United States War on China is a War on the Entire World by Brian Berletic!
(2024-09-07 at 21:47:28 )

United States War on China is a War on the Entire World by Brian Berletic!

United States National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan has recently claimed the United States is not "looking for a crisis." This is said, of course, with an important caveat - no crisis is sought as long as China subordinates itself to the United States.

Because China, like any other sovereign nation, based on international law, is obligated to resist foreign subordination, the United States continues speeding toward inevitable war with China. Although China has formidable military capabilities, causing doubt among many that the United States will actually ever trigger war with China, the United States has spent decades attempting to create and exploit a potential weakness Chinas current military might may be incapable of defending against.

Washington,D.C.s Long-Running Policy of Containing China

Far from a recent policy shift by the Biden Administration, United States ambitions to encircle and contain China stretch back to the end of World War 2. Even as far back as 1965 as the United States waged war against Vietnam, United States documents referred to a policy "to contain Communist China," as "long-running," and identified the fighting in Southeast Asia as necessary toward achieving this policy.

For decades the United States has waged wars of aggression along Chinas periphery, engaged in political interference to destabilize Chinas partners as well as attempt to destabilize China itself, as well as pursued likewise long-running policies to undermine Chinas economic growth and its trade with the rest of the world.

More recently, the United States has begun reorganizing its entire military for inevitable war with China.

Cutting Chinese Economic Lines of Communication

In addition to fighting Chinese forces in the Asia-Pacific region, the United States also has long-running plans to cut off Chinese trade around the globe.

In 2006, the United States Army War Colleges Strategic Studies Institute (SSI) published "String of Pearls: Meeting the Challenge of Chinas Rising Power Across the Asia Littoral," identifying Chinas essential "sea lines of communication" (SLOC) from the Middle East to the Strait of Malacca as particularly vulnerable and subject to United States primacy over Asia.

The paper argues that United States primacy, and in particular, its military presence across the region, could be used as leverage for "drawing China into the community of nations as a responsible stakeholder," a euphemism for subordinating China to United States primacy. This, in turn, is in line with a wider global policy seeking to "deter any nation or group of nations from challenging United States of American primacy."

Under a section titled, "Leveraging United States Military Power," the paper argues for and expanded United States military presence across the entire region, including along Chinas SLOC, augmenting its existing presence in East Asia (South Korea and Japan), but also extending it to Southeast Asia and South Asia, recruiting nations like Indonesia and Bangladesh to bolster United States military power over the region and thus over China.

It notes Chinese efforts to secure its SLOC, including with a mutually beneficial port project in Pakistans Baluchistan region, part of the larger China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and the construction of a port in Sittwe, Myanmar, part of the larger China-Myanmar Economic Corridor (CMEC). Both projects seek to create alternative economic lines of communication for China, circumventing the long and vulnerable sea route through the Malacca Strait and the South China Sea.

Both projects have since come under attack by United States-backed militancy with regular attacks still taking place against Chinese engineers across Pakistan and a large-scale armed conflict backed by the United States currently unfolding in Myanmar which regularly sees opposition forces target Chinese-built infrastructure.

Thus, United States policy has sought and has since achieved the region-wide disruption of Chinas SLOC as well as efforts to circumvent choke points (CPEC-CMEC). Other potential corridors, including through the heart of Southeast Asia, have also been targeted by United States interference. The Thai section of Chinas high-speed railway to connect Southeast Asia to China has been significantly delayed by the United States-backed political opposition openly trying to cancel the project.

In many ways, the United States has already created a crisis for China, albeit through proxies.

Targeting Chinese Maritime Shipping

Under the guise of protecting "freedom of navigation," the United States Navy has positioned its warships and military aviation around the worlds most important maritime passages including the Strait of Hormuz in the Middle East and the South China Sea - the east approach to the Strait of Malacca - along with plans to establish a significant naval presence on the Straits west approach.

The United States realizes that Chinese military power is extensive enough to significantly complicate, if not outright defeat, United States military aggression along Chinese coasts. The United States instead imagines targeting China far beyond the reach of its warplanes and missile forces.

The United States Naval Institute published, "Prize Law Can Help the United States Win the War of 2026," the third place entry in the "Future of Naval Warfare Essay Contest." It warns that a "close naval blockage" is infeasible due to Chinas formidable anti-access area-denial (A2AD) capabilities.

It instead argues for:

..a distant blockade-"intercept[ing] Chinese merchant shipping at key maritime chokepoints" outside Chinas A2-AD reach-would be generally sustainable; flexible in tempo and location; pose manageable risks of escalation; and impede Chinas resource-hungry, import-dependent war effort.

Part of this "distant blockade" would be a campaign of targeting, seizing, and repurposing Chinese shipping vessels to augment the United States lagging shipbuilding capabilities and the dearth of maritime resources it has created.

Far from a random essay representing a purely speculative strategy, the United States has already taken steps to implement its "distant blockade." The entire United States Marine Corps has been tailored solely to wage war against Chinese shipping across the Asia-Pacific and beyond.

The BBC in its 2023 article, "How United States Marines are being reshaped for China threat," would report:

The new plan sees the Marines as fighting dispersed operations across chains of islands. Units will be smaller, more spread out, but packing a much bigger punch through a variety of new weapons systems.

The "new weapons systems" are primarily anti-shipping missiles. Operating on islands and in littoral regions, the United States Marines have been transformed into a force almost solely for disrupting Chinese shipping.

Together with plans to seize Chinese vessels, the United States has positioned itself not as a global protector of "freedom of navigation," but the greatest threat to it. Considering Chinas status as the largest trade partner of nations around the globe, United States plans to target Chinese shipping is not a threat to only China, but to global economic prosperity as a whole.

United States War with China is War with the World

The danger of Washington,D.C.s desire for war with China and implementing its "distant blockade" to strangle Chinas economy into ruins is a danger for the entire world. While preventing the global economic damage this strategy will cause after it is put into motion may be impossible, targeting the various components the United States is using to encircle and contain China ahead of this conflict is possible.

United States political interference and the political as well as armed opposition it has created and is using to cut Chinas various economic lines of communication, can be exposed and uprooted by national and regional security initiatives.

Securing national and regional information space is the simplest and most effective way to cut the United States off from the populations it seeks to influence and turn against targeted nations to achieve the political and security crises it uses to threaten trade between China and its partners.

Passing and enforcing laws targeting, exposing, and uprooting United States interference, including the funding of opposition parties, organizations, and media platforms by the United States governments National Endowment for Democracy (NED) is also essential.

Recent moves by the United States to target foreign media organizations and their alleged cooperation with American citizens has created a convenient pretext for other nations to cite when targeting and uprooting NED-funded activity.

While taking these steps will have their own consequences, including retaliation from the United States itself, the alternative - allowing the United States to prepare and eventually carry out its "distant blockade" against China and its global trade partners - will be even more consequential.

Only time will tell if the emerging multipolar world is capable of seeing and solving this future crisis the United States has spent decades preparing to create, or if the political leadership in Southeast and South Asia will fear short-term consequences at the expense of allowing and thus suffering catastrophic consequences in the intermediate future.

Brian Berletic is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine "New Eastern Outlook"

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