US foreign policy stirring political turmoil with China and Russia.

in #politics3 years ago

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Glen Diesen, Professor at the University of South-East Norway and editor at the Russia in Global affairs Journal has published a very interesting and insightful editorial for RT. Diesen says the lack of a strong leadership and coherent policy from Washington is creating dangerous ambiguity on the borders of Russia, China and Iran. The US is neither in nor out of hot issues it has created. The worst problems, the ones that could lead to great power war, insanity in this nuclear age, are the confrontation with China over Taiwan and with Russia over the Donbass.

https://www.rt.com/russia/521506-us-unpredictability-fuels-conflicts

"Washington is also ambiguous about abandoning its more than four-decades long One-China policy, which recognises Taiwan as part of China…” writes Diesen.

Wait, I thought, don’t you mean that China has the policy of claiming sovereignty over Taiwan? Nope, you schooled me on that, Glen Diesen, and thanks!

Here’s Google on that:

"In the case of the United States, the One-China Policy was first stated in the Shanghai Communiqué of 1972: "the United States acknowledges that Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China.” [ – under Nixon]

"On January 1, 1979, the United States recognized the PRC [People’s Republic of China, ‘ communist China’ which is governed by the CPC] and established diplomatic relations with it as the sole legitimate government of China. On the same day, the United States withdrew its recognition of, and terminated diplomatic relations with, the Republic of China [Taiwan] as the government of China.” [– under Carter]

It seems to me that recognizing the People’s Republic of China was the way that Nixon and Kissinger took to try to back out of the Vietnam War, signalling to China that there would be less of a threat on China’s border and cooling off of the long term “covert” [CIA/Wall Street] goal of encircling China. By 1972 the US ground forces in Vietnam were in a state of collapse and mutiny. The war had never had a military objective that could be defined and achieved and, without that, war is nothing but a pointless slog. [Which brings us to Afghanistan of which more later] Pointless slogs kill military forces and they exhaust and destroy the states which attempt to wage any kind of “forever war”.

In 1979, under President Carter in that strange post-Vietnam and post-Watergate interlude, the US recognized the People’s Republic of China, sent diplomats to Beijing and withdrew its recognition and it’s diplomats from Taiwan. I’m betting the death of Mao in 1976 (and the immediate purge of Mao’s wife and his other close advisors by Deng as “The Gang of Four”) helped a lot to bring China into an acceptable status vis a vis the US.

Since then, as Glen Diesen writes, there has been an unspoken agreement to let sleeping dogs lie in the South China Sea. China backs off of really enforcing its claim to Taiwan and the US backs off of seriously enforcing its hegemony over Taiwan.

But then came Trump. In 2016 Trump challenged the One-China policy. “I don’t know why we have be bound by a ‘One China’ policy unless we make a deal with China having to do with other things, including trade.”, he said, ever more concerned with trade and business and unconcerned with foreign policy. He ceded that field to Mike Pompeo and John Bolton with disastrous results in my opinion. Last November Pompeo said, “Taiwan has not been a part of China”. That’s a very CIA thing to say; it’s a Cold War thing to say. Now that Biden is supposed to be in charge, when he obviously isn’t capable of it, the foreign policy of the US is even more headless. The US Navy is barging into the South China Sea, which makes it impossible for China not to respond. And thus the tensions ramp up almost automatically. If China is worried that nuclear missiles might be put on Taiwan I can’t blame them since nobody in Washington seems to be living in the real world.

China looks to Ukraine and the constant hints of nuclear capability being advanced along with NATO membership. Putin has said today that pushing Russia has its limit and that limit has been reached. Threats to Russia’s national security will be met with responses both asymmetrical and swift. He’s talking about the Donbass of course. The Donbass region is ethnically Russian. Letting the Donbass be taken by Kiev forces that have vowed to do these people terrible harm would be the political end of the Russian Federation. It would put hostile forces right on Russia’s border and cut Russia off by land from Crimea and the Russian Black Sea Fleet at Sebastopol. If that were so much as threatened Russian forces would pour over the border and Russian tanks would be in Kiev as fast as they could roll. The same outcome would result from NATO threatening to station nukes in Ukraine.

A similar situation applies to Taiwan. The threat to put nukes on Taiwan would result in China invading and taking the country. China would have no choice but to do that. And latest war games played by the Pentagon have demonstrated that US forces and bases and naval assets in the area would be wiped out.

I’m willing to have some faith that Washington policy people are aware of this. Mutual understanding between Washington, Beijing and Moscow needs to be established right now. But what is the prospect of that since Washington is looking as demented as Biden?

However, reality is banging the gavel. The War in Afghanistan is finally over because the longer that slog continues the more the collapse of the US Armed Forces becomes evident to all the world.

Glen Diesen also schooled me about "The Afghanistan Papers”.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/investigations/afghanistan-papers/documents-database

To my embarrassment, I hadn’t heard about this at all. In late 2019 the Washington Post actually published something real! Shades of The Pentagon Papers, the secret documents revealed by Daniel Ellsberg and published by the Washington Post which sounded the death nell of the Vietnam War! The Afghanistan Papers are the documents heretofore obscure which the Wa/Po bills as "The Secret History of the War” four conclusions emerge unvarnished:

  • “Year after year officials failed to tell the public the truth about the war”

  • "US and allied officials admitted the mission had no clear strategy and poorly defined objectives."

  • "Many years into the war the US still did not understand Afghanistan"

  • "The US wasted vast sums of money trying to remake Afghanistan and bred corruption in the process.”

In 50 years Washington has somehow managed to learn nothing from the debacle of the Vietnam War. I damn well know why the War in Afghanistan is an exact repeat of the Vietnam War. It’s because the Nam war was started by and was run by the CIA and the Afghan War is exactly the same. Same corruption. Same drugs. Same wastage of the American economy and the humiliation of the American Military. The American economy and military never did quite recover from the Nam. And the worst disease of all became endemic in Washington when John F Kennedy was murdered and the CIA took over, That is the sickness of lies fostered by secrecy. Lies lead to divorce from reality, which is insanity. The corruption of the War in Afghanistan – and Iraq and Syria and God knows how many other countries – has come home to roost on Washington.

The recovery of America must begin with truth and it has begun. It will be a rough road with no guarantee of a happy ending. The land of America is boiling with corruption and hate and incredible stupidity as lawless thugs burn down the nation, demand the abolition of the police, and Maxine Waters, who called Trump a demagog, shouts encouragement completely oblivious of her own hypocrisy. The Democrats are pouring gasoline on the burning down of their own country and the Republicans are standing by silent. This cannot go on. If it does America will literally break apart.