Trump’s dangerous China syndrome

Not content with bungling his way through the COVID-19 pandemic, Donald Trump is hell-bent on starting an entirely new global crisis.

Aided and abetted by his merry band of witless enablers, the U.S president is provoking a fight with China that could ignite another Cold War — the last thing humanity needs at this juncture in its history.

Peddling an unsubstantiated theory that the virus behind COVID-19 originated in a Chinese laboratory, Trump is threatening economic retaliation against the planet’s second biggest economy.

Within days, he might tear up the trade agreement he reached with Beijing in January. And if that happens, it will, in part, be because the president maintains the Chinese government failed to contain COVID-19.

That’s the proverbial pot calling the kettle black. Trump is blaming China for “the worst attack” the U.S. has ever faced. But it was his own arrogant, chaotic mishandling of the pandemic that resulted in the world’s richest country becoming the world’s greatest victim of COVID-19.

Trump has, in turn, denied the coronavirus was a serious threat, reacted to it in slow-motion, discredited the scientists who tried to help and urged a dangerously precipitous end to the nationwide lockdown.

It is no wonder, then, that despite having four per cent of the world’s population, the United States has reported a third of the world’s COVID-19 cases. Or that, as of Monday, 85,817 Americans had died of the illness.

That’s more than twice the death-toll in any other country.

In addition to letting his country down, Trump let the world down. Past American presidents launched campaigns to fight HIV/AIDS and Ebola. Not only is Trump missing in action on the international front in this pandemic, he’s threatening to defund the World Health Organization because he alleges it favours China.

There is, of course, method in Trump’s latest madness. He’s up for re-election this year. However, the economy he bragged about reviving is suddenly the weakest it’s been since the Great Depression. And the pandemic he’s mismanaged caused that decline. Trump’s solution? Redirect American ire to his convenient Chinese scapegoat.

To be sure, China’s own response to COVID-19 has also been deeply flawed. Initially, Beijing covered up the outbreak of the coronavirus and punished Chinese doctors trying to speak out. That made it easier for the virus to spread abroad and almost certainly made COVID-19 more deadly than it had to be.

Clearly, China has some explaining to do to the international community, if for no other reason than so the world can find ways to prevent future pandemics from happening.

But the threats and insults Trump is firing at Beijing will be counterproductive. China is already using this crisis to change the geopolitical order in its favour and step into the leadership vacuum left by Trump’s America.

What the world doesn’t need is another crisis and possibly another Cold War between China and the U.S. We could see the international community splitting into two camps — one led by China, the other by the U.S. The planet would be a poorer, more frightening place for it.

If there was ever a time for America’s allies, including Canada, to do all they can to bring the world’s two superpowers together, it is now. The global economy is reeling. The world faces a long, perilous climb out of recession and possibly a decade of rebuilding.

It would be best if nations everywhere work to achieve this together. We don’t know how sane national leaders can persuade Trump to back off. They should try.