Exactly. This is a language game. To my mind, it’s pretty simple:

We should do the best we can to avoid a cold war with China. But we’re not, and neither is the Xi government. So we’re all sliding into one anyway. Bad.

And far too many Beltway types are fine with that bc:

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a) The natsec community draws influence and a salary in an environment of strategic competition; China hawkishness will pay.

b) 30 years of unipolarity has impoverished American thinking about diplomacy. We’re too used to knee-jerk belligerence.

Consider, eg, that much GOP

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hawkishness on China is simply to cover-up for Trump’s massive incompetence on corona. Trump and MAGA would happily risk dangerous cold war competition rather than admit that Trump is a colossal idiot who didn’t care if Americans died.

So yeah, stumbling into a cold war with

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China is a really bad idea we should try hard to avoid - but we won’t. And Xi is making that so much easier too. So this will all get much worse.

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So think about your standard Fox analyst: ex-military, casually hawkish about almost everything, hung-up on displays of force and resolve, irresponsible threat inflator, not actually a subject matter expert on China or East Asia.

These people spent 20 years telling us that

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Muslims hate us, that 9/11 was the first in a string of terror to come in US cities, that Iran seeks regional hegemony, that the Iraq & Yemen wars were defensible, and so on. Almost all that was wrong. None of these people knew much about the Middle East. But scaring the crap

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out of Americans got them on TV and hired by hawkish think-tanks.

I’m about 80% positive the same thing is going to happen on China. These guys are going to have a field day and get lots of good consulting/TV gigs telling you that we’ve no choice but to cold war with China.

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