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In a recent article in the Ottawa Hill-Times, journalist David Crane asked an important question: “Is Canada trying to match or outdo American hostility to China?”

Canada’s Indo-Pacific Strategy (CIPS), announced in Vancouver recently by Liberal foreign affairs minister Mélanie Joly and other ministers, answers that question unequivocally: “China is an increasingly disruptive global power” begins the CIPS assessment of China. True enough if taken in isolation. Insidious, however, in the way it is used in this report.

 

By Guest author Noam Chomsky  and Guest author John Price

 

“We are not just going to engage the Indo-Pacific, we are going to lead,” stated Joly in her opening remarks. In this case, leadership seems to imply being tougher on China than anyone else. In its two-page assessment, the CIPS lists a litany of China’s alleged misdeeds and that, it would seem, is all there is to say. Not a word about its impressive economic achievements; nor that China is Canada’s second largest trading partner; nor about lifting 800 million people out of poverty, as recognised by the UN; not a peep about its development of solar power generation, documented in a Lancet study. Frankly, any teacher would be compelled to give a failing grade to the Canadian government’s assessment of China because of the obvious bias.

Attitude Toward China

“We will challenge China whenever necessary, and cooperate if we must,” is the government’s new mantra. Frankly, the CIPS is an embarrassment, a strident polemic, not diplomacy. If implemented it will definitively end any possibility of substantive Canada-China cooperation on the environment, an imperative in the face of the global climate emergency. It also increases the possibility of war and the use of nuclear weapons, the other existential crisis of this era.

In terms of concrete actions, the CIPS charts two main priorities – increase funding to Canada’s military/spy agencies, and provide a large infusion of cash to finance infrastructure projects in the region.

A closer examination of the fine print shows the five-year military/spy funds (what the government euphemistically terms “Promoting Peace, Resilience and Security,” includes:

  • nearly $500-million to increase the Canadian military’s presence in the region;
  • and more than $227-million for Canada’s to bolster national security agencies (including CSIS, CSE, RCMP, and CBSA).

Compared to some of the military powers in the region, this is a small amount, but its significance lies elsewhere. It signals that Canada’s first priority in Asia is to bolster its military and spy network to confront China. Peacekeeping under the aegis of the UN is not even an afterthought. Also distressing is the distorting nod to feminist foreign policy, allocating funds for a “regional Women, Peace, and Security initiative” in the hope of securing social license for its agenda.

On the trade and investment front, the biggest single allocation of funds is a three-year injection of $750-million to Fin Dev Canada, (Canada’s development finance institution) to help develop “high-quality, sustainable infrastructure” in the region. The mandate of FinDev is not providing governmental assistance directly but rather “supporting the private sector in developing markets to promote sustainable development.” In addition, these funds are to be channeled not through existing financial bodies in Asia but through the new US-led G7 “Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment.” a parallel initiative dominated by the US. Frankly, this is a move sponsored by the US and Canada to bring another institution from outside the region to discredit and bypass China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

In a similar vein, Canada’s trade strategy does not build on existing networks in the region but tries to bypass them. For example, it could have come in and supported the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), that includes 15 East Asian and Pacific nations of different economic sizes and stages of development including China; or the Asia-Pacific Trade Agreement (APTA), formerly known as the Bangkok Agreement that has been operating for nearly 50 years. But no, like its financial initiative, it wants to join another parallel initiative, the US-sponsored Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity, and/or reinforce the CPTPP (Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership), a regional grouping originally sponsored by the US that excludes China.

A New Sentinel in a Global Empire

Has China become a major power and is it throwing its weight around in the region at times? Yes.

Is publicly accusing it of being disruptive and bulking up for a military confrontation the way to deal with it? Only if you’re aiming for war.

Preceding the release of the CIPS, specialists in Asia Pacific affairs gathered in two conferences in Ottawa, HardTalk: Canada and the Asia Pacific and the East Asia Strategy Forum 2022. Almost all of the invited speakers, regardless of political stripe, were clear – a policy based on containing China or trying to isolate it was wrong and counterproductive. That advice has been ignored. Furthermore, early drafts of the new strategy prepared by Global Affairs Canada (GAC) were unacceptable according to minister Joly. Then, who were Joly and the cross-departmental group that finalised the strategy listening to, if not from specialists with extensive experience in the region or from GAC?

