US COLD WAR AGAINST CHINA ANTHOLOGY #5

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CONTENTS: CHINA NEWSLETTER #5

Threatened War, NEW COLD WAR

Political Conflict

Economic

Technological

Psychological

Media

Peaceful Alternatives

TEXTS

NEW COLD WAR

THREATENED ARMED FORCE

On the Brink in 2026 – Michael Klare in TomDispatch

Michael Klare’s serious warning of a U.S. war on China, with a compelling introduction by Tom Engelgardt (as he is wont to do).

TOMGRAM

Michael Klare, An All-American Path to War?  POSTED ON JULY 13, 2021

The single scariest night of my life may have been on October 22, 1962, when I thought that all the duck-and-cover moments of my childhood were coming home to roost. President John F. Kennedy appeared on national television (and radio) to warn us all to duck and cover. The Soviet Union, it seemed, had managed to emplace medium-range nuclear missiles in Cuba that could reach major East coast cities. He was ordering a naval “quarantine” of the island.  As he put it, “We will not prematurely or unnecessarily risk the costs of worldwide nuclear war in which even the fruits of victory would be ashes in our mouth, but neither will we shrink from the risk at any time it must be faced.”

That was the beginning of what came to be known as the Cuban Missile Crisis.  Of course, I’m here today, so neither New Haven, where I was then a freshman in college, nor New York, where I grew up, had its Hiroshima moment, nor did anyplace else in the U.S., Russia, or Cuba.  Still, it felt too close for comfort.

Despite all the years of the Cold War still to come, I never again felt that unforgettable sense that a nuclear war might break out.  But never say never, not on a planet filled with such weaponry, not when its two major powers, the U.S. and China, are increasingly facing off, particularly over the island of Taiwan.

Last month, for instance, Admiral Sam Paparo, commander of the U.S. Pacific fleet, called China a “pacing threat,” explaining that “I worry about China’s intentions. It doesn’t make a difference to me whether it is tomorrow, next year, or whether it is in six years. At Pacific Fleet and Indo-Pacific Command we have a duty to be ready to respond to threats to U.S. security.” And that “duty,” he added, includes delivering a fleet “capable of thwarting any effort on the part of the Chinese to upend that [world] order, to include the unification by force of Taiwan to the People’s Republic of China.”

Meanwhile, in Army circles, there is increasing discussion of the possibility of stationing a U.S. armored brigade combat team as a “tripwire force” on that very island. That way, should Beijing decide to invade, it would face U.S. troops from second one.  And just as such thinking was emerging in military circles here, a Chinese publication put out a “detailed outline of a three-stage surprise attack which could pave the way for an assault landing on Taiwan.” All of this, of course, was happening as the Biden administration ramps up its distinctly anti-China-focused foreign policy.

So, welcome to the world TomDispatch regular Michael Klare, founder of the Committee for a Sane U.S.-China Policy, considers as he peers into a future in which the Chinese Missile Crisis of 2024 or 2026 is anything but beyond imagining. Tom

On the Brink in 2026

U.S.-China Near-War Status Report

BY MICHAEL KLARE

It’s the summer of 2026, five years after the Biden administration identified the People’s Republic of China as the principal threat to U.S. security and Congress passed a raft of laws mandating a society-wide mobilization to ensure permanent U.S. domination of the Asia-Pacific region. Although major armed conflict between the United States and China has not yet broken out, numerous crises have erupted in the western Pacific and the two countries are constantly poised for war. International diplomacy has largely broken down, with talks over climate change, pandemic relief, and nuclear nonproliferation at a standstill. For most security analysts, it’s not a matter of if a U.S.-China war will erupt, but when.

Does this sound fanciful? Not if you read the statements coming out of the Department of Defense (DoD) and the upper ranks of Congress these days.

“China poses the greatest long-term challenge to the United States and strengthening deterrence against China will require DoD to work in concert with other instruments of national power,” the Pentagon’s 2022 Defense Budget Overview asserts. “A combat-credible Joint Force will underpin a whole-of-nation approach to competition and ensure the Nation leads from a position of strength.”   

On this basis, the Pentagon requested $715 billion in military expenditures for 2022, with a significant chunk of those funds to be spent on the procurement of advanced ships, planes, and missiles intended for a potential all-out, “high-intensity” war with China. An extra $38 billion was sought for the design and production of nuclear weapons, another key aspect of the drive to overpower China.

