British Launch Strategy To Confront China, and Retake U.S., Europe in the Process

Nov. 24, 2020 (EIRNS)—In the past week, two top British Establishment outlets have put on the table a “new” grand strategy for Britain to take back global leadership by means of a subservient Biden Administration joining Great Britain in unifying the West against China, the British way.

The Economist outlined the concept in a Nov. 19 piece, titled “The Second Cold War: The China Strategy America Needs.” Leading U.K. think-tank, the Policy Exchange, outlined the strategy in greater depth in a 53-page report released two days ago under the charming title, “A Very British Tilt: How U.K. May Influence U.S.-China Strategic Competition in Indo-Pacific Region.”

Americans might want to wake up: The intent of this proposed global strategy is not solely to crush China, but the United States as well, by reestablishing the iron grip of the “Special Relationship” of British control over U.S. policy which President Donald Trump disrupted. The Economist adds that stripping uppity Europeans of delusions of playing at being a “superpower” can be a side benefit.

The Economist lays the strategy out this way:

“The achievement of the Trump Administration was to recognize the authoritarian threat from China. The task of the Biden Administration will be to work out what to do about it... America needs to strike a grand bargain with America’s democratic allies with like-minded countries to pool their efforts.”

The battlefield of “the cold war against China” will not be that of ideology and nuclear weapons as it was against the Soviet Union;

“the new battlefield today is information technology: semiconductors, data, 5G mobile networks, internet standards, artificial intelligence (AI) and quantum computing. All those things will help determine whether America or China has not just the military edge ... but also the more dynamic economy.” The Chinese Communist Party is right: “Tech is the path to power.”

The Economist envisions this “grand bargain” with U.S. allies as best organized around “an enlarged G7... more adaptable and less clumsy” than a treaty or a new NATO-like structure. The U.S. would have to concede it is no longer dominant; some Europeans would have to “temper” their ideas of becoming a superpower separate from China and the U.S.—and the U.K. would be back in the driver’s seat!

EIR is preparing a fuller report on Policy Exchange’s “Very British Tilt” report. Sputnik International called attention to the report’s call for the U.K. to sweep back into the Indo-Pacific region in force, militarily and economically, reversing the “east of the Suez” concentration adopted in 1968. Sputnik cites one of the authors, British Asia specialist and former BBC Beijing Bureau chief Humphrey Hawksley, on how “the U.K.’s military presence in the region would strengthen the ‘Special Relationship’ with the U.S. and pave the way for ‘fast-tracking negotiations for a trade deal with the U.S.,’ something that the post-Brexit U.K. urgently needs.”