 which was actually initiated by Saakashvili when he sent the Georgian armed forces to invade South Ossetia, a separatist region protected by Russian peacekeepers..
- Defying the limits set in the Russian-approved resolution on Libya to overthrow the government of Muammar Gaddafi and kill him, leaving Libya an anarchic disaster.
- Propping up the rebellion against the Russian-aligned government of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, long after it was clear that the rebels were dominated by Islamists and that they had no chance of actually defeating the Assad regime.
- A campaign of ridicule and defamation against the Sochi Olympics.
- Idolizing and advocating for Pussy Riot, a band that desecrated a church as an act of protest and is hated by 90+% of Russians.

American Shambaughism dismisses all of this as irrelevant when it asks the fatuous question "what is Putin thinking?" when it comes to Ukraine.

I say it's not.



- Tim Mulhair