Democrats and Republicans in Congress, contending that even such sums were insufficient to ensure continued U.S. superiority vis-à-vis that country, are pressing for further increases in the 2022 Pentagon budget. Many have also endorsed the EAGLE Act, short for Ensuring American Global Leadership and Engagement — a measure intended to provide hundreds of billions of dollars for increased military aid to America’s Asian allies and for research on advanced technologies deemed essential for any future high-tech arms race with China.

Imagine, then, that such trends only gain momentum over the next five years. What will this country be like in 2026? What can we expect from an intensifying new Cold War with China that, by then, could be on the verge of turning hot?

Taiwan 2026: Perpetually on the Brink

Crises over Taiwan have erupted on a periodic basis since the start of the decade, but now, in 2026, they seem to be occurring every other week. With Chinese bombers and warships constantly probing Taiwan’s outer defenses and U.S. naval vessels regularly maneuvering close to their Chinese counterparts in waters near the island, the two sides never seem far from a shooting incident that would have instantaneous escalatory implications. So far, no lives have been lost, but planes and ships from both sides have narrowly missed colliding again and again. On each occasion, forces on both sides have been placed on high alert, causing jitters around the world.

The tensions over that island have largely stemmed from incremental efforts by Taiwanese leaders, mostly officials of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), to move their country from autonomous status as part of China to full independence. Such a move is bound to provoke a harsh, possibly military response from Beijing, which considers the island a renegade province.  Buy the Book

The island’s status has plagued U.S.-China relations for decades. When, on January 1, 1979, Washington first recognized the People’s Republic of China, it agreed to withdraw diplomatic recognition from the Taiwanese government and cease formal relations with its officials. Under the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979, however, U.S. officials were obligated to conduct informal relations with Taipei. The act stipulated as well that any move by Beijing to alter Taiwan’s status by force would be considered “a threat to the peace and security of the Western Pacific area and of grave concern to the United States” — a stance known as “strategic ambiguity,” as it neither guaranteed American intervention, nor ruled it out.

In the ensuing decades, the U.S. sought to avoid conflict in the region by persuading Taipei not to make any overt moves toward independence and by minimizing its ties to the island, thereby discouraging aggressive moves by China. By 2021, however, the situation had been remarkably transformed. Once under the exclusive control of the Nationalist Party that had been defeated by communist forces on the Chinese mainland in 1949, Taiwan became a multiparty democracy in 1987. It has since witnessed the steady rise of pro-independence forces, led by the DPP. At first, the mainland regime sought to woo the Taiwanese with abundant trade and tourism opportunities, but the excessive authoritarianism of its Communist Party alienated many island residents — especially younger ones — only adding momentum to the drive for independence. This, in turn, has prompted Beijing to switch tactics from courtship to coercion by constantly sending its combat planes and ships into Taiwanese air and sea space.

Trump administration officials, less concerned about alienating Beijing than their predecessors, sought to bolster ties with the Taiwanese government in a series of gestures that Beijing found threatening and that were only expanded in the early months of the Biden administration. At that time, growing hostility to China led many in Washington to call for an end to “strategic ambiguity” and the adoption of an unequivocal pledge to defend Taiwan if it were to come under attack from the mainland.

“I think the time has come to be clear,” Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas declared in February 2021. “Replace strategic ambiguity with strategic clarity that the United States will come to the aid of Taiwan if China was to forcefully invade Taiwan.”

The Biden administration was initially reluctant to adopt such an inflammatory stance, since it meant that any conflict between China and Taiwan would automatically become a U.S.-China war with nuclear ramifications. In April 2022, however, under intense congressional pressure, the Biden administration formally abandoned “strategic ambiguity” and vowed that a Chinese invasion of Taiwan would prompt an immediate American military response. “We will never allow Taiwan to be subjugated by military force,” President Biden declared at that time, a striking change in a longstanding American strategic position.

The DoD would soon announce the deployment of a permanent naval squadron to the waters surrounding Taiwan, including an aircraft carrier and a supporting flotilla of cruisers, destroyers, and submarines. Ely Ratner, President Biden’s top envoy for the Asia-Pacific region, first outlined plans for such a force in June 2021 during testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee. A permanent U.S. presence, he suggested, would serve to “deter, and, if necessary, deny a fait accompli scenario” in which Chinese forces quickly attempted to overwhelm Taiwan. Although described as tentative then, it would, in fact, become formal policy following President Biden’s April 2022 declaration on Taiwan and a brief exchange of warning shots between a Chinese destroyer and a U.S. cruiser just south of the Taiwan Strait.