There are hints in the CIPS itself. It repeatedly asserts it is not “engaging” in the Indo-Pacific alone but is doing so with its closest allies including “the United States, the European Union, Germany, France and the United Kingdom.” The CIPS in fact represents a global strategy emanating from the US. When Trudeau and Biden met in Washington in early 2021, they announced the “Roadmap for a Renewed US-Canada Partnership” that included working “to more closely align our approaches to China…” and reinforcing their commitment to NATO and “the Five Eyes community.”

Indeed, while the CIPS was being developed, NATO representatives gathered in Madrid in June where they adopted a new ‘Strategic Concept’ that they believe made “far reaching decisions to transform NATO.” Though intended initially as a military alliance for Europe directed against the Soviet Union (with US and Canadian participation), it has expanded continuously, and is now based on what it calls a “360-degree approach.” In other words, the whole world is now its purview. Not only will it confront Russia, it will confront terrorism wherever it needs to, it will deal with “conflict, fragility, and instability in Africa and the Middle East,” and, most crucially, address the “systemic challenges posed by the PRC to Euro-Atlantic security and ensure NATO’s enduring ability to guarantee the defence and security of Allies.” Indo-Pacific partners Australia, Japan, New Zealand, and the Republic of Korea participated together in a NATO Summit for the first time.

The Empire doesn’t rest. The stakes are too high.

Far from being a made-in-Canada plan, the CIPS seems to be one spoke in the wheel of a global plan directed by the United States. Herein lies the great folly of the illegal Russian invasion of Ukraine. It has allowed NATO to assume the mantle of righteousness, rendering the US into only one of a large coalition defending Ukrainian sovereignty. Both NATO and the CIPS center “the rules-based international order.” But missing from both is the “UN-based international order.” No accident.

The UN-based international order is enshrined in the UN Charter, the foundation of modern international law. The Charter bans “the threat or use of force to” to resolve conflict with few exceptions. It also demands the UN Security Council and other UN-supported institutions set the rules. This is unacceptable to NATO and to the CIPS. They want to set the rules and use their militaries to enforce them. Canada, with its new strategy, is in fact turning its back on the UN.

The world has no desire to be under the thumb of empires. If that is China’s ambition it will fail. But as we monitor China, we should be ready to understand the history of the present. In that regard the CIPS is miserably deficient.

In the run-up to the release of the CIPS, foreign minister Mélanie Joly provided a preview in a major speech at the University of Toronto. In the Q&A session afterwards, she claimed the “rules-based international norms” established in Asia maintained “peace and stability since the Second World War.” In effect, she is suggested that we forget:

  • the three million who died in the Korean War
  • the additional three million who died in Vietnam
  • the one million who died in Indonesia in 1965 after the US-engineered coup
  • the Okinawans who were dispossessed by the US military and continue to fight to this day to get rid of the huge US bases on their islands
  • the thousands of Pacific Islanders who saw their islands seized and used for nuclear testing by the US, to now have them inundated by rising sea levels as a result of global warming for which both Canada and the US are historically responsible.

Joly’s view of history can only be described as Eurocentric and a complete failure to recognise the elephant in the room – the existence of an empire formed over the past 175 years, beginning with Admiral Perry first forcing unequal treaties on Japan with his gunboat diplomacy. Today, the US maintains its empire with force.

According to the recently renamed US. Indo-Pacific Command, its forces include “375,000 US military and civilian personnel including the US Pacific Fleet of approximately 200 ships (including five aircraft carrier strike groups), nearly 1,100 aircraft, and more than 130,000 sailors and civilians; Marine Corps Forces, Pacific with two Marine Expeditionary Forces and about 86,000 personnel and 640 aircraft; US Pacific Air Forces comprises of approximately 46,000 airmen and civilians and more than 420 aircraft; US Army Pacific has approximately 106,000 personnel, plus over 300 aircraft and five watercraft; more than 1,200 Special Operations personnel; Department of Defence civilian employees in the Indo-Pacific Command AOR number about 38,000.”

