US meddling is far from confined to Ukraine as part of its proxy war with Russia. The US pursues a similar policy against China by targeting nations all across China’s periphery

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DEFEAT CAPITALISM AND ITS DEADLY SPAWN, IMPERIALISM
ecological murder •
BRIAN BERLETIC
The New Atlas
Mar 8, 2023

US meddling is far from confined to Ukraine as part of its proxy war with Russia. The US pursues a similar policy against China by targeting nations all across China’s periphery. The US government through the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and its subsidiaries has sponsored opposition parties and organizations in Cambodia for years including Kem Sokha’s Cambodian National Rescue Party. In 2017 Kem Sokha openly admitted to working with the US to overthrow the Cambodian government in a Washington-sponsored Serbia-style color revolution. Cambodia has now jailed Kem Sokha for 27 years for treason. The US government, Western media, and Western “rights” groups in concert are falsely claiming the charges are “fabricated,” illustrating how the West uses human rights advocacy as a smokescreen to advance US foreign policy objectives.

References:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/202...

https://www.phnompenhpost.com/nationa...

http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/26/mag...

ABOUT THE AUTHOR / SOURCE
Brian Berletic, a leading geopolitical analyst and former editor of the Land Destroyer blog, is currently the chief editor and correspondent of The New Atlas. A former Marine, Brian currently resides in Thailand.

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Plumpes Denken: Crude thinking

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DEFEAT CAPITALISM AND ITS DEADLY SPAWN, IMPERIALISM
ecological murder •

by George Burchett
 

KOREAN WAR: U.S.-Marine tank follows a line of POWs down a village street September 26,1950. The war was still very much undecided. (CC)



I chanced upon “crude thinking” while reading Bruce Cumings’ The Korean War. Here’s the quote from his book:

Nothing is more important than learning to think crudely,” Brecht once said. “Crude thinking is the thinking of great men.” So was the milieu of crisis in which he wrote, and Koreans fought: crude, illiberal, murderous.

Understanding Brecht, (written in 1933-1939, first published in 1966), Benjamin devotes a section to Crude Thinking while discussing Brecht’s Threepenny Novel. The original quote from the novel is:

The chief thing is to learn to think bluntly. Blunt thinking is great thinking. Politics is the pursuit of business by unbusiness-like methods. (Brecht, p. 169)

Benjamin writes, quoting Brecht paraphrasing himself:

‘The most important thing is to learn to think crudely. Crude thinking is the thinking of great men.’

There are many people to whom a dialectician means a lover of subtleties. In this connection it is particularly useful when Brecht puts his finger on ‘crude thinking’ which produces dialectics as its opposite, contains it within itself, and has need of it. Crude thoughts belong to the household of dialectical thinking precisely because they represent nothing other than the application of theory to practice: its application to practice, not its dependence on practice. Action can, of course, be as subtle as thought. But a thought must be crude in order to come into its own in action. (Benjamin, Understanding Brecht, p. 81 – my emphasis)

I was reminded of another quote, this time it was G.W. Bush’s senior advisor Karl Rove talking to journalist Ron Suskind:

We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality – judiciously, as you will – we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors… and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.

— New York Times Magazine, Oct. 17, 2004

To use another famous quote, Shakespeare this time:

All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players…

Karl Rove’s “we” – history’s actors – no doubt include those G.W. Bush called “the crazies in the basement”: the neo-cons, who scripted, produced and staged the disasters that are Iraq and Afghanistan.

Under Obama, they morphed into “humanitarian interventionists” (under the R2P label – Responsibility To Protect) and added Libya, Syria, Ukraine, Yemen, to the list of neo-con wars and ‘interventions’.

As Rove says, “we’re history’s actors and you” – that is the rest of us – can “study what we do.”

The question is then: are we content to just study the reality the ‘reality creators’ create for us, or can we do something about it and perhaps create another reality?

KOREAN WAR: US Marines during the recapture of Seoul, 1950. (CC)

Theodor W. Adorno, one of the founders of the Frankfurt School of critical theory, who knew both Brecht and Benjamin, disapproved of “crude thinking” or, in German, plumpes Denken. He was also a composer/theoretician of classical avant-garde music, disapproved of jazz and popular music (and culture) in general, and theorized that art should remain “autonomous” – that is detached – from ‘capitalist’ reality. His preferred playwright and writer were Beckett and Kafka. Adorno was a pessimist. For him, post Work War II reality stemmed solely from Auschwitz. He famously said: “There can be no poetry after Auschwitz.” Why only Auschwitz? Why not Hiroshima? Or the many “realities” created by Karl Rove’s “history’s actors” and their criminal predecessors?

