The danger of confrontation between the united states and china in the new cold war

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The danger of confrontation between the united states and china in the new cold war

Abstract

The article analyzes the risks to global security in the face of confrontation, as well as the struggle for world leadership in the United States and China. It is shown that the confrontation and deepening of contradictions between the United States and the People «s Republic of China can lead to a nuclear war. However, many researchers also believe that the image of the Chinese threat is now heavily exaggerated and based on the misunderstanding of China's intentions. In general, expert and analytical centers are encouraged to start technological cooperation with China, rather than exacerbate confrontation. Therefore, on this day there is no clear answer to the question of whether the PRC really threatens US leadership in the framework of the emerging world order. On the contrary, among scholars, politicians and experts one can see the split that is growing in relation to this problem. Despite the opposite view on the ambitions of the People's Republic of China to represent serious US competition in all areas, rivalry between countries of the so - called «Group Two» («G-2») in the coming years will intensify and more and more to put global security policy tasks.

China will be able to pursue a more independent policy than the United States only if it bypasses them in the areas of armaments and high technology. However, it is here that American leadership will remain undisputed for a long time to come. However, many analysts predict China's world leadership in the next decade or decades, as it may soon surpass the United States in economic terms. However, being the greatest does not mean being the first one. In addition to being the world's second largest economy, China is still a long way from taking the lead or competing in other areas (military - strategic, technological, social, etc.).

It has been proved that the optimal choice for China will not be the desire to forcibly introduce its regional, not to mention global, unipolarity, but to actively enter the multipolar world as a major independent center of power.

Keywords: US, PRC, security, Cold War, confrontation, nuclear war, RF.

Анотація

Фесенко М.В. Небезпека протистояння США і КНР в новій холодній війні.

У статті проаналізовано ризики світовій безпеці в умовах протистояння, а також боротьби за світове лідерство, США та КНР. Показано, що протистояння та поглиблення протиріч між США і КНР може привести до ядерної війни. Однак багато дослідників також вважають, що образ китайської загрози нині сильно перебільшений і заснований на неправильному розумінні намірів Китаю. В цілому експертно - аналітичними центрами рекомендується почати технологічне співробітництво з Китаєм, а не загострювати протистояння. Тому, нині не існує однозначної відповіді на питання, чи дійсно КНР загрожує лідерству США в межах світового порядку, що формується. Навпаки, серед дослідників, політиків і експертів можна побачити розкол, що посилюється у ставленні до цієї проблеми. Незважаючи на протилежні погляди з приводу амбіцій КНР, що представляють серйозну конкуренцію США у всіх сферах, в найближчі роки суперництво між країнами так званої «Групи двох» («G-2») буде посилюватися і все частіше ставити глобальні завдання в сфері політики безпеки.

КНР зможе проводити більш самостійну політику, ніж США, тільки якщо обійде їх у сферах озброєнь і високих технологій. Однак саме тут американське лідерство залишиться безперечним ще надовго. Проте, багато аналітиків прогнозують Китаю світове лідерство протягом найближчого десятиліття чи десятиліть, оскільки він може незабаром перевершити США за економічними показниками. Втім бути найбільшим ще не означає бути першим. Крім того, що Китай є другою економікою у світі, він все ще далекий від того, щоб посісти лідерські позиції або стати конкурентом в інших сферах (військово - стратегічній, технологічній, соціальній тощо).

Доведено, що оптимальним вибором для Китаю буде не прагнення насильницького запровадження своєї регіональної, не кажучи вже про глобальну, однополюсності, а активне входження до багатополюсного світу в якості великого самостійного центра сили.

Ключові слова: США, КНР, безпека, холодна війна, протистояння, ядерна війна, РФ.

Аннотация

Фесенко Н.В. Опасность противостояния США и КНР в новой холодной войне

В статье проанализированы риски мировой безопасности в условиях противостояния, а также борьбы за мировое лидерство США и КНР. Показано, что противостояние и углубление противоречий между США и КНР может привести к ядерной войне. Однако многие исследователи также считают, что образ китайской угрозы сейчас сильно преувеличен и основан на неправильном понимании намерений Китая. В целом экспертно - аналитическими центрами рекомендуется начать технологическое сотрудничество с Китаем, а не обострять противостояние. Поэтому, на сегодняшний день не существует однозначного ответа на вопрос, действительно КНР угрожает лидерству США в рамках мирового порядка, который формируется. Напротив, среди исследователей, политиков и экспертов можно увидеть усиливающийся раскол в отношении к этой проблеме. Несмотря на противоположные точки зрения по поводу амбиций КНР представляющих серьезную конкуренцию США во всех сферах, в ближайшие годы соперничество между странами так называемой «Группы двух» («G-2») будет усиливаться и все чаще ставить глобальные задачи в сфере политики безопасности.

