What is the Real Reason for the US - China Trade War?

What are the risks of military conflicts awaiting Turkey and the world in 2024? More narrowly, for example, starting from the recent Iran-Pakistan tensions, what would happen if this short-lived conflict turned into a war? Would Turkey or Azerbaijan, for example, have remained indifferent? And if they did, how would the Sunni Taliban government of Afghanistan have reacted? Would Saudi Arabia and the UAE want to take advantage of the situation? Or would India, now that it had the excuse it was looking for, have embarked on a massacre of Muslims? Would China want to take advantage of this conflict, even if it was ostensibly between two of its allies? Would the United States consider taking advantage of this war to get rid of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal, a long-standing irritant? Would Iran prefer to use this pretext, apart from Israel, to realize its nuclear ambitions? Would this possible war make possible alternative future scenarios for the Balochistan community, divided into Iranian and Pakistani territories? What course of action would Iran's principal and proxy entities in Iraq and Syria adopt, despite their entanglement with the US and the ethnic Kurdish elements under its control? Could it have been involved in the conflict in these geographies? The questions go on and on...

The risks of all kinds of proxy wars and internal conflicts have increased in the world. As such, I believe that the biggest risk is actually the formation of a chain that will turn another war into an unmissable opportunity for another country. For example, a possible Turkish-Iranian war is an opportunity for all hostile countries, especially Greece. Can you imagine that the US, Russia, Greece, etc. and terrorist organizations such as the PKK, SDF and ISIS would remain silent and ineffective in the event of such a development?

Even worse, what would happen if a madman got bored of waiting and shot an Arab prince with a pistol? (As we know, this is how the First World War started.)

The US War Machine and its Real Global Impact

Everyone may think of different things when they think of the United States. People's perception varies and the media has a great influence on this. However, what comes to my mind are the following facts. We have a military, political and cultural power that has made its money the basis of international trade. And it has built this on a system of wild capitalism. We have a country that even provides people with health insurance and pensions for a limited period of time through private pension funds. It is a country of 300 million unhealthy people, with over 30 million state-secured veterans, over 50 million homeless people. This is the price it has accepted to maintain its superpower status.

In this country, the system is able to continue because only 200 million people are barely managing and have a faint hope for the future. The US outsources the brainpower it needs and has an army made up mostly of immigrants who enlisted in the army to get green cards. This army has spent the last 25-30 years focusing exclusively on low-intensity, asymmetric warfare. Now the era of near-peer struggles is coming and it sees that it is not prepared for it. China, which it has identified as its major enemy, has never focused on low-intensity warfare. It has always trained, equipped and honed its doctrine for a war between regular armies.

At this point, it is the continuity of "hope and a middle class that has a slice of life" that will ensure the healthy continuity of US society. We observe a similar situation in the perception of the US as the sole superpower in the international arena. Somehow, countries do not want to be in direct conflict with this power, or to incur its wrath. In short, we are talking about an order that maintains its image based on assumptions and is actually decaying and no longer sustainable. For the army of this order, which is predominantly composed of immigrant candidates, the continuation of the hope factor is important. But the whole society, military and civilian alike, is in a serious state of insecurity, feeling that something is coming and that they will have no say in it. This grassroots feeling is pushing all western bloc societies, especially the US, towards irrational choices.

The Real Reason for the US-China Trade War

All western countries, especially the US, had no reservations about moving all their production and production-related technologies to China. This lack of concern soon turned China into the world's industrial production giant. By dedicating its education system to preparing a qualified workforce that could be directly utilized by the industry, China was able to leapfrog its potential far beyond its potential competitors. So why are we now talking about a trade war?

The word "trade" is essentially a concept made up of two words. To take something and to give something in return. Today, the sector in which all economic instruments such as goods, services, etc. and their returns revolve has gained a separate identity as "finance". If China produces for a western brand, this is not a problem. The capital, technology and IP rights of this brand do not allow the profits to accumulate in China. A cycle of goods and capital in the world can continue in a branched and knotty manner. Unless, of course, China turns a product into a global leader with its own brand, its own technological ecosystem, its own industrial infrastructure and its own IP rights. The "Made In China 2025" plan under the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was designed and implemented precisely to eat this poisoned apple.