Much of this is arrayed against China and has been for over seventy years. The US is continually realigning the empire’s profile. Recently this has included:

  • the signing of AUKUS (Australia/UK/US), a trilateral military pact for Australia to build nuclear-powered submarines to deploy against China. The deal caused a furor as it involved Australia tearing up a multi-billion-dollar contract with France;
  • reinforcing the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (the Quad), a militarised alliance that includes the US, Australia, India, and Japan to confront China in the Asia Pacific;
  • the CIA establishing a new “China Mission Center” to take on what the agency’s director, William Burns, described as “the most important geopolitical threat we face in the 21st Century, an increasing adversarial Chinese government.”

The Empire doesn’t rest. Nor does the resistance. The Global South is refusing to follow NATO in its sanctions against Russia, including many countries in Asia, India in particular. The US and its main allies are desperate to shore up support.

That is why foreign minister Joly and the CIPS erase the elephant in the room and demand instead that we worry about China. Peoples in Asia and the Pacific are capably and actively dealing with China. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), for example, has been dealing with China on its own terms. They have convened meetings of the ASEAN+3 (ASEAN plus China, Japan, and South Korea) group, the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), and various trade agreements. But rather than reinforce these regional initiatives, Joly and the CIPS sets out not to support Asia, but to impose an Anglo-American parallel agenda, an effective roadblock against regional integration. In its Eurocentricity, the Anglo-American alliance fears an “Asia for the Asians.” What we get instead is a plan to reinforce an Anglo-American empire in the maternalistic/paternalist guise of rescuing ‘Asia’ from China.

Of course, the US Empire in the Asia Pacific did not come into existence by itself. It first arose as part of an Anglo-American alliance fashioned out of the British empire and its settler colonial offshoots – the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. These latter four states, founded through the genocidal elimination of Indigenous peoples to provide land for white settlers and corporations, together with their decrepit mothership, the UK, remain tied together in the so-called “Five Eyes.” As Edward Snowden so bravely revealed, the US NSA and the Five Eyes spy alliance today represents the largest and most sinister spy network in the history of the world. And now Canada wants to reinforce it, including posting more spies in Asia.

The respected Australian analyst, Clinton Fernandes, recently wrote Subimperial Power: Australia in the International Arena. In it, he suggests that Australia has become increasingly dependent on the US economically and otherwise. In joining the Quad and AUKUS recently, it is refashioning itself into what he calls a ‘sentinel state’ – joining countries such as South Korea and Japan that are closely tied to the US national security state.

Canada, it would seem, is aspiring to become another US sentinel state in the Asia Pacific.

The Impact on Asian North Americans

The intensifying demonisation of China seen in the CIPS and US global policy will only further exacerbate racist attacks on those racialised as Asian in North America.

In Canada and the US, the anti-China campaign has given rise to a dramatic rise in anti-Asian racism. The initial tide arose with Trump and his association of the COVID-19 pandemic with China, spurring a huge increase in hate crimes against Asians, or those perceived as ‘Asian.’ In the US, this culminated in the horrific murder of eight people in spas in Atlanta, six of whom were Asian women.

The US department of justice under Donald Trump also began the China Initiative, a campaign to prosecute scientists in the US allegedly spying for China. This led to charges against dozens of scientists, mainly of Chinese descent. According to World University News, “none have been convicted for economic espionage, or theft of trade secrets, or intellectual property.” According to a study by the University of Arizona’s Jenny J. Lee, Xiaojie Li and the staff at Committee of 100, the China Initiative was a clear case of racial profiling and had a chilling effect not only on scientific endeavours but also on Asian American communities at large. More must be done by universities, they state, to combat institutional racism that is inflamed by anti-China rhetoric.

Organised resistance to the program, by those accused and by groups such as the Asian Pacific American Justice Task Force (APA Justice), the Brennan Center for Justice, and Asian Americans Advancing Justice, resulted in the Biden administration cancelling the program in February 2022 though profiling of Chinese American scientists still continue.

In Canada as well, racism directed against those seen as Chinese or Asian exploded during the COVID-19 pandemic. A strong anti-racism movement coalesced as part of the anti-racist uprising of 2020, which helped to push back aggression against racialised communities. Still, racist attacks on Chinatowns continue, against those who dissent from one-sided assessments of China, and most severely, against Chinese Canadian scientists.