КНР сможет проводить более самостоятельную политику, чем США, только если обойдет их в сферах вооружений и высоких технологий. Однако именно здесь американское лидерство останется бесспорным еще надолго. Тем не менее, многие аналитики прогнозируют Китаю мировое лидерство в течение ближайшего десятилетия или десятилетий, поскольку он может вскоре превзойти США по экономическим показателям. Впрочем быть самым еще не значит быть первым. Кроме того, что Китай является второй экономикой в мире, он все еще далек от того, чтобы занять лидерские позиции или стать конкурентом в других сферах (военно-стратегической, технологической, социальной и т.д.).

Доказано, что оптимальным выбором для Китая будет не стремление насильственного введения своей региональной, не говоря уже о глобальной, однополюсности, а активное вхождение в многополюсный мир в качестве крупного самостоятельного центра силы.

Ключевые слова: США, КНР, безопасность, холодная война, противостояние, ядерная война, РФ.

Main part

Nowadays, the analysis of the new Cold War remains a topical issue in the scientific and expert community. Unlike the first Cold War, in which two formation blocs opposed each other - the capitalist and the socialist one, today we are talking about different formats of confrontation, not only between Russia and the United States, but also between the United States and China. This fact makes the new Cold War more many-sided, contradictory and dangerous for world security and stability, given the latest scientific, technical and information technologies. Given all the circumstances, we consider it necessary to analyze the less studied format of confrontation in the Cold War between the United States and China.

An important place in the struggle of the United States and China for leadership is occupied by security aspects. In this context, it should be noted that the economic and technological dominance of the United States is supported by enormous military potential. After the collapse of the bipolar system, the United States did not weaken its power positions and did not reduce defense spending, but rather accelerated the modernization of its military arsenal. This is justified both by the need for the latest defense orders for concerns, companies specializing in the production of weapons, and the need to finance new technical developments, the economic benefits of which support the US economy.

Thus, among the countries that will eventually be able to overtake the United States in the military sphere, the American leadership singles out China. It is stated that the country's military budget is constantly and dynamically growing, and the People's Liberation Army of China can become an armed force that will meet all modern requirements. In this regard, the modern concept of China's national security is of high interest. Its provisions are set out in such program documents as the decisions of the congresses of the Communist Party, the resolutions of the plenums and the Central Military Commission of the CPC Central Committee, as well as in the documents of the Central Military Council and the State Council. The main provisions on this topic in an open official interpretation are presented to the general public in the White Paper «National Defense of the People's Republic of China», which is updated regularly [1; 2].

The main principle of China's national security strategy is self-reliance, which is interpreted as «using all available opportunities in the country to protect national interests, pursue an independent foreign policy, non-participation in military-political blocs and refusal to join alliances with major powers, and counteracting US hegemony». According to the Chinese leadership, national security directly depends on the power of the state. Its main components are economics, science and technology, domestic political stability and military power [1; 2].

In this context, the position of the Ukrainian scientist, Professor S. Shergin, is interesting, who is convinced that the scale and multifactorial nature of globalization give grounds to interpret it as an objective process of restructuring and qualitative development of the international space. With the redistribution of spheres of global influence, the main opponent of the United States, China, has already created new institutional structures beyond American reach - the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). In the competition for access to the planet's resources, China has significantly expanded the boundaries of its economic expansion. Thus, the total competition of the globalization era continues. Its main participants are, on the one hand, the «Group of Seven», and on the other - the countries of the world periphery, which continue to implement the opposite geopolitical goals [3, c. 42-46].

Professor of Political Science and International Relations, director of the Institute for Security and Conflict Studies at the Eliot School of International Relations at George Washington University, Charles Glaser, notes that a country's behavior as a superpower and whether its actions and those of other players lead to conflict is determined by general schemes of international policy, and specific factors. A broader consideration of the conditions under which a change of world leader can lead to conflict is beyond the attention of international relations theorists, who have something to add to this discussion [4].

The danger of overestimating security threats in the nuclear field is much greater. The Obama administration's «Nuclear Strategy 2010» states that «United States and China's Asian neighbors are concerned about Beijing's current efforts to modernize its military, including the quantitative and qualitative modernization of its nuclear arsenal». However, the document does not explain the dangers of China's military modernization. No projected nuclear modernization in the bright future will allow China to destroy most of America's nuclear forces and undermine its ability to strike a large-scale retaliatory strike. The greatest thing that can be achieved with such modernization is to deprive the United States of a serious nuclear advantage, as China will gain more significant and capable forces and thus reduce America's ability to threaten it with nuclear escalation in the event of a major crisis.

