AUKUS vs China: Inching Toward War

September 21, 2021 (Brian Berletic - NEO) - Australia, the UK and the US announced the formation of “AUKUS,” an amalgamation of the three nation’s initials, as a tripartite “defense alliance.”

Despite claims that the alliance is aimed at no particular country (and no particular country was mentioned during its announcement), the Western media has not reported it as such, and China – the obvious target of this “AUKUS” alliance – doesn’t perceive it as such.

The Guardian in its article, “Alliance with Australia and US a ‘downpayment on global Britain’,” would explicitly state:

 Britain’s post-Brexit foreign policy is taking shape, and the early moves are hardly very surprising: a tripartite defence alliance with the US and Australia – handily compressed to Aukus – clearly designed to send a message to Beijing.

Chinese state media, Global Times, would make it abundantly clear that China understood this with a headline reading, “AUKUS another hostile signal to China, worsens Asia-Pacific security.”

AUKUS begins with the three nations announcing plans to design, develop, and deliver nuclear-powered attack submarines to Australia, which currently has 6 Collins-class diesel electric submarines delivered between the late 1990’s and early 2000’s.

The abovementioned Guardian article noted that Rolls Royce and BAE Systems would likely win contracts as part of this deal. Considering the 18 month period the Guardian reported would be used to plan this process and the several years it takes for BAE Systems to build and commission nuclear-powered submarines, Australia may put these new submarines into service around 2030.

The Price of this New Alliance

As an extra caveat, and perhaps warning to Australia, the new deal is likely to result in a French-Australian submarine deal falling through. Worth 65.6 billion US dollars, this will not be the first time US machinations have cost Paris dearly. In 2015 France was forced to reimburse Russia when it failed to deliver two Mistral-class amphibious assault ships after Paris was pressured to cancel the deal by Washington.

The adage, “no honor among thieves,” comes to mind. France, an eager accomplice in Washington’s various wars of aggression since the turn of the century now finds itself on the receiving end of American exceptionalism. France’s misfortunes today will almost certainly be Australia’s tomorrow as “AUKUS” runs its course.

In many ways, Australia has already begun paying its own price.

Australia’s largest trade partner in 2019 was China. Australian exports to China outmatched all Australian exports to North America and Europe combined. Prompted by the US to pressure China across a range of fabricated accusations, Chinese-Australian trade dropped significantly, with ABC Australia itself claiming by as much as 40%.

While Australia says it is working to compensate for these losses by expanding into alternative markets, such effort could have been used to double Australian trade rather than merely recover from politically-motivated and very much self-inflicted economic damage in its trade row with China.

A War Alliance Predicated on Lies

The “security challenges” AUKUS claims to be addressing include two obvious flashpoints, both the product of persistent US provocations.

The first is centered around Taiwan where the current, US-backed ruling government in Taipei continues to inch toward independence. It should be remembered that Taiwan is recognized by virtually all nations (including the United States) as part of China under the “One China” policy.

To illustrate this, the US itself does not have an official embassy in Taipei. But while the US officially recognizes Taiwan’s status under international law, it has unofficially and consistently undermined it by supporting pro-independence political groups in Taiwan.

The other flashpoint is in the South China Sea where the US accuses China of “bullying” other nations by making “excessive” maritime claims.

The US regularly conducts “Freedom of Navigation Operations” (FNOPs) throughout the region.

The official US Navy website in a statement titled, “7th Fleet conducts Freedom of Navigation Operation” (July 12, 2021), for example, would claim:

The United States challenges excessive maritime claims around the world regardless of the identity of the claimant. The international law of the sea as reflected in the 1982 Law of the Sea Convention provides for certain rights and freedoms and other lawful uses of the sea to all nations.

Not mentioned is the fact that the US itself is not actually a signatory of the 1982 Law of the Sea of Conventions and is in fact one of only a few nations not to sign it.

The US Navy also makes another telling admission when it claimed:

China, Taiwan, and Vietnam each claim sovereignty over the Paracel Islands.

This reveals that it is not China “bullying” nations in the region over the South China Sea, but instead a series of overlapping claims. Nations in the region have disputes not only with China, but also with each other.

This is revealed in headlines like the Wall Street Journal’s 2016 article, “Indonesia Blows Up 23 Foreign Fishing Boats to Send a Message,” in which the Indonesian government destroyed captured Malaysian and Vietnamese fishing boats.

Vietnamese news portal Binh Duong News’ article, “Malaysian Navy seizes Vietnamese fishing boats,” and Bangkok Post’s article, “3 Malaysian trawlers seized near Satun,” also help illustrate many nations in the region are engaged in heated maritime disputes with often theatrical results – but always avoid actual conflict and are eventually resolved bilaterally.

This is not unlike maritime disputes taking place anywhere else in the world, including in Europe, where just this year the New York Times reported on the mobilization of British and French naval vessels over contesting fishing waters near Jersey island. This row too was resolved peacefully.

The South China Sea’s various overlapping disputes have been exploited by the US. Washington has injected itself into the middle of what would be commonplace and long-standing maritime disputes to depict them as one-sided bullying by China to justify America’s large and growing naval presence in the region and to recruit nations into belligerent alliances precisely like AUKUS.

