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Written by Eric Zuesse, exclusively for SouthFront.
Right now, the neocons that Biden has surrounded himself with are threatening to accuse him of having ‘lost Taiwan’ if Biden backs down from his many threats to China, threats that the U.S. Government will reverse America’s “One China” policy, which has been in place ever since the 28 February 1972 “Shanghai Communique”, when the U.S. Government signed with China to the promise and commitment that “The United States acknowledges that all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China. The United States Government does not challenge that position. It reaffirms its interest in a peaceful settlement of the Taiwan question by the Chinese themselves.” If Biden sticks with that, and fails to follow through on his threats that America will invade China if war breaks out between Taiwan and China, then the neocons will say that the U.S., under Biden, has failed to ‘stand up for our allies’, and that therefore China will have effectively beaten America to become the #1 power, on his watch — merely because he had refused to change U.S. policy in the way that the neocons (America’s “Military-Industrial Complex” or “MIC” or weapons-manufacturers — and their many lobbyists and supporters in Congress, the press, and elsewhere) have recently been demanding.
The Truman-created CIA edits, and even writes, Wikipedia; and, so, Wikipedia’s article on “Taiwan” opens by saying “Taiwan,[II] officially the Republic of China (ROC),[I][h] is a country in East Asia.[21][22]” But that assertion of Taiwan’s being “a country,” instead of a province of China, is a lie, not only because Taiwan (despite its propaganda urging the U.N. to accept it to become a member-nation of the U.N.) has not been accepted by the U.N. as a member-nation, but also because the U.S. Government itself promised, in 1972, that both in fact and in principle, the U.S. opposes any demand that might be made by any government of Taiwan to become a separate nation — no longer a part of China. Ever since 1972, any such demand by a government in Taiwan violates official U.S. Government policy since 1972, and is merely another part of the MIC’s wishful thinking, that America will invade China. So: the demand by the neocons, for America’s Government to support a public declaration by Taiwan’s government that it is no longer a part of China, is part of the pressure upon Biden, to yield to the Pentagon lobby (which largely made him the President). Biden’s threats might be made in order to satisfy his financial backers, but, if he fulfills on any of those threats, there will then be a war between America and China.
China is insisting that the anti-communist Chinese who in 1945 escaped to China’s island of Formosa or Taiwan — which Japan had conquered and militarily occupied between 1895 and 1945 — illegitimately controlled that land just as the Japanese had illegitimately controlled it between 1895 and 1945, and so China claims that Taiwan remains and has remained a province of China, as it has been ever since at least 1683, when China’s Qing Dynasty formally declared it to be a part of China. Taiwan was ruled that way until 1895, when Japan conquered China and one provision of the peace-treaty was that Taiwan would henceforth be part of Japan’s territory, no longer Chinese.
After WW II, when FDR’s America was allied with China against Japan, Truman’s America (the source of neoconservatism, or overt U.S. imperialism) supported the anti-communist Chinese, not mainland China, and therefore generally backed Taiwan’s independence from the mainland. However, that intense Trumanesque U.S. neoconservatism ended formally with the 1972 Shanghai Communique. And Biden is now considering whether America will go to war in order not only to restore, but now to further intensify, Truman’s neoconservative, imperialistic, U.S. thrust — going beyond even Truman.
Here is how that is currently playing out:
On September 10th, the Financial Times headlined “Washington risks Beijing ire over proposal to rename Taiwan’s US office” and reported that the neocons were pressing for Biden to change the diplomatic status of Taiwan’s “representative office in Washington” so as to become, in effect, a national Embassy. “A final decision has not been made and would require President Joe Biden to sign an executive order.” This executive order would, in its implications, terminate the Shanghai Communique, and go back to the hard ‘anti-communist’ (but actually pro-imperialistic) policy in which the U.S. Government will be bringing its weapons (and maybe also its soldiers) close enough to China so as to be able to obliterate China within ten minutes by a surprise nuclear attack which would eliminate China’s retaliatory capabilities. It would be even worse than the 1963 Cuban Missile crisis endangered America. So, of course, China’s Government wouldn’t tolerate that. And they don’t.
On September 12th, the Chinese Government newspaper Global Times issued “Teach the US, Taiwan island a real lesson if they call for it: Global Times editorial”, which stated that:
If the US and the Taiwan island change the names, they are suspected of touching the red line of China’s Anti-Secession Law, and the Chinese mainland will have to take severe economic and military measures to combat the arrogance of the US and the island of Taiwan. At that time, the mainland should impose severe economic sanctions on the island and even carry out an economic blockade on the island, depending on the circumstances.
Militarily, Chinese mainland’s fighter jets should fly over the island of Taiwan and place the island’s airspace into the patrol area of the PLA. This is a step that the mainland must take sooner or later. The name change provides the Chinese mainland with sufficient reason to strengthen our sovereign claim over the island of Taiwan. It is anticipated that the Taiwan army will not dare to stop the PLA fighter jets from flying over the island. If the Taiwan side dares open fire, the Chinese mainland will not hesitate to give “Taiwan independence” forces a decisive and destructive blow.
