Two U.S. peace researchers, Michael T. Klare, professor emeritus of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College, and Joseph Gerson, president of the Campaign for Peace, Disarmament and Common Security, have launched a new organization, the Committee for a SANE U.S.-China policy that seeks to counter the U.S. drive to war with China.
At the launching webinar on Wednesday January 27th, Gerson stated that the goal of the Committee for a SANE U.S.-China Policy was to educate the public about China and U.S.-China relations, and to build a base of advocates and activists who could work to deescalate tensions between the two countries.
Joseph Gerson [commondreams.org] 
Michael T. Klare [Source: hampshire.edu]
Klare and Gerson’s committee derives its name from the now-defunct National Committee for a SANE nuclear policy, an organization advocating for nuclear disarmament that was co-founded in 1957 by Norman Cousins, the editor of The Saturday Review who brought survivors of the atomic attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to the U.S. for medical treatment.
Gerson noted that “President Biden has said that he was going to be more aggressive towards China but we urgently need to dial back confrontation and to pursue common security and diplomacy. Chinese Premier Xi Xinping has called for the avoidance of a new Cold War, which is what we seek.”
Michael Klare in his talk in the webinar emphasized that China was the most important foreign policy challenge facing the new Biden administration.
Its choice is to either extend Donald Trump’s provocations—such as the sending of B-52 bombers to the edge of Chinese airspace and meeting with Taiwanese leaders in violation of diplomatic protocols[1]—or to try and recalibrate U.S.-Chinese relations on a positive footing.
By every indication, Biden seems intent on the former, as is evident by his appointment of China hawks like Kurt Campbell, an architect of the Obama administration’s Asia Pivot policy or military buildup in Asia, as the new “Asia Czar” (senior official for Asia policy).[2]
Secretary of State Tony Blinken’s tellingly asserted in his Senate confirmation hearing that “Trump was right in taking a tougher approach to China.”
Klare asked the audience in his talk to imagine how U.S. citizens would react if China moved its jet bombers into the Atlantic Ocean—the equivalent of what the Trump administration had done by placing American B-52 bombers in the South China Sea; or if China tried to ruin the U.S. economy as Trump did through his trade wars and by trying to bar U.S. companies from doing business with major Chinese companies like the tele-communications giant Huawei.
Rachel Esplin Odell, an Asia expert at the Quincey Institute for Responsible Statecraft, followed Klare by warning that a military crisis could arise in the waters off the South China Sea if the U.S. continued to provoke China there.
Odell pointed out that the U.S. military escalation was based on the exaggerated belief that China was a threat to open navigation on the seas, when, in fact, China wants freedom of navigation.
Odell further emphasized that U.S. interventionist policies were provoking nationalist anxieties in China causing it to pursue more aggressive land claims in disputed islands in the South China Sea.
The final speaker at the webinar, Zhiqun Zhu, the chairman of the international relations department at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, lamented the fact that China had become a “punching bag” in Washington and asked whether the China hawks actually cared about human rights in China, or were using China’s human rights abuses to promote their own agenda.
Despite offering good critical analysis of U.S.-China relations, the webinar left out certain key topics such as (1) the role of the U.S. in helping to stir the protests in Hong Kong, (2) China’s conflict with the Uighur Muslims and Tibet, (3) CIA backing of Chinese dissidents, and (4) Huawei executive Wang Menzhou’s trial (see CAM’s coverage), all of which will hopefully be explored in future events.
The Committee for a SANE U.S.-China Policy’s website promotes the group’s mission statement and a timeline of provocative military actions taken by the U.S. in recent months.
Policy papers advocate for progressive measures such as the freezing of arms sales to Taiwan in return for comparable measures on the Chinese side such as a reduction in China’s deployment of ballistic missiles aimed at Taiwan.
Gerson’s essay on the site argues that the Biden administration should pursue a reset policy towards China and push for: (1) the restoration of U.S.-Chinese military-to-military consultations, and (2) the renewal of the U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue suspended by the Trump Administration.
Gerson also advocates for (1) reengaging with the Association of South East Asian Nations’ (ASEAN) Regional Forum and establishment of a binding Southeast Asian Code of Conduct regarding military operations in the South China Sea and for pursuing joint development of the sea’s mineral resources by nations with overlapping territorial claims; and (2) for pursuing a face-saving agreement whereby the United States would permanently cease its freedom of navigation operations in exchange for Chinese demilitarization of its island bases.