The nuclear strategy states that the United States «must continue to maintain stable strategic relations with Russia and China», but China has always lacked the kind of force that provides stability by American standards. If the United States decides that its security requires maintaining a nuclear advantage over China, the United States will have to invest in weapons designed to destroy China's new nuclear force. Such efforts would be in line with the American nuclear strategy of the Cold War period, when special emphasis was placed on the ability to destroy the Soviet nuclear arsenal. Now the arms race of this kind is even less appropriate than then. The United States will be able to maintain significant deterrence, even if China modernizes its forces, and an aggressive nuclear policy harms the country's security, giving Beijing a signal of US hostility and thus increasing China's insecurity.

Undoubtedly, China's build-up of conventional and nuclear weapons will limit some of the capabilities of the United States that it would prefer to maintain. But the United States should not rush to conclusions and see this build-up of hostility. On the contrary, it should be understood that this is the natural desire of China for security [4].

In short, the rise of China may be peaceful, but such an outcome is by no means guaranteed. Contrary to the standard arguments of realism, the pressure of the international system will not push the United States and China into conflict. Nuclear weapons, a geographical barrier in the form of the Pacific Ocean and political relations, which are currently at a fairly good level, should help both countries to ensure a high level of security and avoid militarization, which could lead to serious misunderstandings. The U.S. commitment to protect allies in Northeast Asia complicates matters somewhat, but there is a reason to believe that the United States will be able to extend deterrence to Japan and South Korea, its most important partners in the region. The challenge for the United States is to adjust its policies in situations where non-vital interests may cause problems related to China's growing power and military capabilities.

With all the caveats, China, in principle, has sufficient resources for large-scale military construction. As the experience of the Soviet «superpower» and of China itself shows, the low overall efficiency of the economy and the low standard of living of the population do not exclude the priority of mass contributions to the building of armaments and armed forces. The accumulated potential allows China to deploy military programs, and those that are projected not only on geographically close areas, but also on a global level, including in the nuclear missile sphere. Of course, to reach the «supranational» level of China's military power requires a radical modernization of the armed forces based on a strong socio-economic base within the country. And it will take more than a decade. In the meantime, we state that China has no guarantee of reliable internal stability.

Many American researchers are wary of China, which has probably survived since the Korean and Vietnam Wars. Brzezinski sees the future as follows: «Both the pace of China's economic development and the scale of foreign investment in China - both among the highest in the world - provide a statistical basis for predicting that in about two decades China will become a world power equal to the United States and Europe… So far, China can significantly outpace Japan in terms of GDP. Economic impetus will allow China to reach a level of military power that will become a threat to all its neighbors, perhaps even to geographically more distant opponents of China's hopes. Greater China will become not only the dominant power of the Far East, but also the world's first power rank» [5, c. 190].

Henry Kissinger offers a more balanced forecast: «The large Chinese market, backed by China's military power, which is growing in the hands of skilled and determined leaders, will provide an opportunity for growing political influence. However, this does not mean that China will really seek hegemony or that American policy will lose its ability to influence evolution in Asia. For the first time in history, China is connected to the world economy and the global international system. First of all, to address the policy of confrontation, it is necessary to give a chance to relations that are based on cooperation. American policy should not exclude t he possibility of a political relationship with Beijing. Both sides have an interest in avoiding war in Asia, and China's disputes with some of its neighbors are likely to be more serious than its disputes with the United States. In addition, in the near future, China will not have enough military power to pursue a hegemonic policy. Given all this, it is advisable to try to resolve the contradictions where possible, and where it is impossible to mitigate them» [6].

The famous American researcher M. Lind drew attention to an important notable circumstance. It is that during the bipolar confrontation, the USSR was a military, not a commercial, adversary of the United States, and Japan was a commercial, not a military adversary. During the Second Cold War, China became both a military and a commercial adversary of the United States. That is why the United States needs to abandon its established principle of the division of geopolitics and geoeconomics and adopt the classic practice of great powers, in which the armed forces, diplomacy and trade are seen as three tools of a single strategy that work together. Instead of allowing countries with state capitalism like China to restructure the US economy to serve their own purposes, the US should develop its own industrial strategy. In other words, the United States needs to return to a time-tested and successful Hamiltonian industrial strategy, which is to use all available means - tariffs, subsidies, public procurement, tax breaks, and loans to countries that buy US-made goods to ensure that the strategic industries needed to maintain US military power have been established in or remain in the United States [7].

