Pacific Means Peaceful
Pacific Means Peaceful
Mario Cavolo opines New U.S. Japan Military Expansion Much Ado About Nothing', Warwick Powell writes 'A positive peace is possible', Dilma Rousseff says multipolar economy will help prevent crises
New U.S. Japan Military Expansion Much Ado About Nothing
By Mario Cavolo
According to the U.S. Govt as reported by CNN There Are Mounting Security Threats in Asia.
No there isn't.
Of course they mean China.
Once again let me be clear. You're being lied to.
The only mounting security threat in Asia is the mounting, expanding military of the United States which as we discussed a few weeks earlier is responding to its steady decline not with diplomacy & cooperation but by expanding their military to increase control of the world by threat, intimidation, violence, death & the bloodshed of more innocents.
There's a problem with all this of course. An elephant in the room. What might that be?
Unlike the half a million Ukrainian who are now dead because they were willing to go to war, Taiwanese citizens, Philippines citizens, Singapore citizens and even most Japanese citizens are not out of their minds willing to die and have their homelands become blood-soaked islands in the name of U.S strategic interests and political propaganda.
Unlike the war-like, half crazy Europeans, Asians have a brain and use it to conclude that staying alive and staying peaceful is the way forward for mankind no matter what.
Let me make a further clarification. IF the United States is expanding its military in the Asia Pacific mainly via this new defense cooperation with Japan to be ready to respond when China attacks anyone, then that is truly terrific news because it means there's nothing to worry about.
Forget about it and go enjoy some tea. Because China would never do that. Not ever.
Every time any western country starting with the United States tells you China might attack or invade Taiwan, once again you're being lied to. You're being told a created western political propaganda narrative that was created out of thin air to serve as their reason for building up their own military, sell weapons, sow more war & bloodshed as they are so masterly good at doing.
Let's review China's military history and policies to date. In October at the Summit in San Francisco, Xi Jinping used the podium to state to the world "China will never start a cold war or a hot war with any other nation."
Ok, so let's pick a nation. Any nation. And now ask yourself: Would China would ever attack that nation in some region of the world?
The African continent? No.
South America? No.
The European region? No.
Asia Pacific? No.
North America? Hell no.
See? Our answer is undoubtedly no.
Since its founding in 1949, The People's Republic of China has no history of starting wars with anyone. And before that down into the 1800s China also never started war with anyone. Japan has invaded China several times in fact. Britain started the Opium Wars.
China has not in 200 years attacked or invaded any other nation beyond some small back and forth border disputes with India and the Sino Vietnam war in 1979 which China did NOT start.
Unsurprisingly as on the Korean peninsula in 1950, it was the United States who created the mayhem, wars & bloodshed in Vietnam. Otherwise, China never would have been there in the first place.
So if we can see crystal clear that today's China is committed to peace and has literally zero interest in attacking or invading any other nation, what the hell makes you think they would attack, invade and kill their own Chinese citizens on the island of Taiwan? For what? Its absurd. A made up narrative like I told you.
The only problem on Taiwan is a very small, yet quite annoying band of extremists backed by the United States called the DPP. It serves the United States well to endlessly stir up trouble to disrupt good relations between any countries and territories and that's why the United States backs the DPP.
But in the end, the United States couldn't care less if scores of innocent Taiwanese civilians die along the way and the Taiwanese people, and the Philipino people as well, know that. They have zero trust and zero faith that the mighty United States would defend them even though they don't even need defending.
So then we have to wonder what is going on with this fresh U.S. Japan military expansion as CNN reported.
"The United States will overhaul its military forces in Japan as the two countries move to deepen defense cooperation, Washington and Tokyo said Sunday, in a sweeping step to modernise their alliance in the face of mounting security threats in Asia."
If they're not doing this to be ready to respond to an attack or invasion by China which we now know is never going to happen, then its just more wasted billions in military spending while the very real problems facing Americans back home continue being ignored.
We might conclude the only other answer is that the United States is planning to be the one that attacks first, creating and provoking small military altercations as the catalysts to do so. They certainly have a history of doing that.
I am here to tell you that it’s not going to happen. If the political and military leaders of the United States truly are as sinister as our famous Dr. No in the James Bond thriller of the same name or as Christopher Walken's truly pyschotic character in A View To A Kill, then yes, we do need to worry.
But dear friends, no worries. While U.S. political and military leaders are surely malevolent and short sighted on foreign policy, they're not psychotic. They know full well that the United States itself is way past being able to withstand the economic damage that would occur devastating their own economy, China's economy and the entire world economy.
So while we do need to get used to a world with an expanded U.S. military and NATO military presence in the Asia Pacific region, it really doesn't add up to much beyond feeding the endless political frenzy of western media headlines and stories and billions more squandered on military rather than where its needed most back home.
Read the original here.
NB: Mario Cavolo is a regular featured contributor and lived in China for 25 years. He is the author of three books along with countless media articles on China and a regular media contributor to China's national media outlets.
A positive peace is possible
By Warwick Powell
The ongoing chaos that seems to be the defining characteristic of US domestic politics sets the backdrop for the attempts of the United States to reassert its hegemony across the world through the global expansion of NATO. US political chaos reflects a political economy that is failing to meet the aspirations of the US people, let alone enable the US to recover its position as the unparalleled global military hegemon.