Given the current political climate and people whom Biden has appointed, it is unlikely that the latter recommendations will be enacted—though popular pressure sparked by the Committee for a SANE U.S.-China policy could be a game-changer.
The Committee’s policy recommendations are particularly important antidotes to Steve Bannon’s Committee on the Present Danger: China which promotes negative disinformation and hatred against China and advocates for an expansive military buildup in the South China Seas.[3]
Headed up by a number of ex-military and CIA officers[4] and neoconservatives like Frank Gaffney who promoted the war in Iraq[5], the Committee on the Present Danger: China is modeled after the Cold War organization, the Committee on the Present Danger (CPD).
The latter was founded in the early 1950s by Paul Nitze, the author of the policy planning document NSC-68 that advocated for an aggressive rollback strategy directed against the Soviet Union.
Supported by CIA luminaries like “Wild Bill Donovan and William J. Casey and billionaires such as Leonard Firestone and Richard Mellon Scaife, the CPD constantly exaggerated the Soviet threat and tried to block arms control treaties and overtures towards détente with Russia.
One of the main push-backs against the anti-Soviet hysteria then was offered by SANE, whose reincarnation today offers a renewed vehicle for activists to try and prevent another major war from breaking out.
Jeremy Kuzmarov is Managing editor of CovertAction Magazine.
[1] China views Taiwan as part of mainland China but Taiwan has sought greater autonomy from China since the late 1940s when Chinese Nationalist leader Jieng Jieshi (Chiang Kai-Shek) fled there after losing the Chinese Civil War to Mao Zedong and the Communists.
[2] See chapter 7 in Jeremy Kuzmarov, Obama’s Unending Wars: Fronting the Foreign Policy of the Permanent Warfare State (Atlanta: Clarity Press Inc., 2019).
[3] In its mission statement, the Committee on the Present Danger: China asserts that China represents “an existential and ideological threat to the United States and idea of freedom [that] requires a new American consensus regarding the policies and priorities required to defeat this threat.”
[4] The ex-CIA officers include former CIA director James Woolsey, Clare Lopez, and Sam Faddis.
[5] Gaffney served as Assistant Secretary for Defense for International Security Affairs under Ronald Reagan and had been an aide to hawkish Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson in the 1970s. Considered by the Southern Poverty Law Center to be one of the country’s leading Islamophobes, Gaffney has advocated for the revival of House of Un-American Activities (HUAC)-style investigations of Muslim-Americans, and presumably will do the same for Chinese-Americans considered to have potentially engaged in espionage for the People’s Republic of China (PRC)..
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About the Author
About the Author
Jeremy Kuzmarov holds a Ph.D. in American history from Brandeis University and has taught at numerous colleges across the United States. He is regularly sought out as an expert on U.S. history and politics for radio and TV programs and co-hosts a radio show on New York Public Radio and on Progressive Radio News Network called “Left on Left.” He is Managing Editor of CovertAction Magazine and is the author of five books on U.S. foreign policy, including Obama’s Unending Wars (Clarity Press, 2019), The Russians Are Coming, Again, with John Marciano (Monthly Review Press, 2018), and Warmonger. How Clinton’s Malign Foreign Policy Launched the U.S. Trajectory From Bush II to Biden (Clarity Press, 2023). Besides these books, Kuzmarov has published hundreds of articles and contributed to numerous edited volumes, including one in the prestigious Oxford History of Counterinsurgency . He can be reached at jkuzmarov2@gmail.com and found on substack here.
wow lies lies lies just give china the south seas lol and they get to keep there man made islands lol more
China dose not uphold and international agreements and you think they will start now lmao you CCP mouthpieces good luck with this lots of wasted CCP money no one thinks China is even remotely a good guy
The writer is describing many bad things that the United States is doing, but he makes no mention of any of the bad things that China is doing and is thus not providing the readers with a complete picture of a very complex conflict. Both countries are big Super Powers, so one must provide a broader picture of everything
with as much detail as possible. It is not enough to just present a list of bad things that the United States is doing.
Who is the clear aggressor?