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Every nation is governed by a political system, the system signifies an evolving human civilization more advanced than any other living species, monkeys, elephants, ants or a school of fish. Political systems progress with time as human development advancing with time. Traditionally, human societies were led by strong individuals who supposedly could make wiser decisions for the society. In human evolution, religious beliefs and political philosophies emerged and influenced the human society's governing system, be it an emperor or king or a collective body.  Human history showed us through merciless religious wars that religion would be best kept out of the political governing system especially when a society consisted of people with multiple religions. Human history also taught us that strong leaders would be best selected by people with a political method not by inheritance or by brutal physical competition. 'Democracy' was evolved through a long period of time and accepted by political philosophers as a decision making 'method' for selecting leaders in all walks of life today, neighborhood leaders, union bosses, city mayors, councilors, governors, congress members, and presidents. This evolution and progression produced fairly efficient societies (vs ancient societies) with democracy practiced at different levels with direct or representative voting system, however not free of conflicts and problems.
 
The U.S. is a young nation with only 245 years of independence, emerged from a colony of an imperial kingdom, the Great Britain by revolution. Fortunately, at the time of her revolution, a political philosophy had already blossomed embracing the concept of “every man is born with freedom” thus implying that every man may participate in the political process that governs the human society. That political process was named as 'democracy' today, but it was not well defined in its infancy. Through 245 years of progress, the U.S. honed her democracy following two major tracks, one was the voting rights, gradually granted to her citizens, white property owners (1790), black adults (1868), women (1920), and age 18 (1970) . The second was the political party system, over time evolved from one principal party to two and more parties and then re-consolidated to today's two dominating parties, Democrats and Republicans. During this political evolution process, besides the voting rights and political party structure, numerous political philosophies flourished which seem to divide people more than unite them in their participation in Democracy. The richness of political philosophies may represent the maturity of a human society, but their divisive nature may have mightier force in destroying a harmonious human society. On the latest Independence day, the author was drawn to ponder and wrote about our bipartisan system with the question, 'Why is our bipartisan system divisive and dysfunctional?' in mind, hence this article is entitled, ' American Bipartisan Confusion'.     
 
American liberalism is one of the major political philosophies embraced by a large number of Americans especially accentuated by Democrats. Under this philosophy, our Democratic Party
promotes social programs, labor unions, consumer protection, workplace safety, regulation, equal economic opportunity, social safety net, disability rights, racial equality, government environmental protection, criminal justice reform, women abortion rights, LGBT rights, accepting undocumented immigrants, agreeing in consensus on climate changes and multilateral approach in foreign policies. Throughout the years, Democrats advocated mixed economy, progressive taxation, higher minimum wage, social security, universal healthcare, public education, subsidized housing, infrastructure development for job creation, and occasionally agreeing in cutting government size and market regulation, progressive tax for more services and equal opportunity but in general supporting more spending on government and services not on military. These philosophies, when implemented in policies, became social liberalism, libertarian-ism and feminism, for example, slashing student loan debt, offering free college tuition, expanding conservation, welcoming 'illegal' immigrants, increasing social and health benefits (including abortion), etc without fiscal consideration. These ideas  irk the Republican party and divides the Americans.
 
American conservatism is another major political philosophy supported by a large number of Americans especially endorsed by the Republicans. Under this philosophy, our Republican party promotes lower taxes, free markets, capitalism, deregulation, and restriction on union; under social conservatism, advocating gun rights, traditional values, restricting abortions (Christian belief), immigration control, opposing drug legalization and supporting school choice, free markets, individual achievement; under fiscal conservatism, eliminating government welfare, favoring supply side economy and smaller taxes. Although, over the years, the Republicans have engaged in welfare reform and supported Medicare covering prescription drugs, however, the philosophical difference on constitution interpretation, strengthening state government power (limiting federal power), preferring market solution over government environment protection, and different views on social policies such as affirmative action, illegal immigrants, same sex marriage, etc. are driving the American bipartisan system far apart. This political division grew wider in almost all domestic issues except less disagreement in infrastructure spending for job creation and smaller difference in foreign policy approach (unilateral action vs multilateral action) and military spending.    
 
