Straw men selling false choices

The original essays to which Barry Brownstein links from social media platforms such as LinkedIn usually bring more light than heat to issues of the day. He's a professor emeritus of economics and leadership at the University of Baltimore, and he sounds like an uncle you'd take advice from. But in a March 24 essay at the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE), Brownstein tries to make a case for "Why We Should Love China, Not Fear It" -- and therein lies my problem: A straw man in a headline never travels alone, and Brownstein's plea for Sinophilia is thick with them.

Brownstein mounts an anti-Trump horse and goes to the whip hand right out of the gate, planting the idea that tariffs imposed on Chinese imports  are monstrously ill-advised. "FEE readers," he writes, "understand well the destructive effects of Trump's tariffs." 

It's an interesting way to start an essay that is not about tariffs, and it only makes sense if you see those economic tools as symptoms of a pathology that the president suffers from. One hopes readers on the FEE website also understand that tariffs have time limits. Consider the new trade agreement between the U.S and China that was announced in January: Other observers have concluded that it is "delivering despite coronavirus." That was the gist of a Fox Business story published the same week that Brownstein decried Donald Trump's allegedly "narcissistic" vision for America.

Straw men love adjectives in the same way that snipers love high ground. Busy reminiscing about the time he saw Trump's Tariffs open for Pandemic Overreaction, Brownstein skates right past the fact that "narcissistic vision" never signed a major label recording contract. Unlike Hillary Rodham Clinton, his opponent in their battle of the bands, the "Make America Great Again" artist whom more than 62 million Americans voted for in 2016 was all about patriotic vision.

The current U.S.-China deal was made possible partly by tariffs, and -- according to MarketWatch -- it could "move the world closer to free trade and ultimately save the World Trade Organization." Increased exports and stronger protection for intellectual property are  good things, right?

The big picture would have been easier for Brownstein to see if he hadn't been enchanted by the work of a Harvard professor known for identifying sixteen different cases "in which an ascending power (like China) challenged an established power (like the United States)." In 12 of those 16 cases, challenger and champion made war on each other.

Clutching the memory of conflict between Athens and Sparta to his chest like a model of covid-19 influence that's too scarily impressive to revise in light of actual experience, Brownstein turns from straw men he's already used (tariffs as horrible weapons, America-first trade policy as narcissistic) to introduce yet another straw man, Mr. Specious Analogy: "Suppose Mississippi became a wealthy state," he wonders-- Would that gladden your heart, or would you "worry that Mississippians gained their wealth by ripping you off"? (Subtext: Are you a kind person or a xenophobe?)

China is not Mississippi, Brownstein admits, but he is at pains to remind us that "the tide of war will stay offshore when we add love to thick economic interdependence." We do that for people with whom we share a national identity, but we ought also to do it for people from other nations, he says.

As one reader noted in comments for his essay, Brownstein's notion of love between countries seems flexible enough to include capitulation. Moreover, he doesn't allow for the possibility that you can love China while simultaneously working to check the pernicious influence of its Communist leadership at every turn (or, indeed, love China precisely by doing that if you have the power to do so, and sometimes even if you don't -- as witness the Wuhan residents saying that coronavirus figures released by their government don't add up).

Brownstein echoes National Public Radio in suggesting that Donald Trump has a zero-sum view of the world where America cannot win unless China loses. He wants the rest of us to believe that Donald Trump is a hateful narcissist treating trade policy like a zero-sum game. Have we reached the point where calling for an end to illegal trade practices is considered warlike activity when performed by Republicans from Queens? Brownstein seems to think so, but based on what we've seen throughout his presidency so far, it's more accurate to think of Donald Trump as a shrewd patriot using every peaceful means at his disposal to broker win-win agreements internationally. 

Let me propose that to the extent that it exists, zero-sum thinking comes from Chinese communist leaders who used the covid-19 crisis they abetted to bulldoze temples and churches. When they appeal to national memory or world opinion, it's with a view toward retaining their own grip on power, rather than out of nostalgia for China as the fabled  "Middle Kingdom." [Sebastian Gorka is another commentator with a few things to say on this subject].

Another straw man deserving of a brotherly backhand is the idea that a worrisome number of Americans up to and including the president operate from an assumption of "national supremacy." 

Look: Ray Charles' version of "America the Beautiful" still brings tears to my eyes, but supremacy and self-sufficiency are two different things. If you can't be patriotic without flirting with national socialism or prudent without being dismissed as hopelessly parochial, then Brownstein must also be disappointed with Brazilians (Headline on an April 8 story about developments in their country: "Brazil Turns to Local Industry to Build Ventilators as China Orders Fall Through").

Faulty premises undergirding a misguided plea for tolerance  affection would not warrant rebuttal if they were uncommon, but Professor Brownstein's willingness to speculate about motive, cherry-pick examples, and give Premier Li Jingping more latitude than President Donald Trump are in line with prevailing bias in the mass media, and it's not a good look.

[UPDATE: an early version of this essay was also published by American Greatness on May  5]