On the contrary, there should be poetry, music, songs, theatre, visual art and other forms of creative resistance to combat neo-con and associated “reality creators.” It worked well against the war in Vietnam. Why shouldn’t it work against the current wars – ongoing and in-the-making?

For Brecht, and other revolutionary artists – Picasso, Mayakovski, Eisenstein, Chaplin, to name but a few – and to use a quote attributed to both Brecht and Mayakovski:

Art is not a mirror to hold up to society, but a hammer with which to shape it.

KOREA: A US soldier stands by a dead Chinese communist soldier who apparently was reading a US illustrated storybook. The cold indifference of war is one of its many dehumanising traits. (CC)

A hammer is a crude instrument, compared to sophisticated weapons of mass destruction (or targeted assassinations) operated by whiz kids with joysticks or high tech warriors in free-fire zones. But it’s a weapon. And so is the sickle.

Time to dust them off and creatively apply some of Brecht’s “crude thinking.”

The neo-con ‘reality creators’ and their many associates are extremely well organized, supported by the mightiest armies in the world, the best propaganda machine in human history, the best academic brains, most of the entertainment industry – in fact, the entire capitalist system.

So what? They don’t own people’s hearts and minds, only their pockets and parts of their brains, through fear, greed and 24/7 brainwashing.

I don’t think there is any point debating them in theoretical discourse, engaging in their history wars etc. That is exactly what they want. Rove: “We’re history’s actors… and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do…”

I don’t want to study them or debate them. I want to hammer them, whenever I can. And I want to apply Brecht’s “crude thinking” as an effective weapon to that purpose.

Bruce Cuming’s quoted Brecht in reference to Korea’s resistance leader Kim Il Sung and his companions in their guerilla war against Japanese imperialist occupiers. To win, they had to practice “crude thinking,” because “crude thinking is the thinking of great men.” They had to rally the peasant masses and the people in general, to win. So did Mao, so did Lenin, so did Ho Chi Minh, so did Castro and others.

In every case, they succeeded against the greatest possible odds by applying revolutionary theory into revolutionary practice and rallying the masses to their cause.

How their revolutions evolved is a matter of debate…

I live in Ha Noi where the red flag with the hammer and the sickle still proudly flies and a statue of Lenin still stands and watches kids ride skateboards during the day and fancy electric cars for rent in the evening. I meet many people from many countries, and they all rave about Vietnam: how friendly, how beautiful, how interesting, how exciting… I also have Vietnamese friends who share Adorno’s pessimism and would be happy to see the red flag and Lenin replaced with… I don’t know. Abstract expressionism?

Vietnam’s independence and unity were the result of the “crude thinking” of Ho Chi Minh, General Giap and other revolutionary leaders.

US pop culture has always whitewashed US imperialist conflicts. In the famous M.A.S.H. TV sitcom which ran almost a decade, the Americans were portrayed as lovable do-gooders. Naturally, amid all the fun and jokes, no one ever questioned who gave the Americans the right to meddle in Korea—or Vietnam—for that matter. (TGP Screenshot)

They didn’t debate French colonialists and American imperialists, they took to the mountains and jungles and beat them, with crude weapons – compared to the most powerful and sophisticated armies in history.

They had the majority of their people behind them. And eventually, the majority of humanity. And they won. And inspired others to do the same.

And so can we, if we apply Brecht’s “crude thinking” and start kicking Rove’s “actors” where it hurts and where they have little power and defenses: the huge space left for progressive creative thought and action.

Look at it as a race: they run for war, we run for peace.

But we can laugh at them, we can ridicule them and show them in all their pathetic ugliness. Them and their lackeys in all spheres of life.

It can be done, with “crude thinking”, with humor, with faith in humanity and love for our dear little planet.

Brecht would approve. Adorno would shake his head disapprovingly. In 1969, he had to flee Frankfurt University after students booed him and put up a banner “If Adorno is left in peace, capitalism will never cease.” His pessimism didn’t inspire them, but Ho Chi Minh, Mao Tse Tung, Castro and Che Guevara did.

So let’s be optimistic and “crude” and start removing Rove’s “history’s actors” from the scene. The survival of our planet depends on it.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
George Burchett is an artist who lives in Hanoi.

