August 09, 2022:
Information Clearing House
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A good friend of
mine, learning of the impending visit of
Speaker of the House of Representatives
Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan, recalled Homer’s
description of Helen of Troy, “The face that
launched a thousand ships and burnt the
towers of Ilium.” Well, Nancy ain’t no Helen
of Troy, but she might nevertheless be in
the business of launching warships and
burning cities due to her bizarre
interpretation of her foreign policy
prerogatives as Speaker.
It is like watching a
train wreck developing in slow motion.
Witnessing the highly dangerous behavior of
the Biden Administration and its acolytes in
power like Pelosi, one feels compelled to
ask whether the White House and Congress are
now setting the stage for the elevation of
China to the status of foreign enemy number
one? Indeed, if one has been hanging around
Washington for the past twenty-five years or
so, it was hard to miss the often-surfaced
bipartisan contention that China is
America’s major over-the-horizon adversary,
or even enemy, with its growing economy, its
successful geopolitics, and its huge
industrious population. I can still recall
my shock at hearing Democratic Senator Jim
Webb, an honorable and highly intelligent
Iraq War critic, telling a conservative
gathering in 2015 that the real future
threat to the United States would be coming
from China.
Fear of China,
sometimes dubbed in racist language as the
“Yellow Peril,” has a long tradition in the
United States and in Europe. In the current
context, the US government is certainly
apprehensive about where the increasing
rapprochement between China and Russia is
going, summed up by Secretary of State Tony
Blinken as “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.”
Ironically enough, that development stems
from the inept US diplomacy exemplified by
Blinken’s tunnel vision that most recently
allowed a negotiable crisis to develop into
a full-fledged war over Ukraine.
But a much more
significant development stems from the
Chinese success when playing at what might
be called the global geostrategy game. The
Chinese Silk Road project threatens to
create a new economic reality for Eurasia,
squeezing the US out and creating unique
networks for marketing, transportation, and
the contractual exploitation of third world
natural resources. Again ironically, the US
was once upon a time the master at creating
such networks to benefit the American
economy and workers, but unmanageable debt
plus inflation combined with outsourcing and
lack of any industrial policy means that
that advantage has largely vanished. To put
it bluntly, China has outcompeted the United
States, and whether that constitutes a
threat depends on which side of the fence
one is standing on.
NATO alliance
Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, is also
part of the gamesmanship, observing 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 and Blinken’s indictment of
China was followed by a NATO issued
“strategic concept”
document that declared for the first
time that China poses a “systemic challenge”
to the alliance and declarations by the
heads of the CIA and MI6 that China
constitutes the “biggest long-term threat to
our economic and national security.”
One would not expect
China to be silent when confronted by the
threats from the West and, indeed, Beijing
has made clear that that Washington is
“playing with fire” and that there would be
“consequences.” Chinese Foreign Ministry
spokesman Zhao Lijian observed 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.”
It would be correct
to describe the US-China relationship as
currently occupying a low point. The result
has been to create an international crisis
where there was none to start with, and it
goes on. There have been
two more interesting developments in the
US versus China saga in the past two weeks.
First came a video-link two hour and
seventeen minute “summit” between US
President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi
Jinping. Biden’s
declared mission was to address those
issues that impeded a more manageable
relationship between the two countries, or
at least that is how it was described.
The issues discussed
by Biden and Xi
included not taking any steps that would
challenge the status quo re Taiwan
as well as Chinese territorial claims in the
South China Sea which the US maintains have
inhibited “freedom of the seas” for foreign
vessels transiting the area. China has
responded that it is only exercising its
sovereignty and stresses that its
international presence is largely derived
from its perfectly legal commercial and
business activity. Other issues under
discussion included what to do about climate
change and the evolving situation in
Ukraine. The possibility of rolling back
some tariffs imposed by Donald Trump
apparently was not discussed.
More provocative by far than the Biden
phone call, which at least was ostensibly
intended to mend fences, is the decision by
Nancy Pelosi to make
an August trip to Taiwan, which has now
been completed. It was the first visit by an
American official at that level since 1997
and it sought to confirm the US total
commitment to defend the Taiwanese if China
were to seek to establish full control of
the Island. The proposed visit had been
linked to moves by Secretary of Defense
Lloyd Austin, who shifted US military
resources in the Far East to provide
possible protection for Pelosi’s travel on a
US Air Force plane if the Chinese were to
attempt to block her by declaring a no-fly
zone over the island. Austin ordered the
Commander of US Forces in the Indo-Pacific
region (aka INDOPACCOM) to send the
Ronald Reagan Carrier Strike Group into the
South China Sea as a “show of force,”
which was construed as a deliberate
demonstration to the Chinese that they have
no actual sovereignty over Taiwan.