In the framework of Made in China 2025 initiative, the Chinese government has announced its commitment to China's leadership in ten key areas, including advanced information technology, aviation, pharmaceuticals, railways, and so on. This should be a turning point for the United States, prompting Americans to identify and promote not specific companies but entire dual-purpose industries that are important for both military and civilian commerce.

At present, China's GDP can be seen as an indicator of potential military power. And although China's per capita GDP is still significantly below that of developed countries, China has already overtaken the United States in terms of purchasing power parity, becoming the world's largest economy. Judging by the market exchange rate, China has the opportunity to overtake the United States by 2030. According to the European Commission, in 2050 China will account for 28% of global GDP, while the US will account for about 16%, the EU - 15%, India - 8%, Japan - 5%. China's state-owned enterprise sector has already caught up with Japan's economy. In the United States and China, which will remain the most influential participants in international relations for a long time, there will be no choice but to work out the principles of what was called «peaceful coexistence» during the First Cold War. There are very few examples in history of deep and warm peace between independent great powers. But the «cold peace», as in the 1990s, or temporary detente, as in the 1970-s is a very realistic goal [7].

Another, no less famous American political scientist, R. Kaplan, is convinced that the new Cold War with China, which has every chance of becoming «hot», will be much more dangerous than the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. According to R. Kaplan, China will be a more formidable enemy than the Soviet Union once was, and the wars of the future will be naval. The onset of the new Cold War is evidenced by constant, endless hacking attacks by the Chinese, who broke the technical documentation for the maintenance and repair of American warships, lists of Pentagon workers, and so on. Thus, the new Cold War is a war «by other means». According to R. Kaplan, «this situation will continue for decades and will only worsen regardless of a trade agreement concluded between the smiling presidents of the United States and China, and through which financial markets instantly soar. The new Cold War is permanent because of many factors that generals and strategists understand, but many prefer to object. And because US-China relations are the most important in the world, the Cold War between them becomes a negative organizing principle of geopolitics» [8].

In general, there are obvious and fundamental differences between the United States and China. China seeks to oust the US Navy and Air Force from the western

Pacific (from the South and East China Seas), and the US military is determined to stay there. From China's point of view, his aspiration is quite logical. The Chinese perceive the South China Sea in the same way as American strategists perceived the Caribbean basin in the nineteenth century. and in the early XX century. In China, the sea is considered the most important extension of its continental land into the ocean, control over which allows them to advance their fleet and navy further into the Pacific and Indian Oceans, as well as control Taiwan. This can be compared to how domination of the Caribbean allowed the United States to exercise strategic control in the Western Hemisphere and thus influence the balance of power in the Eastern Hemisphere during the two world wars and the Cold War. For the United States, a world power, it all started in the Caribbean, and for China, it all starts in the South China Sea. Today, the threat from China has a much greater impact on the US Department of Defense and is more motivating to action than the threat from Russia. China's leadership believes that China, with its agility, a growing technological power, and unfettered by the slowness and bureaucratic control of the United States itself, will catch up and possibly surpass the United States in 5G networks and digital combat systems. China is a new threat with which the US military today compares its strengths and capabilities [8].

R. Kaplan also highlights the ideological aspect of the new Cold War between the United States and China. For several decades, China's rapid development was perceived positively in the United States, and the relatively educated authoritarianism of Deng Xiaoping and his successors were tolerated there, especially by the American business community. But under Xi Jinping, China went from soft authoritarianism to hard authoritarianism. Instead of a collegial group of non-charismatic technocrats, limited in their actions by the need to retire, today there is a lifelong president with a cult of personality. It controls opinions and restricts intellectual freedom through digital means, including through face recognition and tracking the searches of its citizens on the Internet. This is taking on a rather sinister form and is increasingly disliked by American leaders of both parties. It is also a regime that in recent years has thrown almost a million of ethnic Uighur Muslims into concentration camps. The philosophical difference between the American and Chinese systems is as vast as the gap between American democracy and Soviet communism. It should also be borne in mind that technology does not alleviate this conflict, but serves as an incentive for it. Because the United States and China now live in the same digital ecosystem, for the first time in history, wars of «implementation» are possible when «borders are measured in thousands of miles and one mouse click, China can invade American commercial and military computer networks in the same way as the United States can invade the Chinese» [8].

European experts, analysts and political scientists, as well as their American counterparts, are convinced that in the context of the new Cold War, China is much more dangerous than Russia. German researcher of the new Cold War R. Herzinger believes that while Russia openly challenges the West with its military aggression in

Ukraine, brutal participation in the Syrian war and cyberattacks on Western democracies, China is expanding its influence in the world by more subtle methods. If the Putin regime behaves on the world stage like an elephant in a crockery shop, then China is approaching the levers of power in the world rather on its back. For a long time, this gave the illusion that China was a more acceptable antithesis of the West in the long run. And not just because China's economy is the second largest in the world, while Russia's economic potential is somewhere at the level of South Korea. Due to its more homogeneous system of power from an ideological and organizational point of view, China is better prepared to join the world's leading powers than Russia, whose neo-imperialist ambitions are an aggressive defense for fear of death and disintegration.