Today, in 2026, with a U.S. naval squadron constantly sailing in waters near Taiwan and Chinese ships and planes constantly menacing the island’s outer defenses, a potential Sino-American military clash never seems far off. Should that occur, what would happen is impossible to predict, but most analysts now assume that both sides would immediately fire their advanced missiles — many of them hypersonic (that is, exceeding five times the speed of sound) — at their opponent’s key bases and facilities. This, in turn, would provoke further rounds of air and missile strikes, probably involving attacks on Chinese and Taiwanese cities as well as U.S. bases in Japan, Okinawa, South Korea, and Guam. Whether such a conflict could be contained at the non-nuclear level remains anyone’s guess.

The Incremental Draft

In the meantime, planning for a U.S.-China war-to-come has dramatically reshaped American society and institutions.  The “Forever Wars” of the first two decades of the twenty-first century had been fought entirely by an All-Volunteer Force (AVF) that typically endured multiple tours of duty, in particular in Iraq and Afghanistan. The U.S. was able to sustain such combat operations (while continuing to maintain a substantial troop presence in Europe, Japan, and South Korea) with 1.4 million servicemembers because American forces enjoyed uncontested control of the airspace over its war zones, while China and Russia remained wary of engaging U.S. forces in their own neighborhoods.

Today, in 2026, however, the picture looks radically different: China, with an active combat force of two million soldiers, and Russia, with another million — both militaries equipped with advanced weaponry not widely available to them in the early years of the century — pose a far more formidable threat to U.S. forces. An AVF no longer looks particularly viable, so plans for its replacement with various forms of conscription are already being put into place.

Bear in mind, however, that in a future war with China and/or Russia, the Pentagon doesn’t envision large-scale ground battles reminiscent of World War II or the Iraq invasion of 2003. Instead, it expects a series of high-tech battles involving large numbers of ships, planes, and missiles. This, in turn, limits the need for vast conglomerations of ground troops, or “grunts,” as they were once labeled, but increases the need for sailors, pilots, missile launchers, and the kinds of technicians who can keep so many high-tech systems at top operational capacity.

As early as October 2020, during the final months of the Trump administration, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper was already calling for a doubling of the size of the U.S. naval fleet, from approximately 250 to 500 combat vessels, to meet the rising threat from China. Clearly, however, there would be no way for a force geared to a 250-ship navy to sustain one double that size. Even if some of the additional ships were “uncrewed,” or robotic, the Navy would still have to recruit several hundred thousand more sailors and technicians to supplement the 330,000 then in the force. Much the same could be said of the U.S. Air Force.

No surprise, then, that an incremental restoration of the draft, abandoned in 1973 as the Vietnam War was drawing to a close, has taken place in these years. In 2022, Congress passed the National Service Reconstitution Act (NSRA), which requires all men and women aged 18 to 25 to register with newly reconstituted National Service Centers and to provide them with information on their residence, employment status, and educational background — information they are required to update on an annual basis. In 2023, the NSRA was amended to require registrants to complete an additional questionnaire on their technical, computer, and language skills. Since 2024, all men and women enrolled in computer science and related programs at federally aided colleges and universities have been required to enroll in the National Digital Reserve Corps (NDRC) and spend their summers working on defense-related programs at selected military installations and headquarters. Members of that Digital Corps must also be available on short notice for deployment to such facilities, should a conflict of any sort threaten to break out.

The establishment of just such a corps, it should be noted, had been a recommendation of the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence, a federal agency established in 2019 to advise Congress and the White House on how to prepare the nation for a high-tech arms race with China. “We must win the AI competition that is intensifying strategic competition with China,” the commission avowed in March 2021, given that “the human talent deficit is the government’s most conspicuous AI deficit.” To overcome it, the commission suggested then, “We should establish a… civilian National Reserve to grow tech talent with the same seriousness of purpose that we grow military officers. The digital age demands a digital corps.”

Indeed, only five years later, with the prospect of a U.S.-China conflict so obviously on the agenda, Congress is considering a host of bills aimed at supplementing the Digital Corps with other mandatory service requirements for men and women with technical skills, or simply for the reinstatement of conscription altogether and the full-scale mobilization of the nation. Needless to say, protests against such measures have been erupting at many colleges and universities, but with the mood of the country becoming increasingly bellicose, there has been little support for them among the general public. Clearly, the “volunteer” military is about to become an artifact of a previous epoch.

