Rants

The State of China – part one

Michael Ledeen is not a man whose opinions I would naturally respect.  A prominent voice calling for war against Iraq (“One can only hope that we turn the region into a cauldron, and faster, please.  If ever there were a region that richly deserved being cauldronized, it is the Middle East today”) he has been implicated in both the Iran-Contra  Scandal and the “yellowcake” forgery that helped precipitate the war that Mr. Ledeen so devoutly desired.

His present “resident scholar” status at the American Enterprise Institute should also give pause for thought.  It is, after all, the AEI that has been so pivotal in forming American neocon foreign policy.

For those interested, Wikipedia reveals a great many more facts about this unsavoury but influential individual.

And yet.

His article in the current issue of the Far Eastern Economic Review is a plausible comment on the current state of the Chinese regime.  The fact that this issue of the FEER has been banned in China should give you a clue that it’s got right up the authorities’ noses.

Ledeen makes a good case that present-day China should be viewed, and dealt with, as a “mature fascist state”.  He writes:

Imagine Italy 50 years after the fascist revolution. Mussolini would be dead and buried, the corporate state would be largely intact, the party would be firmly in control, and Italy would be governed by professional politicians, part of a corrupt elite, rather than the true believers who had marched on Rome. It would no longer be a system based on charisma, but would instead rest almost entirely on political repression, the leaders would be businesslike and cynical, not idealistic, and they would constantly invoke formulaic appeals to the grandeur of the “great Italian people,” “endlessly summoned to emulate the greatness of its ancestors.”

This is an interesting analogy.  He then goes on to draw some devastating strategic conclusions that I’ll analyze in the next post.

On this day…

No other post on this day.

© 2008 Peter Cox’s Blog.