While the United States is gradually losing its leading position in the contemporary system of international relations under Trump's presidency, China's leadership is increasingly asserting its claims to world leadership. At the same time, contrary to the long-awaited hope in the West that China's exceptional economic growth will sooner or later lead to the liberalization of its political system, it is «increasingly tightening ideological motives». This re-ideologisation is accompanied by the unprecedented armament of the country and the systematic expansion of the electronic system of total surveillance of its own population, which is complemented by a set of penalties for misconduct. Recently, the Chinese leadership has repeatedly stated that it is inclined to the Chinese model of socialism, reaffirms its Marxist roots, and considers it necessary to have comprehensive control over all spheres of the economy and social life. All this leaves no doubt that the Chinese «new campaign for the revival of a great nation» includes the development of a comprehensive social model, the opposite of Western democracy [9].

R. Herzinger rightly believes that with the help of his project «New Silk Road» China, investing hundreds of millions of dollars, expands its influence in the world. At the heart of this project is a network of transport routes in Europe and Asia, for the expansion of which China provides loans, making recipient countries dependent on it. China has been operating in Africa in a similarly successful way for a long time, seizing raw materials and land in many countries of the continent in exchange for cheap loans and free construction projects. Despotic African regimes are very fond of this option of economic aid, as China does not associate it with such annoying demands as respect for human rights or the fight against corruption. Xi Jinping's stated goal of returning China to its rightful place in the world shows that the Chinese regime sees its own socio-political system as a model for all mankind. The Chinese mixture of socialist retro theory and extreme nationalism is inspired by its claim to cultural superiority, based on the glorification of China as a civilization that has many millennia and surpasses everything around it.

According to Herzinger, the idea among some German politicians that China is a potential partner of Europe in defending «multilateralism» against Trump's nationalist course «America above all else» seems criminally naive against this background. When the Chinese leadership promotes a «multipolar world order», it does not in any way imply a law-based system of peaceful, equal cooperation. It implies the elimination of the international order, built on the principles of the rule of law and respect for human rights [9].

Another European researcher from Denmark, L. Erslev Andersen, rightly argues that China seeks to become a global superpower at the expense of the United States. Exactly a year after the Trump administration announced its national security strategy, in which China and Russia were identified as the greatest strategic threat to the United States, in December 2018, the US Department of Defense published a report on the growth of China's military capabilities. Analysts and think tanks regularly send comments and reports around the world portraying China as a new world power that threatens the United States economically, technologically, and militarily and forces them to defend themselves. In particular, Vice President M. Pence constantly calls China a strategic threat. He is supported by the former Danish Minister of Education and Research, S. Pinn, who describes China as an «evil empire».

Along with the United States, China has made significant strides in the development of artificial intelligence, advanced surveillance technology, and machine learning, which allows computers to learn on their own without special human programming. China uses advanced IT technologies to track its citizens, as well as to control and suppress the Muslim Uighur population in Xinjiang Province, which borders Pakistan and Afghanistan. It is in Pakistan that China is investing heavily in President Xi's prestigious project, the so-called «New Silk Road Project», but the plan has already begun to materialize in many parts of the world. By investing in major infrastructure projects, China is expanding its economy, providing itself with important resources and, according to President Xi, contributing to the economic development and prosperity of developing countries. The United States accuses China of wish to control partner countries by making them financially dependent and exporting advanced control technologies. In this context, it should be noted that human rights organizations support these allegations [10].

In the context of scientific and technological leadership and rivalry between the United States and China, we note that the space race between China and the United States will be significantly different from the original of the Cold War. China's space program is as commercially oriented as NASA's, giving the new space race an economic dimension that never existed before. The military aspect of the Sino-US space race is also different, as the focus now is on protecting and attacking satellite communications systems, rather than fighting intercontinental ballistic missiles. But this state of affairs can change quickly. On January 3, 2019, the Chinese National Space Administration landed a lunar launcher on the other side of the moon. This is an outstanding technical achievement, which became possible only due to the fact that China has already managed to launch a halo-orbit beyond the Moon at a distance of 64 thousand kilometers satellite-repeater. This satellite can transmit signals from the Earth to the research apparatus and back, which solved the problem of communication, which is that direct communication with the other side of the Moon was impossible [11].

