My Take | China and the paranoid style in US foreign policy
Two erudite commentators explain why the West’s strategic antagonism towards Beijing is both self-serving and misconceived
I have often thought Shakespeare’s Macbeth is a lot like many traditional Japanese ghost tales. A dodgy character kills someone to achieve his goal. The victim’s ghost comes back to haunt him, leading to his downfall. The ghost may be real or a manifestation of his guilt. No matter, he still ends up dead.
That may be why Jeff Rich, a wonderful historical essayist and YouTuber from Australia, has posted a still from Throne of Blood, Akira Kurosawa’s film version of Macbeth, in a new video essay titled, “China never entered the Thucydides Trap that US history invented”.
I only recently discovered his channel The Burning Archive, which focuses on the history behind contemporary geopolitics, even though it has been running for a decade. Well, better late than never.
China, he argues, is the ghost of Banquo who comes back from the dead to haunt the United States, the Macbeth of nations.
I don’t know if he is right or not. There are many things he says that I might like to challenge, but the analogy is intriguing.
But first, a bit of scene setting.