A New Cold War Culture of Repression

With the White House, Congress, and the Pentagon obsessively focused on preparations for what’s increasingly seen as an inevitable war with China, it’s hardly surprising that civil society in 2026 has similarly been swept up in an increasingly militaristic anti-China spirit. Popular culture is now saturated with nationalistic and jingoistic memes, regularly portraying China and the Chinese leadership in derogatory, often racist terms. Domestic manufacturers hype “Made in America” labels (even if they’re often inaccurate) and firms that once traded extensively with China loudly proclaim their withdrawal from that market, while the streaming superhero movie of the moment, The Beijing Conspiracy, on a foiled Chinese plot to disable the entire U.S. electrical grid, is the leading candidate for the best film Oscar.

Domestically, by far the most conspicuous and pernicious result of all this has been a sharp rise in hate crimes against Asian Americans, especially those assumed to be Chinese, whatever their origin. This disturbing phenomenon, which began at the outset of the Covid crisis, when President Trump, in a transparent effort to deflect blame for his mishandling of the pandemic, started using terms like “Chinese Virus” and “Kung Flu” to describe the disease. Attacks on Asian Americans rose precipitously then and continued to climb after Joe Biden took office and began vilifying Beijing for its human rights abuses in Xinjiang and Hong Kong. According to the watchdog group Stop AAPI Hate, some 6,600 anti-Asian incidents were reported in the U.S. between March 2020 and March 2021, with almost 40% of those events occurring in February and March 2021.

For observers of such incidents back then, the connection between anti-China policymaking at the national level and anti-Asian violence at the neighborhood level was incontrovertible. “When America China-bashes, then Chinese get bashed, and so do those who ‘look Chinese,’” said Russell Jeung, a professor of Asian American Studies at San Francisco State University at that time. “American foreign policy in Asia is American domestic policy for Asians.”

By 2026, most Chinatowns in America have been boarded up and those that remain open are heavily guarded by armed police. Most stores owned by Asian Americans (of whatever background) were long ago closed due to boycotts and vandalism, and Asian Americans think twice before leaving their homes. 

The hostility and distrust exhibited toward Asian Americans at the neighborhood level has been replicated at the workplace and on university campuses, where Chinese Americans and Chinese-born citizens are now prohibited from working at laboratories in any technical field with military applications. Meanwhile, scholars of any background working on China-related topics are subject to close scrutiny by their employers and government officials. Anyone expressing positive comments about China or its government is routinely subjected to harassment, at best, or at worst, dismissal and FBI investigation.

As with the incremental draft, such increasingly restrictive measures were first adopted in a series of laws in 2022. But the foundation for much of this was the United States Innovation and Competition Act of 2021, passed by the Senate in June of that year. Among other provisions, it barred federal funding to any college or university that hosted a Confucius Institute, a Chinese government program to promote that country’s language and culture in foreign countries. It also empowered federal agencies to coordinate with university officials to “promote protection of controlled information as appropriate and strengthen defense against foreign intelligence services,” especially Chinese ones.

Diverging From the Path of War

Yes, in reality, we’re still in 2021, even if the Biden administration regularly cites China as our greatest threat. Naval incidents with that country’s vessels in the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait are indeed on the rise, as are anti-Asian-American sentiments domestically. Meanwhile, as the planet’s two greatest greenhouse-gas emitters squabble, our world is growing hotter by the year.

Without question, something like the developments described above (and possibly far worse) will lie in our future unless action is taken to alter the path we’re now on. All of those “2026” developments, after all, are rooted in trends and actions already under way that only appear to be gathering momentum at this moment. Bills like the Innovation and Competition Act enjoy near unanimous support among Democrats and Republicans, while strong majorities in both parties favor increased funding of Pentagon spending on China-oriented weaponry. With few exceptions — Senator Bernie Sanders among them — no one in the upper ranks of government is saying: Slow down. Don’t launch another Cold War that could easily go hot.

“It is distressing and dangerous,” as Sanders wrote recently in Foreign Affairs, “that a fast-growing consensus is emerging in Washington that views the U.S.-Chinese relationship as a zero-sum economic and military struggle.” At a time when this planet faces ever more severe challenges from climate change, pandemics, and economic inequality, he added that “the prevalence of this view will create a political environment in which the cooperation that the world desperately needs will be increasingly difficult to achieve.”

In other words, we Americans face an existential choice: Do we stand aside and allow the “fast-growing consensus” Sanders speaks of to shape national policy, while abandoning any hope of genuine progress on climate change or those other perils? Alternately, do we begin trying to exert pressure on Washington to adopt a more balanced relationship with China, one that would place at least as much emphasis on cooperation as on confrontation? If we fail at this, be prepared in 2026 or soon thereafter for the imminent onset of a catastrophic (possibly even nuclear) U.S.-China war.