However, it should be noted that China joined the space race quite late, but today China is, without a doubt, the second space power. Therefore, strategy experts earnestly affirm that the second space race has begun, something similar to the firs onet, which was conducted from the 1950s to the 1980s by the United States and the Soviet Union. However, the closer we begin to look at the details, the less similarities we will find between today's Sino-American and Soviet-American rivalries of the age of bipolar confrontation. Chinese leaders have consistently stated that their space program shows the strength of China's national culture, not the benefits of socialism.

The space race of the 2010s is distinguished by the fact that the Chinese program has the same commercial orientation on the NASA program. It has already created a satellite-based global positioning system, which has become an alternative to older American, Russian and European navigation systems. Today, it generates annual revenue of 30 billion dollars. Chinese engineers have been working to generate solar energy in space since the early 1990s. Scientists from the Chinese Academy of Space Technology say that by 2035 they will build a solar power plant between the Earth and the Moon with a capacity of 100 megawatts. This station will be one kilometer in size and will weigh 10,000 tons (25 times more than the International Space Station, which is now the largest artificial object in orbit). Scientists believe that by 2050 the station will start operating, and this will be a revolution in global energy. In the Soviet space program, little posed such a threat to US strategic positions as China's current ambitions.

In the military-strategic context for the United States, China and Russia, space is of military interest mainly because they intend to protect their satellite communications systems and threaten each other's communications systems, but not because of their desire to launch intercontinental ballistic missiles. The US space command, which became an independent military command at the end of 2018, certainly sees this as its main task. In 2007, China caused widespread outrage when it demonstrated the ability, like Russia and the United States, to shoot down satellites with its missiles. In 2016, China launched a spacecraft into orbit with a robotic manipulator arm, ostensibly to remove dangerous fragments of space debris. However, military analysts fear that the real purpose of the launch is to capture American satellites instead of blowing them up and creating new garbage that will pose an additional danger to all. In the space race, China has managed to pose a very serious challenge to US global leadership. However, it cannot be assumed that the new space race between China and the United States will be a simple repetition of the old Soviet - American space race [11].

British researcher I. Stelzer notes that President D. Trump realizes that China is at war to oust the United States from the Asia-Pacific region and take away from the United States the status of the world's leading milit ary and economic power. Trump has finally acknowledged that he is not the only one world leader who plans to «make America great» again. Xi Jinping, China's lifelong leader, has set the same goal. Xi's plan to restore China's greatness, dubbed «Made in China 2025», is more comprehensive, and the tools he has chosen to implement the plan are more effective than the tariffs that Trump has imposed on Chinese products. To the theft of American intellectual property, according to the US trade mission, its volume is 250600 billion dollars annually, and to the requirement that American companies seeking to enter the Chinese market to transfer their intellectual property to the Chinese, Xi adds subsidies some promising industries. This guarantees China leadership in important sectors, and the funds received from them will be spent on strengthening its army. In this context, we will add that with its One Belt, One Road initiative, China will gain priority access to the markets of more than 70 countries in Asia, Africa and Europe, not to mention the impact on their economy and foreign policy [12].

Recognizing that he would have to run his country in a new Cold War, not just a trade war with China, Trump sent his national security adviser, J. Bolton, to Russia in the fall of 2018 to announce the United States' withdrawal from the Treaty. on the elimination of medium-range and short-range missiles, which prevents the United States from expanding its nuclear arsenal. This agreement was extremely useful when the geopolitical struggle for supremacy was waged only by R. Reagan and M. Gorbachev. China was too weak to sign that agreement, and its violator, Vladimir Putin, had not yet come to power. However, today Trump has decided that the United States should release itself from its obligations to rebuild its nuclear arsenal and prevent China from ousting the United States from the Asia-Pacific region.

The transformation of the trade war into a new Cold War has several important potential implications for some aspects of US foreign policy. Tariffs are no longer just tactical and temporary weapons designed to force the Chinese leader to sit down at the negotiating table, accept more American exports and restrict Chinese exports. Tariffs remain just one tool in the Cold War, which will last a very long time. Its consequences will include: rising prices for consumer goods; costs that will result from disruptions in supply chains passing through China and that will result in additional price pressure; pressure on the Federal Reserve, which will be forced to raise key rates to hamper these costs and rising prices will provoke excessive inflationary risks; strengthening the dollar in response to a key rate hike that will force emerging markets to finance their interest payments on dollar debt and purchase oil for dollars [12].