The US even went as far as initiating a tribunal at the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) at the Hague, the Netherlands in 2016 – allegedly on behalf of the Philippines. It was American lawyer Paul Reichler and the Western law firm Foley Hoag – not Filipino lawyers – who led the effort.

The non-binding politically-motivated ruling was not even used by the Philippines who instead opted for bilateral talks with Beijing to establish a mechanism to ease tensions in the South China Sea and even cooperate in contested waters, according to the Philippines’ own Department of Foreign Affairs website.

For added irony and to further illustrate how these disputes are not one-sided Chinese “bullying,” upon the conclusion of the PCA’s ruling, not only did Beijing reject it, Taiwan did too. According to a 2016 New York Times article, Taiwan also then sent a patrol ship to the contested waters.

Together, with the Taiwan issue, these two flashpoints are clearly artificial, kept in motion by a constant investment by Washington in terms of political pressure and propaganda as well as a steady stream of military provocations.

Toward War with China

These flashpoints are cultivated specifically to rally nations against China, to isolate and contain the rising nation, and to grant the US an extension to what it itself calls its “primacy” over Asia.

However, they may also serve as impetus for a limited US-initiated war with China, a war the US would prefer to fight sooner rather than later.

In a 2016 RAND Corporation paper (PDF) commissioned by the US Army and titled, “War with China: Thinking Through the Unthinkable,” a compelling argument is made for the preservation of American hegemony through a limited war predicted to remain conventional and confined to East Asia.

The paper notes:

We postulate that a war would be regional and conventional. It would be waged mainly by ships on and beneath the sea, by aircraft and missiles of many sorts, and in space (against satellites) and cyberspace (against computer systems). We assume that fighting would start and remain in East Asia, where potential Sino-US flash points and nearly all Chinese forces are located.

It’s worth emphasizing that US planners admit that China’s forces are confined to Chinese territory and that the only way a conflict would breakout would be if US forces were in close proximity to them and provoked into conflict where “potential Sino-US flash points” are located, e.g. the South China Sea, or Taiwan. The paper notes that the time frame studied stretched from 2015 to 2025.

The paper also describes the obvious benefits of, and thus motive for the US provoking such a conflict. It states:

The prospect of a military standoff means that war could eventually be decided by nonmilitary factors. These should favor the United States now and in the future. Although war would harm both economies, damage to China’s could be catastrophic and lasting: on the order of a 25–35 percent reduction in Chinese gross domestic product (GDP) in a yearlong war, compared with a reduction in US GDP on the order of 5–10 percent. Even a mild conflict, unless ended promptly, could weaken China’s economy. A long and severe war could ravage China’s economy, stall its hard-earned development, and cause widespread hardship and dislocation.

Such economic damage could in turn aggravate political turmoil and embolden separatists in China.

The US is clearly preparing the grounds for such a conflict, cultivating the very “separatists” the paper notes the conflict would “embolden,” while attacking and attempting to block China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) which is currently diversifying away from China’s dependency on vulnerable Asia-Pacific maritime trade routes.

Through the creation of what are clearly military alliances like AUKUS, the US is ensuring it has the military muscle before, during, and after any such conflict to wage and win it, before then doubling down on a containment strategy to ensure Western hegemony over the Indo-Pacific region for decades to come.

The current status quo all but guarantees China’s economy (as well as military and political influence) will irreversibly surpass the US’ within a decade. The closing window of opportunity the US has to prevent China’s as well as Asia’s surpassing of the West in a transfer of primacy from West to East that has not occurred in centuries, almost certainly was the impetus behind “AUKUS.”

Only time will tell whether or not “AUKUS” will simply buy the US time before being surpassed by China, or if it is one of several final pieces being put in place before the hypothetical conflict RAND Corporation described in the pages of its 2016 paper is turned into a bloody reality.

Brian Berletic is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

The NED's New CEO: Atlantic Council Warmonger Damon Wilson

June 27, 2021 (Brian Berletic - NEO) - The US government’s regime change funding organization - the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) - headed since its inception in 1983 by Carl Gershman - now has a new president and CEO - Damon Wilson. 

The NED’s own announcement regarding the handover provides some background for Wilson, claiming: 

Mr. Wilson currently serves as Executive Vice President of the Atlantic Council, a role he has held since 2011, overseeing Council strategy and managing its 14 centers and programs. Earlier, Wilson served as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for European Affairs at the National Security Council (2007-2009).  He was Executive Secretary and Chief of Staff at the US Embassy in Baghdad (2006-2007), where he helped manage one of the largest US embassies during a time of conflict. Prior to this posting, he worked at the National Security Council as the Director for Central,

Wilson’s previous employment - unlike Gershman who at least on paper came from a “humanitarian” background - reveals an unapologetic pro-war, pro-American hegemony administrator and policymaker. 

These suspicions are immediately grounded in Wilson’s own activities over the past decade at the Atlantic Council - an arms industry, oil company, and bank-funded “think tank” promoting US socio-economic, political, and military domination over the planet and all the wars, interventions, and meddling used to achieve it. 

Understanding Wilson’s career of promoting American belligerence abroad will help one better understand which direction the US NED will take in its continued role in funding US-backed opposition groups and the regime change operations they are tasked with carrying out by Washington around the globe. 

Removing the Velvet Glove 

The NED’s inception in 1983 - according to the Western media itself - was to rehabilitate the image of what was at the time CIA-sponsored regime change operations. 

