US War on China is a War on the Entire World

 

BY Brian Berletic

 

US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan has recently claimed the US is not “looking for a crisis.” This is said, of course, with an important caveat – no crisis is sought as long as China subordinates itself to the United States. 

Because China, like any other sovereign nation, based on international law, is obligated to resist foreign subordination, the US continues speeding toward inevitable war with China. Although China has formidable military capabilities, causing doubt among many that the US will actually ever trigger war with China, the US has spent decades attempting to create and exploit a potential weakness China’s current military might may be incapable of defending against.

Washington’s Long-Running Policy of Containing China 

Far from a recent policy shift by the Biden Administration, US ambitions to encircle and contain China stretch back to the end of World War 2. Even as far back as 1965 as the US waged war against Vietnam, US documents referred to a policy “to contain Communist China,” as “long-running,” and identified the fighting in Southeast Asia as necessary toward achieving this policy.

For decades the US has waged wars of aggression along China’s periphery, engaged in political interference to destabilize China’s partners as well as attempt to destabilize China itself, as well as pursued likewise long-running policies to undermine China’s economic growth and its trade with the rest of the world.

More recently, the US has begun reorganizing its entire military for inevitable war with China.

Cutting Chinese Economic Lines of Communication  

In addition to fighting Chinese forces in the Asia-Pacific region, the US also has long-running plans to cut off Chinese trade around the globe.

In 2006, the US Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute (SSI) published “String of Pearls: Meeting the Challenge of China’s Rising Power Across the Asia Littoral,” identifying China’s essential “sea lines of communication” (SLOC) from the Middle East to the Strait of Malacca as particularly vulnerable and subject to US primacy over Asia.

The paper argues that US primacy, and in particular, its military presence across the region, could be used as leverage for “drawing China into the community of nations as a responsible stakeholder,” a euphemism for subordinating China to US primacy. This, in turn, is in line with a wider global policy seeking to “deter any nation or group of nations from challenging American primacy.” 

Under a section titled, “Leveraging U.S. Military Power,” the paper argues for and expanded US military presence across the entire region, including along China’s SLOC, augmenting its existing presence in East Asia (South Korea and Japan), but also extending it to Southeast Asia and South Asia, recruiting nations like Indonesia and Bangladesh to bolster US military power over the region and thus over China.

It notes Chinese efforts to secure its SLOC, including with a mutually beneficial port project in Pakistan’s Baluchistan region, part of the larger China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and the construction of a port in Sittwe, Myanmar, part of the larger China-Myanmar Economic Corridor (CMEC). Both projects seek to create alternative economic lines of communication for China, circumventing the long and vulnerable sea route through the Malacca Strait and the South China Sea.

Both projects have since come under attack by US-backed militancy with regular attacks still taking place against Chinese engineers across Pakistan and a large-scale armed conflict backed by the US currently unfolding in Myanmar which regularly sees opposition forces target Chinese-built infrastructure.

Thus, US policy has sought and has since achieved the region-wide disruption of China’s SLOC as well as efforts to circumvent choke points (CPEC/CMEC). Other potential corridors, including through the heart of Southeast Asia, have also been targeted by US interference. The Thai section of China’s high-speed railway to connect Southeast Asia to China has been significantly delayed by the US-backed political opposition openly trying to cancel the project.

In many ways, the US has already created a crisis for China, albeit through proxies.

Targeting Chinese Maritime Shipping 

Under the guise of protecting “freedom of navigation,” the US Navy has positioned its warships and military aviation around the world’s most important maritime passages including the Strait of Hormuz in the Middle East and the South China Sea – the east approach to the Strait of Malacca – along with plans to establish a significant naval presence on the Strait’s west approach.

The US realizes that Chinese military power is extensive enough to significantly complicate, if not outright defeat, US military aggression along Chinese coasts. The US instead imagines targeting China far beyond the reach of its warplanes and missile forces.

The US Naval Institute published, “Prize Law Can Help the United States Win the War of 2026,” the third place entry in the “Future of Naval Warfare Essay Contest.” It warns that a “close naval blockage” is infeasible due to China’s formidable anti-access area-denial (A2AD) capabilities.

It instead argues for:

 …a distant blockade—“intercept[ing] Chinese merchant shipping at key maritime chokepoints” outside China’s A2/AD reach—would be generally sustainable; flexible in tempo and location; pose manageable risks of escalation; and impede China’s resource-hungry, import-dependent war effort. 

