|
|
The Trends Journal has reported extensively on President Biden’s approach to China, a country he sees as the U.S.’s top international challenge. (See: “TOP TRENDS 2021: THE RISE OF CHINA,” “BIDEN RAMPS UP PRESSURE ON CHINA,” and “BIDEN VS. CHINA’S BELT & ROAD INITIATIVE: U.S. LOSES.”)
We’ve written that the 20th century belonged to the U.S., but the 21st century will belong to China because the business of Beijing is business; the business of America is costly wars that result in deadly withdrawals.
Indeed, the longest war in America’s history, the 20 year Afghan War that recently ended in disaster—that Gerald Celente got blackballed and denounced for forecasting the U.S. defeat before it started—is being forgotten by the public and whitewashed by the Presstitutes as Washington takes aim at China.
One of the ways the Biden administration is selling its COLD 2.0 strategy is by selling the bullshit that the U.S. is shoring up its defensive stance against Beijing by forming allies with Indo-Pacific nations such as the Philippines, Japan, Australia, India, and Vietnam.
Military Industrial Complex
Having next to nothing to do with strategic defense and more to do with further enriching the military industrial complex, last week—much to the anger of France—the U.S., Australia, and the U.K. (AUKUS) announced an arms deal that will allow Canberra to acquire a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines. Paris is furious because the deal resulted in the cancelation of a French project that would have delivered 12 “conventionally powered” submarines to Australia.
“The American choice to exclude a European ally and partner such as France… shows a lack of coherence that France can only note and regret,” Jean-Yves Le Drian, the French foreign minister, said. The new deal called off a $66 billion agreement that Canberra had with Paris to produce 12 French diesel-powered submarines, according to The Washington Post. Australian engineers had been working in the shipyards in Cherbourg when the deal was announced.
France recalled its ambassadors to the U.S. and Australia in response to the move. Le Drian was asked why Paris did not recall its ambassador to the U.K., and he said Britain seemed like a “fifth wheel on the wagon.” (The French Embassy in D.C. also canceled a gala on Friday night that was supposed to commemorate Paris’ assistance during the Revolutionary War.)
Secretary of State Antony Blinken did his best to assuage Paris at a press conference, saying, “We strongly, strongly welcome European countries playing an important role in the Indo-Pacific.”
Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said France was “aware in advance.” However, French diplomats told Reuters that they learned about the deal just hours before the official announcement was made Wednesday.
“This makes Europeans realize that maybe some of Trump’s policies, beyond the scandals and the tweets, were not an aberration but signaled a deeper shift away from Europe,” Benjamin Haddad, director of the Atlantic
Council’s Europe Center, told Reuters. He said he didn’t understand why the Biden administration had no interest in bringing in the French, a big European Union actor in the region.
Broken China
On 16 February, in an article titled, “CHINA TASK FORCE: US APPROACH TO BEIJING,” we reported that Biden announced the formation of a task force that will form policy to counter China. Biden called Xi a “thug” during the 2020 presidential campaign.
China has been accused by the U.S. and its neighbors of taking a more aggressive posture in the South China Sea. Beijing was quick to denounce the deal and call it a glaring example of an “outdated cold war zero-sum mentality.”
Zhao Lijian, the Chinese foreign ministry spokesman, said the deal may damage “regional peace” and intensify an arms race. He said Australia and the U.S. will hurt their interests.
Ben Wallace, the U.K. defense secretary, said China is about to embark on one of “the biggest military spends in history…Our partners in those regions want to be able to stand their own ground.”
A Financial Times report pointed out that there has been chatter that China is “outpacing” the U.S. in developing and producing submarines for its military.
Richard Fontaine, the head of the Center for a New American Security, called the submarine project a “big deal” that will be ironed out over the next year and a half.
“The real measure of comparison is not China on one side and the U.S. on the other,” he said. “It’s China on the one side with the U.S. and its allies on the other.”
An unnamed U.S. official told the FT that the “fundamental decision” will bind the three countries for generations.
Taiwan also came out in favor of the nuke sub deal and said Taipei “held common interests with the three allies.”
“We are an important member of the Indo-Pacific region…and we have long shared an interest in Indo-Pacific peace and stability with countries with similar philosophies, like the U.S., Australia, and the U.K.,” Joanne Ou, a spokeswoman from Taiwan’s foreign ministry, said. (See: “TAIWAN MILITARY RAMP-UP WILL NOT STOP CHINA,” “U.S. GENERAL DECLARES U.S. “READY” TO DEFEND TAIWAN IF CHINA INVADES.”)