In a recent study, Dr. Xiaobei Chen of Carleton University has made the case that “despite state multiculturalism, foreign policy making can function as an institutional conduit for reproducing systemic racism, which not only exacerbates social divisions but also prevents a form of intercultural understanding in which individuals truly see one another.”

Unlike in the United States where there was a concerted effort to stop the China Initiative, in Canada the situation is less clear. Many people in racialised communities hesitate to speak out on foreign policy out of fear they will be accused of being spies for China or, alternatively, come under pressure from nationalists.

Canada’s spy agencies have come to the fore in this recent period: CSIS, responsible for analysis and operations, and the Communications Security Establishment (CSE), responsible for information collection. A recent report illustrates how the COVID-19 pandemic created “a pivotal moment” for CSIS, and so today they aggressively assert: “Spies are no longer wearing trench coats, they’re wearing lab coats.” The agency has created new programs including “Academic Outreach and Stakeholder Engagement” and taken to social media, establishing YouTube channels, and offering support against certain cybercrimes, all the while spreading fear of “foreign actors” – a term that apparently does not include the United States.

For over a year now, the National Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada has been imposing compulsory CSIS self-screening by all Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) Alliance grant applicants. This interference in research was developed by CSIS in collaboration with major research institutions including the Canadian Foundation for Innovation, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the National Research Council, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, the U15 Group of Canadian Research Universities, Universities Canada, and Vice-Presidents of Research.

Resistance is continuing but so far Canadian institutions, academic or otherwise, have failed to speak out publicly in support of those facing persecution. It seems we still have not learned from the lessons of the Japanese Canadian/American uprooting and internment. Racialised groups are extremely vulnerable to changing foreign policies.

Beyond Empires

A strange disconnect seems to exist between the local and global.

In both Canada and the United States, powerful movements of resistance have arisen to contest domination and oppression. In the former, Indigenous resurgence in the past decade (Idle No More, Attawapiskat, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Children, recognition of the Indigenous children buried in unmarked graves, repatriating social programs, Wet’suwet’en landback, and much more) continues to have huge impacts. The 2020 anti-racist uprising and environmental justice movements are having major reverberations throughout Canada, as is the movement for LGBQT2S+ rights.

In the United States, Black Lives Matter, the #MeToo movement, defence of abortion rights, environmental justice and the fight for Asian American and Latinx rights, as well as voting rights have brought millions into social action.

Yet on the international front, with few exceptions, the movement against the American empire is weaker than in the past. This weakness can be attributed to the capacity of the liberal state to both distort and deflect, to manufacture consent that allows the state to exercise control over international affairs. Thus, the invasion and war lost in Afghanistan is distorted to be a just ‘war against terror’ or to liberate the women of Afghanistan; once lost, it becomes a war to save the Afghanis who collaborated with the US and its allies. Or, in the just war of resistance against the Russian invasion of the Ukraine, performance distorts matters so that NATO responsibility in provoking the war is considered unjustifiable dissent, even treasonous.

In regard to deflection, the China bogeyman performs this role in the Asia Pacific, the latest in an endless march of enemies justifying the never-ending wars waged by the American military, with an ever-evolving assortment of allies. Herein lies the real danger today. On the one hand, the current campaign tells a partial truth about China, its illiberal nature and human rights abuses, reinforced by continual racist stereotyping that draws on a long history of anti-Asian racism in both Canada and the United States.

Much remains to be done.

First published on the Rabble website on December 2, 2022

 

READ MORE:

https://johnmenadue.com/canadas-indo-pacific-strategy-from-un-peacekeeper-to-us-sentinel-state/

 

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"from a position of strength"....

 

By Guest author Daryl Guppy

 

America’s newest nuclear stealth bomber was unveiled by Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin. It is the latest expression of the Thucydides Trap which postulates an inevitable war between America and China.

Popularised by American political scientist Graham Allison, the term comes from the military general Thucydides, who concluded that the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta had been inevitable because Sparta feared the growth of Athenian power. The analysis is now used to describe an apparent (inevitable) tendency towards war when an emerging power threatens to displace an existing great power. It has become a lens through which the West’s relationship with China is viewed.

