May 13, 2024
US Is Losing In Ukraine. Blame China, Says Blinken
by John V. Walsh
At the close of his recent trip to China, on April 26 while still in Beijing, Sec. of State, Anthony Blinken, made an extremely bellicose statement to the press. Blinken’s words marked a new phase in the narrative to prepare the American and European public for more conflict with China. As Caitlin Johnstone has reminded us, “Before they drop the bombs, they drop the narrative.” What, then, is the narrative that Blinken dropped?
Blinken alleges that China’s support for Russia accounts for its success in Ukraine.
In his statement, Blinken tells us that the US has “serious concern” over “components” from China that are “powering” Russia’s war with Ukraine. He goes on to say that China is the top supplier “of dual use items that Moscow is using to ramp up its industrial base, a defense industrial base…” It is widely accepted that the US is losing its Ukraine proxy war. Blinken now informs us that the US-installed Ukrainian regime is losing because China is aiding Russia. Blaming China is nothing new in the argot of the West, but here it is put to a new use, as an excuse for yet another embarrassing defeat for the US.
Blinken lists “machine tools, microelectronics, nitrocellulose” as key components that China provides to Russia. But “dual use items” is an ill-defined and malleable category. Potentially, every item of trade can be subsumed under the term. For example, if Russia imports Chinese machine tools to make cars, then it can readily be claimed that they are being used to build tanks. Or if Russia imports nitrocellulose to make fingernail polish, it can be charged that the chemical is being used for gun powder or explosives. So, when the US demands that China stop “indirect” support for Russia’s war effort, it is ultimately demanding that China cut off all trade with Russia.
Blinken offers no evidence that such “dual use” items are responsible for the drubbing that its Ukraine proxies are taking. And China has no obligation to curtail its commerce with Russia. As with India and other genuinely sovereign nations which continue to trade with Russia, China is not bound by the edicts of the United States.
What in fact is China’s stance on the Ukraine proxy war? First of all, China says that it is providing no weapons or direct support to Russia’s war effort. And the US does not try to contest this; it is a given. In contrast, US and the EU are throwing billions in weapons at the war in Ukraine.
Similarly, the US insists that it will provide “whatever it takes” for “as long as it takes” for Ukraine to win the war. In sharp contrast China has called for negotiations to end the conflict and offered to serve as a mediator. A negotiated solution would certainly end the conflict that has consumed hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers and a large but unknown number of Russians. One might think that China’s call would be universally welcomed.
“Blame China” emerging as a new propaganda line on the Ukraine proxy war
Blaming China for the US failure in Ukraine is not simply a quick talking point inserted into a Blinken speech. It is being echoed by others in the Administration and beyond it in NATO. And it is the reason given for a new round of anti-China sanctions. In short it has all the earmarks of a well-planned propaganda campaign.
In fact, Blinken was not the first to present this view. In a little noticed talk about 3 weeks earlier, on April 3 at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), Deputy Secretary of State, Kurt Campbell, the architect of the “Pivot” to East Asia under Obama and now Biden’s “Asia czar” and second in command at State made the same point. As Business Insider reported, “Campbell said Moscow suffered initial setbacks during the Ukraine war but has ‘retooled and now poses a threat to Ukraine.’ ‘But not just to Ukraine,’ Campbell said. ‘Its newfound capabilities pose a longer-term challenge to stability in Europe and threatens NATO allies.’ The Deputy Secretary pointed to Russia’s receiving industrial and commercial support from China as he spoke in a larger discussion on Indo-Pacific security.”
Sure enough, four days later, on May 1, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen followed up on Campbell’s talk and Blinken’s threat by announcing new sanctions against 280 “targets” with emphasis on the PRC but also including entities in Azerbaijan, Belgium, Slovakia, Türkiye, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
And there was also coordination with NATO on this message. On April 25, one day before Blinken’s statement, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg had scolded China for the misdeed of trading with Russia. It is not hard to see that the campaign linking China to the Ukraine proxy war has been in the works for a while and is a priority for the Biden Administration.
Piggybacking Sinophobia to an intense Russophobia in the West.
Blinken made clear that his remarks were also meant to draw NATO into his anti-China crusade, saying: “In my meetings with NATO Allies earlier this month and with our G7 partners just last week, I heard that same message: fueling Russia’s defense industrial base not only threatens Ukrainian security; it threatens European security. Beijing cannot achieve better relations with Europe while supporting the greatest threat to European security since the end of the Cold War. As we’ve told China for some time, ensuring transatlantic security is a core U.S. interest.” Blinken then concludes this segment of his statement, sounding very much like that great diplomat Don Corleone, “In our discussions today, I made clear that if China does not address this problem, we will.” This declaration drew international attention because of its aggressiveness.
The message linking China to Russia’s military campaign in Ukraine is aimed squarely at the American and European public. Russia and its leaders, at this moment Putin, have been successfully portrayed as the embodiment of aggressive evil in the West for a long time. This Russophobia has roots going back to the Great Schism of Christianity of 1054 and, with only brief respites, is found in one form or another up to the present moment. In recent years it has intensified again, beginning with Russiagate, long since definitively discredited as a hoax by the Mueller and Durham investigations and by scholars like the late, great Stephen F. Cohen. But the myth lives on strengthened by the other bête noir of the Establishment, Donald Trump, the bosom buddy of Putin according to the Russiagate mythology. Russophobia and demonization of Putin have been used to justify the Eastward expansion of NATO and the current proxy war in Ukraine.