The Washington Post in a 1991 article titled, “Innocence Abroad: The New World of Spyless Coups,” would admit:

The great democratic revolution that has swept the globe over the past few years has been a triumph of overt action. The CIA old boys spent a generation fantasizing about this sort of global anti-communist putsch. But when it finally happened, it was in the open. There were no secret paramilitary armies, and there was almost no bloodshed. The key operatives in the conspiracy turned out to be telephones, televisions and fax machines.

Working in broad daylight, the United States and its allies were able to do things that would have been unthinkably dangerous had they been done in the shadows.

Regarding the NED specifically, the Washington Post would note: 

The sugar daddy of overt operations has been the National Endowment for Democracy, a quasi-private group headed by Carl Gershman that is funded by the U.S. Congress. Through the late 1980s, it did openly what had once been unspeakably covert -- dispensing money to anti-communist forces behind the Iron Curtain.

In other words, the NED was a rebranding effort meant to dress up dirty and destructive US regime change campaigns as “promoting freedom around the world” - just as the NED’s slogan says on its official website. It always was - from 1983 when it was first announced to today - a velvet glove placed over the iron fist of covert US interventionism. 

And under Gershman for the last almost 40 years - that is what the NED served as. A “presentable” facade constructed over otherwise invasive, dirty, and destructive regime change campaigns - as invasive, dirty, and destructive as anything the CIA had carried out beforehand - but sold to the public as “democracy promotion.” 

Over the years, as the NED and parallel organizations, institutions, and agencies have attracted more scrutiny, the once “transparent” nature of their work has been increasingly covered up, with key opposition groups receiving NED money removed from public disclosures on the NED’s website, and the NED becoming increasingly covert - defeating the entire purpose of its creation and existing simply as a redundant extension of the CIA itself. 

With Wilson’s appointment as president and CEO of the NED - the velvet glove is coming off altogether. 

In a 2018 Atlantic Council talk titled, "Frontlines of Freedom," Wilson would admit: 

...the strategy [of consolidating control over Eastern Europe] is not meant to create new dividing lines in Europe. The aim is to anchor a vulnerable, insecure zone in the certainty of a stable and prosperous and free Europe, and over the long time [sic] this vision includes a democratic Russia. But the pathway to reform in Moscow might just begin with choices that are made in Kiev, Chișinău, Yerevan, and Tbilisi.

Wilson reveals the goal of US policymakers and their involvement in both the EU and NATO is not only to move both organizations up to Russia’s borders, but to absorb Russia itself - a policy that couldn’t be more obvious to geopolitical observers and the clear driving force behind Western-Russian tensions today.   

Throughout his time at the Atlantic Council he has helped promote US State Department narratives regarding not only the EU and NATO’s antagonism toward Russia, but the West’s wars abroad in general including those in North Africa and the Middle East. 

In 2016 at the US Embassy in Berlin, he would advocate continued sanctions on Syria as well as continued support for armed militants the US is sponsoring to fight Syria’s government by proxy. 

Wilson also participated directly in war propaganda projects with other notorious appendages of the Atlantic Council. This includes a co-authored paper he wrote with US government-funded "Bellingcat" founder Eliot Higgins titled, "Hiding in plain sight: Putin’s war in Ukraine."

Together with Wilson as president of the NED -  sitting on the NED's board of directors - are people like convicted criminal Elliott Abrams who oversaw death squads in Central and South America, Scott Carpenter who directly participated in the US occupation of Iraq as "director of governance for the Coalition Provisional Authority," and Victoria Nuland whose conversations regarding the US hand-picking Ukraine's new government in the wake of the US-sponsored 2014 coup was leaked to the media.  

The NED's role in promoting US-backed regime change under the paper-thin veneer of "promoting freedom around the world" will likely transform into a much more direct tool of aggression wielded by the US alongside sanctions and the ever-looming threat of military aggression. 

And while the US may believe Wilson’s appointment as president and CEO of the NED signals “strength,” in reality it is a sign of America’s growing weakness in combination with an increasingly aware global public - a global public that understands what the NED is, what it does, and the danger it poses - no matter what it claims to represent or to be doing worldwide. 

Wilson’s appointment as president and CEO of the NED may help governments around the globe better explain to their respective populations the danger the NED poses and the necessity of legislation to inhibit or entirely ban the organization and those taking money from them from within their borders. 

Gershman - for nearly 40 years - oversaw an NED attempting and ultimately failing to put a velvet glove over CIA-sponsored regime change. Wilson will be overseeing an NED unable to hide behind such facades any longer - with his own pro-war, pro-intervention, and pro-special interests background undermining the organization’s self-proclaimed but obviously misleading mission statement even further. 

Brian Berletic is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.  

What is Biden’s “Build Back Better World” (B3W)?

Is B3W Washington’s answer to China’s One Belt, One Road or a rebranding exercise for US-funded interference and the blocking of development abroad?

June 23, 2021 (Brian Berletic - NEO) - Announced at the archaic “Group of 7” summit (G7) in mid-June - the “Build Back Better World” (B3W) initiative is billed by Western governments and the Western corporate media as a plan that “could rival” China’s One Belt, One Road initiative (OBOR). 

Yet even its announcement - surely the easiest phase of the overall initiative - fell flat. Not a single actual example was provided of what B3W would provide prospective partners beyond the vaguest platitudes and most ambiguous commitments. 