Part of this “distant blockade” would be a campaign of targeting, seizing, and repurposing Chinese shipping vessels to augment the US’ lagging shipbuilding capabilities and the dearth of maritime resources it has created.

Far from a random essay representing a purely speculative strategy, the US has already taken steps to implement its “distant blockade.” The entire US Marine Corps has been tailored solely to wage war against Chinese shipping across the Asia-Pacific and beyond.

The BBC in its 2023 article, “How US Marines are being reshaped for China threat,” would report:

The new plan sees the Marines as fighting dispersed operations across chains of islands. Units will be smaller, more spread out, but packing a much bigger punch through a variety of new weapons systems.

The “new weapons systems” are primarily anti-shipping missiles. Operating on islands and in littoral regions, the US Marines have been transformed into a force almost solely for disrupting Chinese shipping.

Together with plans to seize Chinese vessels, the US has positioned itself not as a global protector of “freedom of navigation,” but the greatest threat to it. Considering China’s status as the largest trade partner of nations around the globe, US plans to target Chinese shipping isn’t a threat to only China, but to global economic prosperity as a whole.

US War with China is War with the World 

The danger of Washington’s desire for war with China and implementing its “distant blockade” to strangle China’s economy into ruins is a danger for the entire world. While preventing the global economic damage this strategy will cause after it is put into motion may be impossible, targeting  the various components the US is using to encircle and contain China ahead of this conflict is possible.

US political interference and the political as well as armed opposition it has created and is using to cut China’s various economic lines of communication, can be exposed and uprooted by national and regional security initiatives.

Securing national and regional information space is the simplest and most effective way to cut the US off from the populations it seeks to influence and turn against targeted nations to achieve the political and security crises it uses to threaten trade between China and its partners. Passing and enforcing laws targeting, exposing, and uprooting US interference, including the funding of opposition parties, organizations, and media platforms by the US government’s National Endowment for Democracy (NED) is also essential.

Recent moves by the US to target foreign media organizations and their alleged cooperation with American citizens has created a convenient pretext for other nations to cite when targeting and uprooting NED-funded activity.

While taking these steps will have their own consequences, including retaliation from the US itself, the alternative – allowing the US to prepare and eventually carry out its “distant blockade” against China and its global trade partners – will be even moreconsequential.

Only time will tell if the emerging multipolar world is capable of seeing and solving this future crisis the US has spent decades preparing to create, or if the political leadership in Southeast and South Asia will fear short-term consequences at the expense of allowing and thus suffering catastrophic consequences in the intermediate future.

 

Brian Berletic is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”

https://journal-neo.su/2024/09/07/us-war-on-china-is-a-war-on-the-entire-world/

 

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

 

An election dominated by the threat of war and dictatorship

 

    BY Patrick Martin

 

Some eight weeks remain in the most reactionary presidential election campaign in modern American history. The two main capitalist parties are offering American working people the choice of the candidate of fascist dictatorship, Republican Donald Trump, and the candidate of imperialist world war, Democrat Kamala Harris. 

The replacement of President Joe Biden by Vice President Harris stemmed the collapse of the Democratic presidential campaign and brought in an influx of campaign cash, but the race remains essentially tied. A New York Times/Siena College poll made public Sunday showed Trump with a one percentage point lead nationally, but Harris with narrow leads in three of the seven “battleground states” that will determine the outcome in the Electoral College, and tied in the other four.

Significantly, the poll found, according to the Times, that “more than 60 percent of likely voters said the next president should represent a major change from Mr. Biden, but only 25 percent said the vice president represented that change, while 53 percent said Mr. Trump, the former president, did.”

In a statement issued on X, Socialist Equality Party candidate for president Joseph Kishore, citing the Times poll and other indications that the election contest was extremely close, wrote:

What could be a more devastating indictment of the Democrats than the fact that the former president, who attempted to overthrow the last election in a fascistic coup, is able to gain traction and could even win the 2024 elections? 

 

Kishore added, “Harris and the Democrats have absolutely nothing to put forward to deal with the social crisis and the devastating conditions confronting the broad mass of the population. Their central priority is the escalation of war, particularly the US-NATO war against Russia, which is not popular. And they, along with the Republicans, are fully responsible for the genocide in Gaza.”

It is increasingly unlikely that the winner of the election will be known on the night of November 5, given that a few thousand votes could well be decisive in the closest states. The Trump campaign is already making feverish preparations to challenge the vote-counting, both legally and with physical violence, and expects to use Republican-controlled state legislatures and the right-wing Supreme Court to hijack the vote.

