https://www.globalresearch.ca/policing-world-full-time-job/5788642
Policing the World Is a Full-Time Job. Washington is “Addicted to War”
China pushes back against US-led military intervention in Asia
Every leader and top official now in power in the so-called Western World seems to have forgotten that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was founded in 1949 as an alliance that was ostensibly defensive in nature, intended to counter the expansion of Soviet style communism in Europe. That role continued to be the raison d’etre of the organization until communist governments themselves collapsed in both Russia and in the Eastern European states that collectively made up the Warsaw Pact during the 1990s. After that point, NATO no longer had any reason to exist at all as the alleged military threat posed by the Kremlin and its allies vanished virtually overnight.
But clever politicians were quick to put the alliance on life support instead of simply dismantling it. Lacking the threat posed by the Warsaw Pact, NATO was forced to come up with other reasons to maintain military forces at levels that could quickly be enhanced and placed on a wartime footing. Washington and London took the lead in this, citing the now shopworn defense of a “rules based international order” as well as of “democracy” and “freedom.” And fortunately for the national defense industries and the generals, it soon proved possible to find new enemies that provided justification for additional military spending. The first major engagement outside the obligations defined by the original treaty took place in Europe to be sure, but it was in the Balkans where of NATO during the 1995 Operation Deliberate Force. The war ended after the signing of the General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina in Paris on December 14th 1995. Peace negotiations were finalized a week later but fighting resumed between Kosovo and Serbia in the following year, which led to another NATO intervention that eventually ended with the restoration of Kosovo’s autonomy and the deployment of NATO forces, which bombed the Serbs to compel their compliance with a draft cease fire agreement.
NATO also played a role improbably enough in the US invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, which was justified by claiming that an Afghanistan free to set its own course would become a hotbed of terrorism which would inevitably impact on the United States and Europe. It was a paper-thin argument, but it was the best they could come up with at the time and it also eventually involved soldiers from additional friendly countries like Australia. As we have subsequently seen, however, it was all an argument without merit as Afghanistan became a money pit and a graveyard for thousands of locals and foreign soldiers. It is now again in the hands of the Taliban after a bungled withdrawal of US forces and the collapse of the puppet government in Kabul that Washington had installed.
Turn the clock forward to the present. As everyone but President Joe Biden has recognized, the United States and NATO are currently engaged in a proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, which many observers already believe has some of the attributes of World War III. As Russia neither threatened nor attacked any NATO member state, the argument that the response in arming and training Ukraine was defensive was rendered irrelevant. Nor can it be credibly be claimed that Russia is a haven for terrorists, quite the contrary. Nevertheless, Biden has stated that the US will be in the fight on behalf of Ukraine for “as long as it takes.” Does he mean years, and all done without a declaration of war by Congress as required by the US Constitution?
And more appears to be coming. Joe Biden, during last week’s trip to Israel, made clear that the United States is “prepared to use all elements of its national power” to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon and has signed a pledge with the Israeli government to commit itself to do so. If Biden presses the argument that Iran is an international threat due to its impending development of nuclear weapons, will he appeal to NATO to support a joint military option to disarm it? I believe he just might do that. And he might just want to consider how the entire set-up and framing of the issue by Israel is somewhat of a trap. Israel considers Iran’s current nuclear program to be intended to create a weapon, which “they continue to develop,” and there are plenty in the US Congress who would agree with that.
So, if Iran is clearly creating a thermonuclear device, the time to strike is now, isn’t it? And bear in mind how the US/Israeli campaign to condemn is multifaceted. Shortly before the meetings held by Biden and his crew with the Israelis, US government sources set the stage for what was to come by going on the offensive regarding reports that Iran may be selling highly capable offensive drones to Russia for use in Ukraine as well as subsequent claims coming out of Washington that the Iranians are seeking to assassinate senior US officials in revenge for the killing of Revolutionary Guards General Qassem Soleimani in January 2020. One wonders why they waited so long and why the White House has chosen to publicize these stories at this point.