Copyright 2021 Michael T. Klare

Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Books, John Feffer’s new dystopian novel, Songlands (the final one in his Splinterlands series), Beverly Gologorsky’s novel Every Body Has a Story, and Tom Engelhardt’s A Nation Unmade by War, as well as Alfred McCoy’s In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power and John Dower’s The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World War II.

Michael T. Klare, a TomDispatch regular, is the five-college professor emeritus of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College and a senior visiting fellow at the Arms Control Association. He is the author of 15 books, the latest of which is All Hell Breaking Loose: The Pentagon’s Perspective on Climate Change. He is a founder of the Committee for a Sane U.S.-China Policy.

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THREATENED HOT WAR

Viral meme says United States has Invaded 22 countries in the past 20 years; In fact, there are only three countries in the world America hasn’t invaded or have never seen a U.S. military presence: Andorra, Bhutan, and Liechtenstein. According to Kelly and Laycock’s book, the United States has invaded or fought in 84 of the 193 countries recognized by the United Nations and has been militarily involved with 191 of 193 – a staggering 98 percent—-Nation of Change.  CASA CRY, NEWSLETTER OF CASA MARIA CATHOLIC WORKER (5-5-21).

How a Cold War turns hot (hint: you add billions in weapons)

Dick — last week the guided-missile destroyer USS Curtis Wilbur steamed straight towards disputed islands in the South China Sea. Chinese planes and warships were scrambled. Each side accused the other of violations.

The brinkmanship was predictable and intentional: the ship set sail just hours after President Biden specifically laid into China in a speech.

As 20 years of endless, global war rightly falls out of political favor, a growing new Cold War mentality is taking hold that paints China as an ‘existential threat’ requiring — surprise surprise — an aggressive military response, more Pentagon spending, and crackdowns on civil liberties.

It’s dangerous, self-serving, and feeds into racist anti-Asian xenophobia that is already driving horrific murders and attacks — and the Senate is set to make things worse.

The Senate is currently debating the ‘Strategic Competition Act’ — a bill laden with anti-China framing and policies that are certain to entrench this new Cold War even further. That’s why our team is working closely with allies in the House, organizations across the country, and in the media, to push back aggressively. And we need your support.

Can you donate $15 to help Win Without War stop a new Cold War?

It’s a classic case of a solution in search of a problem. The same D.C. establishment (aka the “Blob”) that spent years of media commentary and countless think-tank hours to propagate decades of endless war have picked their new ‘boogeyman.’

It’s working. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have latched onto conflict with China as a way of projecting false bipartisan unity and now, the defense industry and their Pentagon pals are urgently pitching Congress on the need to buy more weapons, even though our Pentagon budget is already 3.5 times the size of China’s.

The Chinese government needs to be held to account for its crimes against humanity targeting Uighurs and other human rights abuses. Xenophobia, demonization, and military escalation don’t make accountability more likely — they just put us on the well worn path to further insecurity, division, and violence.

This week’s vote on the omnibus anti-China legislation in the Senate is a major step in the *wrong* direction. And we are determined to put a stop to Washington’s growing harmful approach to China before things spiral further out of control.

I’m asking again: Can you donate $15 to help Win Without War stop a new Cold War?

This moment presents a once in a lifetime opportunity to fundamentally change how the U.S. government builds the security of its people — we know that more militarization and demonization of China is a distracting and self-defeating strategy toward the true security we need.

What we need is more innovation, cooperation, and multilateral approaches, not hostility and confrontation, working together to win without war.

Thank you for working for peace,

Erica, Michael, Sara, and the Win Without War team

POLITICAL CONFLICT

From G7 to NATO meetings, imperialist powers turn more aggressive towards China

Eds.  mronline.org (6-19-21)

In both the crucial summits of global north nations, political leaders led by U.S. president Joe Biden, made sweeping and unsubstantiated charges against China.

June 18, 2021 | Newswire

AMERICA INVADES: HOW WE’VE INVADED OR BEEN MILITARILY INVOLVED WITH ALMOST EVERY COUNTRY ON EARTH BY CHRISTOPHER KELLY  and STUART LAYCOCK.  Book Publishers Network.  2014.  396.

In this extensive, whimsical volume, the authors posit what many have long suspected: the United States has invaded or been militarily involved with almost every country on the globe.