More importantly, if the Chinese mainland turns a blind eye to the US and the Taiwan island this time, they will definitely go further in the next step. According to reports, Joseph Wu, leader of the external affairs of the Taiwan island, participated in the talks between senior security officials from the US and the island in Annapolis on Friday. Next time, they may publicly hold the meeting even in the US State Department in Washington DC. As the US will hold the “Summit for Democracy” by the end of this year, if we do not contain the insolence of the US and the Taiwan island, Washington might even really invite Tsai Ing-wen to participate in the summit. It will be much worse in nature than former Taiwan regional leader Lee Teng-hui’s visit to the US as an “alumnus” in 1995.
Will peace come if the Chinese mainland puts up with all this and swallows its anger for the sake of peace? If the mainland doesn’t strike back decisively, US warships will dock at the island of Taiwan, its fighter aircraft will land on the island and its troops may be stationed in the island again. At that time, where will be China’s prestige as a great power? How can the country maintain its system of defending its interests on the international stage?
So: either the U.S., or else China, must back down — or else, there will be war between China and the U.S.
Of course, each side has its allies. Perhaps UK will put its neck on the line to conquer China, and perhaps Russia will put its neck on the line to conquer America, but in any case, the result if Biden yields to the neocons, will be World War III.
They press him hard. For example, the British neocon, Niall Ferguson, wrote in the Economist, on August 20th:
There is nothing inexorable about China’s rise, much less Russia’s, while all the lesser countries aligned with them are economic basket cases, from North Korea to Venezuela. China’s population is ageing even faster than anticipated; its workforce is shrinking. Sky-high private-sector debt is weighing on growth. Its mishandling of the initial outbreak of covid-19 has greatly harmed its international standing. It also risks becoming the villain of the climate crisis, as it cannot easily kick the habit of burning coal to power its industry.
And yet it is all too easy to see a sequence of events unfolding that could lead to another unnecessary war, most probably over Taiwan, which Mr Xi covets and which America is (ambiguously) committed to defend against invasion. …
The ambitions of China’s leader, Xi Jinping, are also well known — along with his renewal of the Chinese Communist Party’s ideological hostility to individual freedom, the rule of law and democracy. … If Beijing invades Taiwan, most Americans will probably echo the British prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, who notoriously described the German bid to carve up Czechoslovakia in 1938 as “a quarrel in a far away country, between people of whom we know nothing”. …
That brings us to the crux of the matter. Churchill’s great preoccupation in the 1930s was that the government was procrastinating — the underlying rationale of its policy of appeasement — rather than energetically rearming in response to the increasingly aggressive behaviour of Hitler, Mussolini and the militarist government of imperial Japan. A key argument of the appeasers was that fiscal and economic constraints — not least the high cost of running an empire that extended from Fiji to Gambia to Guiana to Vancouver — made more rapid rearmament impossible.
It may seem fanciful to suggest that America faces comparable threats today — not only from China, but also from Russia, Iran and North Korea. Yet the mere fact that it seems fanciful illustrates the point. The majority of Americans, like the majority of Britons between the wars, simply do not want to contemplate the possibility of a major war against one or more authoritarian regimes, coming on top of the country’s already extensive military commitments.
Scholars get well paid to write such propaganda for the MIC (companies such as Lockheed Martin). Comparing China’s Government with that of Nazi Germany, and proposing that Biden become, for present-day America, what (the equally imperialistic) Churchill was for Britain’s in the late 1930s, might be stupid enough, in just the right way, to inspire someone like Biden, in precisely the wrong way, as it’s intended to do. If so, there will be WW III.
On September 14th, the Editor-in-Chief of Global Times wrote that “China has absolutely no way to retreat. The one-China principle is the fundamental principle that we must insist on.” Similarly, in the 1963 Cuban Missile Crisis — when the Soviet Union was about to place its missiles on an island near America’s coast — America was willing to go to WW III if necessary in order to prevent that from happening. America established its “red line,” and the Soviet Union did not cross it. We’ll see what Biden does. And, if he makes the wrong decision, we’ll then see what Russia does.
Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.
Despite US efforts to maintain the ‘war by other means’ concept (hybrid warfare), US policies translate to eventual kinetic stages of conflict against China.
As the US is developing the offensive capabilities of Taiwan (involving the integration of Taiwan into its missile architecture), it is a matter of logic this will in time exceed limits of restraint and this developing security threat will require a response. The US build-up of allied missile architecture is also moving towards an eventual missile crisis (Russia also warning of such a situation developing due to the build-up of US-allied missile architecture in Eastern Europe). Unfortunately US and NATO officials are not responding to such warnings, primarily because they are seeking to attain nuclear primacy (overcoming mutually assured destruction through attaining close proximity fast first-strike potential with multi-layered/multi-phase retaliatory missile interception capabilities).