The Thucydides Trap is based on the Peloponnesian wars, but its conclusions have been elevated and claimed to be relevant to the relations between much larger and more economically complex modern national states. The Peloponnesian Wars in 431 BCE involved two small city states- Sparta and Athens- with an estimated population of 700,000. The Warring States period in China in 475 BCE involved an estimated population of more than 5 million.

The political and strategic conclusions drawn from these similar warring periods were very different.

In a broad sense, the European conclusions are that conflict is inevitable and a normal part of winning statecraft. It was not until 1648, with the treaty of Westphalia, that the West began to move towards the use of diplomacy to resolve conflict.

In this sense, the small state wars never disappeared from Europe. The Peloponnesian wars and hegemony did not produce democracy, liberal or otherwise. They simply prolonged the aggressive and endless state-on-state warfare for another twenty centuries. It continues today.

In China the Warring States period resulted in the growth of political discourse and theory which favoured diplomacy, civil society and the obligations of the ruler to the ruled. These were core concepts promoted by Confucius and his followers. Again, in a broad sense, they form the philosophical bedrock of the concepts of Chinese Governance.

It wasn’t democracy as the West defines it, but it encapsulated the concept of civil society in a way that European political thought did not. It wasn’t until many centuries later than Mill, Locke and other political philosophers of the Enlightenment began to consider this concept of civil society, and even then it remained rooted in the concepts of a Christian ideology.

The source of political legitimacy was also different. The Chinese emperor held power at the pleasure of Heaven. The Emperor deferred to heaven. In contrast, European Kings were God’s representative on earth and held power by unquestioned divine right. In time, it came to be believed that God’s will was exercised through the people rather than the King. Democracy was a novel concept, and was unable to be divorced from its protestant religious foundations which held that man’s relationship with God was personal, rather than indirectly via the Church.

We see this strong religious element expressed in the foundations of democracy in the United States where even today their currency carries the admonishment “in God we trust”. This is affirmation of the belief that God’s will is exercised through the people. It is this that gives Governance its legitimacy and its sense of righteousness.

These are two very different concepts of the foundation of Governance legitimacy and the way that Government see their relations with other states. These differences go some way towards explaining why Europe pursued a path of colonisation whilst China followed a path of peace secured through open trade. It is the difference between co-existence and conflict, between co-operation and exploitation.

The anarchic squabbles that characterised both the Warring States and the Peloponnesian period do not have a place in the modern environment. Chinese political philosophers moved beyond these primitive struggles, developing the concept of a civil society, and the tolerance that goes with it, long before these ideas were adopted in the West.

Tang Dynasty diplomats held a pragmatic view of how countries pursue their own interests and those they share with others. Respect was one of the features deployed in such relationships. This Tang diplomatic imperative remains at the heart of China’s current approach to diplomacy. It under pins the implementation of Belt and Road Initiatives.

The West remains wedded to Machiavellian solutions based on continual conflict and the need for domination rather than cooperation and co-existence. Many embrace the idea that “If you want peace, prepare for war” and the Thucydides Trap and the B-21 are part of this thinking.

The Thucydides Trap is a genuine trap for misguided thinking because it cannot be applied to the complex political and economic environment of the 21st century. Those who attempt to do so become trapped in simplistic analysis that limits full consideration of the alternatives that promote civil society rather than conflict.

 

READ MORE:

https://johnmenadue.com/australia-flies-into-the-thucydides-trap-holiday/

 

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instant minefield....

Taipei announced reforms to its mandatory male military service laws this week, with the call-up period to be extended from four to twelve months, conscript pay increased, and future training to feature a more rigorous regimen, including the handling of Javelin, Kestrel and Stinger portable missile systems.

The State Department has given the go-ahead on the sale of $180 million in weapons to Taiwan, including a truck-launched anti-tank mine system known as the Volcano.

“The State Department has made a determination approving a possible Foreign Military Sale to the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in the United States of Volcano (vehicle-launched) anti-tank munition-laying systems and related equipment for an estimated cost of $180 million,” the Defense Security Cooperation Agency said in a statement.