In remarks at campaign rallies over the weekend, Trump again threatened his political opponents with arrest, trial and imprisonment. “We gotta stop the cheating. If we stop that cheating, if we don’t let them cheat, I don’t even have to campaign anymore,” he told a Wisconsin crowd. On his Truth Social media site, Trump wrote, “WHEN I WIN, those people that CHEATED will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the Law, which will include long term prison sentences so that this Depravity of Justice does not happen again.”

Trump has already vowed to assume the role of “dictator” on day one of his second presidential term, while pledging to mobilize the military within the United States to round up as many as 20 million immigrants and their families and expel them from the country.

Over the weekend, Kamala Harris received the endorsement of two Republican arch-warmongers, former Vice President Dick Cheney and his daughter Liz Cheney, a former congresswoman from Wyoming and co-chair of the now-disbanded House Select Committee to investigate the January 6, 2021 coup attempt by Trump against Congress.

Dick Cheney is a war criminal, the principal architect of the US invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003, responsible for the slaughter of millions in the Middle East and Afghanistan in wars instigated by American imperialism. That he has chosen to publicly endorse Harris over Trump testifies to his confidence that the Democratic candidate will continue this policy of military aggression in the new arenas chosen by the Biden-Harris administration: the war against Russia in Ukraine, a joint US-Israeli war against Iran and its allied groups in the Middle East, and the war buildup against China in the Asia-Pacific.

Cheney couched his endorsement in language denouncing Trump’s instigation of the attack on Capitol Hill on January 6, 2021. The hollowness of this supposed defense of democracy is demonstrated by Cheney’s own history. The Republican ticket of George W. Bush and Cheney used lies, violent intimidation and the suppression of legal votes—backed by a reactionary Supreme Court—in its successful drive to steal the 2000 election. It was also Cheney who was the most outspoken defender of CIA torture, kidnapping (“rendition”) and murder as part of the so-called “war on terror.”

Nonetheless, the Harris campaign issued a statement welcoming Cheney’s statement: “The Vice President is proud to have the support of Vice President Cheney, and deeply respects his courage to put country over party.”

Appearing on the ABC Sunday interview program “This Week,” Liz Cheney said she had spoken with Kamala Harris and expected to campaign for her. She praised Harris’s acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention, saying that it could have been given by Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush. 

Demonstrating this bipartisan alliance for war, another Republican operative and former official in the Trump administration, Alyssa Farah Griffin, speaking on CNN Sunday, offered this explanation for Dick Cheney’s support for Harris: “Ukraine is on the ballot, continuing support for Ukraine in its war against Russia. That is something that Donald Trump and J.D. Vance have not committed to continuing …”

Trump and Vance are not opposed to imperialist war, including in Ukraine, but hope to profit electorally by posturing as critics of a war that is deeply unpopular. They speak for a faction of the ruling elite that wants to turn more directly to a military confrontation with China, particularly as the Ukraine war has become a stalemate that may well end in military disaster.

As Trump made clear in his appearance last week on Wall Street, where he basked in the support of billionaires like Elon Musk and Steve Schwarzman, he offers the super-rich a further vast increase in their fortunes through another round of tax cuts. Meanwhile, the Harris campaign is seeking to compete for the same support, as shown by proposing a lower capital gains tax than sought by Biden, and publicizing her endorsement by nearly 100 corporate CEOs and billionaires, current and former chief executives of Merck, Aetna, Blackstone, Ford, Xerox and Starbucks.

Whatever the outcome of the vote, the drive by the American ruling class towards war, social counter-revolution and dictatorship will continue. Whether or not he wins the election, Trump will emerge with tens of millions of votes, complete control of the Republican Party, and the backing of important sections of the financial aristocracy.

SEP candidate Kishore wrote, “It is impossible to fight the danger posed by Trump through support for the Democrats. Not only will the Democrats intensify a war abroad that threatens nuclear annihilation, the entire experience of the Biden administration demonstrates that they serve not to undermine but rather strengthen the fascistic right. 

“The only way forward is through the building of a political movement in the working class that articulates its interests, in opposition to the Democrats and Republicans and the entire capitalist system.”