In the event, China
responded to the Pelosi visit with a live
fire military exercise in the air space and
in the waters around Taiwan and whatever
takes place next will have to be dealt with
by the Taiwanese. The Pentagon is reportedly
preparing “options” if China actually does
choose to invade. But nevertheless, the
visit, which cost the US taxpayer $90
million, was clearly intended to send
certain signals to Beijing and those signals
were not only not friendly but even
threatening.
Pelosi assured Taiwan’s president, Tsai
Ing-wen, that there would be US support
despite threats from China, saying “Today
the world faces a choice between democracy
and autocracy. America’s determination to
preserve democracy here in Taiwan and around
the world remains ironclad.” Sounds
familiar, doesn’t it? It is also language
that is largely intended to appeal to the
domestic audience in the US with midterm
elections coming up in November. It always
is popular to take cheap shots at Russia,
Iran or China.
Interestingly,
President Joe Biden, apparently supported
privately by Austin, actually opposed the
Speaker’s trip as it reportedly could
disrupt his intention to actually meet Xi
face-to-face at some point in the future.
Pelosi, who lacks having any actual
constitutional foreign policy role apart
from approving budgets, has provided
ammunition for those among the Chinese
leadership who have come to believe that the
United States cannot be trusted to honor any
agreement made with a foreign government.
The Speaker clearly had not heard about or
understand the “One China Policy” and the
“strategic ambiguity” that governs the
relationship between China and the US over
Taiwan to avoid any military escalation
regarding that issue. Joe Biden, admittedly,
has also muddied the waters by declaring
three times that the US might have to use
force
to defend Taiwan if it is attacked as
Ukraine was, even though he and his aides
later insisted that he was not changing
policy. The US, for its part, actually
concedes the island is part of China, though
“strategic ambiguity” has meant that Beijing
has not yet sought to assert direct
political control over it. Given that status
and the threatening moves by Austin to
protect Pelosi’s trip, one might imagine
what the American reaction would be if China
were openly making plans to fly its fighter
jets into US airspace in order to forcibly
land a senior Chinese official without an
invitation from the State Department.
As always, there have
been other possible developments, including
reports that the US-funded National
Endowment for Democracy (NED) is active in
currently unstable Myanmar (Burma),
fomenting trouble to distract China in its
own backyard. NED is notorious for its role
in regime change operations that were once
the responsibility of the CIA, including the
2014 Maidan revolt in Ukraine. China is
surely aware of the American involvement in
regional meddling. Pushing from the other
direction, North Korea
is threatening to use nuclear weapons if
it is attacked by the US and South Korea,
which will inevitably involve China.
Pyongyang was
responding to reports that Seoul and
Washington are planning war games that will
include a “decapitation exercise” simulating
the assassination of North Korea’s leader
Kim Jong Un.
On balance, the
United States has little to gain and much to
lose by ratcheting up the pressure on China
and its leadership in an attempt to create
the “Pearl Harbor Moment” so much desired by
the neocons and the hardliners in
government. On the contrary, Nancy Pelosi
should have stayed home and the White House
should be working even harder to identify
and pursue those opportunities for
cooperation between the two countries. The
ongoing bipartisan framing of China as an
enemy of both the United States and of NATO
is not the way to go, as it will literally
force the Chinese to respond in kind. If one
considers what is going on with Russia in
terms of disruption of international trade,
just imagine what would happen if the
world’s biggest economy in China were to
begin its own round of sanctions and
selective withholding of manufactured goods.
And then there is the risk of igniting yet
another needless war, one that also comes
with nuclear weapons as a last resort if
either side were to perceive that it was
“losing.” It is just not worth it, is it?
But then again, it never is.
Philip M. Giraldi,
Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council
for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax
deductible educational foundation (Federal
ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more
interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the
Middle East. Website is
councilforthenationalinterest.org,
address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA
20134 and its email is
inform@cnionline.org.