As an American today, it is very difficult to be not confused and frustrated when comes to electing candidates and picking political parties. Every American has the God given right to live their lives as they please but the diverging political philosophy is challenging the conservatives to conform with a lifestyle of liberals and the liberals to accept the conservative values even they felt as discriminatory. The divided Americans cannot accept one another and live in peace. The social unrest, growth of homeless population, the concern of wealth gap, the angry demonstrations and violent hate crimes are the evidence of the outbreaks of the American Bipartisan Confusion. Why is the U.S. changed so much? No matter how one votes or what one says, or how much one prays (if you believe in God), the world is moving to the worse, yet our government only blames the others, Middle East, Russia, China, ... never itself. American citizens are confused by the hostility of family (between generations) and friends; the nation is filled with hate that we can not rationally talk about our own problems except fictitious 'foreign threat'. Did we lose our collective mind or too divided to unite? The following is a set of statements circulating in the organic media reflecting such political confusion and frustration. The author urges the readers to ponder how we may clear up our confusion:

1. If a guy pretends to be a woman, are you required to pretend with him, a LGBTQ question?
2. Is it UN-american for census to verify how many Americans are in America?
3. It is OK to let people own assault weapon to mass murder people, but it is not OK to let a woman to have an abortion of an unwanted baby?
4. Killing murderers is wrong but killing unborn babies is okay?
5. Russians influencing our elections aren't acceptable but illegals voting in our elections are OK.
6. Twenty is too young to drink but eighteen is old enough to vote?
7. Should people who have never owned slaves pay slavery reparations to people who have never been slaves?
8. Should people who have never been to college pay the debts of college students?
9. Irish doctors and German engineers who want to immigrate to the US must go through a rigorous vetting process, but not any illiterate gang member or terrorist who jumps the southern fence?
10. Fence for border security is bad, but fence preventing citizens to get into the capital building is good?
11. If you cheat to get into college you go to prison, but if you cheat to get into the country you can go to college for free.
12. Paying executives millions are OK but have a minimum wage of $15 per hour is not OK.
13. Why people who say there is no such thing as gender are demanding a female President?
14. We say other countries going socialist and collapsing, but it seems we are doing the same.
15. Some people are held responsible for things that happened before they were born, and other people are not held responsible for what they are doing right now.
16. Criminals are caught-and-released to possibly hurt more people. But stopping them is bad because it's a violation of THEIR rights.
17. Taking unilateral action against one country is bad but inviting allies as a multilateral action against a country is good.
18. Speaking truth may be "racists" and telling lies may be patriotic.

 
Are we living in an upside-down world where right is wrong and wrong is right, where moral is immoral and immoral is moral, where good is evil and evil is good? We Americans are drowning and suffocating. We must wake up and speak up against political confusion caused by political correctness. We must reflect on ourselves to clear up American bipartisan confusion!
 
 

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An article published on the Guardian on October 5, 2021, entitled, The US Must Avoid War with China over Taiwan at All Cost, was authored by Daniel L. Davis who is a senior fellow for defense priorities and a former lieutenant colonel in the US army, deployed into combat zones four times. He is also the author of The Eleventh Hour in 2020 America. His opinion is certainly based on his military knowledge. His main points are as follows: 

1. “American policymakers must face the cold, hard reality that fighting China over Taiwan risks an almost-certain military defeat – and gambles we won’t stumble into a nuclear war.”
2. “There would be no palatable choice for Washington if China finally makes good on its decades-long threat to take Taiwan by force. Either choose a bad, bitter-tasting outcome or a self-destructive one in which our existence is put at risk.”
3. “The deputy secretary of defense, Kathleen Hicks, said that if Beijing invades Taiwan, “we have a significant amount of capability forward in the region to tamp down any such potential. Either Hicks is unaware of how little wartime capacity we actually have forward deployed in the Indo-Pacific or she’s unaware of how significant China’s capacity is off its shores, but whichever the case, we are in no way guaranteed to “tamp down” a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.”
4. “Earlier this year, Senator Rick Scott and Representative Guy Reschenthaler introduced the Taiwan Invasion Prevention Act which, Representative Reschenthaler said, would authorize “the president to use military force to defend Taiwan against a direct attack”. In the event of an actual attack, there would be enormous pressure to fast-track such a bill to authorize Biden to act. We must resist this temptation.”
5. “The best that could be hoped for would be a pyrrhic victory in which we are saddled with becoming the permanent defense force for Taiwan (costing us hundreds of billions a year and the equally permanent requirement to be ready for the inevitable Chinese counter-attack).”
6. “The most likely outcome would be a conventional defeat of our forces in which China ultimately succeeds, despite our intervention – at the cost of large numbers of our jets being shot down, ships being sunk, and thousands of our service personnel killed. But the worst case is a conventional war spirals out of control and escalates into a nuclear exchange.”

 
There were quite a number of comments posted by readers. Many just like I agree with Davis' military assessment. However, many readers do not seem to support his not-to-war position. The ones that disagreeing with Colonel Davis can be represented by the words, obligation and duty, hence willing to war, for example, “We have a duty to protect Taiwan, it’s been etched in stone for decades. If the US falter in this commitment, it will be open season for all the world’s adversaries to do as they please.” The ones agreeing with Davis further pointed out the dependency of the West on China's manufacturing. As for strategy, Davis' suggestion is as follows: “The most effective course of action for Washington would be to condemn China in the strongest possible terms, lead a global movement that will enact crippling sanctions against Beijing, and make them an international pariah. China’s pain wouldn’t be limited to economics, however.” This is more or less Biden's Administration is doing or hope to achieve, but so far the progress is not prominent.
 