 

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/09/09/eweb-s09.html

 

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

 

 

Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris held their first (and potentially only) presidential debate on Tuesday ahead of the November election. Former CIA analyst Larry Johnson explains how the debate crystalized the candidates' radically different views on the defining issue of our times: the conflict in Ukraine.

From Ukraine and Gaza to China, North Korea and Iran, Donald Trump and Kamala Harris touched on an array of foreign policy matters alongside domestic concerns ranging from the economy and inflation to the energy and migration crises.

Trump, who thrashed President Biden at a debate in June so badly that the latter dropped out of the race after showing signs of mental decline, focused much of his ire against Harris on national security matters and what he characterized as the threat of a nuclear third world war.

"We have wars going on in the Middle East. We have wars going on with Russia and Ukraine. We're going to end up in a third world war. And it will be a war like no other because of nuclear weapons, the power of weaponry," Trump warned in a closing statement summarizing why Biden and Harris have proven to be "the worst president [and] the worst vice president in the history of our country."

Vowing to get the Middle Eastern crisis "settled and fast" and promising to "end" the Ukraine conflict before even stepping into office, Trump claimed the latter conflict has left "millions of people dead...and it could lead to World War III."

Harris accused Trump of fawning before "dictators" and being easy to "manipulate...with flattery and favors," and touted her and Biden's record of supporting "Ukraine in its righteous defense," claiming a Trump presidency would mean "Putin...sitting in Kiev with his eyes on the rest of Europe, starting with Poland," and vowing to make sure that Washington continues to "have the most lethal fighting force in the world" to sustain "America's standing in the world."

 

'Kabuki Theater'

The debate was generally a “very well constructed” display of Japanese-style “kabuki theater,” highly stylized and ritualized and filled with platitudes, but nevertheless highlighting the candidates’ radically different visions on the top foreign policy question of the day – the conflict in Ukraine, former CIA and State Department analyst Larry Johnson told Sputnik.

Presidential debate ‘kabuki theater’ signals key differences between candidates on Ukraine crisis – Larry Johnson

Tuesday night’s ABC presidential debate between Donald Trump and Kamal Harris was a “very well constructed” Japanese-style “kabuki theater,” highly stylized and… pic.twitter.com/56sFHB6mmN

— Sputnik (@SputnikInt) September 11, 2024

 

“With respect to this talk about Ukraine and Russia, the Kamala Harris approach is the Hillary Clinton approach from 2016, that Donald Trump ‘is a tool of Russia’, [that] ‘he's a surrender monkey’, [that] ‘he's going to give Vladimir Putin whatever he wants’. And Kamala Harris and the Democrats are ‘going to fight the Russians tooth and nail.’ It just underscores that there is no room in the United States right now for an opposition politician to make the case that we need to talk to Russia, that we need to deal with Russia as adults and have mutual respect,” Johnson said.

“The only possible change in policy is if Trump is elected and there will be an effort to stop the war. If it's the Democrats, then the war will continue. It continues for one good reason - it's making people a lot of money. If you look at the stock prices of Raytheon, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, they've doubled and tripled in some cases since the start of the special military operation. So we're talking literally billions, tens of billions of dollars that are being made,” the observer stressed.

Commenting on his impressions of the debate overall, Johnson suggested that it was mostly "meaningless," in the sense that it ignored changes in how people get their information on presidential candidates.

"The old debate style, when it started out back in the 19th century with Lincoln-Douglas - the only way people could really get information was by having to hear people talk out in public or maybe read a newspaper. And that was basically the system until 20 years ago. What has emerged over the last eight years is this dramatic spread of social media. So the notion, number one, that there's an undecided voter out there who was unaware of the positions of Donald Trump or the positions of Kamala Harris is just I think ridiculous. Most people's minds are made up," Johnson said.

The former intelligence analyst agreed with other commentators who have suggested that the debate was stacked against Trump, saying the ex-president's performance was less about debating Harris, and more about debating "biased" media "fact-checking" him while serving Harris "softball questions."

"I don't think this is going to have a lot to do with shaping people's votes. It's going to perhaps create the perception or help build support for declaring that Kamala won the presidency, because I think there are active measures underway to try to steal the election. For example, registering literally millions of illegal migrants that have come into the United States who are not citizens but nonetheless are being signed up to vote. If those votes end up counting in any form or fashion, it could affect the outcome of the election," Johnson summed up.

https://sputnikglobe.com/20240911/trump-harris-kabuki-theater-debate-crystalized-candidates-position-on-risks-of-world-war-iii-1120110008.html

 

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.