By Gabriel HONRADA

Australia has announced plans to accelerate its missile procurement program years ahead of schedule due to perceived threats from China. According to a statement made by Australian Defense Minister Peter Dutton on Tuesday (April 5), the accelerated program will cost US$2.6 billion and increase Australia’s deterrent capabilities.

Under the revised timeline, Australia’s F/A-18F Super Hornet jets will be armed with improved US-made missiles by 2024, three years earlier than planned. The missiles would likely be the AGM-158B JASSM-ER, a stealthy cruise missile with a range of 900 kilometers.

Australia’s Anzac-class frigates and Hobart-class frigates will be equipped with Norwegian-made Kongsberg Naval Strike Missiles by 2024, five years earlier than scheduled, and would effectively double the warships’ strike range.

This comes as a follow-on to the Australian government’s promise last year to invest US$761 million to build guided missiles in the country.

Australia, the US and UK have also announced that they will be working together to develop hypersonic missiles. According to a statement released this month, the three countries will commence trilateral cooperation on hypersonics, counter-hypersonics and electronic warfare capabilities, as well as expand information-sharing and deepen cooperation on defense innovation.

This development comes after Australia-based firm Hypersonix presented its 3D-printed hydrogen-powered hypersonic scramjet engine to US officials last month, and entered into a partnership with US-based firm Kratos to launch the DART AE, a multi-mission, hypersonic vehicle powered by a hydrogen-fueled scramjet engine. Hypersonix says that the DART AE is designed to a reusable space launch platform that emits no CO2 for clean spaceflight.

This spate of hypersonic and other missile developments have no doubt been triggered by Australia’s growing concern over China’s creeping presence near its territories and perceived sphere of influence.

The announcements also mark a certain reversal of policy in Canberra, which came under pressure during the previous Donald Trump administration in 2019 to position US ground-based missiles in Darwin in northern Australia, a proposal that was refused at the time.

Then-US secretary of state Mike Pompeo said at the time a request to base American missiles in Australia would take into account the “mutual benefit” to both countries. Local Australian reports at the time noted that if the US deployed missiles with a range of 5,500 kilometers at Darwin, southern China would be comfortably within range.

The US proposal, which was declined at the time despite moves to boost America’s military presence at Darwin, was made before Australia-China diplomatic and economic relations went into a tailspin over Canberra’s call for an independent inquiry into the origins of Covid-19, an investigation Beijing sees as anathema.

Last month the Solomon Islands announced that it has “initialed” elements of a proposed security deal with China, to be signed at a later date, that would potentially give China temporary stationing rights for its naval vessels and allowance for a Chinese police presence. The deal is still undergoing revision and awaiting the signatures of both countries’ foreign ministers.

The China-Solomon Islands pact was leaked last month by opponents of the deal, and verified as authentic by the Australian government. While still in draft form that cites the need for restoring social order to send in Chinese forces, a Chinese base in the Solomon Islands would immediately undermine Australia and New Zealand’s security.

A Chinese naval presence in the Solomons could cut off Australia and New Zealand from critical sea lines of communication from the US, forcing both countries to rely on their own defense capabilities. The Solomon Islands’ strategic location made it a key battleground during World War II.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison stated that “there are others who may seek to pretend to influence and may seek to get some sort of hold in the region,” and New Zealand raised concerns over the militarization of the Pacific.

The Solomon Islands is a point of increasing geopolitical tension between the US and China in the Pacific. Last year, protests erupted in the capital Honiara over allegations that Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare was accused of using money from a national development fund that comes from China.

Other factors leading to last year’s protests in the Solomon Islands were unequal distribution of resources, the lack of economic support, poor government services, corruption, and a controversial decision in 2019 to drop diplomatic relations with Taiwan in favor of China.

In February the US announced plans to reopen its embassy in the Solomon Islands, which has been closed since 1993, in a bid to counter China’s growing presence.

In 2019, China attempted to lease Tulagi in the Solomon Islands, which has a natural deep-water harbor suitable for a naval base. However, the Solomon Islands government later vetoed China’s attempt to lease Tulagi, saying that the provincial government did not have the authority for such negotiations.

asiatimes.com

Although it is now 20 years since the English edition of my Japan: The Toothless Tiger best seller first appeared, everything that has since happened has confirmed its thesis that East Asia is a powder keg that Japan cannot contain.

Although China’s Belt and Road Initiative is inexorably falling into place, so too is the South China Sea. Although a British convoy, supported by German and American cruisers, recently sailed through the area, they, like the Australians, who are being butt hurt by Chinese sanctions, are not serious players.

South Korea, Taiwan and Japan are the region’s heavy hitters. Though Taiwan would give an excellent account of itself in any future encounter, there is little they could do when faced with overwhelming Chinese firepower. Taiwan could be East Asia’s Arch Duke Ferdinand moment.

South Korea, however, remains the real dagger to Japan’s heart. There are more than five million men under arms on the Korean peninsula – far more armed soldiers than either the United States or Russia maintains. Vladivostock, Russia’s military headquarters in the Far East, is only fifty miles away from North Korea! The resulting geostrategic rivalries make Korea the most militarized piece of real estate on the planet and it is the only place the United States has (repeatedly) declared it has locked and loaded nuclear weapons. As there is no way Seoul can be defended from a determined attack, the USMC is heavily embedded in Okinawa to where they hastily retreated at the height of the Korean War and to where they most likely will have to retreat again. Though Japan needs South Korea as a buffer state against North Korea and its historical Russian and Chinese sponsors, the Belt and Road Initiative would marginalize Japan and make her almost irrelevant to this Chinese minted version of The Great Game.

China views its own naval expansion as vital to protecting her sea routes and, just like Washington, Beijing is deploying her navy to ensure that the black gold continues to arrive to her shores. The fact that this policy poses a threat to Japan is not Beijing’s primary concern. They have the much more daunting task of keeping their vast nation afloat. For that overriding purpose, they need a strong navy to guarantee their oil supplies and a steely determination to defend and promote their national objectives.

Japan’s looming quandary is that, with Taiwan and South Korea, it has been a vassal of America’s East Asian policy, trading economic advancement for American political and military hegemony in contrast to China’s unfettered development. That bill is now due.

China is involved in a great strategic game that she cannot afford to lose. Kazakhstan is China’s natural bridge to the lucrative Iranian and Iraqi fields. Such a link-up would advance China’s standing as a world power. It would also cripple United States’ efforts to secure the Caspian Sea’s oil for the West. China also wants to secure central Asia’s economic cooperation to help mollify Xinjiang, which Erdoğan’s Muslim Uighur fifth columnists are charged with subverting. About 200,000 Uighurs live in Kazakhstan and opposition Islamic terrorist groups have their bases in Almata, its largest city. China hopes to neutralize this U.S. sponsored internal ISIS threat by its oil diplomacy in Kazakhstan, and its arms diplomacy in Pakistan, Iran and Iraq.

NATO’s ongoing belligerence in Eastern Europe has transformed the pipeline poker China has been playing with Russia and the other regional powers, forcing Russia and oil rich Kazakhstan to fully throw their lot in with China. Siberian oil will flow southwards to China and, if Korea and Japan wish it, onwards to them as well.

Iran meanwhile, is helping China wrest the vast oil reserves of the Caspian Sea and the Persian Gulf from Uncle Sam . If Iran and China control the flow of oil from the region, the United States will lose control not only of the Caspian Sea but also of the Persian Gulf’s vast and vital oil supplies. Japan best urgently take stock.

China’s missiles nullify America’s capacity to militarily dominate Asia’s vast geography with its small, dispersed pockets of marine forces, whose forward deployment policy bases are much too vulnerable. Without forward bases in Asia, there can be no concentration of American military power: weapons cannot even be stored, let alone massed for use.

