China has reacted to the AUKUS announcement by condemning it as a return to “Cold War mentality.” The danger, however, is not that the world is returning to the decades of standoff between the US and the Soviet Union. Rather it is facing the threat of a military conflict between the largest and second largest economies, both nuclear armed.
An opinion article by Edward Luce in theFinancial Timeswas headlined “A US-China clash is not unthinkable.” It reflected fears in sections of the ruling class in Britain and internationally of the danger of war. Luce pointed out that for all of Biden’s talk about diplomacy and working with China on common issues, “the strongest winds, however, are towards confrontation” amid a “hawkish domestic US consensus on China. Cold war 2.0 offers a different spectre—escalating geopolitical rivalry between the world’s two largest powers with no clear exit ramp.”
Behind Washington’s escalating tensions with Beijing is the historic decline of US imperialism. Unlike the Soviet Union, China, by virtue of its sheer economic weight and requirements for raw materials, energy, parts and technologies, presents a challenge to continuing US global dominance. The US ruling class is determined to use all means, including its residual military might, to subordinate China to its interests.
The danger of war will not be averted by appealing to the likes of Biden, Morrison, Suga and Modi, but by building a powerful unified movement of the international working class, based on a socialist perspective to abolish the profit system that is the source of the war drive. https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/09/25/quad-s25.html