In this regard, China has recently carried out cyberattacks against corporations, including defense contractors. The U.S. government is also a frequent target, and China launched a cyber attack on a naval college back in 2006. The White House published a new national cyber strategy in 2018, saying the United States would respond to all confirmed cyberattacks. The US administration believes that this is a reasonable deterrent and that the administration will continue to prevent provocations from China by taking appropriate measures. The success of the United States in the development of artificial intelligence will give an advantage in both digital and kinetic warfare in the coming years. Artificial intelligence will soon allow unmanned military platforms to work against the enemy without direct human control. You can imagine a flock of small submarines that can communicate with each other and sink enemy ships. Increased emphasis on artificial intelligence will ensure continued US military and naval dominance, despite the accelerating pace of Chinese militarization. This dominance can be exacerbated by the removal of bureaucratic obstacles in the Ministry of Defense that slow down the introduction of new technologies [13].

As for the United States' closest allies, Taiwan, a strong opponent of China's claims to territory, should be singled out. The Trump administration approved the double sale of weapons to Taipei in June 2018 and should expand cooperation with the Taiwanese armed forces. The United States and Taiwan need to establish friendly relations through meetings between high-ranking diplomats and military officers, as well as a warm welcome from naval ships in their ports. The United States should also provide support for Taiwan's new submarine program. Taiwan's stronger defenses, especially against blockades or naval attacks, could reduce China's chances of seizing the island by force.

Another priority is to pay more attention to Japan's security. President Trump's strong relationship with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe should lead to closer cooperation at sea. Japan has already begun to actively improve its defense capabilities, and the United States must help develop it by expanding arms supplies. By cooperating with Taiwan, Japan's armed forces could become a single center of command and control that will monitor the coastal waters of both countries. Finally, the United States needs to strengthen its naval presence on Australia's north coast. China must understand that the US allies will strongly deny any attempt to control the straits through the archipelagos between the Indian and Pacific Oceans [13].

However, despite US attempts to oppose China's leadership in the world, there is a view that China still lacks the strength to participate in the new Cold War. When the Soviet Union ceased to exist in 1991, the Chinese Communist Party became seriously concerned with finding an answer to the question of why this happened. State think tanks, which were entrusted with this task, blamed Mikhail Gorbachev. The Communist Party of China (CCP) has no doubt memorized the first major lesson in the collapse of the Soviet Union. It is that strong economic performance is critical to maintaining political legitimacy. The CCP's focus on stimulating GDP growth over the past few decades has led to an «economic miracle»: nominal per capita income has soared from 333 dollars. US in 1991 to 7329 dollars. USA in 2018. This is the main and most important reason why the CCP retains power. But the policy that led to the weakening of the economy was barely the only mistake of the Soviet leadership. In addition, the country was embroiled in a costly arms race with the United States that was impossible to win, and fell victim to imperial overstrain, squandering money and resources in favor of regimes that were of little strategic importance and a long history of chronically poor economic governance. Now that

China is entering a new Cold War with the United States, the Chinese Communist Party seems to risk repeating the same catastrophic mistakes.

At first glance, it may seem that China is not really participating in the arms race with the United States. The fact is that China's official defense budget for 2018 is about 175 billion dollars. And is only a quarter of the 700 billion dollars US military budget approved by Congress. USA. However, China's real military spending is estimated to be much higher than its official budget. According to the Stockholm Institute for Peace Studies, in 2018 China spent about 228 billion dollars on the army. US, which is about 50% more than the official figure of 151 billion dollars. One way or another, the problem is not in itself the amount of money China spends on armaments, but in the constant growth of military spending, which means that the country is preparing to enter a long-term race for depletion with the United States. Meanwhile, China's economy is not prepared to produce the resources needed to maintain spending at the level required to win on this front.

If China had a sustainable model of economic growth that supports a highly efficient economy, then it could afford a moderate arms race with the United States. But it has none of that, and at the macro level, China's economic growth is likely to continue to slow. This is due to the rapid aging of the population, high levels of debt, imbalances in loan repayment, as well as the escalation of the trade war launched by the United States. All this will deplete the CCP's limited resources. For example, as the demographic burden of the pension increases, the cost of health care and pensions will increase. In addition, although the Chinese economy may be much more efficient than the Soviet economy, it is far less efficient than the US economy. The main reason for this is to maintain the role of Chinese state-owned enterprises, which absorb half of the total amount of bank loans in the country, although their contribution to value creation and employment is only 20%. Important is the fact that the Chinese leadership was unable to adequately assess: the need to avoid imperial overstrain. About ten years ago, when a huge foreign trade surplus created a surplus of hard currency in the country, the Chinese government began to make expensive commitments abroad and subsidize parasitic «allies».

