ISIS: US-Saudi Plague Reaches Indonesia?

ISIS attacks conveniently mesh with Washington's growing frustration with Jakarta and its expanding ties with China. 

January 16, 2016 (Tony Cartalucci - NEO) - Coordinated bombings and mass shootings struck Indonesia's capital of Jakarta on Thursday leaving several dead and many more wounded. The pattern matched that of attacks carried out last year in Paris, France, where known terrorists Western intelligence agencies were tracking, some for years, were somehow allowed to mobilize large caches of weapons in Belgium and execute their coordinated mass murder with virtually no effort to stop them ahead of the attacks.

The so-called "Islamic State in Iraq and Syria" quickly claimed responsibility for the attack and the Western media has begun stoking fears that the terrorist organization has now spread to Southeast Asia.

G.I. Jihadis: Wherever US Foreign Policy is in Trouble, ISIS is There... 

A pattern is beginning to develop. Wherever the US wants to put its military, ISIS shows up and conveniently justifies it. And whenever the US is having a problem persuading a foreign government to do what Washington desires, ISIS shows up. In fact, pretty much everywhere US foreign policy is in trouble, ISIS and similarly state-sponsored terrorism seems to show up and save the day.

ISIS itself is a creation of the US and its European and Middle Eastern allies. The US' own Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) admitted as much in a leaked 2012 report (.pdf) which stated:

If the situation unravels there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality in eastern Syria (Hasaka and Der Zor), and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran).

To clarify just who these "supporting powers" were that sought the creation of a "Salafist" (Islamic) principality" (State), the DIA report explains:

The West, Gulf countries, and Turkey support the opposition; while Russia, China, and Iran support the regime.

When the US' own Defense Intelligence Agency says the US sought the creation of a "Salafist principality," the verbatim definition of the so-called "Islamic State," in eastern Syria precisely where ISIS is now established, it is clear that ISIS is an enemy of the West in name only, and only to distract from the fact that this abhorrent terrorist organizations is in reality one of the West's most potent and far reaching foreign policy tools. ISIS is a reboot of sorts of Al Qaeda which the US and its Saudi allies first created - intentionally - to wage proxy war against the Soviet Union with in Afghanistan during the 1980s.

Instead of waging war against the Soviet Union with Al Qaeda, the US is now waging an increasingly global war against Syria, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and now clearly much of East and Southeast Asia with either ISIS or a similarly state-sponsored terrorist organization with.

What Other Explanation Could there Be? 

What the world is expected to believe is that the "Islamic State in Iraq and Syria" so named because of where it is supposedly based and primarily operates, is currently fighting both the Syrian and Iraqi governments, Lebanon's Hezbollah, Iran, and Russian airpower, apparently funded, armed, and backed by no one.

Additionally, we are expected to believe ISIS is also fighting thousands of "moderate rebels" the US and its allies claim to have armed, funded, and trained to the tune of several billion dollars. Not only are they fighting these moderates backed by a multi-billion dollar multinational coalition, but are fighting and have been winning. But it doesn't end there. We are also expected to believe that ISIS is also weathering the combined military might of the US, France, Germany, the UK, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Jordan.

Image: If the US and its allies are arming, funding, and training "moderate rebels" to the tune of billions of dollars, who is arming, funding, and training ISIS on a greater scale that has allowed them to dominate the fighting in Syria and Iraq? The answer of course is there were never any moderates to begin with, and the rise of ISIS was very much intentional. 

And finally, we are expected to believe not only all of this, and that ISIS is independently supporting expanding operations in Afghanistan and Libya, but that ISIS now has the extra time, money, resources, and inclination to attack Indonesia all the way in Southeast Asia.

Few nations-states on Earth possess the ability to do what it is claimed ISIS is doing, everywhere it is doing it, and to the degree of success it is allegedly doing it with. Among those few nations, there is only one that benefits from ISIS' activities. The United States.

What's the US Using ISIS and other Terror Groups in Asia for and Why? 

It was just in August of last year that the joint US-Turkish terrorist group, the "Grey Wolves," were implicated in a bombing in Southeast Asia's Thailand. The bomb blast killed 20 and maimed many more in an attack that killed mostly Chinese tourists.

The attack was part of a wider terror campaign backed by the US and Turkey in China's western Xinjiang region where Turkic Uyghur terrorists have been carrying out attacks for years. The US-Turkish backed Grey Wolves have been behind training and arming terrorists in China for years, and more recently have played a role in smuggling Uyghur fighters from China, through Southeast Asia - including through Thailand - and onward to Syria to fight the West's proxy war there.

Image: Thailand and China conducted their first ever joint-air military exercises last year, amid ongoing efforts by Thailand to modernize its military through the purchase of Chinese weapon systems including armored vehicles and even submarines. . 