And the US and NATO are also getting involved with China’s geopolitical policies, on a path that Beijing is warning is extremely hypocritical and which might lead to armed conflict. The signs that the Chinese might be targeted by NATO, possibly over the Taiwan independence issue, came following a stark warning by US Secretary of State Tony Blinken delivered at the NATO summit in Madrid at the end of June. Blinken accused China of “seeking to undermine the rules-based international order,” the same type of critique recently leveled against Russia and Iran. Blinken’s comment was elaborated on by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, who observed how “China is substantially building up its military forces, including nuclear weapons, bullying its neighbors, threatening Taiwan … monitoring and controlling its own citizens through advanced technology, and spreading Russian lies and disinformation.”
Stoltenberg’s indictment of China was followed by a NATO issued “strategic concept” document last that declared for the first time that China poses a “systemic challenge” to the alliance, alongside a primary “threat” coming from Russia. The document copied Blinken’s language, citing “The deepening strategic partnership between the People’s Republic of China and the Russian Federation and their mutually reinforcing attempts to undercut the rules-based international order run counter to our values and interests.”
Finally, the US and British governments collaborated to condemn China as the “biggest long-term threat to our economic and national security.” The declaration came in a July 6th joint news conference in London, where Christopher Wray, director of the FBI, and Ken McCallum, director general of Britain’s MI5, accused China, like Russia, of interfering in US and UK elections. Wray also warned the business leaders in the audience that the Chinese government has been “set on stealing your technology, whatever it is that makes your industry tick, and using it to undercut your business and dominate your market.”
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian initially responded a few days after the NATO summit, observing that the “so-called rules-based international order is actually a family rule made by a handful of countries to serve the US self-interest,” adding that “[Washington]observes international rules only as it sees fit.” Addressing the issue of the role of NATO specifically, Zhao accused Blinken of using NATO to “hype up competition with China and stoke group confrontation.” He added that “The history of NATO is one about creating conflicts and waging wars…arbitrarily launching wars and killing innocent civilians, even to this day. Facts have proven that it isn’t China that poses a systemic challenge to NATO, and instead it is NATO that brings a looming systemic challenge to world peace and security. Thirty years after the end of the Cold War, [NATO] has not yet abandoned its thinking and practice of creating ‘enemies’ … It is NATO that is creating problems around the world.”
China has a point. What NATO is threatening is war, as it is a military alliance. The Chinese appear to understand that NATO is the world’s largest military bureaucracy which has developed since 1991 an overriding institutional commitment to ensuring its permanent existence, if not expansion, even after it has clearly outlived its own usefulness. So Beijing might justifiably wonder, how does China – on the other side of the globe – fit into NATO’s historic “defensive” mission? How are Chinese troops or missiles now threatening Europe or the US in ways they weren’t before? How are the Americans and Europeans suddenly under military threat coming from China?
The Chinese appear to understand that if there is no threat to “defend” against, then a threat must be manufactured, and that is precisely what we are seeing vis-à-vis Russia, China, Iran and even Venezuela.
Washington has become addicted to war and NATO is the chosen tool to give those wars the patina of legitimacy. To launch those conflicts requires either inventing an imaginary threat, or, as in the case of Russia, provoking the very threat the “defensive” bureaucracy was designed to deter or thwart. All indications are that NATO – now embracing 30 countries – is doing both and the results could easily be disastrous for all parties involved. Former congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard particularly abhors the cynical recklessness of the Biden Administration driving the process, explaining how “The reality is, President Biden, members of Congress, leaders in our country, the wealthy, they will have a safe place to be in the event of a nuclear war that they are behind causing while the rest of us in America and Russia, people around the world, will be decimated from this event.”
Prize winning journalist Chris Hedges has also defined the unthinkable that is at stake, and it is past time for Americans and Europeans to take note and stop the madness. Hedges opines that “The massive expansion of NATO, not only in Eastern and Central Europe but the Middle East, Latin America, Africa and Asia, presages endless war and a potential nuclear holocaust.” One might also note that New Yorkers are now being informed about what to do if there is a nuclear attack. Yes, that is precisely the problem – we have an administration in Washington that should be protecting the people living in this country, not setting up scenarios that might lead to their slaughter. Will someone please point that out to Joe Biden?
....
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/57151.htm
Nancy Pelosi Taiwan Visit Could Get Us All Killed
The arrogance of power is especially ominous and despicable when a government leader risks huge numbers of lives in order to make a provocative move on the world's geopolitical chessboard. Nancy Pelosi's plan to visit Taiwan is in that category. Thanks to her, the chances of a military confrontation between China and the United States have spiked upward.