This vulnerability of their bases to Chinese missiles is America’s singular military weakness in Asia. America’s powerful Seventh Fleet cannot make up for the loss of Asian land bases. The Seventh Fleet cannot generate anything like the military power or psychological effect of fixed bases.

The most important of these forward bases are those in Japan. Guam, like mainland America, is simply too far away to fill this role. Okinawa is the pivotal, preferred spot. And China’s missiles are gradually making those bases redundant to America’s strategic thinkers.

China is devoting vast resources to her missile program. This is a war of nerves where time and, ultimately, technology, is on the side of Mainland China. This psychological aspect explains China’s widespread use of ballistic missiles, which are, in essence, really psychological weapons – paper tigers if you will. Although Taiwan might protect itself from an amphibious assault, protecting Taipei from surgical missile strikes – or the threat of surgical strikes – by Beijing’s ballistic missile units is a more daunting task. Beijing knows this and will continue to tighten and loosen the screws, as she deems appropriate.

Japan has a glass jaw, one that China could easily break if Japan does not act responsibly over the next few years. Japan is the only major nation in the world that has explicitly renounced war as a tool of policy. Article 9.1 of the Japanese constitution renounces war “as a sovereign right of the nation”. Article 9.2 asserts that “land, sea and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained”.

That said, Japan maintains very substantial “land, sea and air forces”. Japan’s military expenditures are, in fact, the third highest in the world. Tokyo has stockpiled over 100 tons of plutonium that would be relatively simple to transform into weapons’ grade material. Japan’s fast-breeder reactors (FBRs) have the capacity to squeeze over 60 times more energy from uranium fuel than can the light-water reactors of most other countries. Japan will, in other words, have the capacity to make more nuclear weapons than the combined arsenals of the United States and Russia hold. If nothing else, this arsenal makes an impressive bundle of bargaining chips.

Because its major challenges will come from the air, Japan has developed formidable anti-aircraft and anti-ballistic missile defense systems. Japan’s radar and its accurate Tomahawk missile technology far excel their American prototypes. Other Japanese strengths in miniaturization, automation, telecommunications and the development of durable, lightweight advanced materials further enhance their military capabilities.

Japan’s plutonium purchases have allowed it develop the necessary nuclear submarine technology to counter China’s blue water navy. Though impressive, a handful of nuclear submarines and a couple of batteries of missile defenses do not make Japan impregnable.

Bizarre as it seems, Japan’s expertise in these niche areas is a cause for concern in Washington. America fears lost market share if Japan exports its expertise – and, to develop the required expertise, Japan would have to copy the examples of Israel, Sweden, South Africa and other small countries and aggressively export. The United States fears that Japan would win export orders at its expense.

Japanese dual-use technological capabilities in commercial fields related to military use threatens the preeminent position American producers currently enjoy in the world’s arms’ markets. This is ironic as, historically, the United States encouraged Japan in its development of dual use capabilities. Spin-offs from the radio industry, for example, helped kick-start the Japanese commercial television industry, which eventually obliterated their American competitors.

Japan’s defense industry is, however, an inconsequential part of Japan’s overall industrial output. It accounts for less than 1 percent of Japanese gross domestic product (GDP) and even those firms, such as Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) and Kawasaki Heavy Industries (KHI), which are most heavily involved in it, are there mostly because of the spin-off technological benefits it has given them.

Whereas Japan has some particularly strong trees of knowledge, the forest overwhelmingly belongs to America. Japan just does not have the logistical depth of America or the European Union to be a major league player. While Japanese industry has established a global position in a wide range of critical modern technologies, Japan’s defense industry has lagged behind. At the systems level, military technology has simply moved faster than Japan’s ability to catch up.

Japan, in other words, does not have an autonomous arms industry. Today, the defense industry accounts for less than 0.6 percent of total industrial production, an almost insignificant amount in Japan’s overall context. Though Japan produces about 90 percent of its own military requirements, much of that is built under license from American firms and a considerable amount of the technology is black-boxed – sealed so that Japanese engineers cannot study and copy them.

In summary then, East Asia is in a state of chassis. Although Japan has neither the heart nor the materiel for what lies ahead, she, together with South Korea and Taiwan, must develop not only their autonomous defense systems but their own autonomous diplomatic voices as well. Japan’s future, whether she likes it or not, will be with its East Asian neighbors’ Belt and Road Initiative when the U.S. 7^th Fleet, however belatedly, scuttles back to Pearl Harbor.

The Pentagon has produced its latest National Defense Strategy (NDS), a report made every four years to provide the public and the government with a broad overview of the US war machine’s planning, posturing, developments and areas of focus.

You might assume with all the aggressive brinkmanship between Moscow and the US power alliance this year that Russia would feature as Enemy Number One in the 2022 NDS, but you would be assuming incorrectly. The US “Defense” Department reserves that slot for the same nation that’s occupied it for many years now: China.

Antiwar’s Dave DeCamp writes the following:

The full NDS is still classified, but the Pentagon released a fact sheet on the document that says it “will act urgently to sustain and strengthen deterrence, with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as our most consequential strategic competitor and the pacing challenge for the Department.”

The fact sheet outlines four priorities for the Pentagon:

1. Defending the homeland, paced to the growing multi-domain threat posed by the PRC
2. Deterring strategic attacks against the United States, Allies, and partners
3. Deterring aggression, while being prepared to prevail in conflict when necessary, prioritizing the PRC challenge in the Indo-Pacific, then the Russia challenge in Europe
4. Building a resilient Joint Force and defense ecosystem

China Identified as Top ‘Threat’ in New National Defense Strategy
US military activity near China increased significantly in 2021
by Dave DeCamp@DecampDave #China https://t.co/L8gkis0WTF pic.twitter.com/22wbJFyEF6

— Antiwar.com (@Antiwarcom) March 29, 2022

“The Pentagon says that while China is the focus, Russia poses ‘acute threats’ because of its invasion of Ukraine,” DeCamp writes, showing the empire’s view of Moscow as a second-tier enemy.

Ahead of a meeting with China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has made some comments which clearly illustrate the US-centralized empire’s actual problem with Moscow.

“We, together with you, and with our sympathisers will move towards a multipolar, just, democratic world order,” Lavrov said to the Chinese government on Wednesday.

And that right there ladies and gentlemen is the real reason we’ve been hearing so much hysterical shrieking about Russia these last five or six years. It’s never been about Russian hackers. Nor about a Kremlin pee pee tape. Nor about Trump Tower. Nor about GRU bounties in Afghanistan. Nor about Manafort, Flynn, Bannon, Papadopoulos or any other Russiagate Surname of the Week. It’s not even actually about Ukraine. Those have all been narrative-shaping constructs manipulated by the US intelligence cartel to manufacture support for a final showdown against Russia and China to prevent the emergence of a multipolar world.

The US government has had a policy in place since the fall of the Soviet Union to prevent the rise of any powers which could challenge its imperial agendas for the world. During the (first) Cold War the strategy promoted by empire managers like Henry Kissinger was to court China out of necessity to pull it away from the USSR, which was when we saw business ties between China and the US lead to immense profits for certain individuals in both nations and the influx of wealth which now has China on track to surpass the US as an economic superpower.

Once the USSR ended, so too did the need to remain on friendly terms with China, and subsequent decades saw a sharp pivot into a much more adversarial relationship with Beijing.

Speaking at the Bloomberg New Economy Forum, Hillary Clinton admits there was an expectation in Washington Russia would have no choice but to become the West’s junior partner due to the fear China could take over the Russian Far East. /1https://t.co/pJQeF0eCxf

— Artyom Lukin (@ArtyomLukin) November 20, 2021

In what history may one day view as the US empire’s greatest strategic blunder, empire managers forecasted the acquisition of post-soviet Russia as an imperial lackey state which could be weaponized against the new Enemy Number One in China. Instead, the exact opposite happened.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told the Bloomberg New Economy Forum last year that she’d “heard for years that Russia would become more willing to move toward the west, more willing to engage in a positive way with Europe, the UK, the US, because of problems on its border, because of the rise of China.” But that’s not what occurred.

