As I hinted at the other shop yesterday
http://rangingshots.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/vampire.html
today we were supposed to be looking at USN fleet defence problems in the
light of Kamikaze threats in the latter stages of 1944/5 approaches to the main
islands on this blog. Why? Well it has all to do with the IR fuses, proximity
fuses, rockets and payloads. The confusing title of this series of wonderings
and wanderings should by now be triggering realisation.
However this piece of learned garbage heaved into view.
“We will have a very strong (military) presence, very strong continued
posture throughout the region to back our commitments to our allies, to protect
and work with our partners and to continue ensuring peace and stability in the
region, as well as back our diplomacy vis-à-vis China
on the South China Sea”.
David Shear, US Department of Defense’s Assistant Secretary for Asian and
Pacific Security Affairs.
Indian President Modi “seals $22 billion of deals on China visit... China had already promised $20 billion of
infrastructure investment during (Chinese President) Xi’s visit to India last
year”. Financial Times (5/18/165, p. 4)
Introduction
The highly influential Council on Foreign Relations recently published a
Special Report entitled, “Revising US Grand Strategy toward China”, (Council on
Foreign Relations Press: NY 2015), co-authored by two of its Senior Fellows,
Robert Blackwill and Ashley Tellis (‘B and T’), which proposes a re-orientation
of US policy toward China. The Report a policy for buttressing ‘US primacy in
Asia’ and countering what they describe as “the dangers that China’s
geo-economic and military power pose to US national interests in Asia and
globally”. The Report concludes by listing seven recommendations that Washington should follow
to re-assert regional primacy.
This essay begins by
discussing the basic fallacies underpinning the Report, including outdated and
dangerous presumptions about US
power and presence in Asia today, and the
authors’ incoherent, contradictory and unrealistic prescriptions.
Mistaken Assumptions about Past and Present US Policies to China
Blackwill and Tellis (‘B and T’) start out with the preposterous claim that
contemporary US policy
toward China has been driven
by its positive “effort to ‘integrate’ China into the liberal
international order”. This is a gross misrepresentation of Washington’s past and current efforts to
subvert the Chinese Communist government and to undermine its state- directed
transition to capitalism.
Ever since the end of the Second World War, and especially since the Chinese
Civil War (1945-49), which brought the Chinese Communist Party to power, the US
has poured billions of dollars in military aid to the retreating Nationalist
regime and to finance the bloody Korean War (1950-53) – with the open goal of
overthrowing the Chinese communist government. When US
forces briefly reached the Chinese-Korean border, provoking a Chinese response,
Washington
threatened to unleash nuclear weapons on the Chinese. For the next two decades,
the US
maintained a naval and air embargo against the world’s most populous state, an
insane policy which was only reversed by President Nixon’s re-establishment of
diplomatic and commercial relations in 1973.
When the veteran Chinese leader, Deng Xiaoping embarked on a state-managed
transition to capitalism, Washington adopted a two-track policy of encouraging
China’s rulers to ‘open their markets’ to US multi-national corporations, while
financing and backing pro-US liberal activists seeking to overthrow the Communist
government (the so-called Tiananmen Square Uprising) as well as the
secessionist Tibetan and Uyghur insurgencies in western China.
Far from trying “to integrate China
into the liberal international order”, Washington
attempted to replicate the decade-long chaotic and destructive “transition to
capitalism” which took place with the dissolution of the USSR under
Mikhail Gorbachev. During the disastrous US-backed regime of Russian President
Boris Yeltsin – the ‘lost decade’ (1990-1999) - living standards for the
average citizen plunged 70% and Russia
was transformed from an advanced superpower to a ravaged vassal state. Beijing’s rulers took careful stock of the grotesque
pillage of the former USSR
and rejected US plans to replicate their ‘Russian success’ and integrate China as a
vassal state within the international capitalist system.
Washington’s sanctions and boycott policy,
following the defeat of its Tiananmen Square proxies, was of no avail: Washington failed to stop the massive influx of US
multinational corporations into China.
Its punitive measures had no impact on China’s political stability and
unprecedented economic growth.