Killing Chinese tourists in Thailand was aimed at straining recent and growing ties between Bangkok and Beijing. Thailand has recently sought closer military and economic cooperation with China while slowly moving away from an increasingly meddlesome West. Bangkok had sought to purchase Chinese weapons, including several submarines. It already possesses Chinese-made warships and armored vehicles, and late last year conducted its first ever joint Thai-Chinese air military exercises.

Economically, Thailand has been working with China toward a deal to construct additional rail infrastructure both in Thailand, and connecting the nation beyond, including to China itself.

When the US has repeatedly placed pressure on Bangkok to join its provocations in the South China Sea aimed at Beijing, Bangkok has repeatedly insisted that the conflict is none of their business, and that they will play no part in it.

The bombing in August by a terrorist organization which at one point was run out of the US embassy in Ankara during the Cold War, was a warning to Bangkok that if it hinders rather than aids US "primacy" in Asia, it will suffer destabilization.

ISIS Punishes Indonesia for its "Sins" 

And Indonesia is likewise "guilty" of many of the same "sins." Jakarta while occasionally challenging China rhetorically, has repeatedly avoided getting too deeply involved in America's provocations in the South China Sea. Additionally, Jakarta, like Bangkok, has sought to build greater economic ties with Beijing. This includes a deal that will see China construct a high-speed rail network throughout the country.

Bloomberg Business' article, "China to Build $5 Billion High-Speed Rail Line in Indonesia," would state:

China won the rights to build a $5.5 billion railway line in Indonesia as the Southeast Asian nation tries to upgrade its infrastructure to drive economic growth. 

The massive infrastructure project will boost both China and Indonesia for decades to come. With the economic opportunities mass transportation brings a nation, opportunities for Washington to use socioeconomic disparity as a tool to divide and gain leverage over nations like Indonesia internally as it and other Western powers have done in the past will dwindle. Additionally, that China is building such projects in both Thailand and Indonesia, will only lead to greater ties between Beijing and a rising Southeast Asia - a Southeast Asia rising on the back of expanding and improving infrastructure.

With few attractive alternatives to offer Southeast Asia, the United States appears to have departed from offering "carrots" it does not have, and has instead resorted increasingly to the "stick." But instead of wielding that stick itself, it has handed it to the "Salafist principality" it admittedly conspired to create with its allies in eastern Syria in 2012.

For the crime of wanting to move further out from under what the US itself calls its "primacy over Asia," Indonesia has been attacked, and now has the menace of ISIS being further still dangled over its head if it continues forging stronger ties with Beijing.

Thailand and Indonesia are not alone. The US has openly declared in signed and dated policy papers that it believes controlling a unified Southeast Asian front, and arraying it against China, is the only way to encircle, contain, and eventually undermine and destroy the current political order in Beijing.

To that end, the United States has formulated an array of options ranging from supporting internal political subversion through US State Department-funded political fronts and nongovernmental organizations, to an increasing dependency on terrorism, to coerce Southeast Asia away from Beijing while dividing and disrupting Southeast Asia's own geopolitical future.

The US and its allies could at any day expose and cut ISIS' supply lines leading from their various subsidiaries and fronts around the world, back to Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and its other state-sponsors. Instead, the US protects and cover up this extensive, global state-sponsorship of terrorism. As such, when "ISIS attacks," it is really an extension of US foreign policy, and not merely ISIS alone that is committing this violence, nor for ISIS and its own agenda alone that it is being carried out.

Most ironic of all, perhaps, is the possibility that because of America's dwindling credibility worldwide, and its waning influence in Asia, its complicity in the violence being carried out against the governments and peoples of Southeast Asia may - instead of creating a unified front against China - end up creating a unified front displacing Washington's influence form the region. In many ways this is already underway, and Thursday's attack in Jakarta may only stand to accelerate this process.

Tony Cartalucci, Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine“New Eastern Outlook”.   

Jakarta Blasts: ISIS Inc Strikes Again

Was Jakarta Getting Too Cozy with China? 

January 15, 2016 (Tony Cartalucci - LD) - Here is what we are expected to believe regarding coordinated bombings and mass shootings that took place on Thursday in the capital of Southeast Asia's nation of Indonesia - an economically and geopolitically crucial state.

We are to believe that the "Islamic State in Iraq and Syria" (ISIS) - named so because it allegedly exists and primarily operates in Iraq and Syria - is fighting the Syrian government, nonexistent moderates the US claims it is arming and funding to the tune of several billions of dollars a year since 2011, the Iraqi government, the Kurds, Russia, Lebanon's Hezbollah, and Iran. And also, allegedly, ISIS is fighting the combined military power of the United States, France, England, Germany, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Qatar.

Yet we are expected to believe that ISIS has the time, energy, resources, and inclination to attack Indonesia in a spectacular, large-scale bombing and mass shooting?

And why? Where does Indonesia fit into the "Islamic State in Iraq and Syria?" According to the West's official narrative, Indonesia doesn't fit in at all except in the most abstract, ideological way imaginable.

