President Obama is scheduled to be travelling to three Latin American countries in upcoming days, but is taking heat for it from Republicans who believe he should certainly be home dealing with the Japanese tsunami and the Libyan security crisis rather of schmoozing with foreign leaders. Having said that, the president also has ulterior motives to make his way south of the border: stymieing the rapid rise of Chinese influence in the Latin America region. This leads naturally to the subsequent question... Are we in an economic Cold War with China?
Just after WWII the United States and the Soviet Union made spheres of political influence, largely through economic indicates. There was a race to influence Egypt especially, with each sides pouring in more dollars to one-up the other. It appears we are now engaging in the identical kind of tactics with the Chinese. In fact it appears strange that we would want to compete in a foreign aid game at all if China were our friend, we will need to be glad to see them contributing to countries in will need. Rather, we have to compete to establish a sphere of influence in South America to directly counter the Chinese presence. Other regions around the globe are also watching the identical drama unfold prior to their eyes.
The U.S. has been fighting other economic proxy wars with the Chinese too. Currency inflation has been discussed as a matter of foreign policy, not just economic security. Balancing the levels of inputs and outputs among the two countries appears important to U.S. economic sustainability. Moreover, China continues to order our bonds at the growing dismay of U.S. economic officials and the public at significant. The public fear of China is reminiscent of our fear of the Soviets. Of course there is the apparent comparison, a classic ideological difference between a self-proclaimed communist government and a Western democracy.
This is more than a small economic competition. We have singled out the Chinese as our superpower economic rival, and the tension continues to grow. Undoubtedly there are differences in between our economic Cold War and the Cold War with the Soviet Union (the most obvious becoming the lack of a nuclear arms race, although there still seems to be minor military and space competition among the U.S. and China). The politics of a Cold War grow to be in particular tricky - China is an ally, much like the Soviet Union just after WWII. So instead of stating our intentions, we shroud our feelings in secrecy and pretend that we have no worries about China. Our economic actions say otherwise.