A “fact sheet” provided by the White House for what is essentially a US-led project  - rather than clarify or solidify B3W’s vision - instead seems to suggest the “initiative” is serving as a rebranding exercise behind which US meddling abroad will continue. 

The White House document mentions, “Development Finance Corporation, USAID, EXIM, the Millennium Challenge Corporation, and the U.S. Trade and Development Agency,” as being involved - all of which are admittedly arms of US political interference abroad, not agencies involved in driving actual development. 

USAID - for example - is mentioned by name 40 times in the US Joint Chiefs of Staff’s counterinsurgency manual (PDF) which describes the tools and techniques the US military can use to defeat insurgency abroad - tools and techniques that are admittedly just as useful at undermining, overthrowing, and replacing a targeted government with. 

In many instances, “counterinsurgency” strategies are employed by the US for precisely this purpose - cementing in power a client regime selected by the US to replace a targeted government toppled by Washington. USAID’s role is augmenting the insurgency-counterinsurgency strategy, not actually spurring development in any given country.  

Other pillars of B3W like the “Millennium Challenge Corporation” qualify development through influencing policymaking. 

One project on the Millennium Challenge Corporation’s official website featured in a post titled, “Social Inclusion in MCC’s Mongolia Compact: Affordable Water for all in Ulaanbaatar,” illustrates that US-funded “development” in Mongolia regarding “affordable water for all” is not building physical infrastructure that actually brings affordable water for all - but instead consists of conducting surveys and pressuring policymakers. 

Rather than images of American construction crews building pipelines, digging wells, or putting up permanent water towers serving entire communities, the Millennium Challenge Corporation’s website features people with clipboards knocking on doors. 

Myanmar: A “Sneak Peak” at America’s B3W in Action 

Instead of actual development, US “development” agencies like these often channel money into political opposition groups specifically to block the construction of national infrastructure that would solve issues like energy, water, and food shortages - often predicated on false socio-political pretexts like “human rights” and “environmental” concerns.

In Myanmar for example, US government-funded opposition groups have worked for years to block the construction of Chinese-led projects including dams that would generate electricity, contribute to flood control, and aid in agricultural irrigation. 

Wikileaks in a 2010 US diplomatic cable titled, “Burma: Grassroots Opposition to Chinese-backed Dam in Northern Burma,” would reveal US diplomats discussing the success of US embassy-funded “grassroots” opposition groups blocking Chinese-initiated dams. The cable noted: 

An unusual aspect of this case is the role grassroots organizations have played in opposing the dam, which speaks to the growing strength of civil society groups in Kachin State, including recipients of Embassy small grants.

Once projects like dams, roads, rails, or ports are blocked in targeted nations like Myanmar, no Western alternative is ever offered. 

Instead, organizations like USAID provide provisional infrastructure like solar panels and ad-hoc water towers providing recipient communities with minimum living standards. The goal is to disrupt unifying national projects and encourage local communities to make do without modern infrastructure. This in itself aids in arresting development across entire regions - allowing the US to artificially maintain “primacy” over them. This also contributes to separatism, with communities dependent on US handouts rather than working with their own nation’s government  - which in Myanmar in particular has been the source of decades of armed conflict. This conflict also further arrests development. 

All of this is in stark contrast to China’s OBOR which is building physical infrastructure that is transporting goods and people across entire regions and providing food, energy, and water for a growing number of people around the globe - all without political strings attached or armies of foreign-funded “activists” commandeering national policymaking and in turn, hijacking national sovereignty.

Nations have already tangibly benefited from Chinese-led infrastructure projects - including nations like Myanmar where projects have been completed. These include roads, bridges, and dams. 

The Irrawaddy Bridge (also known as the Yadanabon Bridge) built by China CAMC Engineering and completed in 2008 - for example - finally allows heavy vehicles to cross the Irrawaddy River from the nation’s northwest to Mandalay and the nation’s interior beyond without using cumbersome ferries. 

Also built with China’s help is the Yeywa Dam commissioned in 2010. It includes the nation’s largest hydroelectric power plant, providing energy to nearby Mandalay. It also significantly contributes to flood control. 

Opposed to its construction was the so-called “Burma Rivers Network” - an extension of “International Rivers” - funded by Western corporate foundations like Open Society, the Ford Foundation, and the Sigrid Rausing Trust - all admittedly working in parallel with fronts like USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy to advance US government foreign policy objectives. 

Burma Rivers Network made claims regarding the dam including that the power would “likely” be “transmitted to China” - a claim that was and is completely false. The network also made baseless claims that villagers were “forcibly relocated without compensation” and that the dam would jeopardize their livelihood. This livelihood included unsustainable fishing and logging along the river - a livelihood necessitated by a previous lack of infrastructure needed for modern and sustainable economic opportunities.

As other adjacent projects to the Yeywa Dam are either proposed or in the process of being built - these same US-backed networks work tirelessly to derail compensation, relocation, and even public hearings to discuss either in the first place. 

In some cases - like the proposed and partially constructed Myitsone Dam - work has been halted by not only US-funded opposition groups politically obstructing progress, but also by armed attacks by US-backed separatist groups. 