 The DSCA is the Pentagon agency overseeing the sale of arms and the provision of training and other services to foreign governments.

According to the DoD, the Taipei office (Taiwan’s de facto embassy in Washington, DC), requested an unspecified number of Volcano systems, 10-ton cargo trucks, M87A1 anti-tank munitions, M88 and M89 canister and training munitions, logistics support including spare parts, manuals, training and engineering assistance.

 

READ MORE:

https://sputniknews.com/20221229/us-greenlights-sale-of-rapid-mine-deployment-system-to-taiwan-as-china-tensions-sizzle-1105892176.html

 

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SEE ALSO: 

territorial mischief created by the american empire in the middle-east and eastern europe......

 

 

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china's top gun....

A Chinese military plane came within six metres of the nose of a US air force aircraft in the contested South China Sea last week and forced it to take evasive manoeuvres to avoid a collision in international airspace, the US military said.

The close encounter followed what the United States has called a recent trend of increasingly dangerous behaviour by Chinese military aircraft.
The incident, which involved a Chinese Navy J-11 fighter jet and a US air force RC-135 aircraft, took place on December 21, the US military said in a statement.

“We expect all countries in the Indo-Pacific region to use international airspace safely and in accordance with international law,” it added.

The Chinese embassy in Washington DC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In the past, China has said that the United States sending ships and aircraft into the South China Sea is not good for peace.

US military planes and ships routinely carry out surveillance operations and travel through the region.

China claims vast swathes of the South China Sea that overlap with the exclusive economic zones of Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, Indonesia and the Philippines.

Trillions of dollars in trade flow every year through the waterway, which also contains rich fishing grounds and gas fields.

In a meeting with his Chinese counterpart in November, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin raised the need to improve crisis communications, and also noted what he called dangerous behaviour by Chinese military planes.

Despite tensions between the United States and China, US military officials have long sought to maintain open lines of communication with their Chinese counterparts to mitigate the risk of potential flare-ups or deal with any accidents.

Australia’s defence department said in June that a Chinese fighter aircraft dangerously intercepted an Australian military surveillance plane in the South China Sea region in May.

Australia said the Chinese jet flew close in front of the RAAF aircraft and released a “bundle of chaff” containing small pieces of aluminum that were ingested into the Australian aircraft’s engine.

In June, Canada’s military accused Chinese warplanes of harassing its patrol aircraft as they monitored North Korea sanction evasions, sometimes forcing Canadian planes to divert from their flight paths.

Relations between China and the United States have been tense, with friction between the world’s two largest economies over everything from Taiwan and China’s human rights record to its military activity in the South China Sea.

US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan in August infuriated China, which saw it as a US attempt to interfere in its internal affairs. China subsequently launched military drills near the island.

The United States has no formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan but is bound by law to provide the island with the means to defend itself.

 

READ MORE:

https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/world/2022/12/30/defence-planes-close-encounter-us-china/?breaking_live_scroll=1

 

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By John Menadue

 

We are being led in our anti-China hysteria by the United States which is not concerned that China will attack us, or even the United States, but is concerned that its world hegemony is being challenged.

A repost from November 11, 2022

That is why the US is persistently goading China into conflict and possible war. And we follow along. As Jack Waterford put it from a US official, the US sees us as an ‘easy lay’.

What the United States really resents about China is that it is successful after almost two centuries of poverty and humiliation.

China has certainly changed but the problem is the US refuses to change and accept the fact that it’s no longer the  sole hegemon.

And the recent US election will not change anything in that regard with both the major parties having a common view about the ‘China threat’ and heavily influenced if not controlled by the military/industrial complex supported by a compliant media. We follow like a patsy.

The United States is by any measure the most aggressive and violent country in the world and will not accept a multi-polar world where countries large and small can live in peace together. The US has a dogmatic and self- righteous view that it is ‘exceptional’, a ‘chosen people’ and should set global rules for everyone.

It parrots endlessly about ‘ a rules based international order’. That is really code for US hegemony and domination. And to top up its cynicism, the US then cherry picks the rules that it decides to support.

The only military risk that we face from China is if we continue as a proxy for the US in its endless wars. The US is a dangerous ally, as Malcom Fraser put it.

