by MATTHEW BOYLE at breitbart.com
Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI), the chairman of the newly created U.S. House Select Committee on China, told Breitbart News exclusively that the United States and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) are deep into a “new Cold War.”
Gallagher’s bold characterization of years-long rising tensions between the two world powers, as the official authority of the U.S. House of Representatives on the matter, as a “Cold War” much like the decades-long one the United States eventually won against the now-defunct Soviet Union is a major escalation.
“It’s my argument that they, increasingly in partnership with Russia and to a lesser extent Iran, have been waging Cold War against us for the better part of a decade,” Gallagher said in an exclusive interview with Breitbart News that aired on Breitbart News Saturday on SiriusXM 125 the Patriot Channel last weekend. “I mean, historians will argue when this new Cold War began, it could have began in 2009 when under the previous leadership of Hu Jintao they made aggressive claims in the South China Sea that led to this sort of unprecedented militarization. It could be in 2015 with the OPM hack, which actually happened in 2014, or it could be when Xi Jinping came to power in 2012 or 2013. Who knows? But, they are waging it against us. The point of Cold War, in some sense, is to achieve your objectives without having to resort to hot war. Like the Soviets before them and as Winston Churchill said at the beginning of the old Cold War, of course they don’t want war—they want the fruits of war without having to go to war. We need to deny them that objective.”
Gallagher said some in foreign policy established circles are hesitant to speak so plainly about the threat of the CCP, but not doing so gives them everything they want.“
I think there’s this hesitancy to use the ‘new Cold War’ language for one reason: It’s the fear of upsetting Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party,” Gallagher said. “It almost gives in to the rhetoric we see coming from the CCP, where they attack everything—even attempts at engagement they will attack as ‘Cold War mentality’ or ‘Cold War thinking’ or ‘zero sum games.’ It’s designed to make us afraid to speak the truth. That’s sort of the overall point.”