The build-up of the offensive (military) potential of Taiwan alone would in time require a response by the mainland but US-Taiwan (political) moves towards separatism will likely result in the enforcement of the Anti-Secession Law (that authorizes military force). If (or when) the decision for reunification is taken, Western bloc powers that may consider interference in this domestic issue of China should familiarise themselves with US war simulations and studies that establish US-led forces would experience profound losses and eventual defeat in a conflict against China.
The globally expanding wars of aggressions of the US-NATO bloc have progressed to preparations for war scenarios against China, Russia, Iran, the DPRK, etc. The hybrid warfare domain is active and intensifying (involving commercial sabotage efforts, partition operations, regime change efforts, atrocity propaganda as employed against every targeted nation, being the clearest sign war is being prepared, etc.). As certain Western bloc nations seek to form anti-China alliances (particularly the US and Australia with the QSD as the basis of an ‘Asian NATO’.), they do not adequately recognise China also has strategic allies (as recent joint China-Russia military exercises should have clarified). If limits of restrain are exceeded, the DPP and any foreign powers that may engage their military forces against China will experience the consequences. This is a matter of logic.
Note: Importantly, the concept of nuclear primacy is only feasible in a first-strike scenario (the basis of why China and Russia should create integrated operational plans for certain scenarios and revise their no first use policy if this event is determined at any stage as imminent and inevitable, pre-emption allowing the minimisation of greater losses in a retaliatory scenario).
This is a good comment. I still want to point out that there is no such thing as “nuclear primacy” because there is no such thing as “nuclear weapons”. Everyone can ascertain that this bold assertion is correct by examining the 1945 footage of Hiro/Naga and other Japanese cities, all of which were destroyed by democratic firebombers dropping carpets of napalm bombs on defenseless and essentially wooden cities that had only very few stone buildings, all of which can be clearly identified on the photos after the murderous democratic raids. I could write more but most people won’t believe it anyway.
So the upshot of this is that you don’t need to worry and be scared by a the apocalyptic prospect of nuclear armageddon. It won’t happen because it can’t happen. It’s a world of lies and scams and fraud and hoaxes, and you are meant to live in fear, but you might want to opt for a more reasonable way of life.
Americans need to understand something. If there is a war between China and the US, it will not be a “far away war” American cities will be destroyed, their economy, already on life support, will collapse. The US is at the moment a very divided and chaotic nation,I don’t think they will win this war.
Neither will China win a real nuclear war. Their military installations will be destroyed. Their ports, devastated. Who would profit by such a war? Why, the “military-industrial”-financial “complex,” what else?
Enough, enough, enough already. The US and China (that is the respective elites, more covert in the US, more overt in China) have long decided to split the world between them. Same regime. Masks, population control (“soft” democide), total control by the financial-digital complex, working with government agencies (CIA, politbüro). That’s what is really happening. Everything else is distraction. The war actually fought is a class war. It’s a super rich and hence powerful elite against the masses (who are much more powerful in the end, by are doped by supposed nationalistic agendas, hygiene and other lies). What country hasn’t seen its citizens’ basic liberties, health and economic well-being taken away?
Please guys it’s all theater. 10% for big guy is in Chinas pocket. The Laboratory Virus was developed with US money in China, to be let lose globally. The Chinese even pulled that number with the Wuhan wetmarket as a ruse to make believe a natural origin of SarsCov2. They worked together there, and they will work together in war, because it will be fake war – where the outcome is predetermined. Looking at the chaos and the willingly made woke culture of weakness, it is China which will win. The USraHell Elites have mostlikely all argreed on that years ago, when they invested into Chinas military complex, and when Israel transfered the Lavi technology to China, helping to develope the Chengdu J10 actively in their wind tunnels, laying the ground for the later J20 and everything what came after that. It’s very similar then the Standard Oil policies with Max Warburgs/Adolf Hitlers IG -Farben in the thirties, and what the Koch Brothers and Henry Ford did in Germany and the Sowjet Union in between the wars. Both countries were developed for war, to make profits and that they kill as many of each other as possible in a coming long war. One can see the same now with China. They make them knowingly strong for war – and make the others knowingly weak, and then they let it start – with the outcome already pre agreed. Same like it was with AH, who asked his favourite architect Albert Speer to design monumental buildings, also with the requirement that they had to look good as ruins – something which one only does with preknowledge, that they will be at the end only exist as ruins, as a background for the everlasting historical theater, given by the globalists – who are at least since 110years united in leading the cattle into long a deadly wars, which made/make them stronger each and every time…
The US needs a good hiding to wake it up out of its insane “woke” catatonic state.
The US can recognize the PRC OR the ROC as the sole legitimate government of China. The US CANNOT recognize the ROC on Taiwan and a few islands as an independent state from mainland China. Why? Because both the ROC AND the PRC insist that China is one nation, not two. Both claim to be the only legitimate government of all China.