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What China Should Do if Taiwan Declares Independence From China

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DEFEAT CAPITALISM AND ITS DEADLY SPAWN, IMPERIALISM
ecological murder •
Eric Zuesse

“Our goal is to avoid fighting a land war in Asia,” Wormuth said. “I think the best way to avoid fighting that war is by showing China and countries in that region we can actually win that war.”  The war preparations against China are happening in the open. How much more blatant and sociopathic can the Empire get, and obviously it has no respect for its own population, which it clearly regards as brainwashed morons.  (TGP Screenshot)

The U.S. Government’s preferred way of forcing Russia or China to make a first-use of nuclear weapons (after the two August 1945 A-bomb blasts on Hiroshima and Nagasaki that the U.S. perpetrated to start its global empire or “hegemony”) would be as follows:

1972 signed commitment to a “one China” policy that Taiwan is a province of China will have ended, and America will then ‘legitimately’ invade China in response to China’s subsequent invasion of Taiwan (to reassert that Taiwan is a part of China).

3. Based upon that allegation by the U.S. Government, the U.S. Government would then declare that China’s Government is an ‘aggressor’ against America’s ‘ally’ Taiwan, and will invade China with non-nuclear weapons.

4. At that point, China will have to decide whether the U.S. Government will have already done enough to justify a launch by China of an all-out nuclear war upon the United States, or, instead, for China to wait for yet further lies and provocations from it, before doing so.

5. If China decides to wait, and if it succeeds in destroying America’s invasion forces without resorting to nuclear weapons, then the U.S. Government will have to decide whether to accept that defeat and end its war against China, or, instead, to itself launch against China enough nuclear weapons so as to destroy China and thereby declare victory over ’that aggressor nation’.

6. If China instead decides not to wait, but instead to launch immediately a nuclear invasion of America, then anything can happen, up to and including Russia’s joining that conflict on China’s side — especially because the biggest fear that Russia’s Government has is that it will, itself, be forced into having only two options: either destroying America, or else capitulating to America. Russia has made clear that under no circumstance will it ever capitulate to America. The only remaining option for Russia then would be to launch an all-out nuclear invasion against the U.S. and its nuclearly-armed ‘allies’ (vassal-nations).

7. CONSEQUENTLY: At step #4 in the above, if China decides to wait for yet further lies and provocations from the United States, then it will be doing so with an understanding that a point-of-no-return has already then been reached, and a third option for China’s Government would likely enter the situation, at least temporarily: Calling a U.N. Security Council (UNSC) meeting in order to vote on the matter. If China fails to get a favorable vote at that level, then still a meeting can be called at the U.N. General Assembly (UNGA) in order to vote on a resolution that China will propose calling for America and its allies to become formally declared to be “aggressors,” and for reasserting that Taiwan remains as being a province of China.

8. That UNGA vote would have no binding authority under international law, but it wouldn’t need any. That vote would itself determine whether or not a majority of the U.N.’s member-nations side with America on this matter, or instead with China on it. The moral power and authority of that vote could determine whether the future of the world will be led by America’s Government, or, instead, by China’s Government (perhaps in partnership with Russia’s Government).

25 July 1945) to take control over the entire world, into — instead, it would be — the U.S. empire’s own end-point, or termination, and the start then of a new world order.

“Lukashenko meets Xi Jinping. Cold war lines are being drawn”, and they well-encapsulated, in their 18-minute video-discussion, where things now are clearly — and at breakneck speed — heading. A more long-term perspective, and one which is documented by links to the data from which it’s derived, was presented by me in an article on 28 August 2022, under the headline “Why RussChina Will Probably Be the Dominant Nation Beyond the Year 2100”. But, of course, the individuals who are controlling the U.S. Government might prevent that outcome, by means of forcing Russia and/or China into a world-ending nuclear war. Anyone who thinks that that cannot happen ought to read the March 1st article from the U.S. Government’s own Voice of America, headlining “US Army Secretary Lays Out Strategy for War with China”. That’s the type of people who now (especially after 24 February 1990) control the U.S. Government. They don’t represent the American public; they represent fewer than one-in-ten-thousand Americans. But those are the very richest Americans, and all of them are “neoconservatives” or U.S. hegemonists or global-imperialists, and they control more than merely the U.S. Government: lots of profit and nonprofit corporations. So: they should be taken seriously, as an enormous threat to the entire world. And an excellent description, of how they do what they do, was given by Seymour Hersh, in a February 23rd interview under the headline “Rising INTERVIEWS SEYMOUR HERSH: Journalist DEFENDS Reporting on US DESTRUCTION of Nord Stream”. Only by deceiving the public can they do what they do. And they’ve been doing it ever since 25 July 1945 — but even more so now, than at the beginning. And they are becoming increasingly desperate because of the direction that things are going. On 17 July 2017, the great investigative journalist Nafeez Ahmed headlined “Pentagon study declares American empire is ‘collapsing’: Report demands massive expansion of military-industrial complex to maintain global ‘access to resources’”, and he summarized a major U.S. Government study that was titled “AT OUR OWN PERIL: DOD RISK ASSESSMENT IN A POST-PRIMACY WORLD”. Its endnote #2 on page 101 said:

The concept of “post-primacy” was widely acknowledged by the vast majority of those the study team engaged with during the course of the study. It was, however, a source of significant discomfort for some senior leaders engaged in the course of the study. Because of the wide majority acknowledgement of the term as appropriate to current strategic conditions, the U.S. Army War College (USAWC) study opted to retain it. 

a 2013 (pdf) article by Sean Starrs, in International Studies Quarterly, which documented that America as constituted by the American people are becoming poorer, but America as constituted by the owners of its largest corporations — global corporations — are getting richer even faster than before, so that wealth-inequality is soaring, and America’s super-rich are benefitting even more as America’s public are experiencing the opposite. Corporate America is thriving, as public America becomes more like third-world. The Government represents corporate America, not the American people. It represents the wealth, not the people; it represents actually the richest ten-thousandth of the population, and not, at all, the other 9,999 of them. And this Government is terrified that maybe — at some point — it will no longer dominate in terms of power. Because: its billionaires’ wealth depends increasingly on their Government’s power. That coercion amplifies their wealth.

billionaires would need to lose power — if that’s even possible. And the Governments of both China and Russia will need to understand this, if there is to be any hope of overcoming this global problem that seriously endangers the entire world’s future.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.

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The Beginning of Democracy or The End of Humanity

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DEFEAT CAPITALISM AND ITS DEADLY SPAWN, IMPERIALISM
ecological murder •
Frank Scott
APPEARING IN LEGALIENATE

America is no longer the most powerful nation in the world and that is great news for humanity, beginning with the American people. But on the verge of social collapse it is still the most militarily dominating nation and as such represents an incredible danger to the same folks: humanity, beginning with the American people.

The Russo-phobic policies which began more than 100 years ago with the Russian revolution have continued and may be more demonic than ever, even though that nation is no longer run by communists but by capitalists. It is too big and powerful to tolerate for the global bully that America has become and now combined with China, an even greater menace to the self-chosen western royals but aligned with growing numbers of nations - a majority the world over - no longer willing to scrape and bow before former colonial powers but anxious to link up in new groups that essentially say to the dominant power for most of the twentieth century: fuck off!

"The present war in the Ukraine regularly charged to Russia owes its existence exclusively to America and its Nato lapdogs and their endless pursuit of the destruction of Russia. The insane policies created by homicidal degeneracy that labels murder as democracy goes on while those who pay for it are endlessly told that evil Putin is bent on taking over all of Europe and possibly parts of California and New York in his blind lust for blood and empire..."

The military-industrial complex America was warned about back in the 1950s by an outgoing republican president has become something far more menacing to humanity than president Eisenhower imagined back then, though he was certainly right to warn us about the dominance of that aspect of capitalism and what it might do to the future. Since the end of the second world war, in which Eisenhower served as a heroic figure as a general, later becoming president, America has killed more people in wars than it did in that historic bloodbath which murdered millions, mostly Europeans and Asians and most especially Russians. Our domination of the world allegedly was supposed to be making it safe for what is called democracy but has far more in common with a market force where the rich rule, as in all other aspects of reality. The numbers slaughtered in Korea, Vietnam, much of southeast Asia, south and central America and scattered spots in Europe are only subject to estimates but even those can cause shudders if considered by people, though most of us are kept preoccupied with sports, celebrities, shopping and incurring debt to know about let alone pay attention to the horrendous inhumanity that is at the root of the reasonably comfortable lives led by a servant class to wealth numbering in the profitable millions while the losing numbers of humans are in the billions.

That too is hopefully soon about to change but the suffering that looms before humanity and social justice prevail could kill all of us if a nuclear war results from the dying gasps of capitalism.

SIDEBAR: STUNNING POLL

The world is watching, and most of humanity is siding against the Empire and its criminal stooges, including many people inside the Empire itself.
(Courtesy of J Matson Heininger, a TGP group member.)