But if you understand that:

1. The US and its allies created ISIS on purpose to fight its proxy wars in the Middle East, North Africa, Central, East, and Southeast Asia for it; 

2. The US is NOT fighting ISIS by any means, and is only using the organization's existence in Syria and beyond to justify extraterritorial military aggression and meddling across the globe; 

3. Indonesia has been defying US pressure to join Washington's proxy conflict with China in the South China Sea and; 

4. Indonesia has been fostering closer economic and military ties instead with China itself ...

...then ISIS attacking Indonesia's capital of Jakarta makes perfect sense.

It was punitive. It was also a warning to Jakarta that it has a choice; subjugation by the West, or destabilization.

The same choice was given to Thailand in August of last year when US-Turkish-backed terrorists blew up 20 people in the heart of Bangkok. This was after it became clear that a definite and permanent shift was made by Bangkok toward Beijing, with new defense industry contracts being sought, existing ones being fulfilled, joint military exercises being organized with China to replace Vietnam-era exercises generally held with the US, and massive infrastructure projects being pursued jointly by Bangkok and Beijing.

The attack in Bangkok also took place as it became abundantly clear that US-backed political fronts in Thailand were being rooted out and denied any future opportunities to find themselves back in power.

Likewise, Indonesia - while paying lip service to Washington's war of words with China in the South China Sea - has been growing perhaps "too close" for Washington's liking to Beijing.

Jakarta had just signed a multi-billion dollar massive rail infrastructure deal with China. Not only does this bring Indonesia and China closer together, it  will continue to do so over many years to come. The deal also came at the expense of America's allies and geopolitical proxies in Tokyo who also attempted to bid for expanding Indonesian rail infrastructure, but lost out to Beijing.

For now, despite the threats, attacks, and attempts to undermine and subvert Thailand for its geostrategic shift, Bangkok has decided not to capitulate to Washington. It has remained relatively un-confrontational with the US in words, but in actions, it has pivoted away from the US' own "pivot toward Asia."

Indonesia now has a choice. Allow the US to leverage this recent attack to reassert both its designs and ambitions upon Indonesia and give its proxy political fronts and proxies scattered across Indonesia's political landscape, police, military, and business community, or to join Thailand and others in a long-term vision that sees Asians maintain primacy over Asia, not Washington. 

ASEAN Economic Community - Why, For What, and By Whom?

November 26, 2014 (Tony Cartalucci - NEO) - On TV, upon the magazine rack, in schools, and on billboards around the country, the coming ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) is being heralded everywhere across Southeast Asia. 

Upon ASEAN's official website, the AEC is described as: 

The ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) shall be the goal of regional economic integration by 2015. AEC envisages the following key characteristics: (a) a single market and production base, (b) a highly competitive economic region, (c) a region of equitable economic development, and (d) a region fully integrated into the global economy.

The AEC is an unquestionable inevitability - and more alarmingly - an inevitability absolutely none of the many hundreds of millions of Southeast Asian citizens have asked for, voted for, or have any direct say in regards to. So inevitable is AEC's unfurling in 2015, that few have even bothered to ask "why?" "for what?" and "by whom?"

A Cheap EU Knock-Off Destined for Catastrophic Failure  

If AEC's premise as described by ASEAN itself sounds suspiciously similar to the European Union (EU), that's because it is. It is not only driven by the same immense global spanning corporate-financier special interests that consolidated Europe's economies, currencies, and institutions, but for the very same goal of collectively looting the region if and when it is successfully consolidated.

The EU now writhes in debt, endless proxy wars fought on behalf of Wall Street and London, and socioeconomic strife caused by EU regulations forced upon various populations against their will. While it was always difficult for citizens of respective European nations to have their voice truly represented within the halls of their own respective national governments, it is more difficult still for the EU's ruling elite assembled in Brussels to be held accountable and made to actually work for the  European people. 


Instead, the EU serves the immense corporate-financier interests that cobbled this supranational consolidation together in the first place. The European people were not allowed to vote on entering into the EU, and those that did repeatedly voted against it until threats, economic extortion, and propaganda finally succeeded in overcoming resistance. In Southeast Asia, nothing of the sort has even been proposed, and most Southeast Asians are oblivious to what ASEAN and the AEC even represent. Like the International Monetary Fund's (IMF) incursion into Asia during the late 1990's, it won't be until catastrophic failure has already swallowed the whole of Southeast Asia that people begin to realize what has been foisted upon them. 

Already, many across Southeast Asia are being effected by bilateral free-trade agreements (FTAs) that allow local markets to be flooded by cheap foreign goods. Socioeconomic disparity, even across Southeast Asia and greater Asia itself can devastate communities and industries already just barely making do. Special interests driven to ink FTAs generally make no provisions to prepare local markets about to be devastated, and no provisions after FTAs take demonstrable tolls. FTAs inked by ousted Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra with China, for example, devastated Thai farmers when cheaper Chinese produce flooded Thai markets. Some farmers including those who grew garlic, were driven almost entirely out of business.