Washington’s policy supporting China’s entry into the World Trade
Organization encouraged China to open up to US investors, but US policy makers
did not understand how the Chinese state’s carefully calibrated mix of
dependence on foreign capitalist investment and technology with their adoption,
assimilation, and autonomous expansion of endogenous Chinese expertise would
create a such a massive independent economic superpower.
Washington’s
‘penetration and conquest strategy’, dubbed by B and S as its ‘integration into
the international order’, ultimately failed, despite frequent attempts to
undermine the Chinese state regulations and controls on foreign capital. The US’ efforts to subordinate (“integrate”) China into its
burgeoning Asian empire was unsuccessful.
During this period, China
expanded into world markets, harnessing Western capital to its national goals.
It borrowed and improved on US technology to develop a high growth model,
exceeding the US
growth rate by 600%!
For over two decades, China
grew exponentially, accumulating hundreds of billions of dollars in foreign
reserves, while the US
economy ran-up monstrous trade deficits with Beijing. The US
had embarked on a series of prolonged wars while converting its economy from
productive to finance capitalism and needed to borrow vast sums from China in the
form of sales of Treasury notes or face a major domestic financial crisis.
In essence (and not noted by ‘B and T’), China ‘integrated’ into the
international economic order as a productive, creditor state, at the same time
the US was reduced to financial–debtor status and lost its global economic
primacy while pursuing its unpopular wars in the Middle East.
It was not the ‘failure’ of liberal US market policies that propelled China
forward to primacy in Asia, as ‘B and T’ argue in their essay, but Washington’s
multi-trillion-dollar wars in South Asia, the Middle East and North Africa and
its wholesale conversion to Wall Street speculation, which caused the US to
lose its primacy in Asia. ‘B and T’s’ claim that US ‘market liberalism’ helped
China to emerge as the economic superpower in Asia is a flimsy pretext for
ignoring real causes and now promoting an even greater level of US militarism
in the region. Unfortunately, their muddle-headed diagnoses and militarist
proposals strongly influence the Obama Administrations policy decisions!
Blackwill and Tellis’s unwillingness to recognize China’s peaceful rise to
economic supremacy in Asia leads them to rely on a purely ideological construct
to bolster their militaristic argument for intensifying “the US naval and air
presence in the South and East China Seas and accelerating the US ballistic-missile
defense (sic) posture” in the Pacific. ‘B and T’s a priori ideological
presumptions lead them to declare that “China is a danger to US Asian
interests”, ignoring elementary Chinese vital national interests in having open
and secure access to vital waterways leading to their Asian markets and sources
of raw materials. At no point does ‘B and T’ identify a single move implemented
by China,
which has threatened the open seaways. Nor do they identify a single overt or
covert threat by China toward
the US.
While ‘B and T’ fantasize about China’s
military threats, they suffer a severe case of amnesia with regard to overt US
attacks, invasions, and occupations of China’s Asian neighbors. Over a
dozen such military assaults have been launched by Washington in the region, which ‘B and T’
conveniently . . . omit.
‘B and T’s evocation of a “China
threat” is a crude ploy to justify further US
military encirclement of China,
in line with their policy recommendations. The US
has recently dispatched B-1 bombers and surveillance planes to Australia and threatens to attack China’s base
and port construction on its off-shore shoals and island territories. Equally
ominous, US officials arrested a visiting Chinese academic attending a
conference claiming he was part of a plot stealing ‘dual purpose’ high tech
secrets.
Contradictions and Incoherence of B and T Policy Recommendations
B and T policy recommendations for securing US
primacy in Asia are contradictory and
incoherent. For example, they recommend that the US “revitalize the economy”
and promote “robust growth” as a first priority, but then demand a “substantial
increase” in the enormous US military budget. They advocate limits on the sale
of civilian technology (so-called “dual” use) and the exclusion of China from
US-sponsored Asian trade networks like the ‘Trans-Pacific Partnership’ (TPP).
Most experts openly acknowledge that the huge US ten-trillion dollar
military spending over the past two decades has destroyed any possibility for
‘robust growth’ of the US
economy. ‘B and T’s recommendations for even more military spending can only
make matters worse by diverting public and private capital away from economic
growth. This is what undermines the United States
strategic future in Asia!