Kelly, a longtime military-history buff, readily admits in his introduction that he drew inspiration for his first book from Laycock’s previous work (All the Countries We Invaded: And a Few We Never Got Round To, 2012), which covers Great Britain’s overseas excursions. The two got to talking and discovered that the U.S. offered even greater fodder for such a compilation. It has invaded 84 out of the 194 countries recognized by the United Nations and has been militarily involved with 191 of those. (The holdouts, the authors note, are Andorra, Bhutan, and Liechtenstein.) Military action is never too far away for America, as Kelly notes: “Americans are always hoping for peace but usually preparing for war. The American Eagle is an ambivalent bird holding arrows in the talons of one foot and an olive branch in the other.” A work such as this has the potential for being academically stodgy, but Kelly and Laycock deftly avoid that trap. Instead, they find colorful, obscure episodes from each country’s past. Take, for example, Panama’s Watermelon War of 1856: “It was really more of a Watermelon Riot, which was triggered by an intoxicated American railroad traveler who took a slice of watermelon from a Panamanian fruit merchant and refused payment. Fifteen Americans were killed in Panama City, and we sent our troops in to restore order.” One drawback is that readers can get cast adrift on the sea of military and political acronyms in the book, but the authors do provide supporting materials, such as a glossary, maps, and a comprehensive index, at the back of the volume to provide perspective for those seeking clarification. Still, for a dedicated history fan, this is an invigorating travelogue, taking readers around the world and backward and forward through time.
An intensive compendium of America’s interactions, both good and bad, with other countries that rightly leaves out the philosophizing.
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2015

The Xinjiang genocide determination as agendaEds.  mronline.org (5-9-21).Because of the world’s fundamental interconnectedness, the increasingly Cold War-like relations between The West and China have negative consequences for both systems and for the rest of the world.May 8, 2021 | Newswire

Danny Haiphong.   Off the Rails: New report by Corporate-funded think-tank reveals how profit-driven motives drive New Cold War against China.  Mronline.org (6-9-21).

The same report paradoxically acknowledges the failure of the economic model the U.S. has tried to impose on the rest of the world

June 8, 2021 | Newswire    

Wage war against the philosophy of war

The Forty-Fifth Newsletter (2020)

Posted Nov 06, 2020 by Vijay Prashad

 Imperialism , Marxism , State Repression , War  Global  Newswire  China , coronavirus , COVID-19 , India , pandemic , Tricontinental Newsletter

Originally published: The Tricontinental (November 5, 2020)   | 

Dear friends,

Greetings from the desk of the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.

In mid-October, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) released its World Economic Outlook report, which offered some dizzying data. For 2020, the IMF estimates that the global Gross Domestic Product (GDP) will decline by 4.4%, while in 2021 the global GDP will rise by 5.2%. Stagnation and decline will define the economic activity in both Europe and North America, as well as in large states such as Brazil and India. With a second wave of coronavirus infections in Europe and with the first wave not having been controlled in Brazil, India, and the United States, it appears that these IMF estimates might sink further downwards.

Meanwhile, the data on China is quite astounding. China will account for the absolute majority, namely 51%, of world growth. Based on the IMF numbers, the other contributors to world growth will be mainly Asian economies that have strong trading relations with China, namely South Korea, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Malaysia. In 2020, China’s National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) did not set any growth targets due to the occurrence of the Great Lockdown. However, at the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, the NDRC head Ning Jizhe said that targets would be set for 2021, although he reiterated that the growth targets would not be merely towards GDP growth but towards ‘a steady improvement in quality’, which means poverty alleviation. After the meeting, Yu Xuejun, deputy head of the National Health Commission, said that the ten million families who fell into poverty due to the coronavirus disruptions have now been lifted out of poverty.

Given the continued disruptions caused by the virus and the uncertainty about a vaccine, it would behove the countries of the world to dial down tensions and expand collaborations. Exchange of information and personnel to break the chain of the infection–organised by the World Health Organisation–would enhance eroded public health systems. Yet, this is exactly what the countries most impacted by the coronavirus–Brazil, India, and the United States–refuse to do (and this is precisely what is being encouraged by the socialist states such as China and Cuba).

While the United States drives a ‘vaccine nationalism’ agenda, using whatever means possible to secure a vaccine for U.S. residents with no regard for the rest of the world population or the viruses’ disregard for borders, China and Cuba have called for a ‘people’s vaccine’. This approach, placing public health before profit, advocates for all those seeking a vaccine to pool their patents and share COVID-19 related technology. China has now formally joined the COVAX collaboration, a platform organised by the WHO and others that will ‘support the research, development and manufacturing of a wide range of COVID-19 vaccine candidates’. The platform includes 184 countries, but not the major capitalist powers. At a press briefing, Zhao Lijian said, ‘With four vaccine candidates entering phase-3 clinical trials, China is self-sufficient in vaccine production. Nevertheless, China decided to join COVAX. The purpose is to promote equitable distribution of vaccines through concrete actions, ensure the supply of vaccines in developing countries, and motivate more capable countries to join and support COVAX’.

