By Walt Zlotow
Michael Miclaucic’s Chicago Tribune op-ed “The West is losing the cognitive war with Russia and China” is hyperbolic nonsense
Ask a hundred folks who study US foreign relations what ‘cognitive war’ is and you’ll likely draw blanks.
Yet, esteemed foreign policy educator/journalist Michael Miclaucic spends nearly a thousand words trying to convince Trib readers there is such a thing as cognitive war and that America is ominously losing this war to China and Russia in the real war for world domination.
Miclaucic defines it as “the strategic manipulation of information and redirection of perception for the purpose of waging war and achieving war goals.” That is simply propaganda, a nation putting its best foot forward in defining its actions and goals in the world stage. And it has been around since the first peoples began waring with each other thousands of years ago.
Miclaucic posits US foreign policy is just fine but that we’re losing this propaganda war to “sworn enemies Russia and China.”
He’s wrong on both points. US foreign policy is not fine, it’s a mess. Enabling Israeli genocide in Gaza. Making the Russian invasion of Ukraine inevitable thru 23 years of NATO expansion onto Russia’s borders. Publicly proclaiming getting prepared for war with China. Sanctioning dozens of countries and likely thousands of foreign individuals simply for not buckling to our foreign policy demands.
Nor are Russia and China America’s sworn enemies. The former is pushing back against US adventurism with NATO expansion in Europe. The latter is responding to US ramping up possible war over Taiwan. Neither entanglement is connected to America’s true national security interests.
It’s not better messaging from China and Russia that has caused much of the world to withdraw from US unipolar dominance to join BRICS and Shanghai Cooperation Organization. It’s America’s bullying and belligerence worldwide marking the end of America as the world’s sole superpower.
Michael Miclaucic’s ominous warning of US decline harkens back 70 years ago when commentators screamed ‘The Russians are coming, the Russians are coming.’ Nothing much has changed for Miclaucic except now it’s ‘The Russians and Chinese are coming, the Russians and Chinese are coming.’
Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coalition, Glen Ellyn IL
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“The Russians Are Coming the Russians Are Coming” is a hilarious but prescient 1966 American comedy film directed and produced by Norman Jewison for United Artists. The satirical story depicts the chaos following the grounding of the Soviet submarine СпруT off a small New England island. There is initial comedic drama however all ends well. The film stars Alan Arkin in his first major film role. The movie is easily found free on the web – highly recommended considering the US’s current geopolitical manoeuvring.
I feel sorry for trump as he knows what he means to say but, as his broca’s bit is not connected to the rest of his brain, he doesn’t know what he is saying nor what he has said.
He is often angry and accuses people and countries of ‘ripping us off’ without backup evidence.
Is that not a description of madness???
Frantic messaging from the US is likely to increase in the coming weeks and months.
On Monday March 17, 2025, China launched the digital 人 民 币 RMB settlement system.
It includes the 10 ASEAN countries and 6 Middle Eastern countries and already represents 38% of global trade.
According to reports, the Digital Renminbi (RMB) based transactions have exceeded USD $1.2 Trillion.
The US will fight to retain US$ dominance.
A bit like the author of this piece, I’m also a bit lost in the woods re. the meaning of the term ‘cognitive war.’
I would suggest one takeaway though, and that is the fact that the Chinese currently outrank America and all other western countries in terms of the numbers of skilled STEM graduates they turn out from their universities… and this in turn has given them a significant leading edge in their base mass of technical skills and the capacity to put those skills into practice.
Another thing that demarcates China from most other countries is that their use of ideograms in written language along with the four-tone (upwards, downwards, rising-falling, and neutrally inflected) oral structures necessitate a more comprehensive bi-hemispherical development; left & right brain, which in turn as a sound generality results in a more grounded and fluid intelligence than our 26-character alphabet and its language grounding in the rational left hemisphere allows. One might argue on these bases that China is, in fact, winning the ‘cognitive war.’