“We haven’t seen that,” Clinton said. “Instead what we’ve seen is a concerted effort by Putin maybe to hug China more.”

The empire’s expectation that Moscow would come grovelling to the imperial throne on its own meant that no real effort was expended trying to establish goodwill and win over its friendship. NATO just kept on expanding and the empire got increasingly aggressive and belligerent in its games of global conquest. This error has led to the strategist’s ultimate nightmare of having to fight for global domination against two separate powers at once. Because empire architects incorrectly predicted that Moscow would end up fearing Beijing more than it fears Washington, the tandem between China’s economic power and Russia’s military power that experts have been pointing to for years has only gotten more and more intimate.

And now here we are with Russian and Chinese officials openly discussing their plans to create a multipolar world while Chinese pundits crack jokes about the US empire’s transparent ploys to turn Beijing against Moscow over the Ukraine invasion:

Can you help me fight your friend so that I can concentrate on fighting you later?

— CGTN LIU Xin 刘欣 (@LiuXininBeijing) March 19, 2022

On the empire’s grand chessboard, Russia is the queen piece, but China is the king. Just as with chess it helps to take out your opponent’s strongest piece to more easily pursue checkmate, the US empire would be well advised to try and topple China’s nuclear superpower friend and, as Consortium News editor-in-chief Joe Lauria recently put it, “ultimately restore a Yeltsin-like puppet to Moscow.”

Basically all we’re looking at in the major international news stories of our time is the rise of a multipolar world crashing headlong into an empire which has espoused the belief that unipolar domination must be retained at all cost, even if it means flirting with the possibility of a very fast and radioactive third world war.

This is the Hail Mary pass of the US hegemon. Its last-ditch effort to secure control before forever losing any chance at it. Many anti-imperialist pundits I read regularly seem quite confident that this effort will fail, while I personally think those forecasts may be a bit premature. The way the chess pieces are moving it definitely does look like there’s a plan in place, and I don’t think they’d be orchestrating that plan if they didn’t believe it had a chance to succeed.

One thing that does seem clear is that the only way the empire has any chance of stopping the rise of China is by maneuvers that will be both highly disruptive and existentially dangerous for the entire world. If you think things are crazy now, just you wait until the imperial crosshairs move to Beijing.

caityjohnstone.medium.com

As Ukraine enters the second month of standing up to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s so-called “special military operations,” Kiev’s Western friends continue to escalate their anti-Russian rhetoric, but with little impact. It is anyone’s guess how long Ukraine will be able to sustain itself in this manner.

So far, other than their fitful, late and limited military supplies, Ukraine’s Western friends have shown indulgences only in their repeated standing ovations to President Volodymyr Zelensky’s online speeches followed by one more bout of escalating frenzy about economic sanctions.

What explains the inability of the US and its Western allies to stand up to Putin’s military adventures one after another starting from Moldova, to Georgia, and Crimea to now? What does it mean to US global leadership, to its equations with its newfound friends like India and to its standing up to China in the Indo-Pacific region?

The reality is that the West has stood firm only in its refusal to give in to Zelensky’s requests to impose a no-fly zone over Ukraine, supply him with more potent defense equipment, or immediately stop purchasing of Russian oil and gas, let alone granting Ukraine membership of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization or even the European Union, to which he has formally applied.

Doing any such thing, they say, would entail directly engaging Putin and facing prospects of a nuclear confrontation and World War III.

The reality is that even on its main weapon of economic sanctions, the West remains a divided house, with the European Union pushing complete cessation of Russian energy imports to the end of the year, hoping that the Ukraine crisis will be over by that time.

Indeed, in the first four weeks of the crisis, Europe paid US$18.7 billion for Russian gas and oil, thereby continuing as the world’s second-largest importer of Russia energy.

In fact, other than China as the largest buyer of Russia oil, the next five largest buyers – the Netherlands, Denmark, South Korea, Poland and Italy – are all close US allies. More than 40% of German gas is imported from Russia.

Upping the ante on India

It is against this backdrop that India’s decision this week to buy 3 million barrels of Russian oil seems to have tipped the balance for the US and its allies to attempt to tame India’s “divergent” behavior.

This has triggered a flurry of visits, starting with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and US Under Secretary for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland, plus online conversations between the prime ministers of Australia and the United Kingdom and India’s prime minister, among others.

Having barely managed to ban its own oil imports from Russia and get its European allies to agree gradually to reduce and ban Russian imports by end of this year, the US feels threatened by the possibility of India becoming another large-scale buyer of Russian gas and oil.

After all, India is the world’s second-largest oil importer, and its oil imports account for more than 85% of its total oil consumption. Especially in the face of rising oil prices and its pandemic-hit economy, India is bound to be attracted by deep discounts on Russian oil, gas and other commodities.

Indeed, in the beginning of the Ukraine crisis, India’s repeated abstentions from UN resolutions had led the US to initiate private conversations to convey to New Delhi how its “stance of neutrality” placed it “in Russia’s camp,” which it saw as “the aggressor in this conflict.”

But Moscow has had similar expectations of India standing by its side. Staying non-aligned and steering clear from military alliances has been the central axis of India’s foreign policy, and New Delhi understands the costs of taking sides.

But India standing its ground against Western prodding has made European and North American governments increasingly impatient.

On Monday, for instance, US President Joe Biden publicly called out India’s stand as “somewhat shaky,” while State Department spokesman Ned Price went a step further, alluding to America’s inability to fathom India’s argument of its time-tested defense ties with Moscow when “the times have changed. They have changed in terms of our willingness and ability to be a strong defense and security partner of India.”

She also described the Ukraine crisis as a “major infection point in the autocratic-democratic struggle” and how the US and its European allies could help India overcome its dependence on Russian defense supplies.

Western experts repeatedly allude to the annualized value of India-US trade being $150 billion compared with $8 billion between India and Russia. But that again does not seem enough. Successive US leaders have repeatedly made it clear that they would like to replace Russia as India’s main defense supplier.

India’s proactive neutrality

Without doubt, the Ukraine crisis has impacted India in multiple ways beyond this increasing cost of Western displeasure. Indeed, neither Moscow nor Washington had anticipated India standing firm on its stance of proactive neutrality as shown by its abstentions from all UN resolutions on Ukraine, including this Wednesday’s resolution by Russia.

New Delhi’s expressed first priority was safely bring home home more than 22,500 Indian citizens, which it has done, along with 147 foreign nationals of 18 other countries. The next step for India is to explore a possible role in bringing an early cessation of the violence in Ukraine by urging talks.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has spoken with Putin three times and to Zelensky twice and suggested that “a direct conversation between President Putin and President Zelensky may greatly assist in ongoing peace efforts.”

Showcasing its proactive neutrality, India has also already provided 90 metric tons of humanitarian assistance to Ukraine.

India has of course refrained from publicly condemning Russia’s actions in Ukraine. This is attributed to India’s long-standing defense and strategic ties with Moscow.

Addressing the upper house of India’s Parliament on Thursday, Jaishankar explained what drives this proactive neutral posture of India.

He outlined this in terms of six principles: India’s call for the cessation of violence and hostilities, a return to diplomacy and dialogue, recognition that global order is anchored on international law and respect for territorial integrality and sovereignty of all states, a call for humanitarian access to conflict situations, India providing humanitarian assistance, and finally India being in touch with the leaderships of both Russia and Ukraine as well as with all other stakeholders.