Our 2 February article “CHINA MILITARY. READY FOR WAR?” focused on the Chinese military conducting exercises that simulated an attack on U.S. aircraft carriers.
The three countries said that they would bolster their strategic communication when it comes to cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and undersea capabilities, the FT reported. The report, citing a British official, said the submarine agreement would directly affect the “Five Eyes” arrangement among the U.S., U.K., Australia, New Zealand, and Canada.
TREND FORECAST: Selling Australia at least 8 nuclear submarines is about enriching the military industrial complex, and will do nothing to threaten China’s military superiority. Indeed, only the factual blind would believe the “Five Eyes” which include the U.S., New Zealand, Australia, Canada and the U.K.—with combined populations of 466 million—would pose a real threat to the heavily armed 1.4 billion Chinese nation.
TREND FORECAST: President Biden said in an ABC News interview that other countries should not doubt the U.S. commitment to their security, in particular Taiwan.
“We have made—kept every commitment. We made a sacred commitment to Article 5 that if, in fact, anyone were to invade or take action against our NATO allies, we would respond. Same with Japan, same with South Korea, same with Taiwan. It’s not even comparable to talk about,” he said, referring to the Afghanistan debacle.
But as we have forecast, Beijing has long declared that Taiwan is part of its territory under its “One China Principle,” and it is the mainland’s territory under its Constitution. We forecast that just as Beijing has clamped down on Hong Kong protests and taken full control, so, too, will they take control of Taiwan when they are ready.
The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday—days after the AUKUS deal was announced—that Taiwan’s cabinet called for the allocation of about $8.7 billion over the next five years to upgrade its precision missiles and naval fleet. We’re happy to hear that Taipei is opening its piggy bank. These missiles seem like they have a pretty good cost-benefit ratio. David Axe, an aerospace and defense reporter at Forbes recommended that Taipei bolster its long-range missile batteries to bombard Chinese airfields in the event of an invasion. These missiles can be hidden in mountains.
China will spend about $209 billion on its military in 2021. The U.S. spent about $725 billion on national defense in 2020, according to the Office of Management and Budget. Taiwan’s total national defense budget will hit a record in 2022 when it reaches $15.1 billion.
Theresa May, the former British prime minister, asked Prime Minister Boris Johnson last week if the AUKUS deal brings Britain closer to war, should China invade Taiwan.
“The United Kingdom remains determined to defend international law and that is the strong advice we would give to our friends across the world, and the strong advice that we would give to the government in Beijing,” he said, according to The Guardian.
Gerald Clente, has said that America, with the largest military in the world, has not won a war since World War II and could not even win against third-world nations, such as Afghanistan, after invading that nation some 20 years ago.
Should war break out between China and Taiwan, we forecast the Taiwanese military will not aggressively fight back, since doing so would result in millions of deaths and mass destruction.
TRENDPOST: Last month, we ran an article about President Biden’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan and how—in George Packer’s 2019 book, Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century—Biden, when he was vice president in 2010, struck a cavalier tone when discussing a troop pullout and possible humanitarian crisis.
“Fuck that. We don’t have to worry about that,” Biden reportedly told Holbrooke. “We did it in Vietnam. Nixon and Kissinger got away with it.”
Biden seems to be taking his “fuck that” approach to Paris. French officials have said they were caught off guard by the AUKUS announcement.
It is worth keeping in mind that the White House was criticized for not telling allies about plans to withdraw from Afghanistan until the process was underway. Kabul’s government was also stunned to learn that U.S. troops abandoned Bagram Air Base. Biden, as a senator, was a disaster when it came to foreign policy, and as president, he surrounded himself with Obama’s bench. (See our 26 January article titled, “BIDEN PRESIDENCY=OBAMA.”)
In 2014, the late Sen. John McCain, warned the Senate that now-Secretary of State Antony Blinken is “dangerous to America.” Blinken was interviewing for deputy secretary of state during the Obama administration.
“I rise to discuss my opposition to the pending vote concerning Mr. Antony ‘Tony’ Blinken, who is not only unqualified but, in fact, in my view, one of the worst selections of a very bad lot that this president has chosen,” McCain said.
Blinken offered a mealy-mouthed statement after the French blowback and insisted that they are still a “vital partner.”
Gérard Araud, the former French ambassador, took to Twitter to post a sarcastic response to Blinken: “We are deeply moved…”
Jean-Yves Le Drian, the French foreign minister, said, ““This brutal, unilateral and unpredictable decision reminds me a lot of what Mr. Trump used to do. I am angry and bitter. This isn’t done between allies.”