Meanwhile, as these international initiatives developed, the United States went on a rampage across the world to diminish China’s role but offer nothing productive in its place. In South America, the U.S. has developed a programme called Growth in the Americas (or América Crece), whose purpose is to draw U.S. private-sector funding to crowd out Chinese public investments. In Africa and Asia, the U.S. has developed the Millennium Challenge Corporation to provide modest funds as a challenge to China’s Belt and Road Initiative. Apart from these investment vehicles, the United States has sharpened its military alliance with Australia, India, and Japan, known as the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (‘the Quad’).  MORE

In 1965, as India and Pakistan slipped into another war, Sahir Ludhianvi, one of the great Urdu poets of his generation, wrote a poem called Ai Sharif Insano (‘O Nobel Souls’). It begins with a summary of why war is so atrocious, for, after all, war brings fire and blood, hunger, want, and scarcity. What about a war against capitalism, suggests Sahir, rather than a war that takes the ‘blood of human beings’?

Jang sarmaaye ke tasallut se
Aman jamhoor ki khushi ke liye
Jang jangon ke falsafe ke khilaaf
Aman pur-aman zindagi ke liye

Wage war against the grip of capitalism
Seek peace for the commoner’s happiness
Wage war against the philosophy of war
Seek peace for a peaceful life. Zarina Hashmi (India), Srebenica from These Cities Blotted into Wilderness, 2003.

These are wise words for our times.

Warmly, Vijay.

It’s aggression when ‘they’ do it, but defense when ‘we’ do worse

Alan MacLeod.  Mronline.org (5-7-21)

Aggression, in international politics, is commonly defined as the use of armed force against another sovereign state, not justified by self-defense or international authority.

May 6, 2021 | Newswire    

TECHNOLOGICAL CONFLICT

China on the horizon as ‘world’s pharmacy’

M. K. Bhadrakumar.  Mronline.org (5-12-21).

The World Health Organisation’s approval Friday for China’s COVID-19 vaccine known as Sinopharm dramatically transforms the ecosystem of the pandemic.

May 11, 2021 | News

Community Infrastructure and the Care Crises: An evaluation of China’s COVID-19 experience

Eds.  .  mronline.org (5-7-21)

COVID-19 has exacerbated the gendered impact of care work globally, but lessons can be learned from countries like China that have relied on community organizations for solutions.

May 6, 2021 | Newswire    

Peaceful Alternatives

[VFP-all] Say No To A New Cold War with China Webinar ~ Tuesday, June 15th, 5:00 PM (PT) ~ Guests Madison Tang & Mel Gurtov ~ Hosted by CODEPINK CONGRESS

Sent from Marcy, CODEPINK: info@codepink.org

Join us this Tuesday  ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌

Case for cooperation between China and US

MAY 19, 2023

The Global Importance of Sino-American Relations

BY MELVIN GOODMAN

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Photograph Source: The White House – Public Domain

There is no more important diplomatic relationship for the United States than its relations with China.  The reverse is true for China as well.  If Washington and Beijing can’t solve their political and economic issues than there will be regional instability in the Indo-Pacific region that will ripple through the world.  For the global community to deal with the fundamental problems of climate change and pandemics, the two most important and powerful nations in the world must find a way to communicate and coexist.  At this point in time, neither nation appears to accept or even understand the urgency of the current situation.

During the Cold War, there was a common purpose throughout much of the international arena, which allowed the United States to take the lead in confronting the Soviet Union.  With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War in 1991, the European Community lost interest in global politics and stood by as the United States overplayed its hand and routinely misused its military power in the Middle East and Southwest Asia.  Our European allies were willing to allow the United States to carry out its global responsibilities as it saw fit.  As long as Europe is prepared to rely on the political and military dominance of the United States, it will be difficult for the key European states to forge their own identities.

Meanwhile, China was dealing with its considerable domestic problems, and not calling attention to its incremental military buildup.  China has not used military force since its ill-advised invasion of Vietnam in 1979 to “teach Vietnam a lesson.”  Ironically, it was China that learned it was not prepared for combined arms warfare and Vietnam’s battlefield experience against the French and the United States over a twenty-five-year period created serious tactical problems for the Chinese invaders.