The Guardian in a 2014 article titled, “Burmese villagers exiled from ancestral home as fate of dam remains unclear,” would admit: 

As work got underway, the Kachin Independence Army broke a 17-year-old ceasefire to attack the dam site. In 2010, 10 bombs exploded around the dam site, killing a Chinese worker.

Kachin separatism is openly encouraged by the US as revealed through a series of leaked cables and the US government’s funding of Kachin separatist groups listed on the National Endowment for Democracy’s official website. 

While the example of US interference in Myanmar and its open determination to arrest development is an extreme one - it is essentially the same process used around the globe to address - as the White House “fact sheet” regarding B3W calls it, “competition with China.” 

It is also a “sneak peak” at what B3W will actually entail. Were it a genuine infrastructure drive - actual projects would have been showcased upon its inauguration. Instead, hand-waving and platitudes were used as stand-ins where real infrastructure projects should have been - an assurance that the US was merely rebranding its ongoing efforts to derail not just Chinese-led development worldwide - but development itself.

For a declining empire to maintain “primacy” over areas of the planet as the US insists it must do regarding the Indo-Pacific region - the only way to remain on top is to make sure everyone is declining at an equal or greater rate than the US - even if it means Washington knocking these nations down itself. 

Brian Berletic is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.  

US Marine Corps Rebuilt to Confront China

June 17, 2021 (Brian Berletic - NEO) - The US Marine Corps has after nearly a century of integrating tanks into its fighting forces, abandoned armored warfare in favor of missiles and drones to "confront China" in the Indo-Pacific region. 

The Marine Times in a 2020 article titled, "The Corps is axing all of its tank battalions and cutting grunt units," would explain: 

...the Corps is making hefty cuts as the Marines plan to make a lighter and faster force to fight across the Pacific to confront a rising China.

As part of Commandant of the Marine Corps Gen. David Berger’s plan to redesign the force to confront China and other peer adversaries by 2030, the Marines are axing all three of its tank battalions, and chucking out all law enforcement battalions and bridging companies..."

Since the announcement, the Marine Corps’ tank battalions have been fully deactivated. 

Defense News in another 2020 article, this one titled, "Here’s the US Marine Corps’ plan for sinking Chinese ships with drone missile launchers," would note: 

The U.S. Marine Corps is getting into the ship-killing business, and a new project in development is aimed at making their dreams of harrying the People’s Liberation Army Navy a reality.

The article cited Marine Corps requirements and development chief Lieutenant General Eric Smith, who would explain: 

“They are mobile and small, they are not looking to grab a piece of ground and sit on it,” Smith said of his Marine units. “I’m not looking to block a strait permanently. I’m looking to maneuver. The German concept is ‘Schwerpunkt,’ which is applying the appropriate amount of pressure and force at the time and place of your choosing to get maximum effect.”

Smith describes a concept where the U.S. fleet can herd Chinese ships into a contested area where the Marines can do damage from the shore.

The invocation of "Schwerpunkt" - a concept utilized as part of Nazi Germany's war of aggression against both Western Europe and the Soviet Union during World War 2 - is incredibly instructive in understanding the pathology at play within US foreign policy and defense strategy. 

Washington’s Obsession with Primacy 

Washington's overall strategy toward China is one of encirclement and containment along with the preservation of what US policymakers call America's "primacy" over the Indo-Pacific region - a region the US itself is not located in. 

US military strategists have a long, passionate, but otherwise inexplicable and disturbing admiration of Nazi Germany's fabled military prowess. It is inexplicable because ultimately Nazi Germany not only lost World War 2 but ceased to exist entirely after losing the war. It is disturbing considering what little Nazi Germany did manage to accomplish was confined to death and destruction.  

Concepts like "Schwerpunkt" and "Blitzkrieg" served as tools of an aggressor nation fighting and winning battles (at least initially) amid an ultimately lost war. 

These concepts were imagined by Nazi strategists as able to overwhelm numerically, economically, and militarily superior adversaries if done fast enough - with Berlin hoping to overwhelm Soviet forces in a single season. 

In reality the logistics of a sustained war of aggression, deep within another nation’s territory, across such vast distances made "overwhelming" a superior opponent impossible. Soviet forces were able to adapt and overcome German invaders while simultaneously enjoying advantages in manpower, industrial capacity, and much shorter logistical lines. Soviet forces also possessed the moral imperative of defending their own territory while German soldiers were left wondering why they were fighting and dying hundreds of miles from their own borders.    

The US now finds itself emulating the failed strategy of Nazi Germany - both overall as an aggressor nation on an international level but also upon hypothetical battlefields thousands of miles away from its own shores. 

US strategists imagine that these same concepts served them well in the 1990’s during the Persian Gulf War - failing to note the numerical and economic (and thus technological) advantages the US had over Iraqi forces which played a much more important role. 

Imagining that these same tactics will work against a numerically and economically superior opponent with at least peer-level military technology is deeply flawed.  

Much of US foreign policy today is fundamentally flawed, however, predicated on many false assumptions. The most central false assumption is that the US can or should maintain primacy over the Indo-Pacific region and that China should be subordinated within a US-dominated “international order.”

China today has a population many times larger than the US. Annually, China generates millions more graduates in fields relative to enhancing its technological and industrial capacity than the US does. China's economy will most certainly surpass the US and its influence and relations throughout the Indo-Pacific region are both more sustainable and more desirable for the people living in the region than America's policy of "either us or them." 

