How the U.S. Regime Deceives Its Public to Support Its Permanent-War Economy

Eric Zuesse
Eric's Substack

Mao with Nizon, 1972. A historic turning point.

The U.S. regime (which is controlled by its billionaires, whose international corporations are invested very heavily in their global empire) fools its public to support (via taxes and corpses) the ongoing expansion of their empire, such as one operation that now is perhaps their main unachieved grab: their taking Taiwan from China; and so Taiwan will now be the example discussed here.

At exactly noon Eastern Time on America’s National Public Radio, 21 May 2024, was their standard 5-minute, top-of-the-hour, news-summary (archived here), which included at 2:10-2:18: “China is making it clear it does not like Taiwan’s new president who was inaugurated this week. China wants to make Taiwan part of its own territory.”

Earlier, here was a featured NPR ‘news’-report on this same matter, on 14 February 2024: “China claims Taiwan as its own. How does the conflict look to the self-ruled island?”:

NPR's Steve Inskeep speaks with Alexander Yui, Taiwan's top diplomat to the U.S., about the tensions with Beijing. Taiwan is preparing for the possibility of war with China. …

China … views Taiwan as its breakaway province. When we spoke with Alexander Yui, the veteran diplomat offered a formula for talking about Taiwan's status.

YUI: There's really no point in proclaiming another independence because proclaiming independence means that we are currently subject to someone, which we are not.

INSKEEP: Meaning, you don't have to declare independence because you are independent.

YUI: We are. You know, we have been. We have been. … We have never been subject or part of the People's Republic of China. And that is a fact. …

Nowhere in the interview did NPR (Inskeep) question — much less challenge — that ‘fact’.

However, here is from even the CIA-edited and written Wikipedia (which blacklists (blocks from linking to) sites that aren’t CIA-approved), its article “History of Taiwan”:

In 1662, Koxinga defeated the Dutch and established a base of operations on the island. His descendants were defeated by the Qing dynasty in 1683 and their territory in Taiwan was annexed by the Qing dynasty. Over two centuries of Qing rule, Taiwan's population increased by over two million and became majority Han Chinese.

Furthermore: on 21 May 2022, exactly two years ago, I headlined at Modern Diplomacy (a site that subsequently took down their entire archive of my articles because its owner had been threatened with financial ruin by an agency of U.S. billionaires if he didn’t) “U.S. Violates Its Promises to China; Asserts Authority Over Taiwan”, and reported:

The U.S. regime’s Wilson Center does have an article “JOINT COMMUNIQUE BETWEEN THE UNITED STATES AND CHINA”, at which only the document’s opening 286 words are shown, while the rest is veiled and the reader must then do additional clicks in order to get to it.

The U.S. State Department’s history site, does provide the entire 1,921-word document, but under a different title, one that plays down the document’s actual importance, “Joint Statement Following Discussions With Leaders of the People’s Republic of China”.  (If it’s a “Joint Statement,” then whom are the “Leaders of the People’s Republic of China” “jointly” issuing it with — that title for it is not only false, it is plain stupid, not even referring to the U.S, at all.) Consequently, anyone who seeks to find the document under its official and correct title won’t get to see it at the U.S. State Department’s site.

Here are some of the important statements in the actual document which is called simply “Shanghai Communiqué” :

With these principles of international relations in mind the two sides stated that:

               —progress toward the normalization of relations between China and the United States is in the interests of all countries;

               —both wish to reduce the danger of international military conflict;

               —neither should seek hegemony in the Asia–Pacific region and each is opposed to efforts by any other country or group of countries to establish such hegemony; and

               —neither is prepared to negotiate on behalf of any third party or to enter into agreements or understandings with the other directed at other states.

Both sides are of the view that it would be against the interests of the peoples of the world for any major country to collude with another against other countries, or for major countries to divide up the world into spheres of interest. …

The U.S. side declared: 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. With this prospect in mind, it affirms the ultimate objective of the withdrawal of all U.S. forces and military installations from Taiwan. In the meantime, it will progressively reduce its forces and military installations on Taiwan as the tension in the area diminishes.