With the complicity of our Ministers, senior public officials and journalists our national sovereignty is being seriously eroded. Our military is being fused with the US. We employ retired US military people in our Department of Defence. In Five Eyes our intelligence agencies take in the dirty washing of the CIA.

None of our Prime Ministers stand up for Australia in relations with the US like Gough Whitlam did fifty years ago.

In the 19th and 20th Century we were drawn into United Kingdom’s Imperial wars. We are now drawn into the United State’s imperial wars. We allow others to control our thinking and behaviour.

Our ‘leaders’, think Richard Marles, have been on an American drip feed for so long they have an instinctive Washington mind set.

As China reasserts its historic world role there is no doubt that Chinese influence and footprint is growing in our region but there is no evidence whatsoever that we are under military threat from China. Yet the assumed military threat from China guides almost everything the Albanese Government does and says on strategic and defence matters. And our captured journalist join the anti China throng.

Scott Morrison and Peter Dutton must be delighted to find themselves mimicked by Anthony Albanese and Richard Marles.

China has neither the intent nor the capability to attack us. But as a settler society we remain fearful of our region with echoes of the yellow peril and White Australia.

China does not have a history of military aggression beyond the defence of its own borders. It has only one foreign base in Djibouti, mainly for anti-piracy purposes.

In contrast, the US has over 800 overseas bases including in Guam, Diego Garcia, ROK and Japan that ring China. The US fleet, with our support, regularly patrols off the China coast.

The US would have hysterics if Chinese vessels patrolled off the Californian coast and the Florida Keys. Or if China had B-52 type aircraft based in Mexico!

Not surprisingly, China is determined that it must have the military capability to defend its homeland. However, it does not project its military power around the globe as does the US.

China has not been engaged in military activity for the past forty years. In that time, the US has overthrown numerous governments and illegally invaded many countries.

China has a large and diverse population in areas such as Xinjiang, Tibet, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. It has land borders with fourteen other countries. Not surprisingly China focuses on domestic issues and the protection of its borders.

If China was an imperial power, it would have swallowed up Mongolia, a democratic, mineral rich state which is more than twice the size of Ukraine.

Japan is the only country that has threatened Australia. China never has. Japan occupied large parts of China in WWII and was responsible for the deaths of over 20 million Chinese people. Careless of its aggressive history Japan is again leading the anti-China frenzy in QUAD.

In recent weeks Pearls and Irritations has carried many articles about the ‘China threat’.

See below some brief comments from these articles and links to the full articles.

 

Jocelyn Chey

A genuine threat to Australia’s basic security interests would demand preparedness for war. Threats can be either military or non-military, but only a military threat will lead to war. Australia, like every other country, has problems and disputes with other countries, and economic difficulties and natural disasters that require humanitarian solutions. These non-military threats, even if defence forces are called in to help, should not be treated as military threats. I argue that there is no military threat from China.

 

READ MORE:

https://johnmenadue.com/best-of-2022-china-has-neither-the-intent-nor-the-capability-to-attack-us/

 

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unfinished civil war....

 

By Teow Loon Ti

 

The rising tension over Taiwan is not the making of either of the two Chinese parties to the dispute. After all, the fundamental problem has been the same since its inception. It was an unfinished civil war between two political factions, the Kuomintang and the Communist Party of China, over control of the country after World War II. Matters became more complicated when the United States decided to involve itself in the conflict.

Fresh from a war in Korea (Korean War, 1950-1953) where the Chinese fought on the side of the North Koreans, the US realised the importance of Taiwan as a strategic asset to contain the rise of the Chinese communists. They signed a Mutual Defence Treaty with Taiwan in 1954 (effective until 1979) to protect the Kuomintang government and prevent takeover of the island by the mainland Chinese. It is important to note that the Republic of China at that point in time was not a democracy but a dictatorship under Chiang Kai-shek. Even after the US recognised the PRC as the sole legal government of China in 1979, it maintained its defence of Taiwan through the Taiwan Relations Act which obliges the US to provide Taiwan with sufficient arms to defend itself and ambiguously indicated that it would not tolerate a takeover of Taiwan by force. This was followed by the Taiwan Policy Act that was passed on September 14th 2022. In September 2022, US President Joe Biden stated explicitly that the US would come to the defence of Taiwan in the event of an attack by China. Certainly, the insertion of a third party with an agenda of its own into an already difficult situation further complicates matters and exacerbates the level of conflict.