Long combustible over Taiwan, the tensions between Beijing and Washington are now close to ablaze, due to Pelosi's desire to be the first House speaker to visit Taiwan in 25 years. Despite the alarms that her travel plans have set off, President Biden has responded timidly—even while much of the establishment wants to see the trip canceled.
"Well, I think that the military thinks it's not a good idea right now," Biden said about the prospective trip on July 20. "But I don't know what the status of it is."
Biden could have put his presidential foot down and ruled out Pelosi's Taiwan trip, but he didn't. Yet, as days went by, news trickled out that opposition to the trip was extensive in the upper reaches of his administration.
"National security adviser Jake Sullivan and other senior National Security Council officials oppose the trip because of the risk of escalating tension across the Taiwan Strait," Financial Times reported. And overseas, "the controversy over the trip has sparked concern among Washington's allies who are worried that it could trigger a crisis between the U.S. and China."
Underscoring that the U.S. commander in chief is anything but an innocent bystander in terms of Pelosi's trip, officials disclosed that the Pentagon intends to provide fighter jets as escorts if she goes through with the Taiwan visit. Biden's unwillingness to clearly head off such a visit reflects the insidious style of his own confrontational approach to China.
More than a year ago—under the apt New York Times headline "Biden's Taiwan Policy Is Truly, Deeply Reckless"—Peter Beinart pointed out that from the outset of his presidency Biden was "chipping away" at the longstanding U.S. "one China" policy: "Biden became the first American president since 1978 to host Taiwan's envoy at his inauguration. In April, his administration announced it was easing decades-old limitations on official U.S. contacts with the Taiwanese government. These policies are increasing the odds of a catastrophic war. The more the United States and Taiwan formally close the door on reunification, the more likely Beijing is to seek reunification by force."
Beinart added: "What's crucial is that the Taiwanese people preserve their individual freedom and the planet does not endure a third world war. The best way for the United States to pursue those goals is by maintaining America's military support for Taiwan while also maintaining the 'one China' framework that for more than four decades has helped keep the peace in one of the most dangerous places on earth."
Now, Pelosi's move toward a visit to Taiwan has amounted to further intentional erosion of the "one China" policy. Biden's mealy-mouthed response to that move was a subtler type of brinkmanship.
Many mainline commentators, while very critical of China, acknowledge the hazardous trend. "The Biden administration remains committed to being more hawkish on China than its predecessor," conservative historian Niall Ferguson wrote on Friday. He added: "Presumably, the calculation in the White House remains, as in the 2020 election, that being tough on China is a vote-winner—or, to put it differently, that doing anything the Republicans can portray as 'weak on China' is a vote-loser. Yet it is hard to believe that this calculation would hold if the result were a new international crisis, with all its potential economic consequences."
Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal summed up the current precarious moment with a headline declaring that Pelosi's visit "would likely sink tentative rapprochement between U.S., China."
But the consequences—far from being only economic and diplomatic—could be existential for all of humanity. China has several hundred nuclear weapons ready to use, while the United States has several thousand. The potential for military conflict and escalation is all too real.
"We keep claiming our 'one China' policy hasn't changed, but a Pelosi visit would clearly be precedent setting and can't be construed as in keeping with 'unofficial relations,'" said Susan Thornton, a former acting assistant secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs at the State Department. Thornton added: "If she goes, the prospect of a crisis goes way up as China will need to respond."
Last week, a pair of mainstream policy analysts from elite think tanks—the German Marshall Fund and the American Enterprise Institute—wrote in the New York Times: "A single spark could ignite this combustible situation into a crisis that escalates to military conflict. Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taiwan could provide it."
But July ended with strong indications that Biden has given a green light and Pelosi still intends to go ahead with an imminent visit to Taiwan. This is the kind of leadership that can get us all killed.
....
https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2022/08/02/the-anti-china-brainwashing-is-working-notes-from-the-edge-of-the-narrative-matrix/
The Anti-China Brainwashing Is Working: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix
If someone criticizing the most dangerous agendas of the most powerful and destructive government on earth looks like “Russian propaganda” or “Chinese propaganda” to you, it’s because you yourself have been brainwashed by propaganda.
