March 29, 2024

rise and eventual fall of benevolent facism

IMMEDIATE RELEASE 2 April 2023
WASHINGTON MERRY-GO-ROUND
Today’s Events in Historical Perspective
America’s Longest-Running Column Founded 1932                                                   
The rise and eventual fall of benevolent facism
By Douglas Cohn and Eleanor Clift
          WASHINGTON – China’s leader, Xi Jinping, the General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), is certain to look at the indictment of former President Donald Trump as another sign of system failure. He would be wrong. And the world is looking at Xi’s recent visit with Russia’s authoritarian leader, Vladimir Putin, as an unsettling portent of a dangerous alliance, but Xi’s way is not the Putin way. The world would be wrong.
          Today, we live in an era of two competing systems, and Russia is not included. Instead, it is the American model vs. the Singapore model (which China adopted), both of which appear to be successful. This is quite apart from the Cold War’s American vs. Soviet models because the Soviet system was fatally flawed and doomed to failure by a communist economic ideology that undermined incentive. It was a system not to be confused with the current CCP misnomer system, which is communist in name only.
          The Singapore/China model is an evolved form of benevolent fascism, combining authoritarianism through one party rule with economic capitalism. Xi referred to the late Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s authoritarian prime minister from 1959 to 1990, as his mentor, and Yew’s book, “One Man’s View of the World,” effectively replaced Chairman Mao Tse-tung’s “Little Red Book” as the roadmap for Xi’s China.
          Yew wrote: “For 5,000 years, the Chinese have believed that the country is safe only when the centre is strong. A weak centre means confusion and chaos. . . . Some in the West want to see China become a democracy in the Western tradition. That will not happen.”
          This idea of a centralized vs. decentralized, diffusion of power is at the heart of the difference between the competing systems. Democracy is based upon the diffusion created by competing factions and parties. Centralized power is the basis of fascism, which Xi acknowledged, writing, “The key to running things well in China and realizing the China Dream lies in the party.”
          But this is not 20th century fascism. Unlike the dictators of the last century, Xi fancies himself a peacemaker. Before flying to Moscow to meet with Putin, he was in Saudi Arabia to broker a détente between the Saudis and Iran, and to push for a ceasefire in the war in Yemen, which the Saudis are fighting with American-made weapons.
          Those interventions coupled with the framework for peace he is advancing for Russia and Ukraine give us a good idea of what Xi is up to, which is to spread his country’s influence beyond its borders, while making a name for himself that could rival that of any leader in the West.
          It is not an overstatement to suggest that among Xi’s goals is to win the Nobel Peace Prize, an aspiration not compatible with arming Russia.
          China does not want to go to war. Sure, they do saber-rattling toward Taiwan, but in China’s modern history, it has not fought a large-scale hot war since the 1950’s in Korea (the border wars with India and Vietnam were brief and limited and its takeover of Tibet was almost unopposed). Unlike Germany, Italy, and Japan more than eight decades ago, China has not resorted to military action to get what it wants.
          It’s easier to imagine Xi urging – even demanding – Putin to seek peace than it is to assure the Russian president that China will be his arms dealer. In the four hours Xi spent with Putin, he might have told him how initially there was sympathy for the Russian speakers in Ukraine gaining recognition but not at the expense killing those same people.
          Xi might have held up Moldova as a model for Putin, where the Russians are funding internal disruptions without firing a shot. Or Africa, where the Chinese are buying up natural resources without resorting to military force. Or prosperous Singapore, where people walk the streets safely in a drug-free, gun-free environment.
          Truth is, China’s two-million-man army is undertrained, underequipped, and lacking in combat experience for the 21st century.  China knows it, and that is another reason why Xi left Moscow without making any promises to arm Russia.
          Advocates of the Singapore system see America in disarray, disunited, crime-ridden, and paralyzed by a 226-year-old Constitution. What they do not understand is that the eternal human desire to be free, manifested in both political freedom and free enterprise, is a potent force, an “invisible hand” in Adam Smith’s 1776 words, that no authoritarian system can overcome.
 
          Douglas Cohn’s latest books are World War 4: Nine Scenarios (endorsed by seven flag officers) and The President’s First Year: The Only School for Presidents Is the Presidency.
          Twitter:  @douglas_cohn
          © 2023 U.S. News Syndicate, Inc.
          Distributed by U.S. News Syndicate, Inc.
END WASHINGTON MERRY-GO-ROUND

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