He also responded to a question from a member of Parliament on Biden’s comment on India’s stand on Ukraine as being “somewhat shaky” and maintained that India’s stand in this matter has been “steadfast and consistent” and that it knows how to respond to changing geopolitical dynamics.

The China factor

Remember, India is not the only country exploring deeply discounted Russia oil in the middle of the Ukraine crisis. As noted above, China is the largest buyer of Russia oil, followed by European and Asian allies of the US that have also continued to buy Russian gas and oil.

In fact, unlike India’s state-run oil refineries following an open process of calling for tenders, Chinese companies have been discreetly purchasing cheap Russian oil and keeping their negations confidential.

China being the real and more enduring challenge for Western nations perhaps contributes to their expectations from and overreactions to India’s neutral posture on Ukraine, one that appears nearly identical to China’s posture.

Russia waving the nuclear threat to keep the US engaged in the European theater and Russia becoming all the more dependent on China (and India), leaving the Indo-Pacific region vulnerable to China’s adventures, explains the US upping the ante on India.

Or worse, it is the imagined Russia-China-India triangular partnership synergizing in the midst of the Ukraine crisis that explains Western paranoia about India’s neutrality on Ukraine crisis.

This Western skepticism of course gets especially reinforced by how, in the midst of India-China border tensions and the Ukraine crisis, Chinese Foreign minister Wang Yi visits New Delhi and the Chinese media begin, out of blue, to criticize US “hypocrisy” on India’s “refusal to follow the US lead in condemning and sanctioning Russia.”

asiatimes.com

The Asia Pacific region has come in for much attention in recent years. Most of it a transparent attempt to contain China and its spectacular rise, remember Obama’s pivot to Asia? The dominant narrative is that China poses an imminent threat to its near neighbours. Rarely do we ever hear from the inhabitants of the region regarding their feelings about the threat. For Westerners who are constantly bombarded with the anti-China rhetoric, it is understandable that they think the Asians are terrified of China and are grateful to their Western guardians for protecting them. Let us examine that.

To understand the mindset we must revisit some inconvenient history. With the exception of Thailand, all of the S.E. Asian countries have been the victim of Western colonisation. Vietnam, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Indonesia and China all suffered mightily under Western oppression. The Philippines, South Korea and Japan still host American bases and are de-facto client states as a result. Overwhelmingly the citizenry of these countries greatly resent this fact, countless anti-imperial demonstrations have made this plain, all ignored by minority factions in Government. It is the history of Asia that when white men with guns show up professing good intentions, Asians suffer. This has been the case for more than four hundred years and it persists to this day. Western rhetoric falls on deaf ears in Asia, every promise ever made to them by the West has been broken and they know that the west doesn’t regard or treat them as equals. Once again, they can see that they are being expected to suffer to serve Western imperialist interests.

Over the last 40 years the region as enjoyed a period of peace, stability and prosperity unprecedented in its long history. To be clear, there is much historical enmity in the hemisphere, Japan and Korea, Japan and China and others have a tragic history of conflict. There is little love and much residual resentment among them. There are disputes regarding the South China Sea, many of the countries have overlapping claims. The sea treaties that define the current maps are disrupted by all and recognised by none. These treaties were drawn up in the West in the post WWI era and were done without a single Asian present. They represented Western imperial interests, not those of the Asians. In the Asian way, they resolve these differences through diplomacy, no one is prepared to go to war over it. All still enjoy freedom of navigation, it is not the big issue that it is made out to be in the West.

When Trump first took office, he locked in on North Korea, while posing zero threat to America his interference in a long dormant issue was the cause of much uneasiness in the region. South Koreans as expected were particularly alarmed, the consensus view of the majority in this peaceful country was that they wished he would shut up and go home. Likewise, in Taiwan the majority accept that China wants peaceful reunification as it has clearly stated for more than 70 years. Despite constant provocations China has remained calm on the issue, which absent American interference, will likely resolve itself peacefully in time.

Japan has long been the reluctant local point man for America’s aggression against China. While the Japanese people are not friendly to China, China didn’t unnecessarily drop any nuclear bombs on them or occupy them and treat them as second-class citizens for the last 70 years. They have no interest in suffering further on behalf of the hated Americans. Japan and China have recently had productive bi-lateral meetings to dial back the American rhetoric. Left to their own devices the Asians will find resolution to their differences with reporting to hostilities. Obvious to all is that America is prepared to make sacrifices to contain China. It would sacrifice all its so-called “friends” in the region if it would slow China’s rise.

Parallels to the Asian situation can be found now in Europe with the manufactured Ukraine crisis. The Europeans are well aware that America sees the European interest in peace and stability as a threat to American hegemony. While Germany badly needs Russian gas and has heavily invested in the Nord Stream pipeline, America is prepared to see Europeans freeze rather than buy Russian gas. Its naked aggression in Ukraine seeks to provoke Russia into a conflict on European soil. Russia wisely has not taken the bait, much like China over Taiwan. The worst-case scenario for America is that the Europeans accept Russia as a peaceful member of the community of nations and continue to develop mutually beneficial economic ties. Without big bad Russia as the enemy, there is no need for NATO and the call for America to depart from all their European military bases would be resounding.

Any war with Russia or China would have unthinkable consequences for the world, and it seems clear that no one but America wants conflict. The Germans and French have been trying to make their own peace with Russia outside of the NATO clique. The NATO faction are Americas only real allies in Europe, this a Globalist faction, they don’t represent any countries national interest. The failing Empire is on its last legs, crumbling socially and economically at home, a war, any war, would serve as a useful distraction. It appears clear now that the Empire would see the world burn if it can rule over the ashes.

The key to China’s security riposte to the U.S. is linked to two words that go unstated in U.S. formal policy documents, but whose silent presence nevertheless suffuses and colour-washes the text of the 2022 National Defence Authorisation Act.

The term ‘containment’ never appears, neither does the word ‘encirclement’. Yet, as Professor Michael Klare writes, the Act “provides a detailed blueprint for surrounding China with a potentially suffocating network of U.S. bases, military forces, and increasingly militarized partner states. The goal is to enable Washington to barricade that country’s military inside its own territory; and potentially to cripple its economy in any future crisis”.

What the earlier patchwork of U.S. China measures lacked, until now, has been an overarching plan for curbing China’s rise, and so ensuring America’s permanent supremacy in the Indo-Pacific region: “The authors of this year’s NDAA” however, “were remarkably focused on this deficiency, and several provisions of the bill are designed to provide just such a master plan”.

These include a series of measures intended to incorporate Taiwan into the U.S. defence system surrounding China. And a requirement for the drafting of a comprehensive “grand strategy” for containing China “on every front”.

A ‘sense of Congress’ measure in the Act provides overarching guidance on these disparate initiatives, stipulating an unbroken chain of U.S.-armed ‘sentinel states’ — stretching from Japan and South Korea in the northern Pacific to Australia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Singapore in the south, and India on China’s eastern flank — meant to encircle and contain the People’s Republic. Ominously enough, Taiwan, too, is included in the projected anti-China network.

Accordingly, the measure advocates closer military coordination between the ‘two countries’, and the sale of increasingly sophisticated weapons systems to Taiwan, along with the technology to manufacture some of them.

“And here’s the new reality of the Biden years”, writes Klare: “[Taiwan] is now being converted into a de facto military ally of the United States. There could hardly be a more direct assault on China’s bottom line: that, sooner or later, the island must agree to peacefully reunite with the mainland; or face military action”.

This is not new. The China containment notion reaches back to Obama’s pivot to Asia (and back even further), but it was the during the Trump Administration that the Taiwan pretext began seriously to be ramped. Pompeo upped the ante by approving visits to Taipei by senior officials.

What is different now is that the Biden Administration has not only not reversed the Trump-Pompeo policies, but rather has embraced the Pompeo encirclement agenda, with a vengeance. This is underlined through a provision in the Act insisting that the U.S.’ 1982 agreement to reduce the quality and quantity of its arms transfers to Taiwan, is no longer valid due to China’s “increasingly coercive and aggressive behaviour” toward the island.