Despite this, or perhaps in part because of this, the US has been doubling down on a strategy aimed at reasserting military preponderance in Asia. The recent NATO summit spoke decisively to this shift in focus, as the failing proxy war in Ukraine exposes the US-led NATO's limitations in doctrine, resources and systems.
By absurdly seeking to blame China for NATO's failures on the Ukraine crisis, the US and NATO have sought to not only rationalize their military failure but to justify the transfer of focus to Asia. Russia's ongoing battlefield successes are now being ascribed to China's support of the Russian military effort, despite the absence of any evidence of such. For NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, China is the "decisive enabler", "inciting the largest military conflict in Europe since World War II".
In raw material terms, the collective Western military industrial complex has been exposed in both qualitative and quantitative terms. Qualitatively, claimed technological superiority has been demonstrated to be false bravado. The cavalcade of Wunderwaffe delivered to Ukraine over the past two years has failed to deliver a decisive edge to the proxy Ukrainian military. Quantitatively, the collective Western supply chains simply don't have the wherewithal to repair and replace what's being lost on the battlefield. This is evident in areas such as the production of 155mm munitions, in which US and NATO ambitions of expanding output have foundered, as described in detail in a recent Reuters investigation. Monthly production capabilities in the collective West aren't sufficient to replace what's being used by Ukraine, let alone come close to matching the productive output of the Russian industrial system.
Talk is cheap, but the West is no longer able to back it up with walk.
But the talk is actually anathema to the realization of stability and peace. Rather, the ways in which the talk is framed — whereby security is a function of militarized deterrence — is the very source of the instability that they are seeking to mitigate. Deterrence discourse aims to dissuade adversaries from attacking due to the supposed costs of doing so. Yet, such an approach in practice is rarely sustainable, doesn't work in many cases and can actually set up an arms race courtesy of the well-known security dilemma. In other words, deterrence has a high risk of failure.
The deterrence discourse seeks to manipulate the risk environment, without ever addressing the root causes of insecurity. Seeking to out-escalate an adversary may work for a while, buying one time, but it is no panacea to the problems that are causing insecurity in the first place. And yet, the entirety of the US-NATO strategic mindset is anchored by this flawed deterrence frame.
The failure of so-called deterrence in Ukraine and Gaza reminds us all that such an approach cannot deliver the security, peace or prosperity that people demand and deserve.
Rather, what's needed is an effort to develop a positive peace, which was once proposed by Johan Galtung, the father of peace studies. A positive peace addresses the holistic dynamics of stability whereby prosperity and peace are framed as codependent and symbiotic; while a negative peace, characterized by the mere absence of military conflict, is a condition of functional deterrence with all the associated instabilities and risks.
One cannot achieve peace through security, but security can be achieved through peace. This requires a reframing of peace through the lens of indivisible and holistic security, which intertwines economic prosperity with transnational peacemaking. The security of one or a select few cannot come at the expense of the security of another, or others. This is a NATO-inspired recipe for instability.
The risk to Asian peace and prosperity is from the expansion of NATO to the region, and the US efforts to reclaim lost primacy. Multipolarity is a global reality, and Asia is a veritable case study of multipolarity and a consensus-based methodology of peacemaking, in which prosperity and peace are two sides of the one strategic coin. The foundations of regional peace, by way of the Bandung Declaration some 69 years ago, remain in place.
ASEAN centrality can and should play a cornerstone role in the future configuration of multipolar peace in Asia. Its success in creating the world's largest free trade agreement — the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership — is testament to the success of its understated style and method. Further regional economic integration through trade, investment flows, sovereign data platforms built on standards that enable interoperability, and national currency-based digitalized payments are some of the ingredients for a positive peace.
The US-NATO black thumb of death and destruction, and baked-in escalation risk, are anathema to peace and prosperity in Asia. There are other ways. The spirit of Bandung calls us again.
Read the original here.
NB: The author is an adjunct professor at Queensland University of Technology and a senior fellow at the Taihe Institute. The author contributed this article to China Watch, a think tank powered by China Daily.
Head of BRICS New Development Bank urges focus on 'multipolar economy' to form multipolar world
Head of BRICS New Development Bank, former Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff says multipolar economy will help prevent crises
By Anadolu Agency
The head of the economic bloc BRICS New Development Bank, former Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff on Thursday urged to focus on the formation of a multipolar economy.
Speaking at a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in St. Petersburg, Rousseff said the "Global North" failed to address humanity's global problems, asserting that a multipolar economy is better equipped to withstand global shocks and crises.
"We are a different bank, created by the countries of the Global South for the countries of the Global South. We cannot dictate conditions for our members," Rousseff said.
She emphasized that a multipolar economy is essential for achieving true multipolarity, and contributing to its establishment is one of the BRICS New Development Bank's goals.
Rousseff highlighted the importance of national currencies in a multipolar world, noting that another of the bank's commitments is to facilitate settlements in national currencies.
"This is crucial for developing countries that lack strong currencies and suffer from exchange rate volatility," she said.
Putin praised Rousseff's leadership at the bank, noting that under her chairmanship, the bank showed a significant net profit for the first time.
He invited Rousseff to discuss the bank's further development and to explore joint initiatives, including through the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF).
SPIEF, held annually in June since 1997, is supported by the president of the Russian Federation and organized by the Ministry of Economic Development.
The forum gathers leading global politicians and businesspeople to identify and deliberate on key challenges facing Russia, emerging markets, and the world, aiming to establish frameworks for common solutions.
Read more here.