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While the world teeters on a potential WW III scenario in Ukraine with the Biden Administration as full time participants, the US government and its Congressional Uniparty continue to enflame its pro war passion with reckless talk of US military involvement against two of the most powerful nuclear nations on the planet – both at the same time.
Being deeply embroiled in Ukraine has not stopped those same US decision-makers from unceasingly beating the drums of war against China. With a political establishment legendary for its refusal to accept responsibility for another costly defeat, the truth of Ukraine’s demise has remained concealed from the American public as questions of US military prowess are little more than imagined superiority.
At the same time, the once globally dominant US economy is staring at a potential economic bankruptcy beyond modern experience, threatening to reek unimaginable fiscal pain and suffering throughout every American family in the entire country. Unable to come to terms with their own past tyranny and rather than accept the reality that the US is in an economic war with China, the Biden Administration prefers to spin an economic challenge into a military war since we all know that war is good for business. The 2023 $858 billion National Defense Authorization Act included $10 Billion for security assistance and weapons procurement for Taiwan.
Even as the fight is on in the House to make necessary cuts to the trillion dollar budget, it is the bloated military budget over the last two decades that has brought the country to the brink of bankruptcy. Was it worth twenty years in Afghanistan and inflicting a devastating war on the people of Iraq and Libya because their Presidents dared to suggest moving off the dollar in favor of their own currency. Both Hussein and Gaddafi suffered the same fate.
The fact that the US has “been at peace” for a mere sixteen years out of its two hundred and fifty year history at a cost of $6 trillion since 2001, confirms the US as the “most warlike nation in the history of the world,” according to former President Jimmy Carter. Confirming how the US has found itself insolvent as wars are always budget busters, Carter explained that the US has been intent on forcing American principles on every other country including a US-imposed rules-based order rather than an order based on international law respecting each nation’s sovereignty. It was Carter who articulated the One China Policy concept and provided diplomatic recognition to China in 1979 which is still in effect today acknowledging that the government of the People’s Republic of China as “the sole legal Government of China.” He pointed out that China has not been in military conflict since the Vietnam War and with their ‘peace dividend,’ Carter explained “China has not wasted a single penny on war, and that’s why they’re ahead of us. In almost every way.” In 2017, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson reiterated the One China Policy acknowledging Taiwan as a part of China.
With war hysterics against China on the rise, Col. Douglas MacGregor shared with Tucker that there will be “no war with China unless the US starts it.” MacGregor added that:
“This is the most reckless and irresponsible administration in living memory. We don’t have anyone who qualifies as a Statesman. Statesmanship involves advancing American interests at the least cost to the American people. Beijing will not allow Taiwan to become a garrison state for American armed forces and if they think we are going to intervene to defend that island in event of a dispute, then we will be at war with China. We are not prepared for that; we are now provoking China over an issue that is .. strategically important to them” like the Crimea is to Russia.
While former UN weapons Inspector Scott Ritter makes the point that China is creating a normalization strategy by “ending war once and for all” as the BRICS are exploding with economic growth and innovative technology as it “redefines the world” beginning with the Saudi Arabia – Iran agreement. In addition, Ritter cites that with a population of one billion, China raised 300 million citizens out of poverty as the American middle class is shrinking.
Ritter goes on to suggest that “America is not as strong as you think! A war with China is one the US can’t win!” “The Good news is China does not want a war with America; or Taiwan; they are looking for peaceful resolution. The bad news is America wants a war.”
If Americans are frustrated when they read “Made in China” they can thank the US Congress in the mid-1990’s for enacting NAFTA which shipped millions of American manufacturing jobs overseas with no clue about the economic ramifications. Today there is resentment about the Chinese vast technological widgets they produce but there is no one to blame but Congress. There is an alarming unfamiliarity amongst the pro-war China crowd who are not aware that the CCP were victors of the 1949 Chinese Civil war maintaining possession of mainland China. It was at that point that Taiwan was occupied by Chiang Kai Sheik’s Nationalists at which time the US government began its long history of arms, financial and political support.
Taiwan is an island one hundred miles off the Chinese coast and not a separate ‘break-away’ province although Taiwan developed its own constitution and democratic elections – not unlike how Hawaii is a separate state of the United States yet makes its own laws but remains under the sovereignty of the US. The Chinese Exclusion Act was the one and only time that federal legislation explicitly suspended immigration for a specific nationality – not counting FDR’s internment of Japanese Americans. It was not until the Act was repealed in 1943 which permitted a quota of 105 Chinese immigrants annually to enter the United States.
Today. the American population is being heavily lobbied to believe that Taiwan is essential to US national interest as if distinct from Ukraine which is clearly not in the US interest. The difference is that the US is in an economic war with China while the US is economically and militarily on the ropes. True to America’s concept of being the world’s hegemonic superior, there is an innate resistance to the concept of a planet without internal interference, devoted to prosperity for all nations, expanding trade and economic ties and technological innovation.
