Marching Into the New Year with World Wars III, IV, and V (Part 2)

In Part 1, we covered the progress of World War III with Russia, a classic hit that’s rising with a bullet. Our producers, however, are not stingy with their talent and are now offering a Bonus Track!

Yes, not content with its pursuit of WWIII with the world’s largest country and largest nuclear power, the United States is now also threatening and preparing for WWIV against the world’s most populous and most economically dynamic country, China.

By 2025, according to U.S. Air Force General Michael Minihan. Or 2027, according to the more optimistic CIA Director, William Burns.

In preparation for this conflict, according to Marine Lieutenant General James Bierman, the U.S. is “setting the theatre in Japan, in the Philippines, in other locations,” and “preposition[ing] weapons and other supplies on five more bases” in the Philippines. And President Biden “vows” to “transform Japan into a potent military power.”

So, Germany is sent against Russia, and Japan against China. Helluva song. I think we’ve heard it before.

This, again, because of fear—fear of the rising economic and military power of China, which also threatens the dissolution of unipolar hegemony. Lavrov’s point about Ukraine works quite well (with minor interpolation) for China, too:

"Everything is quite clear here. It’s not about Ukraine [or Taiwan] at all…the United States and the rest of the West, which Washington has subjugated – [will] not permit any events in the international arena that would somehow call into question the US claims to hegemony in the modern world."

Per Chomsky, “the China threat is that China exists.” It’s just too big—~20% of the world’s population—and too economically and, now, militarily powerful, it is building too many strong relations with countries on every continent, and it will soon overtake the U.S. as the dominant force in the world’s political economy. All the sooner if allied with other countries—like, you know, Russia.

In order to prevent that, a campaign is waged to attack China for some other, ostensibly magnanimous, reason—to protect Taiwan. The slight problem here is that Taiwan is a part of China. That is the policy of the United States government, the United Nations, and the Taiwanese government itself. Taiwan’s government and relative political autonomy are tolerated by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as unresolved elements of China’s civil war. Under any circumstances, Xi sending troops to Taiwan is no different from Lincoln sending troops to Fort Sumter, and is no more America’s business than our Civil War was CHina's. But the PRC has chosen not to resolve that unfinished business by military force, and has no reason to visit mass death and destruction upon its own province.  Both the PRC and the Taiwan government have every reason to resolve the internal issue of the unity of the Chinese state in a way that preserves peace and prosperity.

What the PRC will not tolerate is any attempt by any Taiwanese government to declare itself, or to de jure or de facto become, an independent country—an action that can only happen at the instigation of and in league with foreign governments seeking to divide and weaken China, in violation of their own commitments to the PRC and to the world. That will bring a military response from the PRC.

That, of course, is exactly what the U.S. is instigating. And in a way the PRC cannot ignore. It is a policy of deliberately preventing the reunification of China by building Taiwan as a de facto (at least) independent country and U.S. client, and stitching it into a military alliance whose purpose is to maintain U.S. hegemony in the region. That is the policy of the U.S. and its Asian and Australian poodles—and, yes, NATO, for whom, according to the Atlantic Council, “opportunity knocks” in the Pacific.

And (as in Ukraine) here’s the other thing that everybody knows: If the PRC wants to take Taiwan by military force, it will. Nothing the U.S., Japan, or Australia can do will stop it. Except, the U.S. may think, the use of nuclear weapons. The point is not to protect Taiwan, but to use the conflict over it to damage, divide, and set back China. It is this policy, driven by the U.S., that will bring death and destruction to Taiwan, as it did to Ukraine. I hope there are enough sane political forces in Taiwan to prevent this.

Ukraine has precisely been a valuable lesson for China. As Caitlin Johnstone put it:

I don’t know if Beijing will ever launch an attack on Taiwan…but if it does it seems a safe bet that it will be because the U.S. empire kept ramping up aggressions and provocations until it got to the point that China felt it was losing more from inaction than it would from action. And then empire apologists will spend all day shrieking at anyone who tries to talk about those provocations.

For those who don’t (want to) understand that China cannot not take this lesson from Ukraine, Johnstone has another apt quip (from July): "Failing to learn from history is one thing; failing to learn even from the last five months is quite another."

Of course, the rise of China is unstoppable, and the U.S.’s fear becomes another panicked cycle of escalation that can only lead to defeat, likely including nuclear war.

But Wait! There’s More!

There’s another Siren song being sung, and another country in the world whose rising strength cannot be tolerated: Iran.

Indeed, I think the risk of a world-wide war, with nuclear weapons, to destroy Iran is more imminent than war with China.