‘B and T’ advise Washington “to expand
Asian trade networks” . . . by excluding China . . . the largest investment
site and market for the leading ‘500’ US multi-national corporations! In fact,
when Obama, in line with ‘B and T’ recommendations, loudly refused to
participate in the Chinese-sponsored ‘Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, all
of the US major Asian “partners”, except Japan, ignored Washington and joined
the AIIB! China
is unquestionably the leading economic partner for all Asian countries and none
of the bellicose rhetoric that ‘B and T’ spout is going to erode those
essential realities.
In fact ‘B and T’s proposal to eliminate ongoing trade with China of so-called ‘dual purpose’ technological
exports will further isolate the US from its much-ballyhooed ‘Asian
partners’ who are especially eager to ‘add value’ to their exports. In sum, ‘B
and T’s recommendations to US policy makers will guarantee an anemic, not a
‘robust’, growth.
B and T proposals are guided by a strictly military logic, contrary to
advancing US
trade networks.
B and T (and the Obama regime) propose “to reinforce” what they call the
Indo-Pacific partnership via a “build-up (of) the power-political capabilities
of its friends and allies on China’s
periphery”. Whatever ‘B and T’ meant by “power-political capabilities” they
certainly did not take into consideration India’s drive for economic
development and long-term, large-scale investment and trade agreements. In
terms of trade and development deals, the meager results on the heels of
Obama’s recent visit to India
demonstrate just how shallow the administration’s policy towards the
subcontinent really is.
The Indo-Chinese economic and development partnership far surpassed in size
and scope any of the vacuous proposals put forth by ‘B and T’ to the Obama
Administration. In mid-May 2015, Indian President Modi signed a $22
billion-dollar business deal with China on top of the massive
$20-billion dollar Chinese infrastructure investment agreement in 2014. $42
billion-dollars of Chinese investment and trade deals with India have pulled the rug out from under any
Obama regime plans to enlist India
into its anti-China campaign and military provocations. The reality of
Indian-Chinese economic deals shows just how absurd ‘B and T’ policy recommendations
are.
President Modi put the ‘nail’ in the coffin of ‘B and T’s, “US Grand
Strategy toward China” in
his last speech in China
after his most successful visit: “I strongly believe that this century belongs
to Asia”. Lest it be thought by any other
Kissinger protégé, (Blackwill is a Henry Kissinger Senior Fellow), that the
deepening Indo-China relation is a mere passing phenomenon, their agreements
involve the most advanced sectors of their economies, including
telecommunication and energy, as well as the development of a solar
photovoltaic industrial park.
As for B and T’s proposal to block ‘dual use’ technology transfers to China, the
Indian government has openly rejected that line of unreason by calling on
countries to accelerate technology transfers.
‘B and T’ and the entire crowd of ‘armchair war-mongers’ at the Council on
Foreign Relations (CFR) have misread the most basic economic developments of
our time. US economic growth
is becoming increasingly dependent on large-scale, long-term foreign capital
inflows from ‘emerging economies’ – especially China! Developing Asian nations
accounted for $440 billion in outward investment, greater than North America or
Europe , as the largest source for foreign
direct investment. China’s
$266 billion dollars accounted for most outgoing FDI from Asia.
China’s importance as a source of investment can only expand, especially
through its newly-founded ‘Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank’ (AIIB) and its
plans to promote the multi-billion Silk Road linking Beijing through Central
Asia to European markets. China’s
financial role is going to be crucial in the new BRICS (Brazil, Russia,
India, China and South Africa) bank – developed to
counter the IMF.
Nothing that the Obama regime and its advisers from the Council on Foreign
Relations have proposed can possibly ‘balance’ the rise of China, because their
policies include the boycott of large-scale, long-term Chinese economic
initiatives which Washington’s ‘allies’ are eager to join. Virtually all have
rushed to sign up with the AIIB leaving a sour-faced Obama Administration
totally isolated. The Council on Foreign Relations’ proposal for Obama to form
anti-Chinese ‘networks with its allies’ is pointless when such hostile
‘networks’ are clearly not going to undermine their most lucrative economic
deals with China.
After running through a laundry list of hostile policies toward China, based on a strategy of escalating
military encirclement, ‘B and T’ conclude their essay with a bizarre call for Washington to “energize high level diplomacy with Beijing” and do “everything it can to avoid a
confrontation with China”.