Currently, China has been taking advantage of the U.S. preoccupation with supporting  Ukraine to steal a march on Washington’s interests, particularly in the Middle East.  Unlike the United States, China has avoided contentious disputes throughout the Third World in order to establish reliable state-to-state relations in the Global South.  While the Middle East has become America’s briar pitch, China has concluded long-term energy deals with Iran and Saudi Arabia, and recently orchestrated a rapprochement between the region’s leading countries.  The United States could not play the honest broker role because it has no diplomatic relations with Iran and unreliable relations with Saudi Arabia.

American politicians and pundits have replaced the Soviet Union with China as a threat in order to justify obscenely high defense spending and a policy of containment against China itself.  The policy of containment appeared to work against the Soviet Union because of Soviet political and economic weakness; a policy of containment will not work against China, a major power with the world’s second largest economy and second largest defense budget.  The leading trade partner for most nations of the Indo-Pacific region is China.  It was easy for the United States to draw a dividing line between the European Community and Russia, but it is unlikely that an analogous dividing line can be drawn in Asia to isolate China.

In any event, the United States has sufficient military resources in the Indo-Pacific region to give China pause before committing any major provocation.  The United States can also take advantage of Xi Jinping’s ultra-nationalism, which has led Japan to bolster its military capabilities; enabled closer relations between Japan and South Korea; and allowed the United States to return to the use of strategic military facilities in the Philippines.  China particularly misplayed its diplomatic hand in the Philippines.  Nevertheless, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s occupation of  Ukraine has raised the possibility of Xi Jinping resorting to force to solve the long-term problem of Taiwan’s sovereignty and statehood.

Thus far, the policies of the Biden administration have gotten nowhere in creating a more stable and predictable relationship with China.  The Wilsonian appeal to democracy is a non-starter, predictably because of U.S. hypocrisy in reaching out to authoritarian governments in Saudi Arabia and Venezuela in order to obtain greater oil production.  Most of the states in the Indo-Pacific region want nothing to do with U.S. policies that seem to be predicated on a worsening of Sino-American relations that could lead to a Cold War.

The case can be made that the U.S. would benefit from cooperative relations with all of the Asian states, and that more stable relations with China would allow for greater cooperation throughout the region.  At the same time, the United States and China could pursue mutual interests that include dealing with the climate crisis; securing greater guarantees for the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons; and even ameliorating the tensions created by North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.  It is difficult to imagine any improvement on the Korean peninsula without Sino-American cooperation.

Finally, even the slightest improvement in Sino-American relations would create some anxiety in Putin’s Kremlin because of the disastrous and desperate situation that Moscow faces on its long western borders.  Thus far, the Biden administration’s policy of dual containment against both Russia and China has only driven Moscow and Beijing into the deepest partnership in their history.  Since China has shown great restraint in refusing to provide important military weaponry to Russian forces, perhaps it’s time for a reciprocal show of restraint on the part of the United States.

Melvin A. Goodman is a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy and a professor of government at Johns Hopkins University.  A former CIA analyst, Goodman is the author of Failure of Intelligence: The Decline and Fall of the CIA and National Insecurity: The Cost of American Militarism. and A Whistleblower at the CIA. His most recent books are “American Carnage: The Wars of Donald Trump” (Opus Publishing, 2019) and “Containing the National Security State” (Opus Publishing, 2021). Goodman is the national security columnist for counterpunch.org.

CONTENTS: US COLD WAR AGAINST CHINA ANTHOLOGY #4, May 4, 2021.
https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2021/05/us-cold-war-against-china-newsletter-4.html

THREATENED WAR

Pentagon Budget Prepares for War

US/India Alliance War Preparation

Taiwan Pushes US War v. China

US Encircles China

POLITICAL CONFLICT

Anti-China Hate and Politics
Ally Canada’s Uyghur Genocide Slander
US Slander and Libel v. China’s Vaccine Generosity

China v. US

China in Africa
Smith’s China’s Engine of Environmental Collapse

ECONOMIC CONFLICT
China’s Restraint on Capital for the Public Good
US Neoliberal Financialization v. China’s Industrial Socialism

TECHNOLOGICAL CONFLICT

China’s CO2 Emissions

Chinese Government Regulation of FF Industry Emissions

MEDIA CONFLICT

 Western Media Incite Anti-Asian Racism

PEACEFUL ALTERNATIVES TO CONFLICT

Appeal for Collaboration Between China and US

Remember Vietnam

END CHINA NEWSLETTER #5