An evaluation of a selection of the major American military adventures since WWII i.e. the Korean War; the Vietnam War; the problem in Taiwan; the CIA involvement in the 1965 coup in Indonesia which overthrew the left learning government of Sukarno and its replacement by the Suharto government; the Cuban Missile Crisis; US support for the Contras against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua; and even the proxy war in Ukraine today indicates that they derive from a pathological fear of communism. Geopolitical interferences of this nature have resulted in a nuclear arms race that puts the safety and welfare of the rest of the world in peril.  China’s decision to develop the atom bomb in the late 1950s was motivated by the threat of a Western monopoly on nuclear weapons. A recent paper (18/07/2022) by Ong Zha highlights the rationale: “Many people are familiar with Mao’s statement that nuclear weapons are paper tigers. …they will become real tigers if a state does not have them; and that the development of nuclear weapons ‘is a destiny-determining matter.’ … and that nuclear deterrence is thus a necessary means for eliminating nuclear threats and the West’s nuclear monopoly.” Chinese Nuclear Thinking Final PDF Mao’s enigmatic statement about paper tigers suggests that destructive weapons will not defeat people with strong ideologies.

True to Mao’s assertion, the use of military threats today have not only been mostly counterproductive, they also evoke responses that are just as threatening. Countries that feel threatened respond by building equally menacing weapons. Over the recent tensions between China and the US, there are reports that China is increasing its arsenal of nuclear weapons from around 300 to above a thousand. Nevertheless, the Chinese have kept to Mao’s words that their nuclear weapons are meant for self defence. China has stated repeatedly and categorically that it will not be the first to use nuclear weapons in a conflict. On the other hand, the US, which considers China its most important adversary, has not made any such undertaking. An example of the US’ willingness to use nuclear weapons on China occurred in 1958 when China launched a military attack on Taiwan. This was revealed by Daniel Ellsberg who challenged the Justice Department to charge him for spilling classified information about the Taiwan crisis (Charlie Savage, New York Times, 22/05/2021). Plans to drop nuclear bombs on China were abandoned only after China stopped its attack on Taiwan.

What the US has not learnt from its numerous military adventures around the world is that:

  1. Ideologies cannot be defeated by the force of arms even with nuclear threats.
  2. Threats make the world less secure by provoking an arms race.
  3. Communism is not as menacing as they make it out to be. It softens and wanes when economic conditions improve. The Chinese today have more freedom than they had during the Mao era.

Post WWII American wars have been waged mainly against communist or extreme Islamic regimes, mostly to no avail. They were essentially ideological warfare. As Afghanistan and Iraq have demonstrated, theocracy is making a comeback e.g. the Taliban and Shiite Islam respectively. America’s retreat from Vietnam did not result in the neighbouring Southeast Asian countries falling like dominos. Muslim dominated countries like Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei have endured. So has the monarchy of Thailand. Only Cambodia and Laos became communist states because they were victims of the Vietnam War. They have now become enviable members of one of the most successful trade and dialogue blocks in the east, ASEAN.

Until the US and its allies, and Russia, shed the idea that the threat of force is the only answer to any territorial dispute, we will not have the benefit of feeling safe. More immediately disquieting is the proclivity of the US and its allies to flex their muscles by sending warships and planes to the Taiwan Straits. An accident could happen that triggers a hot conflict. For example, Oren Libermann reports that on the 21st of December, a Chinese Navy J-11 fighter jet came within 20 meters of an American Air Force RC-135 Rivet Joint reconnaissance plane (CNN, 29/12/2022).

The risk of a war and possible nuclear catastrophe can be averted if the two Chinese parties to the conflict begin talking and exploring peaceful reunification. If patience is a Chinese forte, then time is not of essence. In any case, two is a smaller number than three.

 

READ MORE:

https://johnmenadue.com/does-the-taiwan-issue-have-to-be-a-menage-a-trois/

 

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