There is no logical reason why China should not surpass America as the most powerful nation on Earth both economically and militarily. To suggest it shouldn’t, implies that despite possessing every possible advantage over the United States - the people of China are still somehow “inferior,” thus enabling America’s continued primacy over Asia. It is this fundamentally flawed assumption - along with many others - driving American foreign policy and defense strategy toward ever-increasing and unsustainable extremes. 

China’s Military Advantages 

Militarily, China already possesses a larger navy than the US does - a gap that will only widen in coming years. While some have claimed that the US possesses more capable ships and can augment its fleet size with the ships of its allies - this ignores the fact that the US uses its navy to dominate others around the entire planet - not just in seas along China’s peripheries. 

China currently and will likely well into the future continue to concentrate its naval forces in the defense of its own actual territory and “near abroad.” 

The US Navy and Marine Corps’ dreams of “herding” Chinese warships into carefully prepared kill-zones consisting of straits the US imagines itself controlling fails to account for the fact that China could maintain a significant naval force on both sides of any given strait in question without ever needing to enter it.  

Advances in missile and drone technology is a two-way street and one China is not idle in regards to. Numbers of missiles and drones operating on a hypothetical battlefield anywhere in the Indo-Pacific region will consist of Chinese and American forces at the very least matched numerically, but with China ultimately enjoying shorter logistical lines and much more substantial reserve forces on hand and able to mobilize across much shorter distances. 

What This Really Means for the US Marines and America’s Actual Defense 

What a US Marine Corps without its tanks truly represents is a storied branch of America’s armed forces neutered by an increasingly irrational foreign policy driving an equally irrational national defense strategy. 

The Marine Corps until now existed as a highly versatile and mobile force with aviation, armor, and infantry capable of responding to virtually any battlefield challenge imaginable with a full range of combined arms options - from close-up urban combat to warfare on open battlefields at great distances. These were capabilities unique to the US Marine Corps that no other US service could offer.  

Now the US Marine Corps has been specifically tailored to fight a war of aggression thousands of miles from American shores, in a specific theater, against a very specific opponent. It is a war the US has already lost before ever fighting, and in the process has cost its Marine Corps its ability to respond to other potential threats to America’s actual defense at home.   

The only beneficiaries of the US Marine Corps’ disfigurement are arms manufacturers like Raytheon and Lockheed Martin building the missile systems US Marines imagine themselves using against China, and defense contractors like Oshkosh building the vehicles carrying them into these hypothetical, far-flung battles. Also benefiting - of course - are the generals and politicians on the take of America’s oversized and out-of-control arms industry while Americans themselves are left to pay the bills.  

Brian Berletic is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.  

Washington's Obsession with China Expands

March 25, 2021 (Brian Berletic - NEO) - Mid-March saw a series of events helping to measure with exactitude US foreign policy regarding China - a commitment to and a doubling down on a decades-long encirclement and containment policy that has - so far - failed to return on Washington's immense investments in it. 

The first indicator was the new US administration of President Joe Biden continuing without even the slightest deviation Trump-era policy regarding the targeting and banning of Chinese companies. 

German state media - Deutsche Welle - in an article titled, "US designates Huawei, four other Chinese tech firms national security threats," would note: 

The US has labeled five Chinese tech companies, including Huawei, as national security risks. President Joe Biden may be continuing his predcessor's hardline stance against China's growing technological dominance.

Evidence justifying US claims of Chinese companies presenting a national security risk to the US has never been produced - and it is clear that these claims are meant to justify what is otherwise merely America's inability to compete with rising Chinese companies. Because, in addition to banning Chinese companies from doing business in the US - the US has sought to pressure nations around the globe to similarly deny market access to China. 

This is an ongoing bid to secure US market shares through threats and intimation rather than through innovation and competitive business strategies.  

Why two apparently "opposite" political candidates like Trump and Biden have indistinguishable foreign policies is easy to explain when considering these policies are generated and promoted by unelected corporate interests who influence US foreign policy regardless of who sits in either the White House or Congress. These are the very interests who see their market shares and the associated power and influence that comes from them under threat by rising Chinese competitors. 

Another indicator was US Secretary of State Anthony Bliken and US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin's "tour" of the Indo-Pacific, including stops in South Korea and Japan. 

Foreign Policy magazine in an article titled, "Blinken and Austin in Japan to Bolster Asian Allies," would claim: 

The Biden administration wants to prod Japan more on defense and resolve tensions between Tokyo and Seoul.

The article would cite an op-ed by Blinken and Austin in the Washington Post claiming: 

“Our combined power makes us stronger when we must push back against China’s aggression and threats,” Blinken and Austin wrote in a joint Washington Post op-ed, citing human rights abuses in Xinjiang and Tibet, and China’s pushback on freedoms in Taiwan and Hong Kong. “If we don’t act decisively and lead, Beijing will.”

The deeply flawed notion that the US should "lead" in Asia rather than China - a nation actually residing in the region - is at the root of US-Chinese tensions - tensions driven entirely by Washington's unreasonable pursuit of unwarranted influence in - even primacy over the Indo-Pacific Region. 

Foreign Policy would also note: 

...there is growing concern about how to nudge a politically wary Japan to boost its missile defenses, while hardening the U.S. presence that’s increasingly vulnerable to improving Chinese missiles.