In view of the above, the American researcher M. Lind believes that in the fight against China, geopolitics and geoeconomics must merge. Today, the United States is taking part in an arms race with China and Russia, which is gaining momentum. In Ukraine and Syria, the United States and Russia are waging indirect wars, although in Syria they occasionally cooperate with each other to eradicate ISIS. The Great Wall of China, which consists of enlarged and fortified islands in the South China Sea, as well as the challenge of China's territorial claims in the form of maritime freedom exercises conducted by the United States with its regional allies, evokes the image of an iron the veil that divided Europe during the Cold War and regularly provoked crises around divided Berlin.

Today, e-warfare tools have added a new component to the Cold War-familiar tools of espionage, sabotage, and propaganda. The Trump administration has launched a trade war against China, motivated by complaints about forced technology transfer and mercantilist trade practices, but which is actually based on fear of China, which is evolving from a developing country into a high-tech superpower.

Now the most pressing question is what is the path of further development of the United States in the Cold War with China. In the current Second Cold War, as in the First Cold War, there are four basic strategic options: rollback, deterrence, detente policies, and pacification policies. American leaders of the First Cold War rejected both the policy of appeasement and any reckless attempts to «roll back» Soviet influence in Eastern Europe, which threatened direct war, and opted for either a policy of deterring, blocking, or substantially raising the price of enemy attempts to expand. its influence, or truce, which took the form of a policy of detente [7].

Tactical appeasement can sometimes be helpful, but the great strategy of appeasement is to return the United States to North America and transfer the rest of the world to the great Eurasian powers against the interests of the United States. The United States was able to win the world wars and the Cold War only through alliances with the great powers of the Old World, alliances that became possible only through US domination at sea, in the air and in space. The United States needs to retain its allies in Eurasia and other regions outside of North America, and the richer, more influential, and populated the allies, the better. The «rollback» option is not suitable in the context of the Second Cold War. China is unlikely to give up the positions it managed to capture in the South China Sea.

Thus, we note the escalation of geopolitical and geoeconomic confrontation between the United States and China, which according to many analysts could lead to nuclear war. However, many researchers also believe that the image of the Chinese threat is now greatly exaggerated and based on a misunderstanding of China's intentions. In general, US think tanks recommend starting technological cooperation with China, rather than exacerbating the confrontation. Therefore, to date, there is no clear answer to the question of whether China really threatens US leadership in the emerging world order. On the contrary, there is a growing rift among researchers, politicians and experts towards this issue.

Despite opposing views on China's ambitions for world leadership, in the coming years the rivalry between the countries of the so-called «Group of Two» («G-2») will intensify and increasingly set global challenges in the field of security policy. Global climate change and mineral depletion amid a demographic boom - in two years China's population is increasing by Ukraine's population will strengthen China's foreign policy, which will pursue expansionist goals aimed at expanding its influence in the world and capturing new suitable territories for its population.

The relationship between cooperation and hostility between China and the United States may change. However, today, we believe that even with the most serious escalation, Sino-US disputes will not grow into a new global bipolarity. This will not happen in the event of a clash between the two states (which is unlikely, but not completely ruled out), if totalitarian tendencies prevail in Chinese politics. Under such conditions, a more or less broad anti-Chinese coalition of democracies, led by the United States, is likely to emerge, to which China will not be able to oppose a military alliance comparable in strength and cohesion.

China will be able to pursue a more independent policy than the United States only if it bypasses them in the areas of armaments and high technology. However, it is here that American leadership will remain undisputed for a long time to come. However, many analysts predict China's world leadership in the next decade or decades, as it may soon surpass the United States in economic terms. However, being the greatest does not mean being the first one. In addition to being the world's second largest economy, China is still a long way from taking the lead or competing in other areas (military-strategic, technological, social, etc.).

Obviously, absolute figures do not give an idea of the relative importance of Chinese economic growth. Due to its huge population, China cannot be considered one of the leading countries with per capita income. Regulating excessive population growth remains an important issue. Reform of the unprofitable public sector has not been completed, the budget deficit is growing, the infrastructure does not meet the requirements of economic development, unemployment is not falling, the gap between the rapidly developing coastal zones and the backward deep provinces is growing. High economic growth threatens its overheating. China is still a developing country, far behind the most developed countries.

Thus, it is safe to assume that at least until the middle of the century, the best choice for China would not be to forcibly impose its regional, let alone global, unipolarity, but to actively enter the multipolar world as a major independent center of power. In this way, as noted, temporary deviations of Chinese policy to confrontational positions in case of complication of the situation inside the country or aggravation of the situation in the region (for example, in the area of Taiwan or on the Korean Peninsula) are not excluded. Yet the main focus is likely to be on transforming China into a major pole power capable of playing an important role in East Asia, and throughout the Asia-Pacific region, and then possibly in global international affairs.