Americans need to debate the future of their relations with China

IN the aftermath of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, Americans have been reassessing their 20-year-long war on terrorism that resulted in 2 costly military quagmires in the Greater Middle East; and they are asking themselves why they had failed to have a serious debate before committing themselves to spend so much blood and resources in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Historians would have to answer that question. But it is certainly not too late for the American people and their leaders to have such a debate over the direction of their current relationship with China and decide whether they are ready to pay the costs of a long economic and military confrontation with Beijing.

Yet before that discourse has even commenced, Democrats and Republicans in Washington have already declared the start of a Sino-American Cold War with the Biden administration and its GOP opposition on Capitol Hill competing over who is sounding tougher on China.