By Finian Cunningham
November 18, 2022:
Information Clearing House
-- U.S. President Joe
Biden apparently sought to lower tensions with
China this week when he promised Chinese
counterpart Xi Jinping that Washington was “not
seeking a new Cold War” with Beijing.
The two leaders met on the sidelines of the
G20 summit in Indonesia. It was their first
face-to-face meeting since Biden took office in
January 2021. While Biden was all smiles for a
handshake photo-op, Xi looked noticeably
reserved, like a guy who was bracing himself as
one about to hear loads of bullshit.
After more than three hours of private
discussions, the Americans and Western media
subsequently tried to
spin that both sides had agreed on
condemning Russia’s alleged threat to use
nuclear weapons in Ukraine. This was the
Americans taking license. Xi did not specify
Russia, according to the White House
readout of the meeting. Both leaders
condemned nuclear war and said it should never
be fought, a rebuke which applies as much to the
United States as anyone else. The Western media,
however, tried to spin it as joint condemnation
of Russia.
The Chinese side had quite a different take
on what was conveyed in the meeting. No wonder
that Xi had looked reserved when he greeted
Biden earlier.
President Xi was
quoted as telling Biden: “A statesman should
think about and know where to lead his country.
He should also think about and know how to get
along with other countries and the wider world…
Instead of talking in one way and acting in
another, the United States needs to honor its
commitments with concrete action.”
This was pretty close to the Chinese
president calling out his American counterpart
as a bare-faced liar who can’t be trusted in
what he says.
After all, Biden has continued the policy of
massively arming China’s island province of
Taiwan. That is a direct assault on Beijing’s
sovereignty and China’s territorial integrity as
well as posing a threat to its national security
across the 150-km Taiwan Strait.
This American president has said publicly on
four occasions that the U.S. would defend Taiwan
militarily if the Chinese mainland were to
exercise its legal right to use force for
bringing the island under full administrative
control from Beijing. Those declarations by
Biden violate the legally binding One China
principle recognized by international law as
well as under domestic U.S. laws. At the G20
summit this week, Biden said there was no change
in American policy on Taiwan, despite his
previous flagrant statements to the contrary.
The Biden administration is planning to
station nuclear-capable B-52 bombers in
Australia aimed at provoking China as well as
supplying Canberra with nuclear submarines as
part of a new military coalition in the
Asia-Pacific involving the United Kingdom, known
as AUKUS.
Washington has also stepped up economic
warfare against China with bans on the export of
hi-tech semiconductors vital for Chinese
industry.
The resumption of U.S. war drills off the
Korean Peninsula in recent weeks after a
three-year hiatus has sharply escalated tensions
with between North and South Korea which poses a
destabilizing national security risk for
neighboring China.
So, Biden’s talk of “not seeking a new Cold
War” with China is contemptible in the face of
empirical events and U.S. conduct.
Which brings us to the question: what was
Biden trying to achieve in soft-talking to Xi?
It seems the U.S. president was really
seeking to split China from Russia.
Biden talked about no Cold War with China.
But what about Russia? Seems the United States
is full-on about aggravating Moscow. Can a
presumed superpower be credibly in a Cold War
with one adversary but not with another? That
dichotomy doesn’t sound believable. So, what’s
going on?
It is significant that Putin did not attend
the G20 summit this week. Russian Foreign
Minister Sergei Lavrov was deputized to act as
Russia’s dignitary for the event. Why Putin did
not go to the summit was not clear.
Also significant was a top-level meeting held
in Turkey at the same time between the U.S. and
Russia’s spy chiefs.
William Burns, the CIA director,
met with the head of Russia’s foreign
intelligence Sergei Naryshkin in Ankara. The
meeting was widely reported in the Western media
which is unusual for such back-channel
encounters. The impression is that the Biden
administration wanted this meeting to be widely
reported for the optics and headlines. Western
headlines dutifully reported that Burns
purportedly “warned Russia against using nuclear
weapons in Ukraine”.
The White House’s national security council
emphasized that Burns was not engaged in talks
to end the conflict in Ukraine.
The heavily reported narrative of “warning
Russia against nukes” reinforces the contrived
notion that Russia is a pariah state that is
threatening to use nuclear weapons, whereas it
is Moscow that has repeatedly warned that the
war being fueled in Ukraine by the United States
and its NATO partners could spiral
uncontrollably into a catastrophic
confrontation.
Russia has not threatened to use nuclear
weapons, has not even mentioned the word, and it
has warned of the reckless dangers that the U.S.
and NATO are stoking. If anything, it is the
United States and its partners who are
implicitly threatening the risk of nuclear war.
President Vladimir Putin’s warned in September
that if Russia’s existential security is
threatened by NATO then Moscow reserves “the
right to use all means of defense”. That
reasonable warning has been cynically distorted
to appear like a menacing threat to use nukes by
Russia.
It seems that the Burns trip was aimed at
further demonizing Russia as a nuclear threat to
world security. Meanwhile, Biden was trying to
ingratiate himself with Xi as a way to undermine
the strong friendship that has developed between
Beijing and Moscow, especially under Xi and
Putin’s leadership.
Biden’s bid to appease Xi by saying that
there is no Cold War intended is a blatant lie
that China no doubt can see through as plain as
a glass of urine. Biden and Burns’ clunky double
act is likely to not impress anyone in Beijing
and Moscow.
Finian Cunningham: Former editor and
writer for major news media organizations. He
has written extensively on international
affairs, with articles published in several
languages
Views expressed in this article are
solely those of the author and do not necessarily
reflect the opinions of Information Clearing House.
in this article are
solely those of the author and do not necessarily
reflect the opinions of Information Clearing House.
Reader financed- No
Advertising - No Government Grants -
No Algorithm - This
Is Independent