The Taiwan issue has been discussed in the US-China Forum for nearly a decade, but our views seem to fall on deaf ears. We have discussed the history behind the Taiwan issue – it was a result of a Chinese internal war following the ending of WW II. The split of China across the Taiwan strait happened while the world was polarized between a capitalist liberal democratic West led by the U.S. and a communist authoritarian system controlled by the Soviet Union. China had two political parties fighting for power but they had a common goal to unite China and make China strong again despite of the external influence from the Soviet Union and the U.S. The Chinese would have been united if there were no interference from the U.S. and the Soviet. There was no obligation for the U.S. or any other nation to fight in or for a Chinese internal war. The U.S. has no reason to get involved with any political party in Taiwan for its struggle for power. It is none of the U.S. business.
 
The U.S. has been a superpower since the end of WW II and she became The Superpower when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989-1991. However, being a superpower does have obligation in maintaining world peace and promoting world prosperity, but it has no obligation nor right to interfere with other nation's internal affairs. China is a perfect example that she has five thousand years of history and far richer culture and literacy than any nation on Earth. If China is progressing to find the perfect system for governing China who in this world has the right or obligation to dictate or interfere with China's own political evolution? Other nations especially the U.S. should try to understand what a political system with Chinese characteristics mean.
 
The present Taiwan government is ruled by a small political party. Even the present party chose to be a poppy of the U.S., we should be wise enough to stay neutral. The fact that China has risen so fast and advanced in numerous domains making the U.S. uneasy, the U.S. must reflect on itself why we are falling behind? No, no country can steal another country's success. China rose peacefully. She did not wage war or conquer any other country to make her growing strong. From Col. Davis' article, we should ponder what are the differences that have made China to be a world power in a few decades? Only through a humble reflection we may grow strong again. If the U.S. interferes with the Taiwan issue, the outcome will be what Davis predicts. Any hegemony strategy or Thucydides theory is obsolete in a nuclear power world. We must learn how to compete and accept reality.
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Ifay Chang. Ph.D., Inventor, Author, TV Game Show Host and Columnist (www.us-chinaforum.org) as well as serving as Trustee, Somers Central School District.
     

 
Professor Jessica Chen Weiss (JCW) published her interview with Ryan Hass (RH a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute and Michael H. Armacost Chair in Foreign Policies Studies) on the Washington Post Monkey Cage Analysis, entitled ‘The Cold War Is a Poor Analogy for Today’s U.S.-China Tensions’. RH served as the director for China, Taiwan and Mongolia at the National Security Council during the Obama administration. JCW is a political scientist and professor of government at Cornell University, as well as an editor at the Washington Post Monkey Cage blog and a non-resident senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. JCW posted five questions to RH referencing his 2021 book: 1. Where do you see China headed? 2. Assessment of U.S. sanction efforts to China tech giants such as Huawei’s? 3. Where and what successes the U.S. influenced (pushed) China? 4. Referring to G7 ‘Build Back Better World’ (BBBW), how effective is the U.S. led competition against China’s BRI? 5. Differences and similarities between Cold War and today’s U.S.-China situation? This paper will review the JCW-RH interview and offer an opinion on each Q and A.
 
RH has given to-the-point answers to the five questions however with arguments understandably influenced by his political background. On Q1, RH cited ballooning debt, aging population, shrinking productivity and vulnerability in food and fuel supply making China’s continued economic ascent less guaranteed. Further, he stated that with her political system less dynamic and international image declining, China will be constrained globally but will remain an endurable competitor because of the strength in her innovative ecosystem, 800 million citizens lifted above poverty, and a clear vision of rejuvenating the nation. In this author’s opinion, the above arguments and conclusion might be plausible but not comforting if the U.S. was assessed on the same balance by the same factors, debt, aging, productivity, dysfunctional political system, deficits in trade, diminishing reputation on the world stage, etc. This may be the fundamental reason that ‘China Threat’ and ‘Fear China’ are being inflated on the foreign policy dialogue. Furthermore, the U.S. has unnecessarily put too much attention and energy on China rather than focus inward on flaws of the American political system and economic problems. Solving the U.S. domestic issues such as infrastructure, industry revitalization, healthcare, homeless, wealth gap and competitive productivity is more beneficial to the U.S. than targeting China to wish her demise.
 