The point here is that ‘encirclement’ and ‘containment’ effectively have become Biden’s default foreign policy. The attempt to cement-in this meta-doctrine currently is being enacted out via Russia (as the initial step). The essential buy-in by Europe is the ‘party-piece’ to Russia’sphysical containment and encirclement.

The EU is coming under intense pressure from Washington to commit to sanctions – the financial ‘mode’ to encirclement – as EU officials negotiate what would be considered their ‘red line’. Jake Sullivan however, made the new doctrine and what he expects from Europe very clear last November, when he said: “we want the terms of the [international] system to be favourable to American interests and values: It is rather, a favourable disposition in which the U.S. and its allies can shape the international rules of the road on the sorts of issues that are fundamentally going to matter to the people of [America] …”.

Biden’s threat of unprecedented, harsh sanctions however, has brought forth a warning of a completely unexpected source – as both the U.S. Treasury and the State Department have warned Blinken that the envisaged sanctions would hurt U.S. allies (i.e. Europeans) more than they would hurt Russia, and that their imposition could even trigger a counter-productive global economic crisis that would touch both the U.S. and European consumer, via increased energy prices – thus giving a sharp kick to already record U.S. inflation rates.

In short, Europe might also face a U.S.-led insurgency war fought from its territory, spilling over and across other states; giving birth to a new breed of radical ‘jihadis’, and dilating around Europe. And to yet a new wave of sophisticated weaponry (as happened in the wake of the Afghan war) circulating amongst opposition groups, as Stinger missiles were sold on to who knows whom (and then had later to be bought back from them).

In a likely planted piece, the NY Times reports that:

For years, U.S. officials have tiptoed around the question of how much military support to provide to Ukraine, for fear of provoking Russia.

Now, in what would be a major turnaround, senior Biden administration officials are warning that the United States could throw its weight behind a Ukrainian insurgency should Putin invade Ukraine.

How the United States, which just exited two decades of war in Afghanistan, might pivot to funding and supporting an insurgency from just finishing one – is still being worked out: “Biden has not determined how the United States might arm insurgents in Ukraine; or, who would conduct the guerrilla war against Russian military occupation. Nor is it clear what Russia’s next move might be … But Biden Administration officials have begun signalling to Russia [that eventually it] would find the costs of an invasion … prohibitively expensive in terms of military losses.

“If Putin invades Ukraine with a major military force … And if it turned into a Ukrainian insurgency, Putin should realize that after fighting insurgencies ourselves for two decades, we know how to arm, train and energize them”, said James Stavridis, a retired four-star Navy admiral, who was the supreme allied commander at NATO.

This talk in the U.S. of an insurgency mounted via Ukraine has acquired a frenetic quality. Discussion has slipped into neurosis as the U.S. mainstream melts-down at any suggestion of selling out the cause of democracy and liberal values. See here the reaction when the Tucker Carlson’s guest said, “the world is perched on the edge of an abyss. We may soon see the worst combat in Europe since WW2 – killing thousands of people and raising the likelihood of nuclear war. It didn’t have to be this way”.

It’s as if all the many failures of the Biden Administration are being channelled and vented through the narrow atonement of ‘saving Ukraine’.

Naturally, that is not the end to the U.S. project: With ‘containment’ and ‘our democracy’ so much at the forefront of Washington liberal thinking, once Russia has been Gulliverised, and China put on notice, the subsequent containment and encirclement of Iran would seem a foregone conclusion.

Especially, as the encirclement project for China is already underway. And it is not confined to the Indo-Pacific. It is playing out, even today, in the Middle East as an attempted double containment both of Iran and China. The recent drone attack on UAE (claimed by the Houthis) is not unconnected with those targeted states’ bigger struggle to break U.S. encirclement.

One key component to global commerce in upcoming years will be China’s Maritime Silk Road – a shipping route which inevitably pivots around the Horn of Africa, and its choke-point of the Bab al-Mandab Strait, off Yemen’s coast. Yemen therefore becomes a key hub for the U.S.’ ability to ‘contain’ and deny China its’ Maritime Silk Road.

In this context, the UAE plays the Mid-East strategic counterpart to ‘Taiwan’ in the Pacific, becoming the geographical anchor to the ‘sentinel’ ports and islands overlooking the Indian Ocean, the Arabian Sea, the Red Sea, the Horn of Africa, and the Bab al-Mandab strait – all presently controlled by UAE.

The enhanced strategic significance of the UAE to Israel and the U.S. almost wholly derives from its having blatantly used the Yemen war as an opportunity to establish an oversized role for itself – through seizing the ‘guardianship’ of the strait connecting the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden. Ibrahim Al-Amine has outlined in the pro-resistance Lebanese daily, Al-Akhbar (of which he is editor), “the [recent] American decision to force the UAE to reconsider its war “exit strategy”” in Yemen:

“The new development consisted of a major modification in the American-British decisions represented by a strategic decision to prevent the fall of Ma’rib. The Americans thus directly intervened in the battle. Anyone who looks back at the details … will realize that it is deeper and more dangerous in terms of the Israeli fingerprints … The nature of the intelligence work doesn’t resemble at all the work of the assaulting forces in the past years … In the present war situation, the battle needs men on the ground, hence the American decision to force the UAE to reconsider its war “exit strategy”…”.

Thus, the port of Aden, the Bab al-Mandab Strait and Socotra Island fall neatly into a vital component of the Cold War build-up between China and the U.S.: The Arab ally that can control this essential strait will give the U.S. leverage with which to jeopardize China’s Maritime Silk Road – hence, America’s support for the ongoing conflict in Yemen.

And hence the Houthi drone attack on UAE, signalling that the Houthis have no intention of conceding such a vital key point. The Houthis are giving the UAE a bitter choice: Strikes on its cities or yield up the strategic asset of Bab al-Mandab and its surrounds. Iran and China will be watching closely this ‘breakout’ initiative.

Recognizing that the policies spelled out in the 2022 NDAA represent a fundamental threat to China’s security and its desire for a greater international role, Congress also directed the President to come up with a ‘grand strategy’ on U.S.-China relations in the next nine months, and to prepare an inventory of the economic, diplomatic, and military capabilities the U.S. will require to blunt its rise.

Andrew Bacevich, the U.S. military historian, writes that among foreign policy mandarins in present-day Washington, “spheres of influence” have become anathema. As interpreted today, however, the very phrase smacks of appeasement: It carries for the Beltway foreign policy class, a whiff of selling-out the cause of freedom and democracy, a sin which senior U.S. officials abhor. This is all too evident in today’s heated U.S. mainstream discourse.

A decade ago, Hillary Clinton declared categorically that “The United States does not recognize spheres of influence”. More recently, Secretary Blinken affirmed that statement. “We don’t accept the principle of spheres of influence … the very concept of spheres of influence “should have been retired after World War II”.

Of course! Isn’t it obvious? You can’t barricade a country inside its own territory to enjoy the latitude at a later date to be able to suffocate its economy in any future crisis, and at the same time, accept that Russia and China can set their own red lines – red lines that are formulated precisely to counter their containment, and to counter intimidation through military encirclement.

What the NDAA does, (perhaps inadvertently), is to underline precisely how the Russian and Chinese situation are inter-leafed reflections of each other’s predicament. The ‘war’ to break containment and encirclement is already underway. 

Before you read another story claiming war among China, Taiwan and the U.S. is getting closer, or relations are entering dangerous territory, or long-standing issues may soon be settled by any means necessary, ask yourself these three questions.

Why Would China Attack Taiwan?

