“Woe and death to all who resist my will”.
Kaiser Wilhelm II
August 4th, 2023. On
this day in 1914 World War One broke out. It was caused by the insane imperial ambitions
of a deluded ultra-nationalist German emperor, Kaiser Wilhelm II. In September
1939 World War Two was caused by the insane ultra-nationalist ambitions of Chancellor-for-Life
Adolf Hitler. In fact, almost all
systemic wars have been caused by ultra-nationalists in power for life. The Russo-Ukraine War was launched by the Russian
ultra-nationalist President-for-Life Vladimir Putin in thrall to the even more
extreme nationalists with whom he has surrounded himself. And now in Beijing
there is a new Chinese ‘Emperor’, President-for-Life Xi Jingping who is showing
all the signs of the same mix of absolute domestic power, insane ambition and
deluded ultra-nationalism.
The first signs of Xi’s growing
megalomania were the October 2022 humiliation of his predecessor Hu Jintao, by
having him forcibly ejected from the Great Hall of the People. Like all
ultra-nationalists Xi’s power base is the military, the burgeoning People’s Liberation
Army (PLA).
And, like all past emperors he is
moving first to quell any dissent within the Chinese Communist Party, whilst weakening
adversaries abroad. Over the past month Xi has ‘vanished’ China’s erstwhile Foreign
Minister Qin Gang and purged almost all the senior officers of the PLA Rocket Force.
Abroad, China is engaged daily in industrial levels of cyber attacks and espionage,
with the US now trying to eradicate malware Washington believes the Chinese
have inserted into critical national infrastructure upon which the American
armed forces depend.
There was one other thing the
ultra-nationalists of the past have with the ultra-nationalists of the present –
a distracted free world in denial about the systemic threat they pose. Xi has
made the aims of his ambition clear: the forced reintegration of Taiwan into
the Chinese state, the forced subjugation of states around the South China Sea
into a Chinese sphere of influence, the expulsion of the United States from
East Asia, the use of Chinese money to push the West out of the Middle East and
beyond, and debt traps to create de facto Trojan Horses within both NATO and
the EU.
European states are belatedly
awakening to the threat. This week the Italian Defence Minister warned about
the threat posed by Italy’s membership of Beijing’s Belt and Chains Initiative.
At the July 2022 NATO Madrid Summit, the Alliance finally confirmed that “the
PRC’s malicious hybrid and cyber operations and its confrontational rhetoric
and disinformation target allies and harm Alliance security”. In July 2023, a report by the UK’s House of
Commons Intelligence and Security Committee said that China had penetrated
almost all levels of British society and government whilst London’s response was
fragmented and disjointed. As ever, the
British cannot decide which is more important: Chinese money or the threat China
poses.
Whilst it is vital the West
continues to talk to China and avoids ‘war is inevitable’ syndrome it is also
now vital that China is made to realise the costs it would incur if Xi were
ever to go for broke (for that is what it would mean) and attempt to realise
his ultra-nationalist ambitions.
When will we the West ever learn?
Julian Lindley-French
