Is Red China to be feared more than Russia?  Can we afford two enemies at the same time?  Which has the most potential to destroy us economically, politically, and socially?  A surprising answer can come from Italian history.

As a lifelong student of history, and armed with a degree in International Affairs, such questions have always intrigued me.  History doesn’t repeat itself exactly, it’s more like a spiral.  Instead of Hitler’s Germany, there is Putin’s Russia.  Instead of Tojo’s Japan, there is Xi’s China.  Mighty Germany and fanatical Japan were capable of dividing the world between them; marginal Russia and powerful Red China not so much.

Clearly, Red China has boxed us into a corner, unlike any adversary in our past.  It has sapped our industrial independence and financial dominance.  It has seduced American corporations, our media, Big Tech, as well as our universities.  Unless you have a bottle of Stolichnaya Vodka in your house, Russia has zero hooks into the United States.  Its main threat to us is hacking our infrastructure and “stealing” elections.  But, which adversary unleashed the Wuhan Virus that killed our economy along with 600,000 Americans and perverted our social relations?

If we insist on seeing Russia and China as equal threats, than we are repeating the 1930s British view that Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany were two of a kind.  That thinking caused World War II and the end of the British Empire.  There is enough easily available documentation available to support the notion that had Italy and Great British reconciled their differences in the Mediterranean before 1939, the Rome-Berlin Axis would not have been formed and Hitler would not have had a partner to fulfill the insanity of Mein Kampf.

Does Russia want to overrun Europe?  Clearly, it invaded Ukraine’s Crimea region and is waging a proxy war in eastern Ukraine – but, is that the stuff for a NATO-Russian war?  (Crimea, the site of a Soviet naval base was summarily assigned to the Ukraine by Nikita Khrushchev in 1954.  Historically, it was Russian territory.) Putin has made deals with Red China in space; and is making overtures of wider cooperation.  However, Russia shares a 2,600 mile border with Communist China – not always friendly.  It may have more nuclear warheads, but its economy is only the size of Italy’s.  Like the old Axis, a Moscow-Beijing alliance would make Putin (“Mussolini”) the junior partner.

A new understanding with Russia might solve lots of problems besides isolating Red China.  Just as in the 1930s Italians and Brits shared a common grounding in Roman civilization – Germania was its nemesis – Russia is European not Asian.  Putin may regret the loss of the USSR, but he considers its old borders as a Russian sphere of influence just as our Monroe Doctrine defines ours in the Americas. Today’s Italy wants closer ties with Putin’s Russia.  Former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi famously cavorted with Vladimir.  FIAT was the first to build a factory behind the Iron Curtain in 1966. 

There is more opportunity to reach an understanding with Russia on hacking and cooperation in the warming Arctic Circle than fending off Red China’s aggressive moves in the South China Sea and Taiwan.  China is not all talk: Mao annexed independent Tibet in 1950 and sent an army against us during the Korean War. Suppose Russia joins the newly formed “Quad” (U.S.-Australia-India-Japan); China would be encircled. Had Great Britain recognized Italy’s Ethiopian conquest and shared the governance of the Suez Canal, Hitler would have been encircled on three sides.

The Communist Chinese have no gratitude for our saving them from Imperial Japan.  They also got a seat on the UN Security Council – with veto power – and entry into the World Trade Organization, from the West.  Yet, they exploit their national “humiliation” by Europeans and Americans during the 19th Century to justify a deceitful foreign policy – just as Hitler made the Versailles Treaty the motive for his lies and aggressions.

Dictator Xi and his Communists are not without their Achille’s Heel.  The Trump Administration successfully blocked the Dutch from selling a crucial computer chip machine to China in 2019, denying it self-sufficiency.   China still depends on U.S. universities to educate its elite in science and technology.  China’s wealth is not filtering down to the young and needy, leaving many disgruntled.  Communism always fails when isolated.

The hard solution is for us to “decouple” – industrially, financially, and academically – and to woo the junior partner.  -JLM

PS: Italy just won the European championship in soccer!