On Q2, RH stated that “limits on Huawei’s access to computer chips made with U.S. inputs, have pushed the company to consider moving away from smartphones and 5G technology toward less chip-intensive technologies.” China in response is intensifying her drive toward self-reliance. RH’s view is that “the more China turns toward indigenous innovation, effectively limiting its ability to draw on the talent and ingenuity of the rest of the world, the more it could slow itself down. That would be China’s choice.” This author felt that RH should have noted the fact that the U.S. policy change of restricting Chinese scientists and students to come to the U.S. to participate in technology research will slow the U.S. as well, perhaps more severely since China produces many more STEM graduates than the U.S. does each year.
 
On Q3, RH responded with three examples: 1. Intensive U.S.-China economic coordination around the 2008-2009 global financial crisis helped avert global economic depression, China’s currency appreciated, trade balance with the world lessened and Chinese demand for imports fueled global economic expansion, 2. China joined the international response to the Ebola outbreak in 2014 and helped Africa in public health, and 3. China became a key player in securing agreement at the Paris climate conference in 2015. RH further claimed that “the currently elevated tensions in the U.S.-China relationship defies unilateral solutions, whether the challenge is stopping COVID-19, strengthening global health security, building a more inclusive global economy or tackling the climate crisis. From this author’s observation, the above U.S. successes in influencing (pushing) China, are actually perceived differently by international political analysts as China’s success in understanding the U.S. financial turmoil (credit bubble) and world issues (virus management and climate change control). China’s recent achievements in environmental protection, energy and transportation grid, COVID management, space exploration, and exporting infrastructure projects, etc. are evidences that China is capable of planning and executing programs for her and world’s benefits without any nation to push her.
 
On Q4, RH said that “Western countries cannot compete on a cost basis for constructing roads and railways. The G7 ‘BBBW’ initiative will likely be more effective if it avoids attempting to out-China China, Instead, focusing on building digital technology infrastructure, investing in climate resilience and supporting good governance.” In this author’s view, it makes more sense to cooperate rather than compete with China’s BRI and to stop all smearing propaganda against China. The fact that China embraces the UN and receives more support from its members than the U.S. does should serve as a reminder to the U.S.: Condescending diplomacy days are over.
 
On Q5, the key question, RH remarked: “The Cold War is a poor analogy for understanding U.S.-China relations today.” I fully agree with his arguments that 30 years of global war and depression then is very different from 30 years of great power peace and global economic expansion now. The Soviet Union exploited power vacuums along its periphery then and China is surrounded by capable powers in Asia today. The Soviet Union was weak and isolated in its economy then, China is deeply embedded in the global economy as the driving engine today. Thus, I agree with RH; containment is not an option for dealing with China, since no U.S. allies or partners would be eager to align with the U.S. against China. RH did point out “one similarity to the Cold War is the risk of a devastating military conflict between two nuclear-armed superpowers. Only time will tell whether U.S. and Chinese leaders would choose to prioritize risk reduction.” In this author's opinion, this risk may be contained so long China adheres to her policy (never to use nuclear weapon first) and the U.S. does not provoke China to war. There are just too much to lose if the two great powers would engage in a hot war. It is surprising though that RH makes only a light remark “only time will tell” rather than offering some serious recommendations.
 
In this interview, JCW did not ask and RH did not comment on the current Biden's China policy. Reviewing what has happened, the U.S. busy seeking alliances, engaging military exercises in South China Sea, and arming Taiwan to confront, agitate and provoke China, all negative actions that will hurt the U.S. and the world's economic stability. The Biden Administration is clearly conducting a hostile China policy; RH (and Brookings Institute) should make explicit recommendations to turn his negative actions to positive policies. Judging from RH's another Brookings Institute article, entitled, 'Taiwan Voters Should Look Before They Leap on Pork Referendum' (7/12/2021 Order from Chaos), RH was very explicit in giving advice with a patriotic stand - warning Taiwan voters not to reverse Tsai Yin-Wen’s decision of allowing import of U.S. pork containing ractopamine. This is a serious health concern, especially FOR Taiwan people Who consume a lot of pork meat, pork internal organs and many derivative food products made from pork. Taiwan also exports many pork food products to other countries. It is understandable why the pork issue has risen to the level as a referendum for the entire population to vote on but nevertheless it is just a domestic issue. This author is surprised that RH would go so far to warn Taiwan citizens that their voting may seriously affect trade relations with the U.S. He even implied that the pork referendum may affect the American commitment to Taiwan thus its security, an apparent message of threat. On the other hand, the U.S.-China tensions is a far more serious national security issue concerning both the U.S. and China, yet RH is far from explicit in advising his readers, the American people, what is wrong with the current U.S.-China policy and why it is dangerous with a real possibility of driving the U.S. into a nuclear war.