The AEC will multiply this by creating similar conditions across all industries and between all of ASEAN's members. Additionally, the AEC then seeks to integrate ASEAN into the greater "global economy," or in other words, FTAs with the US and EU. Industries just emerging in each respective ASEAN member state will be utterly crushed, bought out, or overrun by foreign corporate-financier monopolies. For local tycoons laboring under the delusions that somehow there is a place around the "global elite's" table for them, the current state of the EU should serve as a cautionary reminder that indeed, no there is not. 

Why, For What, and By Whom? 

In addition to buying out and monopolizing all that resides within Southeast Asia, Wall Street and London desire to use Southeast Asia as a bulwark against China's rising power. These special interests may have even used the rise of China as a means to extort cooperation from respective ASEAN member states in the creation of the AEC.

Again, those ruling political orders across Southeast Asia need only look at NATO and how each member within that alleged "alliance" is strong-armed into one undesirable, highly destructive, and costly conflict after another - not only in direct opposition of each respective NATO member's own population, but in opposition of international law and norms. 

An ASEAN AEC fleeced by the West and driven as a proxy into the maw of neighboring China would cost everyone - from the general population to the ruling elite of each of ASEAN's respective member states - just as is seen across the EU. 

The dream of consolidating and exploiting Southeast Asia as a single geopolitical bloc against China is a long documented conspiracy the United States and its partners in the United Kingdom have worked on for decades. 

As early as the Vietnam War, with the so-called "Pentagon Papers" released in 1969, it was revealed that the conflict was simply one part of a greater strategy aimed at containing and controlling China.

Among many important quotes, is one that outlines the immense regional theater the US was engaged in against China at the time, stating: 

“there are three fronts to a long-run effort to contain China (realizing that the USSR “contains” China on the north and northwest): (a) the Japan-Korea front; (b) the India-Pakistan front; and (c) the Southeast Asia front.” 

While the US would ultimately lose the Vietnam War and any chance of using the Vietnamese as a proxy force against Beijing, the long war against Beijing would continue elsewhere. The use of Southeast Asia as a consolidated front against China would continue on up to and including until today.

This containment strategy would be updated and detailed in the 2006 Strategic Studies Institute report “String of Pearls: Meeting the Challenge of China’s Rising Power across the Asian Littoral”where it outlines China’s efforts to secure its oil lifeline from the Middle East to its shores in the South China Sea as well as means by which the US can maintain American hegemony throughout the Indian and Pacific Ocean. The premise is that, should Western foreign policy fail to entice China into participating in Wall Street and London's “international system” as responsible stakeholders, an increasingly confrontational posture must be taken to contain the rising nation. The use of nations in Southeast Asia to check China's regional power plays chief among this posture. 

Other US policymakers have articulated the use of Southeast Asia as a proxy against China in more direct terms. Neo-Conservative, pro-war policymaker Robert Kagan in his 1997 piece titled "What China Knows That We Don't: The Case for a New Strategy of Containment," noted: 

Chinese leaders worry that they will "play Gulliver to Southeast Asia's Lilliputians, with the United States supplying the rope and stakes.

Kagan would later serve as an adviser to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton who would herself declare a campaign to do just that - supply Southeast Asia with "rope and stakes." Called the "pivot to Asia," Clinton would make a hegemonic declaration in Foreign Policy magazine titled, "America's Pacific Century," stating that: 

...the United States has moved to fully engage the region's multilateral institutions, such as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum, mindful that our work with regional institutions supplements and does not supplant our bilateral ties. There is a demand from the region that America play an active role in the agenda-setting of these institutions -- and it is in our interests as well that they be effective and responsive.

Clinton's reference to America playing "an active role in the agenda-setting of these institutions," referring to ASEAN and APEC, and the rest of her very lengthy editorial reflect a nearly verbatim update of Kagan's 1997 piece - if only stated a bit more diplomatically than Kagan's very straight forward "containment of China" proposal. One must wonder how anyone could learn of America's desire to set the agenda of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, and not immediately identify overt aspirations of extraterritorial neo-imperialism.  

As part of this desire to set the agenda for Southeast Asia, the US has worked hard through its various NGOs to manipulate, influence, and outright overthrow the political orders in place across the region in order to install compliant regimes that reflect America's goal of consolidating and commandeering theses nations both to wholesale loot them economically, and in pursuit of its containment strategy versus China. 

There's a Reason the AEC is not up for Debate 

Clearly, if the AEC's implementation is merely the consolidation and exploitation of the peoples and resources of Southeast Asia, the process of its implementation will neither be up for debate, nor put to a vote. While the United States and the many overly optimistic proponents of the AEC ceaselessly harp upon the tenants of "democracy" and "human rights," these most basic concepts have been utterly absent in the creation of this new supranational bloc.  