The present war in the Ukraine regularly charged to Russia owes its existence exclusively to America and its Nato lapdogs and their endless pursuit of the destruction of Russia. The insane policies created by homicidal degeneracy that labels murder as democracy goes on while those who pay for it are endlessly told that evil Putin is bent on taking over all of Europe and possibly parts of California and New York in his blind lust for blood and empire. This while America spends more on warfare than Russia and China combined – many many times over – and maintains hundreds of military bases in foreign countries, especially surrounding Russia and China, while endlessly screeching about the threat represented by Russia and China. Having brought the world the infinite gifts of nuclear weapons and taco pizza burgers, there seems to be a belief among the ruling servant class to capital that the USA is a gift to the planetary billions, worthy of worship as the foremost global power in charge of a constitutional or biblical “rules-based order” as it’s called, which is like having a drooling mob of rapists and pimps extolling their blessed “love based order”. This alleged “rules-based order” has been participating militarily in Ukraine since 2014, financing, training and supporting a civil war that killed thousands long before most Americans had ever heard of Ukraine or could possibly find it on a map. Pssst – it borders Russia, not Los Angeles or New York, was once a part of Russia and numbers many Russians who speak the language and believe themselves to be Russian before Ukrainian. Limited to the mental rape performed by propaganda outlets calling themselves major media, decent, otherwise thoughtful people have been led to believe all manner of incredible nonsense about the evil head of state and his menace to decent consumers of bullets, dog food, automobiles, computers, bombs and all the stuff that makes us consumers long before citizens. For an all too brief bulletin, try this:

Here is how Putin put the situation in his press conference some time before 2/24, the date Russia began its attack:

“We have made it clear that any further movement of NATO to the East is unacceptable. Is there anything unclear about this? Are we deploying missiles near the U.S. border? No, we are not. It is the United States that has come to our home with its missiles and is already standing at our doorstep. Is it going too far to demand that no strike systems be placed near our home? What is so unusual about this?”

Of course, if Russia or China placed missiles and military personnel at our Canadian or Mexican borders we would bring them food and refreshments and thank them for protecting us from the evils of Canada or Mexico. That is believable to people conditioned to think that Putin and Russians are evil while our multi-billionaire weapons shipment and training for Ukraine and the sacrifice of Ukrainian lives in a so far proxy war are the doings of holy people interested in the salvation of humanity even if we have to destroy it to succeed.

Of course, an overwhelming American majority has come together to borrow more than 31 trillion dollars in order to build a fantastic murder machine while millions of our people lack health care, hundreds of thousands are homeless and in current style, we all share the pronoun (asshole) transcending any sexual, racial, genital or intellectual difference and acting as a unified democratic majority. In an attempted expression of material reality to counter the fanatic brainwashing we incur from our stenographers for the ruling minority – the mass media and its anti-social home units – in order to try assisting in the growing effort to transform material reality before it deforms all of us, the following is advised.

The Ukraine war needs to be ended by an American public demanding it but if that is not to be the case the world, led by China and Russia in cooperation with the overwhelming majority of humanity, needs to stop the domination of the dollar and the weaponry of America by trading and arming on behalf of the majority of people on planet earth.

A peaceful solution to the present murderous idiocy would have Putin and his foreign minister, Lavin, engage in a debate with Biden and his equally failing intellectual employee Blinken, televised to the globe with questions asked by a panel of not only western toadies but an equal number who are critical and thus representative of a global majority, It would not take very long for even the Americans in the audience to figure out that the Russian duo was brilliant by comparison to the American ruling class servants and while this might not bring an immediate end to the bloody horror it would energize an American majority to stand with the world in opposition and in demanding an end to the trillions spent on murder while the nation and the world is falling apart. The material development of minorities brought about by capitalism has been dreadfully unbalanced by the moral underdevelopment suffered by global majorities. Opportunities for real democracy, not only national but international, are finally at hand but they must be exercised before the grotesque butchery of the word and the world’s people brings us all to a dreadful end. The majority if humanity, not only the American people, need to begin acting like one before the minority brings us all to a tragic end.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR / SOURCE
Frank Scott writes political commentary which appears in the Coastal Post, The Independent Monitor and on his shared blog at:http://legalienate.blogspot.com.

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

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DEFEAT CAPITALISM AND ITS DEADLY SPAWN, IMPERIALISM
ecological murder •
Jim Kavanagh
THE POLEMICIST

The West's demonisation never stops. When China is not busy collapsing, she's a dreaded monster.

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?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR / SOURCE
Jim Kavanagh edits The Polemicist. His reporting and commentary appears in many leading left online publications, including Counterpunch, The Greanville Post, OpedNews, and others.

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