What if Kung Fu Panda Turns King Kong?
Were China to fetch up in the American hemisphere – a naval presence in Panama’s waters for instance – will the world complain about the counterbalance to US unipolarity?
What if Kung Fu Panda were to turn into King Kong?
What if China were to offer a mutual defence pact to Panama, given the background of prezelect Trump’s threat to take over Panama Canal, acquire Greenland and incorporate Canada as another state of the US of A?
Before anyone harrumphs a resolve to eat his Panama hat if China were to do anything of the sort, let me clarify this is purely a thought experiment, not any strategic leak from Beijing’s mandarins.
After the Cold War, US had been hailed as the world’s sole superpower. Its military spend is bigger than the combined spend of the next seven largest defence spenders. Its unified commands enable it to deliver coordinated attacks from land, water, air, outer space, and cyberspace. Further, it can draw on Silicon Valley warriors like Palantir, whose motto is dominance in decision making, to produce actionable intelligence from real time data derived from disparate sources.
It accounts for a quarter of global GDP, its growth rate is the envy of the rest of the rich world. New York is the nerve centre of global finance, the dollar remains the world’s reserve currency, and American companies dominate the world of technology and innovation. Its universities are magnets for the world’s best brains and its capital markets are not just large but efficient in ploughing money into innovation.
The American entertainment industry sets the tone for the world’s pop culture. It is on American social media platforms that the world pours out its soul, whispers its scandals, proclaims its peeves and hates, finds love and friendship, spews hate, entertains itself, markets its wares, discovers discounts, celebrates, weeps, seethes, rages, rants, frets and even coordinates deadly attacks. America is to the world what King Kong is to ordinary fauna. And yet, most Americans are convinced their country is in terminal decline, their leaders have left the American dream to rot and Obamacare, and they need a saviour. They have found one. He is large, orange, and brazen. He has promised to make America great again.
Trump wants to save America with tariffs to keep out external competition, by throwing out illegal immigrants, getting tough on crime, and clothing American babies in an oilman’s overalls, so they can dig, dig, and dig – never mind US is already the world’s biggest oil producer, and LA’s burning in fires stoked by climate change.
After America’s humiliation in Vietnam, people began to stop caring about US imperialism. Saddam Hussain and the enormity of 9/11 attacks gave cover to the two instalments of American war on Iraq. Grenada was too small to matter outside the Caribbean. Israel’s larger than life persona, lending itself to easy comparison with King Herod, the killer of infants, hides its true role as US proxy in the region.
Trump makes American imperialism rampant again. Canadians see it clearly. As do Greenlanders and their official protectors, the Danes. Tiny Panama and all of central and South America revive memories of the United Fruit Company. ‘Hey Mister Tallyman, tally me banana’...
Trump twins with Elon Musk, who meddles in British and German politics with smirks, tweets, and offers of millions of dollars. The two project American power not as the anchor of Pax Americana but as licence to do as America pleases. The western world has no response to such hubris, except Starmer’s sputter and Macron’s principled preaching.
If, in this context, China were to offer Panama a mutual defence pact, after building one of the world’s biggest ports in Peru, it would come as a breath of fresh air. Soviets extended friendship to Cuba, which had just fought back and defeated the USled Bay of Pigs invasion. Castro agreed to host Soviet nuclear missiles, as Moscow sought to respond to US missile deployments in Italy and Turkey.
When Washington got wise to it, President Kennedy ordered a naval blockade of Cuba. Moscow and Washington reached a deal. Soviets withdrew their missiles from Cuba, in public, and US promised to stop attempts to overthrow Castro’s regime, and withdrew, on the quiet, missiles in Turkey.
By engaging US in a nuclear standoff, Soviet Union established itself as a military superpower, after having shown off its sci-tech achievements with Sputnik and Yuri Gagarin.
Why should Beijing take on Washington on Panama? It would gain a huge bargaining chip in its dealings with the incoming Trump administration. It would do far more to establish China’s arrival as a global, rather than Pacific, power, than brokering peace between Iran and Saudi Arabia had. China has always bristled at American naval ships’ ‘freedom-of-navigation’ jaunts in South China Sea. ‘Freedom of navigation’ passages by Chinese ships around Panama could help the world see the Chinese point of view on the subject.
Chinese naval presence in the region would be blasphemy against America’s Manifest Destiny, the near divine mandate Americans have traditionally believed they had, to dominate that part of the world. Trump, instead of making America great again, would appear to have shrunk American power.
Of course, neither Canada nor Greenland-Denmark would openly cheer the Chinese. However, few outside Trumpian America would fail to see the bright side of puncturing Trump’s hubris. What would China have to lose, by going public as the only systemic rival to US?
All of West Asia and Africa would welcome a focus of resistance to unipolar hegemony. Japan and South Korea would be inclined to be more mindful of Chinese interests, even as they work towards greater military self-reliance.
Even before Trump, it made sense for Europe to break out of its inertia on clothing its geopolitical salience, with strategic capability sourced from EU members themselves. Trumpian antics make the imperative clearer to minds duller than President Macron’s, who has been lucid on the subject for some time. Brits would be left regretting Brexit more than ever.
Russia would not be overly pleased at China dethroning, on the global stage, Soviet’s legacy as principal rival to US. But Moscow is too obliged to Beijing for its support during the Ukraine war to take offence. India also would gain from the decentralisation of power inherent in degrading any unipolar dominance.
China has little to lose, and a more balanced world, besides a world of gratitude, to win.What if Kungfu Panda were to turn into King Kong?