The people of Southeast Asia did not ask for ASEAN nor the AEC. Much of what both represent are in fact openly opposed by many grassroots movements across the region - not to mention by many around the world. There is a reason the AEC is not up for debate and an endless torrent of full spectrum propaganda is undulating the media in efforts to market the AEC to the general public - no one would buy it otherwise. 

In a democratic society, the people are to vote and in return are to be represented by those they voted for. These representatives are to take the needs and desires of the people and turn them into local, national, and international policy. Instead, the AEC represents a conspiracy cobbled together by special interests and then dishonestly marketed toward the general public to accept. In other words, it represents democracy in reverse - it is the supposed representatives telling the people what they "want" rather than the people telling their representatives what to do. Democracy in reverse could also be defined as "dictatorship" - and in that regard, ASEAN and its AEC would not be a national dictatorship, but rather a supranational one magnifying the abuses and ramifications of such abuses accordingly.   

For this reason, whether one is a conservative nationalist or a liberal democrat, the idea of an AEC forced upon the people without their input, consent, or even expressed desire for such a system should be appalling and surely protested against. However, many must already know that such protests would be futile. But this futility itself only further exposes the unwarranted influence and power that truly drives the AEC's undemocratic and intolerable implementation.

Instead, it will be up to groups within each respective ASEAN member, and up to each community within to expose, boycott, and replace with local alternatives both the national and multinational special interests involved. While such a campaign will be difficult, the only other choice is to do nothing and suffer the same indignation, socioeconomic decay, and perpetual war the EU now suffers. The people of Southeast Asia have many advantages including the advantage of time on their side to mitigate a repeat of the EU's slow-motion collapse - but it is only an advantage if people begin acting now. 

Tony Cartalucci, Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine“New Eastern Outlook”. 

Supranational ASEAN is Super Folly for Southeast Asia

US reveals ASEAN as neo-imperial consolidation as Clinton calls on bloc to present a "united front" against China.
by Tony Cartalucci

September 4, 2012 - In the literary classic "Gulliver's Travels," the protagonist, Lemuel Gulliver, finds himself shipwrecked on an island of tiny people called, "Lilliputians." While he slept, the Lilliputians used their tiny rope and stakes to tie Gulliver down. When he awoke, though many times larger than any one of the Lilliputians, he was immobilized and at their mercy.

Image: Lemuel Gulliver on the island of Lilliput, having been overtaken while asleep by ropes and stakes by the diminutive but numerous Lilliputians. Western corporate-financier interests envision organizing Southeast Asia into a supranational bloc, ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations), to use the smaller nations as a combined front to "tie down" China in a similar manner. Unlike in the story "Gulliver's Travels," China may well break free of its binds and stomp the Lilliputian leaders flat for their belligerence. 

....

This analogy is important because it represents the precise example used by Wall Street-London corporate-financier interests in producing policy for the containment of China. In 1997, a very different world from today, where the idea of a multipolar world order uprooting Anglo-American hegemony was still a fanciful notion, Western policy makers literally used this analogy to describe their strategy of encircling and containing China.

Containment of China Has Been US Policy for Decades. 

Corporate-financier subsidized policy scribe, Robert Kagan, is a notorious warmonger and so-called "Neo-Conservative," a signatory to many of the West's most recent crimes against humanity, including the deceitful invasion and occupation of Iraq based on lies regarding "weapons of mass destruction," the deceitful invasion and overthrowing of the Libyan government based on lies regarding the "responsibility to protect" (R2P), and the most insidious plot to-date, the premeditated organizing and arming of sectarian extremists aligned with Al Qaeda to violently overthrow Syria, paving the way for war with Iran.

In 1997, Kagan penned, "What China Knows That We Don't: The Case for a New Strategy of Containment," which spells out the policy Wall Street and London were already in the process of implementing even then, albeit in a somewhat more nebulous manner. In his essay, Kagan literally states (emphasis added):

The present world order serves the needs of the United States and its allies, which constructed it. And it is poorly suited to the needs of a Chinese dictatorship trying to maintain power at home and increase its clout abroad. Chinese leaders chafe at the constraints on them and worry that they must change the rules of the international system before the international system changes them.

Here, Kagan openly admits that the "world order," or the "international order," is simply American-run global hegemony, dictated by US interests. These interests, it should be kept in mind, are not those of the American people, but of the immense corporate-financier interests of the Anglo-American establishment. Kagan continues (emphasis added): 

In truth, the debate over whether we should or should not contain China is a bit silly. We are already containing China -- not always consciously and not entirely successfully, but enough to annoy Chinese leaders and be an obstacle to their ambitions. When the Chinese used military maneuvers and ballistic-missile tests last March to intimidate Taiwanese voters, the United States responded by sending the Seventh Fleet. By this show of force, the U.S. demonstrated to Taiwan, Japan, and the rest of our Asian allies that our role as their defender in the region had not diminished as much as they might have feared. Thus, in response to a single Chinese exercise of muscle, the links of containment became visible and were tightened.

