Starting new cold war 'dangerous'

US senator challenges fast-growing views of zero-sum struggle with China

It is "distressing and dangerous" for the political establishment in Washington to drum up a new cold war with China, a trend that risks jeopardizing the interests of both countries along with the cooperation the world badly needs, a prominent US politician said on Thursday.

In the article Washington's Dangerous New Consensus on China published in Foreign Affairs, US Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont challenged what he said was a "fast-growing consensus" emerging in the United States that views US-China relations as a zero-sum economic and military struggle.

"The prevalence of this view will create a political environment in which the cooperation that the world desperately needs will be increasingly difficult to achieve," wrote Sanders, an independent who caucuses with the Democrats and twice ran unsuccessfully for the party's presidential nomination in 2016 and 2020.

The chair of the Senate Budget Committee said the unprecedented global challenges the US faces are shared global challenges, which require increased international cooperation, including with China.

But he said a growing bipartisan push for a confrontation with China will set back US goals in security, prosperity and the international system and risks empowering authoritarian, ultranationalistic forces in both countries.

"It will also deflect attention from the shared common interests the two countries have in combating truly existential threats such as climate change, pandemics, and the destruction that a nuclear war would bring," he wrote.

Sanders, the longest-serving independent in US congressional history, cautioned Americans must resist the temptation to try to forge national unity through hostility and fear. He claimed the rush to confront China has a recent precedent in the global "war on terror" waged the last two decades.

"Almost two decades and $6 trillion later, it becomes clear that national unity was exploited to launch a series of endless wars that proved enormously costly in human, economic, and strategic terms and that gave rise to xenophobia and bigotry in US politics," he said.

Divided nation

Unsurprisingly, in a climate of "relentless fearmongering" about China, the US is experiencing an increase in anti-Asian hate crimes, Sanders explained.

"Right now, the United States is more divided than it has been in recent history. But the experience of the last two decades should have shown us that Americans must resist the temptation to try to forge national unity through hostility and fear," he added.