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Gerald Celente has long said the business of China is business, and the business of the U.S. is war.
Washington continues its effort to militarily encircle China and choke off Beijing from the global economy by conducting a major military drill with the Philippines that included an “unprecedented” live-fire exercise that will sink a ship off the coast of the former U.S. colony.
The Financial Times reported that the drill, which will last until 28 April, will include about 12,000 U.S. forces and 5,400 Philippine military personnel.
The culmination will include sinking a ship off the Philippine’s largest island of Luzon. The ship, which will be located in the West Philippine Sea, at the rim of the South China Sea, will be targeted with “all the weapons systems that we have, ground, navy, and air,” Col. Michael Logico, the director of the Philippine military’s joint and Combined Training Center, told the paper.
Troops from Australia are also taking part in the drills.
Logico insisted that the exercises were not an attempt to provoke any country, but Luzon would likely be the venue of a major military confrontation if China decides to invade Taiwan.
TRENDPOST: It should be noted that protests have broken out in the Philippines over the increased presence of American troops in the country and the decision to give the U.S. fleet access to four additional military bases seen as strategically important if China moves on Taiwan.
Washington and Manilla have been growing increasingly close since the May 2022 inauguration of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., the son of the former U.S.-backed dictator of the same name. (Former President Rodrigo Duterte tried to improve Manilla’s relationship with China during his tenure and refused to allow U.S. forces to expand their presence under the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement.)
Two of the bases that the U.S. will have access to are in Cagayan, which is about 250 miles from Taiwan, the report said.
Huang Xilian, a Chinese envoy, said the Philippines is “stoking the fire,” and the new base access for the U.S. “has caused widespread and grave concern among Chinese people.”
“Obviously, the US intends to take advantage of the new EDCA sites to interfere in the situation across the Taiwan Strait to serve its geopolitical goals and advance its anti-China agenda,” Huang said, according to The South China Morning Post.
Renato Reyes Jr., the secretary general of Bayan, an alliance of leftist groups in the Philippines opposed to U.S. military expansion in the country, told the news outlet that the U.S. is just using the war games to project its power in Asia.
“It’s not intended to defend the Philippines,” he said. “It’s not intended to help the Philippines modernize. It’s really intended to showcase U.S. power. And it is a preparation for war.”
He said the Philippines stands to get stuck in the middle of an arms race between the U.S. and China. (See “U.S. CONTINUES TO INSTIGATE CHINA AFTER WELCOMING TAIWANESE PRESIDENT” 4 Apr 2023, “WWIII: U.S. QUADRUPLES TROOPS IN TAIWAN IN PREPARATION FOR WAR WITH CHINA” 28 Feb 2023, “U.S. WARSHIP SAILS THROUGH TAIWAN STRAIT, CHINESE FORCES PUT ON ALERT” 10 Jan 2023, “WASHINGTON RAMPS UP WAR TENSIONS WITH CHINA: $10 BILLION IN U.S. MILITARY AID TO TAIWAN” 20 Dec 2022, and “U.S. PROVOKES CHINA AFTER SAILING DESTROYER AROUND DISPUTED ISLAND CHAIN” 28 Mar 2023.)
“We don’t want incursions from China, but we don’t want to be used as a staging ground for U.S. military intervention and hegemony in the region,” he said. “So, our position is that we do not welcome these exercises. They will have a long-lasting negative effect on the region. And they are also historically an affront to Philippine sovereignty.”
TREND FORECAST: Repeating what we had long forecast that the 20thcentury was the American century and the 21st will be China’s The Global Times quoted Kishore Mahbubani, the former Singaporean Ambassador to the United Nations, who said that domination by the West is coming to an end, “and now the West is accelerating its decline, and the future will be dominated by the ‘CIA era’ formed by China, India, and ASEAN.”