We lived through a similar period in history when almost all the world's silver stocks accumulated in China. Paying for this with "Opium Addiction", China lost all these treasures it had accumulated. Now there is no possibility of China becoming addicted to opium. If China had chosen to be patient until it saw the corpse of its enemy floating down the river in front of it, that is, if it had waited another generation for western society to lose all its institutional memory of production, it could have implemented a similar plan more easily. But for various reasons, the 2025 target has triggered a global process that will begin in the economic sphere but will not be limited to it.

This process, thanks to the memories of the brutal western practices of the last three centuries and the ease with which the information age facilitates global information and communication, is pushing all nations to take stock of the situation individually. (The world is bigger than five...) A significant part of these assessments, however, are blocked on the necessity of using military force. This blockage, which can be likened to a dam formed in a stream by the garbage washed away by the water, seems to have reached a critical density that will break the dam when a piece of garbage is pulled out.

A New Order Will Be Established in the World and We Will Take Our Place in It

For those living in Turkey, the phrase in the title is quite familiar. A new order will be established and we will take our place in it. Undoubtedly, this sentence has a share of truth and an ongoing validity. But in the current state of the world, what we need as a country to achieve this (even if it goes against our cultural codes and sense of justice) is the failure of other countries and societies. Interestingly, this is true for all other countries, western or eastern.

This is why we have seen the US plunging the politically divided Arab countries into civil wars, while leaving its vassal monarchies untouched. And we have seen it choose to take part in Iraq and Syria itself, in order to maintain its ability to threaten its dependent monarchies and other neighbors. The United States fueled the war in Ukraine and managed to withdraw from Afghanistan before it happened, but this time it was the country's critical position that prevented the war from spreading. Given Taiwan's importance and its interaction with other countries, the US has pitted the Philippines and Indonesia against China in the Indo-Pacific region. In short, the United States is persistent in its policy of buying time by encouraging all the wars it believes it can prevent from spreading. In the process, it consigns the suffering and losses suffered by other nations to its own gain.

Iran is another country in the region that defends its country through proxy wars and the use of fighters. Iran has gone so far as to confuse ends with means in this regard, and when and where Iran will change its position is key for many other countries, including Turkey. For this reason, the Iranian leadership, in full collusion with the US and Israel, spends all its energy on weakening and wearing down the Islamic world. Mixing miscalculations into these efforts and taking the country to war against enemies it would not prefer can be considered a political advantage or success for our country. The fact that such a war will also hurt our brothers and sisters in Iranian Azerbaijan does not change the reality.

Therefore, I believe that when we look at our environment and the world, we need to calculate the following possibilities:

1. Which wars have the potential to be beneficial for our country?

2. Which wars should we avoid for the benefit of our country?

3. Which wars have the potential to spread locally / globally / not?

4. Which wars put a spoke in the wheel of the US and other power centers?

5. Which wars can we, as a country, turn their fate in our favor through external influence?

6. Which wars force us as a country to take a direct position in them?

7. Which wars will Turkish public opinion accept and which will it reject?

The period we are living in reveals that a new global order cannot be realized in peace, but only after a chain of wars. Even on a personal level, we see this reflected in the following sentences: I'm tired of waiting! Even if those who utter sentences like these do not know the bitter, cruel, and unrelenting nature of war, the words do not change. Turkey's history of irregular warfare further fuels the perception (ignorance) of an imaginary war that is happening somewhere, but does not affect personal life. The misuse of developments in the defense and aviation industry for PR purposes further deepens this perception (ignorance).

Conclusion

War is a trick. We need to use our minds now. We need to choose which wars we will be involved in and to what extent, and prepare for them in advance. We may not be interested in war, but war is constantly interested in us.