❖
The western propaganda campaign against China is succeeding, even among many who consider themselves anti-war or critical of establishment power. Whatever sick future agendas they’re manufacturing consent for, they’ll be able to roll right on out. People’s brains are turning to soup.
❖
The best case scenario for Nancy Pelosi’s Taiwan visit — the absolute best case — is that it ratchets up cold war tensions with China that threaten us all and benefit ordinary people in no way. The worst case scenario is as bad as anything you can possibly imagine.
So why are we being told that it’s still happening? Well, as Antiwar’s Dave DeCamp reminded us a few months ago, one major factor is that it facilitates US military expansionism geared toward encirclement strategies against China.
“The United States no longer sees Taiwan as a ‘problem’ in our relations with China, we see it as an opportunity to advance our shared vision for a free and open Indo-Pacific,” Raymond Greene, the deputy director of the de facto US embassy in Taipei, said last year.
❖
Imagine if the Democratic Party fought against Republicans as hard as they fight against world peace.
❖
“A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit.”
~ Ancient Greek proverb
“A society grows radioactive when old women try to start World War Three on a planet they know they won’t have to live on.”
~ New Australian proverb
❖
Taiwan is a US military asset, not a US ally. That’s a very significant difference that everyone, especially the Taiwanese, would do well to keep in mind.
❖
Empire simps like to say that Taiwan being governed by Beijing would cut the world off from microchips.
Right, sure, because if there’s one thing we know about China, it’s that it never sells anything to other countries.
❖
To be clear I don’t actually care whether Beijing has a legitimate claim to Taiwan. Do not give a fuck. To me that’s just empty narrative fluff. My sole concern is that we appear to be sliding toward a massive conflict that will hurt everyone and may end up getting us all killed.
❖
It’s a safe bet that a minority of Americans could find Taiwan on a map, and that of these the overwhelming majority believe it’s just some island nation that China randomly decided it hates.
❖
The US has no business talking about another nation potentially seizing an island territory by force. This by itself doesn’t validate Beijing’s claims to Taiwan, it just means the US is the very last nation on earth who has any business talking about it.
The US colonized Hawaii. Just took it, and now they say it’s theirs. Now imagine if Hawaii was 25 times closer to the continental United States, and if Hawaii had been American for centuries, and if the Confederates had taken Hawaii after the Civil War, and if the Civil War was much more recent and also was still unresolved. That’s how much the US needs to shut the fuck up about Taiwan.
❖
The single dumbest theory in right wing conspiracy circles today is that Pelosi and “the CCP” are secretly conspiring to help China by inflaming tensions over Taiwan. Rightists cannot accept that they simply have the same position on China as Democrats.
Rightists suck at conspiracy analysis in general, but when it comes to China their brains turn into pure shaving foam. Just complete slobbering idiots. China is not being helped by more US war machinery being moved to its surrounding waters you absolute morons.
❖
There needs to be a major war every generation or two, otherwise peace becomes normalized and becomes the expectation. If you allow that to happen then war begins to stand out against expected norms like the freakish abomination that it is, and militarism looks insane.
They use propaganda to facilitate war, but they also use war to facilitate propaganda. Keeping the wars going helps the propaganda machine spin war as something normal and expected and to be continuously prepared for. It acts as an immunosuppressant against the public’s natural, healthy rejection of war. The more normalized war becomes, the more suppressed our collective immune system’s rejection of it becomes.
War is the absolute worst thing in the world. It’s the most insane thing humans do. The most destructive. The least sustainable. The most conducive to human suffering. Only by very aggressive narrative management can the public be dissuaded from insisting on peace.
Eliminating “Vietnam syndrome” (American reluctance to engage in wars after Vietnam) wasn’t just an effect of the Gulf War, it was a major reason for it. I remember when Bush Sr started bombing Baghdad during the Gulf War and my dad held his head in his hands in shock. He kept saying, “This is an invasion!” They insisted it wasn’t. Now they don’t even mind you using that word, because we are so inured to it.
My dad is a Boomer who missed conscription to Vietnam by one day. He rightly perceived war as an unnatural horror to be avoided except in the most dire of necessities. That healthy response is what they’re continuously working to suppress in us with all the perception management.
❖
Westerners are only encouraged to contemplate the horrors of war when it is someone else’s war.
No comments:
Post a Comment