Since the end of WWII, the United States has initiated scores of armed conflicts and wars, but has still not achieved any final victory. Many experts have noted that the American Army has won several victories in various conflicts, but has not won a single war.
Since WWII ended, American presidents have constantly been initiating wars. There was the Korean War: Kim Il Sung wanted to sign a peace treaty, but Washington refused to have anything to do with the Communist leader, and arranged for a war. Eisenhower unleashed different wars from Guatemala to Vietnam. Kennedy wanted to end a war, but was assassinated. According to the most conservative estimates, over the 75 years that have elapsed since WWII the United States has fought in at least 30 countries, and this does not include clandestine operations conducted by the CIA, or all the revolutions and civil wars that have been orchestrated by Washington.
Many observers are convinced that the American ruling elite have an idee fixe that consists of global dominance, hegemony, and supremacy. One American columnist stated that every 10 years the United States has to find some kind of small country and militarily intervene in its territory to demonstrate its aspirations to rule the world to everyone on the planet. And Lawrence Wilkerson, the former chief of staff for the United States State Department (between 2001 and 2005), stated point-blank: “Since 1947, the United States has been an empire, but any person that has studied history knows that empires both past and present must wage war to ensure their own existences.” After all, when a war is raging in some far-away country, the US military-industrial complex receives orders for armaments and science grants to help develop new weaponry, and private contractors are awarded military contracts. War is an excellent move to help distract people from the United States’ domestic problems, and wars are continuously present.
This is why Washington not only desires to maintain the intensity of wars in progress in various regions around the world, but to ensnare the entire world in military blocs and armed coalitions that are solely under its jurisdiction. In 1949, the United States created the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO, to address political, economic, and military challenges. In 1951, the Australia, New Zealand, United States Security Treaty (ANZUS) was created to help coordinate the efforts put forth for collective security in the Pacific Ocean; at present, this has been de facto terminated, even though it has not officially been disbanded. In 1954, to combat Soviet political expansion in South Asia and Southeast Asia, the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization SEATO was organized, however it did not last long, and in 1977 the participating countries mutually agreed to terminate it.
To help address certain imperial challenges in a certain specific region, over the past few decades Washington has been particularly energetic in running to set up “coalitions” so that “responsibility is shared” with other countries for any military intervention campaigns launched. For example, for the 2003 invasion of Iraq that was artificially incited by Washington to overthrow Saddam Hussein, a “military coalition” was cobbled together under the pretext of fighting international terrorism. Another “military coalition” was created in 2001 for the armed invasion of Afghanistan, and yet again the pretext was “combating terrorism”. One year ago, the United States started to take proactive measures to put together an anti-Iranian military coalition, declaring that the objective was to “protect the tankers transporting oil in the area of the Persian Gulf”.
And now US Secretary of State Pompeo, when giving a speech at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in California, proclaimed that a new bloc was being created, and declared that the People’s Republic of China is an overt, obvious enemy for the United States and the entire “free world”. The United States envisages confronting China with an alliance forged in a new format that includes like-minded countries in NATO, the G7, the G20, and the United Nations. Many political commentators have already stated that this speech by Pompeo means that the United States has declared a cold war on China. Previously, US Secretary of Defense Mark Esper urged strengthening NATO to “keep Russia and China in check”, clarifying that “Russia represents a slightly less difficult challenge than China”.
As should have been anticipated, the ideas put forth by Pompeo about forming a universal front to confront China were immediately supported by the British political elite, who are hopelessly dependent on the United States and with whom the US Secretary of State met on 21 July during a visit to Great Britain, holding the appropriate instructional talks with participation on the part of the government and a group of members from Britain’s parliament.
The long-standing partnership between the United States and the Celestial Empire, hastily validated in January this year with a “phase one” agreement about a long-suffering trade deal, is now threatening to burst at the seams. Over the past few days, the United States and China have already moved from harsh rhetoric to a diplomatic conflict: the White House demanded that the Consulate General of the People’s Republic of China in Houston (in the state of Texas) be shut down over the course of 72 hours. In response, China announced its decision on 24 July to shut down the United States consulate in the city of Chengdu (in Sichuan Province). President Donald Trump did not rule out the possibility that other Chinese diplomatic missions might be next after the Chinese Consulate General in Houston, and specifically in San Francisco in California.
Media outlets under Washington’s control long ago launched an anti-Chinese propaganda campaign. For example, the NBC television channel, citing American intelligence services, affirms that the Chinese Consulate General was a “high-technology communications center to coordinate and execute operations to gather intelligence”, including those geared toward gathering “valuable information on healthcare research” and “to implement in the oil & gas industry”. Wang Wenbin, an official representative from the Chinese Foreign Ministry, has already called the actions taken by Washington an unprecedented escalation of the tensions in the relations between the two countries, and one that grossly violates international law, the key principles governing international relations, and the consular treaty signed by China and the US
The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has already delivered criticism caused by the overtones in Mike Pompeo’s words about creating an international anti-Chinese coalition – ones that contain rude language, as has become habitual in US foreign policy lexicon – directed towards China, its sociopolitical system, and the country’s leadership. The Russian Foreign Ministry underscored that by its actions Washington is fomenting tension in its relations with Beijing and inflicting damage to American-Chinese relations, both in the international arena and as a whole, since these two countries are permanent members of the UN Security Council, and play key roles in international affairs. Along with other members of the “Big Five”, the US and China bear the express responsibility to support global stability.
Regarding Washington’s attempts to drag Russia into the confrontation between the United States and China, complicate the Russian-Chinese partnership, and “drive a wedge” into the friendly ties that exist between Russia and China, the Russian Foreign Ministry officially announced that Russia intends to further strengthen its cooperation with China, something which this author sees as a crucial factor in stabilizing the international situation.
Vladimir Odintsov, political observer, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
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