The new China hands insist that the United States needs to explain to the Chinese that its goal is merely, as [Robert] Zoellick writes, to avoid "the domination of East Asia by any power or group of powers hostile to the United States." Our treaties with Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Thailand, and Australia, and our naval and military forces in the region, aim only at regional stability, not aggressive encirclement.

But the Chinese understand U.S. interests perfectly well, perhaps better than we do. While they welcome the U.S. presence as a check on Japan, the nation they fear most, they can see clearly that America's military and diplomatic efforts in the region severely limit their own ability to become the region's hegemon. According to Thomas J. Christensen, who spent several months interviewing Chinese military and civilian government analysts, Chinese leaders worry that they will "play Gulliver to Southeast Asia's Lilliputians, with the United States supplying the rope and stakes."

Indeed, the United States blocks Chinese ambitions merely by supporting what we like to call "international norms" of behavior. Christensen points out that Chinese strategic thinkers consider "complaints about China's violations of international norms" to be part of "an integrated Western strategy, led by Washington, to prevent China from becoming a great power.

What Kagan is talking about is maintaining American preeminence across all of Asia and producing a strategy of tension to divide and limit the power of any single player vis-a-vis Wall Street and London's hegemony. Kagan would continue (emphasis added):

The changes in the external and internal behavior of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s resulted at least in part from an American strategy that might be called "integration through containment and pressure for change."

Such a strategy needs to be applied to China today. As long as China maintains its present form of government, it cannot be peacefully integrated into the international order. For China's current leaders, it is too risky to play by our rules -- yet our unwillingness to force them to play by our rules is too risky for the health of the international order. The United States cannot and should not be willing to upset the international order in the mistaken belief that accommodation is the best way to avoid a confrontation with China.

We should hold the line instead and work for political change in Beijing. That means strengthening our military capabilities in the region, improving our security ties with friends and allies, and making clear that we will respond, with force if necessary, when China uses military intimidation or aggression to achieve its regional ambitions. It also means not trading with the Chinese military or doing business with firms the military owns or operates. And it means imposing stiff sanctions when we catch China engaging in nuclear proliferation.

A successful containment strategy will require increasing, not decreasing, our overall defense capabilities. Eyre Crowe warned in 1907 that "the more we talk of the necessity of economising on our armaments, the more firmly will the Germans believe that we are tiring of the struggle, and that they will win by going on." Today, the perception of our military decline is already shaping Chinese calculations. In 1992, an internal Chinese government document said that America's "strength is in relative decline and that there are limits to what it can do." This perception needs to be dispelled as quickly as possible.

Clearly, however, this "perception" of US military decline has only been heightened as the Wall Street-London financier model of "economic growth" has been revealed as an untenable global Ponzi scheme versus the Chinese model of industrial production and infrastructure expansion. The military might required to contain China is also politically and economically unjustifiable, and increasingly so.

It appears possible at least, that US policy makers committed to a losing strategy based on inaccurate interpretations and projections regarding the collapse of the Soviet Union and its comparison to the Chinese. US policy makers have led the populations of Western civilization down a dead-end in pursuit of global hegemony instead of one of economic and technological progress.  

The West is Now Militarily Confronting China (and Russia). 

In hindsight, we see that the West has indeed applied a double game vis-a-vis China, using a combination of geopolitical-socioeconomic incentives and lures to win over Chinese corporate-financier interests -to provide them with an attractive stake in the Anglo-American "international order" while simultaneously creating a geopolitical landscape across both Asia and the world to prevent China from cultivating its own interests independent of Wall Street and London.

The hope is to undermine nationalist elements in China, while promoting and cultivating suitable proxies eager to merge China into a Wall Street-London dominated global order.

This has manifested itself in direct political attacks based on "human rights" within China itself (and here), and in the sweeping devastation of the Arab World via the US-engineered "Arab Spring." What it has effectively done is overturn and threatened both Chinese and Russian interests across Africa, the Middle East and into Central Asia. During the early stages of the Arab Spring, where Russian and Chinese investments were literally being destroyed by US-proxy forces, hubris in Washington revealed that Western policy makers intended to drive the political instability all the way to Moscow and Beijing's doorsteps.

Image: From the Strategic Studies Institute's 2006 "String of Pearls" report detailing a strategy of containment for China, the evolution of Kagan's 1997 paper.

....

US Senator John McCain, chairman of the International Republican Institute which played a pivotal role in organizing the so-called "spontaneous" "Arab Spring," said in 2011 of the unrest his IRI had helped fund in Egypt, "I would be a little less cocky in the Kremlin with my KGB cronies today if I were Vladimir Putin. I would be a little less secure in the seaside resort [of] President Hu and a few men who govern and decide the fate of 1.3 billion people."