The Wikipedia article’s 428-word summary of the “Document” did include parts of the paragraph which started “The U.S. side declared,” but the summary closed by alleging that the document “did not explicitly endorse the People’s Republic of China as the whole of China. Kissinger described the move as ‘constructive ambiguity,’ which would continue to hinder efforts for complete normalization.” How that passage — or especially the entire document — could have been stated with less “ambiguity” regarding “the People’s Republic of China as the whole of China” wasn’t addressed. In fact, the statement that “all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China” includes asserting that the Taiwanese people “maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China.” So: the U.S. did agree with that, even signed to it in 1972. If the U.S. refuses to agree with it now, then what was the U.S. agreeing to in that Communique, and under what circumstances does the Communique become null and void for either of the two agreeing Parties to it? When does it stop being binding? Perhaps the document should have added something like “The U.S. Government will never try to break off pieces of China.” But maybe if that were to have been added to it, then the U.S. regime wouldn’t have signed to anything with China. Is the U.S. regime really that Hitlerian? Is this what is ‘ambiguous’ about the document?

In fact, the affirmation that, “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. With this prospect in mind, it affirms the ultimate objective of the withdrawal of all U.S. forces and military installations from Taiwan.” is now routinely being violated by the U.S. regime. Here’s an example:

One of the leading U.S. billionaires-funded think tanks, the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), was co-founded by Kurt Campbell, who is Joe Biden’s “Asia co-ordinator” or “Asia Tsar” with the official title of “National Security Council Coordinator for the Indo-Pacific.” The other co-founder is Michèle Flournoy, who also co-founded with the current Secretary of State Antony Blinken, WestExec Advisors, which firm’s client-list is secret but generally assumed to be top investors in firms such as Lockheed Martin. That advisory firm’s activities are also secret. 

Perhaps nothing is more profitable than trading on inside information regarding corporations whose main, if not only, sales are to the U.S. Government and its allied governments. Trading on inside information needs to be secret in order to be non-prosecutable. The clients of WestExec Advisors might be extraordinarily successful investors, because they’ve hired people who have ‘the right’ contacts in the federal bureaucracy and so know where your ‘national security’ tax-dollars are likeliest to be spent next.

CNAS issued, in October 2021, “The Poison Frog Strategy: Preventing a Chinese Fait Accompli Against Taiwanese Islands”. It was written as-if the Shanghai Communique hadn’t prohibited this. The presumption there was instead that America and Taiwan would have so much raised the heat against China’s not being picked apart, so as for China to have militarily responded in order to hold itself together; and, then, a stage, “MOVE 2,” would be reached, in which:

The Taiwan and U.S. teams engaged in more direct communication, which aided the U.S. team in framing the crisis. By Move 2, the U.S. team had accepted that using military force to retake Dongsha would be too escalatory and might disrupt the formation of any counter-China coalition. Accordingly, the team reframed the takeover of Dongsha as an opportunity to expose Chinese belligerence and to encourage states to join together to balance against China’s aggressive behavior. The U.S. team’s decision to place U.S. military forces on Taiwan during Move 1 became a key driver for the rest of the game.

Then, 

By Move 3, both the U.S. and Taiwan teams were in difficult positions. The U.S. team did not want to let Chinese aggression go unpunished, both for the sake of Taiwan and within the context of the broader regional competition. At the same time, the U.S. team wanted to show its partners and allies that it was a responsible power capable of negotiating and avoiding all-out war. The Taiwan team was caught in an escalating great-power crisis that threatened to pull Taiwan into a war that it was trying to avoid. The Taiwan team had to balance its relationships and policies with the United States and China while simultaneously spearheading de-escalation. And in the early part of the game, before communication between the United States and Taiwan teams improved, the Taiwan team had, unbeknownst to the U.S. team, set up a back channel with the China team. At the same time the back-channel negotiations were ongoing, the U.S. team was still, in fact, considering additional escalatory action against the China team. …

Toward the end of the game, the U.S. and Taiwan teams’ main strategy was to isolate China diplomatically and economically and garner enough international backing among allies and partners to make that isolation painful. To this end, the Taiwan team focused on pulling in some of its regional partners, such as Japan, while the U.S. team reached out to its NATO allies.9 To avoid unwanted escalation or permanent effects, the U.S. and Taiwan teams limited their offensive military operations to non-kinetic and reversible actions such as cyberattacks and electronic warfare.

Under “Key Takeaways and Policy Recommendations” is:

Given the inherent difficulty of defending small, distant offshore islands like Dongsha, Taiwan and the United States should strive to turn them into what the players called “poison frogs.” This approach would make Chinese attempts to seize these islands so militarily, economically, and politically painful from the outset that the costs of coercion or aggression would be greater than the benefits.