Over the last decade Taiwan invested $188.5 billion in China, more than China’s investment in the United States. In 2019, the value of cross-strait trade was $149.2 billion. Pre-Covid, travelers from China made 2.68 million visits to Taiwan. China applied in September to join the new Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership. A week later, with no opposition voiced by Beijing, Taiwan applied to join as well. China is Taiwan’s largest trading partner. “One country, two systems” has not only kept the peace for decades, it has proven damn profitable. Why bomb one of your best customers?

Apart from the potential the nuclear destruction of the Chinese state (the U.S. has 10 nukes for every Chinese one) why would China consider a war that would provoke the U.S.? Total Chinese investment in the U.S. is $145 billion. U.S. investment in China passed $1 trillion. The Chinese are literally betting the house on America’s success.

A failed invasion of Taiwan would topple Xi if not the whole power structure. An invasion is impractical. Chinese amphibious forces would be under fire from Taiwan’s F-16s armed with Harpoon anti-ship missiles practically as they left harbor. Taiwan will soon field a land-based anti-ship missile with 200 mile range. Estimates are China would need to land a million soldiers on day one (on D-Day the Allies put ashore 156,000) against Taiwan’s fortified rocky west coast, navigating among tiny islets themselves laden with anti-ship weapons. China’s primary amphibious assault ship, the Type 075, carries about only 1,000 men, and China currently has only three such ships. Its conscript troops are unblooded in combat. Meanwhile American and British forces patrol the waters. Aircraft from Guam, Okinawa, and Korea could shut down the skies, and decimate Chinese aircraft on the ground. This is not Normandy. It is also not another of the counterinsurgency struggles which defeated America. It is the Big Power conflict played out in the Strait instead of the Fulda Gap, the war U.S. has been preparing to fight against someone since the 1960s.

No risk vs. gain calculation would end up concluding the best option was war. And discard the irrational actor scenario; Chinese leaders have always believed in historical cycles. They waited close to 300 years to end the foreign Qing dynasty. They waited out Britain for hundreds of years for the peaceful return of Hong Kong, same with Portugal and Macau. Chinese diplomacy is patient, not reactive. There is no fierce urgency to reunification. One waits to win.

Why now?

In fiction one of the important tools is the Change Event, the thing that answers the question of why now? Why did the mild-mannered accountant suddenly become a vigilante? Oh, his daughter was kidnapped. So where is the “why now” part of China-Taiwan?

One of the most compelling arguments China plans no war is they haven’t yet fought any wars. No shots have been fired over the disputed islands, which have disputed for decades. Taiwan broke away in 1949 and the last shot fired was in the 1950s. Chinese troops entered Vietnam only after the U.S. began its own campaign of regime change there, and briefly in 1979 during a border scuffle. China joined the Korean War only after the U.S. threatened to cross into Chinese territory. Xi’s reunification rhetoric is essentially the same as Mao’s.

China is an autocracy (unchanged since 1949), and has not promoted things like free speech in Hong Kong or Tibet, never mind in Beijing or Shanghai. We don’t have to like that, but it is nothing new and has nothing to do with invading Taiwan. China did little when some of the leaders of the Tienanmen protests turned up in Taiwan, another worried over “why now” event.

United States President Joe Biden held his first direct dialogue with China’s President Xi Jinping amid spiraling tensions between the world’s two biggest economies. Professor Francis Boyle gives his take on the “big event” in a brief interview below.

First though, some background. It seems oddly complacent that it has taken nearly 10 months since Biden entered the White House for these leaders to finally get around to engaging in substantive talks given the urgent context of fraught relations.

Some observers will see the conference held online on November 15 as a welcome move to put the brakes on a dangerous dynamic that is potentially leading towards military confrontation. But a closer look beneath the optics of the meeting reveal that there was no removal of the fundamental source of tensions, which is US hegemonic ambitions, according to Boyle.

The online summit was initiated by Biden and lasted for more than three hours. The American side gave the event high-profile TV coverage. Chinese media tended to welcome the meeting as signaling a possible turning point for improved relations. However, while both leaders appeared to be cordial there was little sign that Washington has changed its fundamental position of antagonizing China, a policy that is leading to armed conflict in particular over Taiwan.

Professor Francis A. Boyle comments in the following interview that both sides remain entrenched in opposing positions. He notes that President Xi warned the Americans that China would not tolerate any interference promoting Taiwan’s independence. For his part, Biden said the US maintains its so-called One China Policy recognizing Beijing’s sovereignty over Taiwan. But at the same time, Washington retains “strategic ambiguity” which gives itself license to supply Taiwan with military weapons, a policy that is emboldening Taiwanese declared independence from the mainland.

From the White House readout of Biden’s comments, the US side also arrogates a presumptive right to lecture China over alleged human rights abuses. Objectively speaking, this US position is cynical and provocative given its blatant hypocrisy over its own record of gross human rights abuses, past and present, as Boyle has extensively documented in his scholarly and legal work over several decades. For Biden to keep pushing this arrogant charade as with previous administrations is proof that Washington is not capable of conducting relations based on mutual respect, which Xi called for.

Boyle points out that the disastrous retreat by the US from its failed war in Afghanistan is largely motivated by Washington’s geopolitical need to confront what it views as the primary challenge to its global power stemming from an ascendant China and an emerging multipolar world. Afghanistan does not represent “an end to American wars”, as Biden claimed. It is more a conservation and redirection of imperial power. In that regard, the online summit with Xi initiated by Biden is merely more deception and duplicity by the US side, which does little to mitigate dangerous tensions.

Francis Anthony Boyle is Professor of International Law at the University of Illinois College of Law. He is an alumni cum laude of Harvard School of Law. Boyle has served as counsel for Bosnia-Herzegovina and an advisor to the Palestinian Authority. He is a long-standing critic of US policy supporting Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories which he has condemned as genocide. Boyle has denounced US governments over foreign policy that systematically promotes war and the oppression of indigenous peoples. He is author of numerous books, including The Criminality of Nuclear Deterrence; Destroying Libya and World Order: The Three-Decade US Campaign to Terminate the Qaddafi Revolution; World Politics and International Law; Destroying World Order: US Imperialism in the Middle East Before and After September 11; and Foundations of World Order: The Legalist Approach to International Relations.

Interview

Question: After the online summit this week between US President Joe Biden and Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, do you see any grounds for optimism for US-China relations improving and “veering away from conflict” as President Biden put it?

Francis Boyle: No. President Xi read the riot act to Biden on Taiwan. So far, I have seen no evidence that Biden is backing down on his support for the Taiwan independence movement.

Question: Was it significant that the summit was requested by Biden in the first place?

Francis Boyle: Yes. This was basically a public relations gesture by Biden to convince the American people and the world that he was really doing something to calm the situation down when in fact on the ground in Taiwan and in the seas of the Taiwan Strait and in the South China Sea he is doing the exact opposite. I am sure President Xi is paying attention to what Biden is doing, not what he is talking about in a virtual summit that Biden broadcasted in the media for propaganda purposes. As Machiavelli said in The Prince, the Prince must learn to be a fine liar and hypocrite. That’s Joe Biden!

Question: Biden told Xi that the US still supports the One China Policy. Do you see this statement lowering tensions over Taiwan?

Francis Boyle: Of course not. Indeed, right after the meeting the Biden administration announced there is going to be a high-level meeting between US defense experts and Taiwan defense experts. Biden basically slapped Xi in the face right after their “summit”.

Question: Biden mentioned various human rights concerns in China. Xi did not mention human rights concerns in the US Does that indicate US policy is still hampered by arrogance and presumption of superiority?

Francis Boyle: Of course. Like all US administrations going back to Jimmy Carter, they have all used “human rights” as a propaganda weapon against their designated adversaries. Meanwhile, look at what successive recent US governments have done to the Palestinians, or the Libyans, or the Iraqis, or the Syrians, or the Somalis, or the Yemenis, or the Afghans, etc. Massive death and destruction all over the Middle East and Central Asia.