And that: 

Japan already has Aegis-class destroyers equipped with SM-3 missiles offshore, which the United States helped develop, and is a co-producer in the F-35 program. But last June, Tokyo canceled delivery of the U.S. Aegis Ashore missile system, a shore-based missile-defense system, pushing instead to develop a domestically produced solution. That’s another area where the Pentagon may press the Japanese.

SM-3 missiles used on Aegis-class destroyers as well as with Aegis Ashore systems are manufactured by Raytheon - an arms manufacturer Lloyd Austin sat on the board of directors of until being brought in as Biden's Secretary of Defense. 

In essence, a former Raytheon director will be selling missiles for Raytheon in his official capacity as Secretary of Defense - and based on the supposed threat of China - the largest economy and most populous nation in the region - "leading" rather than the US. 

To paper over the corruption at the very core of US foreign policy - the US pursues a propaganda war against China - citing manufactured and patently false claims of "repression" and "abuse" everywhere from Hong Kong and Taiwan to Xinjiang and Tibet. 

A 2019 US State Department strategy paper titles, "A Free and Open Indo-Pacific: Advancing a Shared Vision," would repeat these false claims, stating: 

The People’s Republic of China (PRC) practices repression at home and abroad. Beijing is intolerant of dissent, aggressively controls media and civil society, and brutally suppresses ethnic and religious minorities. Such practices, which Beijing exports to other countries through its political and economic influence, undermine the conditions that have promoted stability and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific for decades.

It is difficult to understand what "stability" and "prosperity" the US is referring to. 

It is amid China's rise that the region enjoys unprecedented levels of both as well as accelerated development through projects built in cooperation with China - and all in stark contrast to the decades of war triggered by US interventions on the Korean Peninsula and all across Southeast Asia as part of its Vietnam War and adjacent military operations. 

These were conflicts that have left the region permanently scarred and in several instances - such as the residual impact of chemical weapons used in Vietnam or unexploded ordnance dropped by the US over nations like Laos - are still disfiguring and killing people to this day. 

Underneath this thin and peeling layer of US propaganda lies the truth of waning American primacy around the globe and the fundamental lack of interest by Washington and Wall Street to adjust US foreign policy toward a cooperative and constructive role among the nations of the world rather than unobtainable aspirations to dominate over all other nations. 

Brian Berletic is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.  

Biden's First Foreign Policy Speech Vows Forever Wars

February 27, 2021 (Brian Berletic - NEO) - US foreign policy has clearly continued in the same direction, without missing a beat. Unlike in previous transitions in the White House, this time US President Joe Biden has not even really tried to promise even the faintest hope that it wouldn't. 

There were a few glimpses of remote hope - particularly regarding the possibility the US wouldn't abandon its last arms treaty with Russia, New START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) - and Biden's promise of returning to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), also known as the Iran Nuclear Deal. 

However, in Biden's first speech regarding foreign policy since taking office, now posted on the White House's official website and titled, "Remarks by President Biden on America’s Place in the World," reveals that, if anything, US belligerence on the global stage is set to only expand. 

"America is back.  Diplomacy is back at the center of our foreign policy." 

Biden's opening remarks attempt to suggest that America has drifted away under his predecessor US President Donald Trump. But when he says "America is back," we are left to assume he means "back" to what the US was doing under the administration of US President Barack Obama under which he served as vice president. 

This was a president elected into office by the American people to end the wars of his predecessor, US President George W. Bush. Not only did he fail to end those wars - one in Iraq and one in Afghanistan - he expanded both. He also started several new wars including in Libya, Syria, and Yemen. 

Under the administration of Obama-Biden, the US also overthrew the government of Ukraine in 2014 precipitating deadly violence in the nation's eastern region. 

Obama also continued Bush-era policies aimed at overthrowing the government of Venezuela and instituted the so-called US "pivot" to Asia in which US meddling was expanded in a bid to peel Southeast Asian states away from China's orbit - or create an arc of chaos to disrupt China's rise, trying. 

And in Biden's recent foreign policy speech - he has vowed to continue all of this. 

Myanmar: We will "Impose Consequences on Those Responsible"  

After declaring his intentions of meeting the challenges of "the growing ambitions of China to rival the United States and the determination of Russia to damage and disrupt our democracy," he immediately set upon Myanmar - which he continuously referred to in his speech as "Burma" - the British colonial nomenclature for the now independent nation. 

He would claim: 

There can be no doubt: In a democracy, force should never seek to overrule the will of the people or attempt to erase the outcome of a credible election.  

The Burmese military should relinquish power they have seized, release the advocates and activists and officials they have detained, lift the restrictions on telecommunications, and refrain from violence.

Indeed, the military in Myanmar seized power - removing Aung San Suu Kyi from office as well as her National League for Democracy (NLD) political party. 

While Biden demands "democracy" for  Myanmar - he fails to admit that democracy by definition is a process of self-determination and Washington's role in installing Aung San Suu Kyi and her NLD into power in the first place was as much a violation of Myanmar's political independence and he claims the military's recent move was. 

The US government through the US National Endowment for Democracy (NED) funds over 80 programs alone in support of the now ousted government of Aung San Suu Kyi and her NLD. The US has created what is essentially a parallel structure of institutions it had - until the military took power - run the country with. 