This piece of ‘expert’ idiocy could only have been written by a former
lecturer from the Harvard
Kennedy School.
Policies designed to surround China
with US military installations and naval vessels, threaten China’s vital
maritime routes. Measures to restrict the sale of ‘dual use’ (civilian)
technology and efforts to build hostile regional networks and military
partnerships are hardly conducive to ‘energizing high level diplomacy with Beijing. ‘B and T’s
proposals and Obama’s policies are designed to confront, provoke and undermine China. That is
one very obvious reason why China
pursues such favorable economic agreements with its neighbors.
‘B and T’ policy proposals are doomed to fail because the US has not and cannot match China’s robust
economic growth. Washington cannot compete
with Beijing’s open and flexible large-scale
economic agreements with all Asian countries (except the US vassal Japan).
Most Asian powers have rejected the ideological message peddled by the Obama
Administration that China
is a danger. They see China as a partner, a source of capital and easy
financing for vital projects without the onerous ‘conditions’ that the US
controlled IMF imposes. They are not interested in big, wasteful spending on
costly weapons systems pushed by US war industries and which have no
productive value.
An Alternative “Grand Strategy toward China”
If one were to propose a realistic and reasonable ‘US Grand Strategy toward China’ one
would have to start by shedding all the false assumptions and bellicose
proposals that have been put forth by the CFR and the authors of the Report
under review.
First and foremost, the US
would have to give up its self-appointed role as global policeman, reallocate
its bloated Pentagon budget to finance vital domestic economic development,
while rebalancing the US
economy away from Wall Street speculation in the FIRE (finance, insurance real
estate) sector, to producing goods, providing quality services and financing
long-overdue infrastructure development projects.
Secondly, Washington
would have to expand and promote long-term, large-scale exports of its advanced
technology to compensate for the loss of low value exports.
Thirdly, it would join with China
in its new infrastructure bank, securing contracts via aid packages. Washington would have to look at China’s export of capital as an opportunity to
improve the US’s
deteriorating infrastructure. Washington would
have to increase and expand its cyber-technical ties with China via joint
ventures. Washington would need to replace its military bases surrounding China
with industrial parks, commercial ports and regional ‘Silicon Valleys’ and
promote co-operative ventures that allow the US to ride the wave of Chinese
dynamism. Since the US
cannot (and should not) curtail or compete with China’s growth it should join them
and share it.
The US should not attempt
to block China’s
growth and expansion; it should assist and share in its ascendancy, especially
in the face of great global climate and energy challenges. Washington is much more likely to strengthen
its Asian – Pacific partnership and succeed in its diplomacy if it replaced its
military posturing with robust economic growth.
Note:
James Petras latest books include:
James Petras and Henry Veltmeyer (2014), Extractive Imperialism in the Americas:
Capitalism’s New Frontier, published by Brill (Leiden/Boston) (Studies in
Critical Social Sciences Series).
James Petras (2014), The Politics of Empire: The US, Israel and the Middle East, published by Clarity
Press, Atlanta.
http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/TPV3/Voices.php/2015/06/01/a-critique-of-us-grand-strategy-toward-c#more37728
Bearing in mind that USofA corp was supposed to have crashed
and burned somewhere on the shores for another Hakata Bay,
around 1950 or so,
See Casualty Projections for the U.S.
Invasions of Japan,
1945-1946:
Planning and Policy Implications by D. M. Giangreco
AND that plan has not changed as far as the PLAN is concerned then the above
mind enema makes one realise that the average US PhD has to have the attention
span of a gnat fart and the mental capacity of an empty hive.
Like Germany/USSR
it didn’t matter who “won” so long as everyone was dead. This is was black
magician operation upon the HAS.
Everything that has happened since 1941 has been a coherent staged programme
to exhaust and destroy USofA corp. and its useless people.
When oh when is someone going to start thinking like Rock/Roth does? At no
point can one even attempt to take on their master’s mind set until one thinks
like a criminal degenerate low entropy self replicating bankster.
All western intellectuals seem to be suffering Retarded Elder Protocol 12 Munchausen
Syndrome by Proxy Syndrome made manifest.