Question: China’s President Xi often talks about how China is no longer the weak giant of former times when the US and European imperial powers dominated it as for example during the 19th Century Opium Wars. Would you agree that there is a new historic reality of US imperial decline in a multipolar world where China is more than capable of determining relations?

Francis Boyle: Yes. The United States government just suffered the most catastrophic defeat since Vietnam in Afghanistan. They have learned nothing from it. Indeed, Biden said that they are leaving Afghanistan in order to better confront China. QED.

“When elephants fight, it is the grass that gets trampled.”

So warned Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte in his address to the UN General Assembly on September 22, 2020. He was referring to the consequences for East Asia of a conflict between the US and China.

Fast forward to October 2, 2021, about one year later, and the first patch of grass has been stomped on by the U.S. elephant, trudging stealthily about, far from home in the South China Sea.  On that day the nuclear-powered attack submarine, the USS Connecticut, suffered serious damage in an undersea incident which the U.S. Navy ascribed to a collision with an undersea object.

After sustaining damage, the submarine apparently surfaced close to the Paracel Islands which lie only 150 nautical miles from China’s Yulin submarine base in Hainan Province.   The Connecticut is one of only three Seawolf class of submarines, which are assumed to be on spying missions.  But they can be equipped with Intermediate Range (1250-2500 km) Tomahawk cruise missiles which can be armed with nuclear warheads.  It is claimed that they are not so equipped at present because the Navy’s “policy decisions” have “phased out” their nuclear role, according to the hawkish Center For Strategic and International Studies.

When a US nuclear submarine with such capabilities has a collision capable of killing U.S. sailors and spilling radioactive materials in the South China Sea, it should be front page news on every outlet in the U.S.  This has not been the case – far from it.  For example, to this day (October 30), nearly a month after the collision, the New York Times, the closest approximation to a mouthpiece for the American foreign policy elite, has carried no major story on the incident and in fact no story at all so far as I and several daily readers can find.  This news is apparently not fit to print in the Times.  (A notable exception to this conformity and one worth consulting has been Craig Hooper of Forbes.)

A blackout of this kind will come as no surprise to those who have covered the plight of Julian Assange or the US invasion of Syria or the barely hidden hand of the United States in various regime change operations, to cite a few examples

The U.S. media has followed the narrative of the U.S. Navy which waited until October 7 to acknowledge the incident, with the following extraordinarily curt press release (I have edited it with strike-outs and italicized substitutions to make its meaning clear.):

The Seawolf-class fast-attack submarine USS Connecticut (SSN 22) struck an object while submerged on the afternoon of Oct. 2, while operating in international waters in the Indo-Pacific region in the South China Sea near or inside Chinese territorial waters. The safety of the crew remains the Navy’s top priority  The crew is being held incommunicado for an indefinite period. There are no life threatening injuries. This allows the extent of injuries to the crew to be kept secret.  

The submarine remains in a safe and stable condition hidden from public view to conceal the damage and its cause.  USS Connecticut’s nuclear propulsion plant and spaces were not affected and remain fully operationalare in a condition that is being hidden from the public until cosmetic repairs can be done to conceal the damage. The extent of damage to the remainder of the submarine is being assessed is also being concealed. The U.S. Navy has not requested assistance will not allow an independent inspection or investigation. The incident will be investigated cover-up will continue.

Tan Kefei, spokesperson for China’s Ministry of National Defense although not so terse, had much the same to say as my edited version above, as reported in China’s Global Times:

“It took the US Navy five days after the accident took place to make a short and unclear statement.  Such an irresponsible approach, cover-up (and) lack of transparency .. can easily lead to misunderstandings and misjudgments. China and the neighboring countries in the South China Sea have to question the truth of the incident and the intentions behind it.

But Tan went further and echoed the sentiment of President Duterte;

“This incident also shows that the recent establishment of a trilateral security partnership between the US, UK and Australia (AUKUS) to carry out nuclear submarine cooperation has brought a huge risk of nuclear proliferation, seriously violated the spirit of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, undermined the construction of a nuclear-free zone in Southeast Asia, and brought severe challenges to regional peace and security.

“We believe that the actions of the US will affect the safety of navigation in the South China Sea, arouse serious concerns and unrest among the countries in the region, and pose a serious threat and a major risk to regional peace and stability.”

The crash of the USS Connecticut goes beyond the potential for harmful radioactive leakage into the South China Sea, with potential damage to the surrounding nations including the fishing grounds of importance to the economy.  If the US continues to ramp up confrontation far from its home in the South China Sea, then a zone of conflict could spread to include all of East Asia.  Will this in any way benefit the region?  Does the region want to be turned into the same wreckage that the Middle East and North Africa are now after decades of US crusading for “democracy and liberty” there via bombs, sanctions and regime change operations?  That would be a tragic turn for the world’s most economically dynamic region.  Do the people of the region not realize this?  If not, the USS Connecticut should be a wake-up call.

But the people of the US should also think carefully about what is happening.  Perhaps the foreign policy elite of the US think it can revisit the U.S. strategy in WWII with devastation visited upon Eurasia leaving the US as the only industrial power standing above the wreckage.  Such are the benefits of an island nation.  But in the age of intercontinental weapons, could the US homeland expect to escape unscathed from such a conflict as it did in WWII?  The knot is being tied, as Krushchev wrote to Kennedy at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis, and if it is tied too tightly, then no one will be able to untie it.  The US is tying the knot far from its home this time half way around the world.  It should not tie that knot too tight.

counterpunch.org

Under Trump’s escalating anti-China stance, Taiwan enjoyed enhanced recognition and support – with regular high-level visits from U.S. officials, as well as increased arms sales. This led some Beltway pundits, at the time, to express concern that ‘strategic ambiguity’ regarding the possibility of a U.S. military response – were Taiwan to be militarily reunited with China – was being deliberately eroded. They warned in Foreign Affairs to not rock the boat with China.

Nonetheless, Taipei feared that this salami-slice push by Washington’s China hawks nurturing Taiwan autonomy, could be watered down by an incoming Biden administration. They feared that U.S. foreign policy under Biden would chart a softer approach, based more on managing its pivot to ‘intense competition’ with China.

Much the same expectations of a Bidenesque ‘softer’ approach – albeit in the context of multilateral co-operation – was shared by Brussels in the wake of Biden’s arrival in the White House. Biden’s ‘America is Back’ mantra received a gushing welcome from the Brussels ruling class. It was expected to overturn Trump’s scepticism and hesitancy on NATO and the EU, and to usher in a new golden era of multilateralism. It hasn’t.

Biden’s ‘laser-like pivot’ to China as its primordial security interest – rather – has resulted in the North Atlantic, the EU and NATO becoming much less important to Washington, as the U.S. security crux compacts down to ‘blocking’ China in the Pacific.

Biden may ‘speak’ multilateralism; he may speak more ‘softly’; but it is the Military Industrial, War College and Think-Tank conceptualisations ultimately that count, and to whom one should pay attention. Why? because … continuity.

Incumbents of the White House come and go, but U.S. security objectives do not alter course so readily. A touch on the tiller by an incoming Administration often is insufficient to change a massive vessel’s course. Academic military think-tank perspectives evolve to a different rhythm, and to a longer ‘beat’. When Trump was in the White House, his views on NATO and Europe’s defence efforts were not so very different to those just manifested by Blinken, when he disparages the EU as a significant actor in Global terms – as the U.S. plunges into its ‘China First’ metamorphosis.

The key difference is in style: the new Secretary of State says it in excellent French, whereas Trump just didn’t ‘do European finesse’. The continuity however, was ever present.