The U.S. regime’s having in 1972 committed itself to there being only “a peaceful settlement of the Taiwan question by the Chinese themselves” has somehow now become a license for the U.S. regime to provoke “Chinese attempts to seize these islands” and yet to cause — by America’s constant further provocations and lying — this to be “so militarily, economically, and politically painful from the outset that the costs of coercion or aggression would be greater than the benefits.”

In other words: the U.S. regime expects to portray China as being the aggressor, and the U.S. regime as being the defender — but, actually, of what? It would be the defender of breaking off a piece of China to add it to the U.S. regime’s allies, against an ‘aggressive’ China that opposes America’s violating its own, and China’s, 1972 Joint Shanghai Communique — which prohibits that.

On May 19th, The Hill, one of the U.S. regime’s many propaganda-mouthpieces, headlined “China warns of dangerous situation developing ahead of Biden Asia trip”, and opened: 

China warned the U.S. that President Biden’s visit to East Asia this week could put their relations in “serious jeopardy” if officials play the “Taiwan card” during the trip.

In a phone call with national security adviser Jake Sullivan, China’s top diplomat Yang Jiechi warned the U.S. against speaking out on the independent sovereignty of Taiwan, a self-ruling democratic island in the Indo-Pacific that China claims is historically part of the mainland and should be under Beijing’s control.

China doesn’t claim that Taiwan “is historically part of the mainland and should be under Beijing’s control,” but that, just like Hawaii is NOT a part of “the mainland” but IS “under U.S. control,” and NOT “a self-ruling” nation, Taiwan is NOT a part of “the mainland” but IS (not ‘should be’, but IS) under China’s control, and NOT “a self-ruling” nation. Just as there is no “independent sovereignty of Hawaii,” there also is no “independent sovereignty of Taiwan.” How many lies were in that opening? (And this doesn’t even bring in the fact that whereas Hawaii is way offshore of America’s mainland, Taiwan is very close to China’s mainland.)

And how long will the U.S. regime’s constant lying continue to be treated as-if that’s acceptable to anything other than yet another dangerously tyrannical regime — a U.S. ally, perhaps?

——

I did not mention there that, after the “Shanghai Communiqué” in 1972, came the 15 December 1978 “JOINT COMMUNIQUE OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA  AND THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA”, which restated: 

2. The United States of America recognizes the Government of the People’s Republic of China as the sole legal Government of China. Within this context, the people of the United States will maintain cultural, commercial, and other unofficial relations with the people of Taiwan.

3. The United States of America and the People’s Republic of China reaffirm the principles agreed on by the two sides in the Shanghai Communique. …

7. The Government of the United States of America acknowledges the Chinese position that there is but one China and Taiwan is part of China.

That 1978 agreement also stated that:

4. Both [Governments] wish to reduce the danger of international military conflict.

5. Neither should seek hegemony in the Asia-Pacific region or in any other region of the world and each is opposed to efforts by any other country or group of countries to establish such hegemony.

Not only does the U.S. regime routinely violate all of that, but it even violates its promise made in the 1972 agreement, that, “it affirms the ultimate objective of the withdrawal of all U.S. forces and military installations from Taiwan. In the meantime, it will progressively reduce its forces and military installations on Taiwan as the tension in the area diminishes.” It has done, and is doing, the exact opposite — precisely in order to provoke China to invade Taiwan, so that the U.S. regime will be able to charge ‘Chinese aggression’ as America’s excuse for invading China.

The signed word of the U.S. Government means nothing, because it’s a lying fascist imperialistic dictatorship. And its ‘news’-media such as NPR simply repeat its lies as-if those weren’t and aren’t blatant lies, meant for fooling instead of informing the public.

Subsequently, on 31 July 2023, I headlined “Lying Blinken Visits Australia for Peace With China by Arming Taiwan to Break Away From China” and reported that Biden’s Secretary of State was working with the U.S. regime’s Australian colony to arm Taiwan’s rulers enough for them to be willing to provoke China to invade Taiwan so that the U.S. regime would then invade China in order — not to aggress against China but — to ‘defend’ Taiwan against ‘China’s aggresion’: it targets all of its public statements at only fools (because, with a track-record such as this regime has, those are the only people who believe it any longer). 

The regime’s purpose isn’t merely to expand yet farther America’s empire, but also (and perhaps mainly) to expand the sales of Lockheed Martin and the other U.S.-and-allied billionaires’ international weapons-marketing firms.

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