Yemen War: Ending All [Relevant] American Support

President Biden's remarks about Yemen and his desire to end the war might - at first glance appear positive. 

Yet upon closer examination, the prospect of peace is much less promising. 

Biden would claim (emphasis added): 

This war has to end.  

And to underscore our commitment, we are ending all American support for offensive operations in the war in Yemen, including relevant arms sales.

Biden would quickly follow up his comment by noting attacks on Saudi Arabia - omitting the context that they are being carried out in retaliation for Saudi Arabia's war of aggression on Yemen. 

Thus, Biden is simply saying the US will not sell Saudi Arabia (directly) "relevant" weapons that will be used in the war on Yemen - but will surely continue selling Saudi Arabia weapons - a fact that will nonetheless continue to enable Saudi aggression both against Yemen and throughout the region - either directly or indirectly. 

Biden's desire to "negotiate" a settlement to the conflict means that Washington's desire to end the war is not unconditional - but very  conditional - and likely involves the necessity of a government of Washington's choosing finding its way into power in Yemen. 

It should be remembered that Biden was vice president when this US-enabled proxy war began in the first place and for the sole purpose of installing a Western-friendly regime into power. 

Regarding Yemen, Biden managed to vow continued war while appearing to seek peace. 

Russia's "Interfering with our Elections, Cyberattacks, Poisoning its Citizens" is "Over" 

While Biden has extended New START with Russia - his comments about Russia signal the creation of the same sort of pretext all of his predecessors have used to then walk away from other essential arms control treaties. 

Biden would claim: 

I made it clear to President Putin, in a manner very different from my predecessor, that the days of the United States rolling over in the face of Russia’s aggressive actions — interfering with our elections, cyberattacks, poisoning its citizens — are over.  We will not hesitate to raise the cost on Russia and defend our vital interests and our people.

The US conducted an investigation for over 2 years regarding alleged "Russian interference" in US elections and found no such evidence. 

The same can be said of alleged "Russian cyberattacks," particularly when considering experts submitting reports to US Congress on the matter were then caught themselves posing as Russians and engaging in coordinated inauthentic behavior in America's information space - and worst of all - during US elections. 

The "poisoning" of Russian citizens regards the alleged poisoning of US-backed opposition figure Alexei Navalny - an extremely unpopular figure in Russian politicals with no prospect of ever holding political office. The alleged poisoning came at a time when Russia and Germany were nearly finished with the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. The "poisoned" Navalny was flown by a shadowy Western NGO to Germany to serve as a prop in last-minute efforts by the US to shame Germany into cancelling the project. 

It is clear who had the motive to poison Navalny and it wasn't the Kremlin. 

Thus, Biden is repeating three accusations of which he has evidence for none - followed by a threat to "raise the cost on Russia" which will most certainly include the shredding of treaties, additional sanctions, and more hybrid warfare directed along Russia's peripheries and within Russian borders themselves. 

And while Biden poses as breaking away from alleged warm relations between "Trump's" America and Russia - shredding treaties, imposing sanctions, and using hybrid warfare against Russia continued under all four years of Trump's presidency. 

"We'll Take On Directly China"

Biden vowed to carry US hostility toward China, predicated on the same lies the Trump administration used to justify what has become a full-blown trade war between the US and China. 

Biden would claim: 

We’ll confront China’s economic abuses; counter its aggressive, coercive action; to push back on China’s attack on human rights, intellectual property, and global governance.

China's "economic abuses" are simply China out-competing the US economically. "Aggressive, coercive action" most likely refers to China's ability to leverage its growing power in defense against what was for decades unchecked Western abuses and aggression against both China directly and its neighbors. 

And US claims regarding China's "attack on human rights, intellectual property, and global governance" are three repetitive lies the US is using with more frequency against any and all nations that refuse to fall under its "intentional order."  The notion of the US taking the moral high-ground on "human rights" despite being the worst offender of human rights this century - including Biden's own personal role in the wars in Libya, Syria, and Yemen - plums new depths of American hypocrisy. 

Biden would also at one point claim (emphasis added): 

If we invest in ourselves and our people, if we fight to ensure that American businesses are positioned to compete and win on the global stage, if the rules of international trade aren’t stacked against us, if our workers and intellectual property are protected, then there’s no country on Earth — not China or any other country on Earth — that can match us. 

Back in reality, China is a nation with four times the population of the US, with an economy increasingly dependent on cutting edge technology, and with access to plenty of resources. Unless US President Joe Biden is suggesting that the people of China are somehow inferior to Americans - China will not only "match" the US, it will inevitably surpass it several times over. 

US President Joe Biden's first foreign policy speech was a vow to maintain America's belligerent posture around the globe. Biden all but vowed to continue ratcheting up pressure on both Russia and China - and for reasons we know for a fact are verified lies. 

He all but stated that the war in Yemen will only end when the outcome the US seeks is finally achieved. 

And in the end - ultimately - Biden is making a renewed declaration of American exceptionalism - stating that no nation can "match" the US as long as the "rules" aren't "stacked against" America. 

Of course - for a nation with a smaller population and access to fewer resources - the only way for that to be possible is if the rules are instead stacked against everyone else on Earth - and that is precisely what the Biden administration is promising the world over the next four years - the continued stacking of those rules against all other nations on Earth and punishment to anyone who attempts to stop America from doing so. 

Brian Berletic is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.