On 3 October, the Department of State’s spokesman, Ned Price, made a statement that the U.S. was most concerned by China’s air activity near Taiwan, calling such actions ‘provocative’. Price also described Taiwan as ‘democratic’, an ‘ally of the U.S.’, and one who ‘shares our values’. “We will continue to stand with friends and allies to advance our shared prosperity, security, and values and deepen our ties with democratic Taiwan”, he said.

Not surprisingly, Beijing responded furiously with a strong counter-statement criticising Price’s words as a plain inference that the U.S. regards ‘democratic’ Taiwan as a ‘nation’, separate to China. Beijing views any breach of America’s 1972 ‘One China’ commitment as trespassing across China’s reddest of red lines. Beijing underlined its extreme anger by deploying a record breaking 52 aircraft near Taiwan, in a single day. And a thunderous editorial in the Global Times insisted that it was ‘Time to warn Taiwan secessionists and their fomenters: War is real’.

Biden may be sincere when he says that his Administration does not seek war with China, but nonetheless, from some one, or other, wedge inside the Establishment, there has been this continuous chip-chipping away at the One China policy with a series of small, seemingly innocuous moves – proposing to change the Taipei Cultural and Economic office in the U.S. into a quasi-diplomatic Taiwan Representational Office; through more military sales; USAF touchdowns, and senior official visits – culminating last week with Australia’s former prime minister Tony Abbott visiting Taipei, where he provocatively insisted that “any attempt at coercion would have incalculable consequences” for China, and strongly suggested that both the United States and Australia would come to Taiwan’s aid militarily. “I don’t believe America could stand by and watch [Taiwan] swallowed up”.

Was this speech ‘green-lighted’ ahead of delivery from some cubby-hole in Washington? Almost certainly ‘yes’.

Then again, back in August, in the Washington Examiner, American Enterprise Institute senior fellow Michael Rubin contended that Taiwan must “go nuclear” in the wake of the disastrous American withdrawal from Afghanistan. To survive Taiwan should obey the most primal, bare knuckles law of world politics: Self-help.

The Island authorities plainly have long been inching towards full independence from China. This week, President Tsai, marking the 110th anniversary of the declaration of a Republic, inflamed tensions with Beijing by suggesting that Taiwan stood as the first line of defence of democracy against authoritarianism. Her speech was riddled with language implying there are two countries on each side: i.e. in effect, that there are two distinct nations. Was Tsai egged on to use such language?

Rubin’s contention that Taiwan should go nuclear is not without history. In 1975, the CIA reported “Taipei conducts its small nuclear program with a weapon option clearly in mind.” However, Taiwan was not allowed to develop a weapon, and the CIA put a stop to it in 1987, when a defector arrived in the U.S. with proof of the programme.

President Xi however, by contrast, is fully committed to reunifying Taiwan with China. He repeated it forcefully again this week. Beijing suspects Team Biden of pursuing a stealth policy of encouraging Taiwan’s independence by such weasel-worded statements, such as the one by Price, that give the impression of an America that, in the last resort, would back a unilateral act of independence by Taiwan. China’s response is unequivocal: That would mean war.

Yet there is more to it than that. Taiwan is the principal piece on the chessboard, but not the only one. Again, continuity is the key. Incumbents and their programmes wax and wane, but the dynamic pull of continuity can prove nigh impossible to resist .

At the beginning of February – just four weeks after Biden was inaugurated – a Republican senator Dan Sullivan, a member of the Armed Services Committee, took to the floor of the U.S. Senate, in response to the Atlantic Council’s publication of “The Longer Telegram,” a paper by an anonymous former senior government official proposing a new American China strategy. The Senator said of this paper: this is “a great, important development” that the Biden administration “needs to take a hard look at”. He noted that the U.S. has arrived at a historic moment similar to the period after World War II in which it devised its containment strategy toward the Soviet Union.

Senator Sullivan’s reference to that historic Soviet containment strategy, was intended to draw comparison with George Kennan’s historic 1946 “Long Telegram” on a grand U.S. strategy for the Soviet Union. As the anonymous author of January’s Longer Telegram explains:

“Kennan’s famous 1946 “long telegram” from Moscow was primarily an analysis of the inherent structural weaknesses within the Soviet model itself, anchored by its analytical conclusion that the USSR would ultimately collapse under the weight of its own contradictions … The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), however, has been much more dexterous in survival than its Soviet counterpart, aided by the fact that China has studied carefully, over more than a decade, ‘what went wrong’ in the Soviet Union. It would therefore be extremely hazardous … to assume that the Chinese system is destined to inevitably collapse from within — much less to make the overthrow of the Communist Party the U.S. declared objective …T he present challenge will require a qualitatively different and more granular policy response to China than the blunt instrument of ‘containment with Chinese characteristics’ and a dream of CCP collapse”.

Here is a case of continuity hijacked. Yes, Kennan’s analysis was a profound appraisal of how the Soviet Union functioned internally, and from that had flowed a U.S. strategy. And the same needs to be done with China, the author insists. Yet there is in the new Telegram no comparable empathetic understanding of President Xi’s modernisation project, nor the part played by China’s experience of its’ ‘Century of Humiliation’ in the Kanaan mode. Rather, the Longer Telegram stands as a narrative supporting mainstream U.S. interventionism, albeit cloaked in the Kanaan mantle.

The playbook is very familiar (from the Iranian experience): “The political reality is that the CCP is significantly divided on Xi’s leadership and his vast ambitions …”, the author asserts. The author’s key policy take-aways are: to drive a wedge into the CCP leadership; to divide it against itself; to mount a menu of pressure-point issues in order to impose costs on Xi and his allies (Taiwan features prominently at the top of the list); and specifies as the single greatest factor that could contribute to Xi’s fall: Economic failure.

All these identical policies that failed dismally in Iran – they never learn.

What is the point here? It is that following Beijing’s broadside at Ned Price’ statement, Biden’s National Security Adviser, Jake Sullivan, urgently flew to Zurich to meet with Yang Jiechi, a Politburo Member and Director of the Office of the Foreign Affairs Commission. Yang and Sullivan talked for nearly six hours, apparently. It seems they disagreed on all issues. Sullivan reportedly framed the talks as listing several issues of contention (Human Rights, Uyghurs, Hong Kong, Taiwan, the disputed Islands, etc.), which America wishes to pursue with Beijing. Yang, however, flatly refused to discuss any of them, saying they were all domestic issues.

Sullivan then insisted that Climate Change should be compartmentalised from these other points of contention – and treated as a separate area of co-operation. Sullivan also called for open channels of communication by which America’s intense ‘competition’ with China could be ‘managed’ and contained. Still, it seems they disagreed on all issues. The only ‘positive’ to emerge from the meeting was agreement – but only in principle – for there to be a virtual meeting between Biden and Xi before the end of the year.

The point here is that Sullivan’s script seems drawn straight from the Longer Telegramplaybook, whose flaws are very manifest: Firstly, it is rooted in the pure ideology of preserving U.S. supremacy “for the century ahead”; and secondly, it is rooted in fantasy to imagine that the U.S. can successfully change the decision-making of top Chinese officials of whose political culture they have no inkling. This strategy most likely will end in disaster, or even in catastrophic war.

It would be a mistake however to underestimate the Longer Telegram’s appeal. Part of the reason, as Ethan Paul notes, is that “the sharpest minds in Washington have been singularly focused on finding the best ways of maintaining American dominance, assuming it to be synonymous with American interests, and as the only way of organizing the world. Many authors of these arguments—Ely Ratner, Mira Rapp-Hooper, Kelly Magsamen, Melanie Hart, Tarun Chhabra and Lindsey Ford —have secured top jobs in the Biden administration. Together (and with their key theorist, Rush Doshi), they represent a new, rising generation of policymakers who seek to reorient American foreign policy – around competition with China … They will now get their chance to put their ideas to the test”.