Ukraine, Taiwan… Two-Pronged US Aggression Toward Russia, China Escalates

Via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

All people of the world should hope that a multipolar world vision prevails and the destructive American ideology fails – definitively.

There is a close parallel in the way the Biden administration is riling up dangerous tensions with Russia and China. The proxy in both cases are the Ukraine and Taiwan, respectively.

Washington is citing claims that Russia and China are threatening its allies which, in turn, provides a pretext for the United States to step up its own provocative actions. It’s a vicious cycle that is at grave risk of spinning out of control into an all-out war between nuclear powers.

In just three months after his inauguration as the 46th U.S. president, Joe Biden’s administration has embarked on a reckless course of belligerence toward Russia and China. This dynamic was predicted by Strategic Culture Foundation in several of our commentaries and interviews before Biden was inaugurated on January 20.

However, this systematic hostility from the United States has been underway from several past administrations, including the previous Trump White House and before that the Obama administrations in which Biden served as vice president. Now as president, Biden is taking up a continuous policy of aggression with even more gusto. This invariable direction of belligerence tends to prove the real nature of U.S. politics. Presidents come and go, elections take place periodically, but the power and policymaking resides with deep state planners whose loyalty is not to any particular party but rather to the furtherance of imperial objectives regarding America’s presumed global position and privileges.

The current president and his top aides, like before, bring a certain stylistic image to the underlying thrust of power. Team Biden have sharpened the rhetoric of adversity, repeatedly labelling Moscow and China as “existential threats”. Practical acts of hostility have followed, including imposing sanctions on Russia over its Nord Stream 2 gas project with Europe; and on China over baseless claims of “genocide” against its Uyghur ethnic population in Xinjiang.

The Biden administration is turning reality on its head, either through cynical deception or from its own cognitive dissonance regarding the real world. (Most certainly the former for the deep state planners, maybe the latter for the politician puppets.)

It accuses Russia of aggression by building up military forces on the border with Ukraine. This is while the U.S.-backed regime in Kiev has been serially violating a shaky ceasefire in Eastern Ukraine, shelling civilian centers and escalating a humanitarian crisis. Russia has every right to deploy military forces wherever it deems within its borders. Moscow has rejected claims that it is posing a threat to any other country. Nonetheless, this week the Kremlin said the deteriorating security conditions in Eastern Ukraine (the Donbass) may oblige it to defend ethnic Russians facing a criminal offensive. That offensive is being waged by the Kiev regime which has the full support of the United States and the NATO military alliance. Only last month, the Biden administration released a further $125 million in lethal weaponry to the Ukraine. That can be seen as a green light for the regime in Kiev to reject the 2015 Minsk peace accord and to push for more conflict in what has already been a seven-year war, causing more than 13,000 deaths. (The war was instigated after the U.S., EU and NATO backed a coup d’état in Kiev in February 2014 which brought to power an anti-Russian regime with historic links to Nazi Germany.)

Yet in the Alice-in-Wonderland view of Washington, as well as the European Union and NATO, the aggression is being instigated by Russia.

As for China and Taiwan: Biden is advancing the same policy under the previous Trump and Obama administrations of military buildup near China’s territory. This week saw the fourth U.S. guided-missile destroyer passing through the Taiwan Strait since Biden took office. That narrow sea separates the breakaway island from China’s mainland. Beijing has sovereign territorial claim to Taiwan which is recognized by the vast majority of nations, including up until recently the United States under its so-called “One China” policy. Biden, like his predecessor Donald Trump, is deliberately eroding the One China policy by sending delegates to the island on official visits, increasing weapons sales and most provocatively making public declarations that the U.S. will “defend” Taiwan in the event of “an invasion” by Chinese forces.

Similar to the Ukraine, the Biden administration’s rhetoric and conduct is serving to fuel an ever-more provocative stance by the Taiwanese leaders. This week, a senior official warned that the island’s forces would shoot down Chinese aircraft that approach the territory. This is nothing but a flagrant challenge to China’s territorial integrity and sovereignty. As in the case of the Ukraine and Russia, it is Washington’s words and actions that are inflaming the tensions between Taiwan and China. Yet the Americans accuse others of “aggression” and claim to be providing “defense”.

The bigger picture for all of this is, of course, the geopolitical great game which Washington sees as a zero-sum challenge. Strategists in Washington have made it abundantly clear that the American imperative for pursuing its ambitions for global power and dominance is to prevent the rise of Russia and China and a multipolar world order. Moscow and Beijing have repeatedly called for a peaceful coexistence among nations based on partnership, mutual respect and above all adherence to international law. In short, the manifestation of the United Nations Charter.

Such a multipolar world of equals is anathema to the United States and its imperialist pursuit of unipolar dominance. The latter configuration is essential for maintaining the dollar as the world’s reserve currency which, in turn, is vital for propping up the U.S. economy. For historical reasons, American capitalism is waning from its previous formidable prowess as the world’s engine for growth. The tide is shifting to China and Eurasia which offer an alternative model of socialistic planned economies, based on a mix of public and private ownership, which are directed at progressing societal development. China’s success in lifting millions of its people out of poverty while millions of Americans fall into poverty indicates the end of an “America Century”. The United States, under its prevailing corporate capitalist system, cannot compete with the emerging multipolar order. By way of trying to reverse the historic decline, the U.S. is compelled to resort to increasing militarism against what it perceives as its nemesis – Russia and China – the two main proponents of a multipolar vision.

It is therefore logical, if not execrable, that Washington appears to be accelerating on a collision course against Russia and China. The speed and recklessness is correlated with the growing sense that the American Empire is in terminal demise. The Ukraine and Taiwan are providing the U.S. with a two-prong attack against Russia and China and what Washington views as its last chance to grasp on to a world that is disappearing before its eyes. America’s reckless and delusional gambling is placing the world in an extremely dangerous situation. Its rulers and their political flunkies are flicking matches at a powder-keg.

All people of the world should hope that a multipolar world vision prevails and the destructive American ideology fails – definitively.