This is another instance of fear becoming panic—in this case fear about the dissolution of the Zionist project.

Since the United States, for whatever reasons, has taken upon itself the duty of being the guarantor of the Zionist settler-colonialist project, it will do anything to prevent its failure.

The problem now is, as David Hearst asserted, two years ago: “The project to establish Israel as a Jewish state has never been in more peril than it is now, when it thinks it is on the cusp of victory.” Like every settler-colonial project, to be stable and complete, Zionism requires the extermination, expulsion, or subjugation of the Palestinian people, and, though it has accomplished quite a bit in that regard, it has not been enough.

As I said, commenting on Hearst’s statement:

After all, Israel, as the “regime of Jewish supremacy,” depends on a program of brutally colonizing seven million people forever, with the necessary acceptance and approval of the rest of the world. History has some lessons about that. “No justice, no peace” isn’t just a slogan; it’s political analysis. Given who has what to lose in the actual context, if those seven million Palestinians continually rile things up and make life uncomfortable for their colonial masters, there’ll be a lot of the latter re-settling on the East Bank. Of the Hudson.

…[the] Israeli state [is] the unfinished project of the Zionist enterprise…The settlers’ motto is “Finish ’48!” Because the Nakba isn’t over, and never will be. Just look.

Israel does not yet exist, because seven million Palestinians still do. And we have to be aware, as Bresheeth-Žabner warns us, that: “Israel has been preparing for many years for a window of political opportunity – a historical juncture which will enable it to vacate Palestine of most of its remaining indigenous population.”

The present Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu and Itamar Ben-Gvir knows that this is true, and is hell-bent on finishing ’48, by any means necessary. The U.S. government and American Zionists know all this is true, and are in a panic about how to respond. They know that the deceptive historical and ethical narrative of Zionism has already been exposed and discredited for too many people, and they know that the outright pogromist policies of Bibi/Gvir will shred any remnant of its moral pretense and further dissolve political support, even among the U.S. electorate and commentariat. These policies will destroy the collaborationist apparatus of the Palestinian Authority, and threaten to instigate a by-all-means-necessary Palestinian resistance that will not readily be demonized and will gain support throughout the world, including in Europe. But, beyond sanctimonious rhetoric, Israel’s U.S. protectors will not do a single thing—will not withhold one dime or bullet—to stop the Israeli government from doing anything it wants.

In fact, what the U.S. government will do is give Israel that other thing Israel has wanted for over a decade, that thing for which the U.S. and Israel signed a “secret” pact and established a Mission Center, and which would have happened four years ago if Donald Trump hadn’t called it off with ten minutes to go: war on Iran.

The U.S. leadership, deeply committed to Zionism, will give this war to Israel in exchange for Israel’s pledge to hold off indefensible mass deportations, settler pogroms, and executing Palestinian prisoners. Which Israel may do, for a bit, until after they get what they want re Iran. U.S. leaders will sell this war to the U.S. and European audiences as a righteous blow against misogynist Mullahs. What settler-colonialism?

This is a war Israel needs soon. They can’t wait to destroy Iran’s growing capacity to defy Israel’s military aggressions and to support Palestinian resistance to the rampage that is coming. The Ukraine situation may put it off a bit, or may bring it on sooner, but the push for this war will ripen before China.

It is also a war in which, I guarantee, Israel will use one or more nuclear weapons on Iran. Because Israel needs to sufficiently intimidate, and destroy enough of, the large and powerful country to render it impotent for decades, and nuclear weapons are the only thing they can think will do that. And Israel has no fear of a nuclear attack in response.

It is a war in which Iran, using its formidable and feared missile inventory and well-trained allied forces like Hezbollah, will attack Israel proper and U.S. ships, material, and forces everywhere it can. It is a war that will be a global disaster that will engulf at least the entire Middle East, a good part of Europe, and may draw in the Russians and/or Chinese.

World War V.

One might note how the imperialist deep state manipulates the public’s antipathy to war through its Mighty Wurlitzers of the two parties and their allied media: Russia is made a scapegoat by the Democrats for their political and social failures, and China by the Republicans for the ruling-class’s transfer of capital and jobs, which caused many of the social problems the Democrats promise, and fail, to fix. Both of them promote the notion that Israel is a righteous victim, and Iran a villain that must be destroyed. One might note that it’s not China or Russia or Iran who is the people’s enemy, but the Republicans and Democrats, and the imperialism and Zionism they enact.

One might.

But why settle for one World War, when you can have three?