The West is already creating a united front against both Russia and China in the Middle East. The violence in Syria is aimed directly at Iran. A successful war against Iran would leave US proxies on Russia's doorstep, and with US occupied Afghanistan beside it, form a front threatening both Pakistan and Western China where the US is already hard at work inciting Tibetan and Uyghur terrorists.

ASEAN is Poorly Dressed Recolonization. 

But China is a vast nation, and this Afro-Eurasian front stretching from Africa to the Himalayas still isn't big enough. In Southeast Asia, the West is attempting to create a European Union-style supranational bloc - the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Its proponents and leadership are notorious servants and affiliates of institutions synonymous with Western hegemony.

Image: The supranational ASEAN bloc consists of Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, Malaysia, Brunei, Indonesia and the Philippines with a combined population of 600 million (as of 2010). The logo of bound rice padi stalks allegedly represents all of Southeast Asia "bound together in friendship and solidarity." In reality, it represents Southeast Asia bound together for a Wall Street-London corporate-financier "harvest." With English made the official "working language" of ASEAN, harking back to the age of British imperialism, and the US already tasking ASEAN to form a "united front" against China, it is clear whose interests it serves.

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The current ASEAN secretary general for example, Surin Pitsuwan of Thailand, leads current efforts to implement the Asian Economic Community (AEC) 2015 blueprint. Pitsuwan sits as a Member of the Board of Trustees of the globalist Asian Foundation, funded by amongst many others, Boeing, Chevron, The Ford Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Halliburton, Raytheon Company, Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. He joined the Rockefeller Foundation's Board of Trustees in 2010. He also sat on the Council on Foreign Relations' (CFR) International Advisory Board as of 2009, and even gave a talk before the CFR on May 14, 2008, regarding a "one unified Southeast Asia."

The official language of ASEAN is English - bizarre since only one ASEAN member counts English as its official language - the minute city-state of Singapore which also counts Mandarin, Malay, and Tamil as official languages. Modern day Singapore is increasingly shifting demographically and linguistically toward Chinese, with English use a vestigial feature of British colonialism. The irony of consolidating Southeast Asia under a supranational English-speaking bloc extends to other former British holdings including Malaysia and Myanmar, both of whom fought hard to achieve relatively recent independence.

The Asian Economic Community (AEC) being pushed for implementation by 2015 mirrors other supranational, Wall Street-London dominated free trade blocs and monetary unions, including the European Union, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFA), and the upcoming US-led Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) with which the AEC will mesh.

Military cooperation is defined under the ASEAN Security Community "plan of action." It is designed to incrementally integrate the foreign policy of ASEAN members. Since ASEAN is dominated by leadership entwined with Western hegemonic interests, ASEAN's collective foreign policy will be thus aligned with that of the West, enforcing its corporate-financier as well as geopolitical agenda. Already, the US is employing a strategy of tension to mobilize ASEAN to do its bidding.

Hillary Clinton Test Drives ASEAN as Vehicle of US Foreign Policy.  

Geopolitical shake ups, although less chaotic than the US-engineered "Arab Spring" have also recently unfolded in Southeast Asia. While US State Department trained and funded mobs cluttered the streets of Egypt and Tunisia, and terrorists rampaged through Libya and Syria, US State Department-funded opposition groups staged protests in Malaysia, Bangkok, and Myanmar. US proxies, including Thailand's Thaksin Shinawatra and Myanmar's Aung San Suu Kyi have made political resurgences while the US' Anwar Ibrahim of Malaysia is positioning himself for upcoming elections with the US-funded Bersih street movement.

While US-proxies clawed their way into power, the US announced America's "Pacific Century." Published under US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's name, Foreign Policy Magazine stated:

"As the war in Iraq winds down and America begins to withdraw its forces from Afghanistan, the United States stands at a pivot point. Over the last 10 years, we have allocated immense resources to those two theaters. In the next 10 years, we need to be smart and systematic about where we invest time and energy, so that we put ourselves in the best position to sustain our leadership, secure our interests, and advance our values. One of the most important tasks of American statecraft over the next decade will therefore be to lock in a substantially increased investment -- diplomatic, economic, strategic, and otherwise -- in the Asia-Pacific region."

 It would continue by stating:

"Harnessing Asia's growth and dynamism is central to American economic and strategic interests and a key priority for President Obama. Open markets in Asia provide the United States with unprecedented opportunities for investment, trade, and access to cutting-edge technology. Our economic recovery at home will depend on exports and the ability of American firms to tap into the vast and growing consumer base of Asia. Strategically, maintaining peace and security across the Asia-Pacific is increasingly crucial to global progress, whether through defending freedom of navigation in the South China Sea, countering the proliferation efforts of North Korea, or ensuring transparency in the military activities of the region's key players."

Clearly, by "open markets" and American firms' ability to "tap into the vast and growing consumer base of Asia," we see an overt declaration of intent for Wall Street and London's corporate-financier interests to overrun and dominate Asian markets with the same monopolies they have pillaged and exploited their own populations with - to devastating socioeconomic consequences.