Among those efforts to spread WWIII with China includes Steve Bannon provoking the America First base to believe that the “CCP is not the legitimate government of China” or that war with China is imminent or desirable. Do those threatening views of WW III represent President Trump’s current thinking? Is Trump planning to campaign on war with China?
The US response to perceived China aggression has been to send the US Seventh fleet to routinely conduct operations in the South China Sea as if there is no geopolitical limitation to the US Navy flaunting its ownership of the Taiwan Straits. To rely on the amateur Secretary of State Tony Blinken and Pentagon militarists as objective sources about why Taiwan is essential to US national interest is sheer lunacy since the United States and China have no high level diplomatic communication. How is it not confrontational for the US Seventh fleet to dare intrude into Chinese waters?
As denounced by US Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel, former US Representative and Obama White House Chief of Staff has flailed that China’s economic “coercion is important” and that one anonymous source concluded that China’s emerging leadership as “worrisome.” Rep. Michael McCaul, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair while on an Asian junket commented that ‘“Coercion is core to China’s economic model” making ‘coercion’ the new ‘buzz’ word to describe China. McCaul went on to suggest that “We protect Taiwan by arming and training them — and by being prepared to defend them if necessary.”
Accompanying McCaul to Taiwan were Reps. French Hill, R-Ark., Michael Lawler, R-N.Y., Ami Bera, D-Calif., Young Kim, R-Calif., Nathaniel Moran, R-Texas, Guy Reschenthaler, R-Pa., and Madeleine Dean, D-Pa.
As Speaker McCarthy met with President Tsai Ing-wen of Taiwan in California a plane banner flew over head with “One China, Taiwan is part of China”, rather than choosing to make the more objectionable personal trip to Taiwan as former Speaker Nancy Pelosi visit had set off alarm bells in China. A long game player rather than expecting instant gratification, China’s response to McCarthy’s meeting has been more muted as former Taiwan President Ma Ying-Joeh was visiting the Chinese mainland citing “People on both sides of the Taiwan Strait are [ethnically] Chinese people, and are both descendants of the Yan and Yellow Emperors.”
McCarthy was accompanied by uniparty lawmakers on the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party including Chair Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) and ranking Member Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) as well as Reps. Jason Smith (R-Mo.), Chair of the Ways and Means Committee; Julia Brownley (D-Calif.); John Curtis (R-Utah); Carlos Gimenez (R-Fla.); Ashley Hinson (R-Iowa); Trent Kelly (R-Miss.); John Moolenaar (R-Mich.); Seth Moulton (D-Mass.); Adrian Smith (R-Neb.); Michelle Steel (R-Calif.); Haley Stevens (D-Mich.); Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.); Rob Wittman (R-Va.) and Ryan Zinke (R-Mont.) and Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.).
As American neo cons continue to fault any country (especially Russia or China) that dares challenge the US omnipotent status based on its bullying history and wasteful squandering of its own resources, the BRICS (Brazil/Russia/India/China/So. Africa) are in a rapid stage of development as they solidify their base in preparation for a major expansion of multi polar emerging economies including Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt, Argentina and Algeria among others: all are committed to intergovernmental cooperation based on non-interference in internal matters, peace, pursuit of prosperity and security with free exchange of trade as all are dependent on relinquishing the Dollar with formation of a BRICS joint financial infrastructure creating its own separate currency.
Regarded as US allies, both French President Emanuel Macron and Brazilian President Lula, no doubt reading the tea leaves that US hegemony is flagging, both distanced themselves on a recent visit to China. Lula confirmed that he is on board with BRICS and its Shanghai-based New Development Bank to replace the American Dollar as well as China’s efforts to terminate US global dominance suggested that the US “stop encouraging war and start talking about peace.” Brazil also signed up for the CIPS, the Chinese payment settlement system alternative to SWIFT. While Macron said that Europe had “no interest in an acceleration of the crisis in Taiwan and should pursue a strategy of independence.”
In a recent Washington speech, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen accused China of ‘unfair economic” practices suggesting a broad set of tools at US disposal that included heavy-handed sanctions and yet admitted that the use of economic leverage to weaponize US currency could undermine the hegemony of the Dollar. Yellen assured that “we will not compromise on the protection of human rights” which are “foundational to how we engage with the world.”
The US and its militarists remain in denial that it has brought the global reserve currency crisis on itself by cultivating an unrealistic self-aggrandizement of their dominance, and may not yet fully understand that that the war in Ukraine has shaken the world to no longer be willing to accept US hegemony just as a war with China is unthinkable. As the US is coming unglued with little official recognition of the brewing crisis or discussion on a potential response to save the Republic, an impending alternative economic system is threatening the dollar, a flagrant misuse of sanctions against Russia and others as a means of control and suppression has only fueled antagonism to cut ties with the US and encourage de-dollarization.
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Renee Parsons served on the ACLU’s Florida State Board of Directors and as president of the ACLU Treasure Coast Chapter. She has been an elected public official in Colorado, staff in the Office of the Colorado State Public Defender, an environmental lobbyist for Friends of the Earth and a staff member of the US House of Representatives in Washington DC.
She is a regular contributor to Global Research.