Clinton continues: 

As we update our alliances for new demands, we are also building new partnerships to help solve shared problems. Our outreach to China, India, Indonesia, Singapore, New Zealand, Malaysia, Mongolia, Vietnam, Brunei, and the Pacific Island countries is all part of a broader effort to ensure a more comprehensive approach to American strategy and engagement in the region. We are asking these emerging partners to join us in shaping and participating in a rules-based regional and global order.

Mention of  a"global order" harks back to Kagan's 1997 piece and is a theme that pervades all Western corporate-financier driven policy papers (and consequently actual policy). In fact, Clinton's entire tirade is merely Kagan's policy paper, updated and repackaged for public consumption, touching on each and every facade Kagan had suggested the US use to lure the Chinese into Western ambitions to encircle and contain its growth while maintaining US global preeminence.

The predication the US is using to not only reassert itself in Asia Pacific, but to both create and dominate the agenda of ASEAN was alluded to as well:

To pave the way, the United States has opened a new U.S. Mission to ASEAN in Jakarta and signed the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation with ASEAN. Our focus on developing a more results-oriented agenda has been instrumental in efforts to address disputes in the South China Sea. In 2010, at the ASEAN Regional Forum in Hanoi, the United States helped shape a regionwide effort to protect unfettered access to and passage through the South China Sea, and to uphold the key international rules for defining territorial claims in the South China Sea's waters.

The US is openly encouraging confrontation with China over disputes in the South China Sea. These disputes will be expanded to economic and eventually geopolitical issues. As US proxy-regimes claw their way into power across Southeast Asia, this confrontation will become more pronounced.

The Washington Post has recently reported in their article, " Clinton to press for ASEAN unity in South China Sea disputes with Chinese,"  that, "U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called Monday for Southeast Asian states to present a united front to the Chinese in dealing with territorial disputes in the South China Sea to “literally calm the waters.”

Clearly, this is just the first step in creating a much wider and more permanent "united front," just as the US is doing in the Middle East regarding Iran, and eventually Russia and China directly.

Throwing A Wrench Into the Cogs of Imperialism.

The morbid machinations of Wall Street and London are driven by and for their collective corporate-financier interests. These are corporations, institutions, and services we use (globally) on a daily basis. For Americans and Asians alike, recognizing that our daily patronage of seemingly benign corporations like Unilever, Pepsi, and Coca-Cola is in fact the engine driving global conflict and wars of hegemony, is the best first step. Effectively boycotting and replacing them with local alternatives is the next step.

By boycotting and replacing these corporate-financier interests with local alternatives, specifically with a model of local and national self-sufficiency, we not only hem in the global-spanning machinations of megalomaniacs, we also shift the balance of power back into our own hands. Because freedom cannot exist when individuals, communities, even entire provinces and nations are dependent on multinational corporations and institutions. Economics, policy, and progress both technological and social must be organized and driven from the grassroots up, not the other way around.

Organizations like ASEAN are created to enhance and further empower the collective corporate-financier interests that are represented throughout its leadership and by the sponsors of its various arms and initiatives. These benefit special interests at the cost of the vast majority of the population - as clearly demonstrated by the European Union as it finally reveals its true purpose - consolidating the wealth of nations for economic exploitation and plundering.

Image: Greek riots unfold as the European Union's economy collapses and austerity measures are imposed on vast swaths of the population to bail out corporate-financier interests - the very ones behind the reckless "globalization," economic and monetary interdependencies that made the plundering and destruction of Europe's economies possible in the first place. It is painfully obvious that the ASEAN union will unfold in a similar manner with the exact same Western corporate-financier interests behind its creation, and already plotting to plunder the collective economies of Southeast Asia while proxy-regimes bleed national treasuries dry in pursuit of Western foreign policy objectives. 

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Through reckless systems of interdependence, Europeans had been led into regional economic collapse. Had each nation been building up a sustainable, self-reliant, full-set economy with trade as a supplement rather than an imperative, the economic woes of one nation would be effectively isolated from the next.  

Southeast Asians should be asking themselves who will be the first "Greece" or "Iceland" amongst ASEAN should the same economic, monetary, and political interdependencies be foisted upon them - victims of financial speculators brought in under the auspices of "free trade" seeking new marks for their global Ponzi scheme, uninhibited by national borders and protectionist measures.

As individuals we can pursue models of local and national full-set, self-reliant economics that trade only to supplement our prosperity. We can do this by voting with our wallets for local businesses, becoming entrepreneurs ourselves, and supporting local and national leaders who promote localism and the primacy of the nation-state.

To proceed with the development of ASEAN and the 2015 Asian Economic Community in the face of an unraveling West - Asia prevailing solely because it has not yet implemented the vast economic and political unions and interdependencies the West has - will be looked back at by future generations as supreme folly.