Linking this Russophobia to China helps the US to enlist its EU vassal states in its crusade against China. The message is simple, “If you dislike Russia, you should hate China. And you should love sanctions levelled on China.”
An escape from the humiliation of defeat at the hands of a “gas station”
The new narrative also saves the US and its Eurovassals from an embarrassing moment as Russia, often dismissed as a “gas station masquerading as a country” defeats Ukraine, even though Ukraine is heavily backed by money, weapons, intelligence and military “advisors”. How humiliating it is for the US to be defeated by a “gas station”! A rout of this sort will certainly not help the US as it scours the planet in search of other countries to serve in its goal of total global hegemony, a goal set in the years just before the US entered WWII.
But have Blinken and his colleagues thought this through? After all they are saying that the US and EU backed Ukraine, while China backed Russia; and Russia won. In its quest to secure anti-China allies, this is not a good look for the US.
The strategy of linking China to Russia also harbors a contradiction. The US has proclaimed since at least 2011 that China is its main adversary, but it keeps getting distracted, stuck to various Tar Babies, the most prominent being Russia. (Some others have been Libya, Syria, Venezuela, North Korea, the Gaza genocide.) By linking China to Russia, the US signals once again its inability to shake off its obsession with Russia, leaving it with multiple adversaries rather than one. This is the typical predicament of an overextended Empire.
Blinken’s remarks in light of the Gaza genocide
In the course of his statement in Beijing, Blinken implied that he and the US have high minded concerns over Putin’s “brutal” war that has “taken the lives of innocent children, women and men.” But upon hearing those words, Gaza intrudes on one’s thoughts. And at once Blinken’s words ring hollow, to put it mildly, coming from a man who has been a leading figure in supporting and arming the Israeli slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza. This massacre is but the latest phase in the long slow genocide of the Palestinian people which the West has supported since its beginning with the Nakba of 1948. As of this writing a minimum of 34, 000 Gazans have been slaughtered, 42% of them children, in a little over 6 months. Gaza is a “mask off moment” as Anya Parampil has put it which illuminates lays bare the brutal visage of the US Empire which is at work in so many corners of the planet. It affects how we look at everything, including the US proxy war in Ukraine.
This article first appeared at Antiwar.com
John V. Walsh, until recently a Professor of Physiology and Neuroscience at the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School, has written on issues of peace and health care for the San Francisco Chronicle, EastBayTimes/San Jose Mercury News, Asia Times, LA Progressive, Antiwar.com, CounterPunch and others.
|
|
There's more at link...
It's been my contention for some time Russia was
pressing this war for China, that the deal was made to
supply China with the rare and common minerals from the
treasure store of Ukraine.
*****
Russia-Ukraine War: China’s Vanishing Neutrality
Full Chinese logistical support for Russia could be the
real game changer of the war – and that support is
growing more important and less discreet.
By Pierre-Marie Meunier
February 24, 2024
Russia-Ukraine War: China’s Vanishing Neutrality
Russian President Vladimir Putin (left) talks with
Chinese President Xi Jinping at the official welcoming
ceremony held for the heads of delegations taking part
in the Third Belt and Road Forum for International
Cooperation, Beijing, China, Oct. 17, 2023.
Credit: Russian Presidential Press and Information
Office
“In the Ukraine War, China Is the Only Winner.” This
observation served as the title of an article published
in May 2023 by The National Interest. Although that
sentiment is not a widely held consensus in Europe, it
well summarizes an idea circulating across the Atlantic
on the benefits that China can derive from the war in
Ukraine: Both a diversion to attract U.S. attention and
means to the European front (far from Taiwan and the
South China Sea ), and a chance to obtain raw materials
at unbeatable prices from a Russia that absolutely must
find the means to finance its war. The Atlantic Council
has framed this as an “economic lifeline” between China
and Russia.
Even if Russia lost the war, with all the possible
consequences for Vladimir Putin’s power, China could
seize the opportunity to have a permanently weakened
Russia on its borders. The situation appears
sufficiently profitable, regardless of the outcome,
that China has officially refrained from deterring
Russia.
That said, even the “limitless” partnership between
China and Russia, announced in early February 2022,
ultimately found limits following Russia’s invasion of
Ukraine on February 24, 2022.
Shortly after the invasion, a Chinese spokesperson
skillfully dodged questions from journalists wanting to
know whether China’s government had been warned of the
Russian invasion of Ukraine, refusing to speak of an
“invasion” and explaining that Russia did not have to
ask for “permission” (which was not the question
asked). But China has also taken good note of the
extent of Western sanctions against Russia, and, unlike
its bellicose neighbor, it does not yet seem ready to
cut itself off from its main customers and outlets,
particularly in the context of an economy that is
teetering on its foundations.
China also quickly gave guarantees to the West that its
support for Russia would not cross certain lines. For
example, China decided in September 2022 to stop
deliveries of truck engines for Kamaz. In August 2023,
China also decided to suspend, at least officially,
exports of commercial and recreational drones to Russia
and Ukraine. But a New York Times investigation seems
to indicate that this decision concerned Ukraine much
more than Russia.
There is apparently a difference between what China
says and what China does.
China’s Economic Support for Russia
As the conflict becomes bogged down, considering that
the world economy has now adapted to the new energy
landscape, the redistribution of oil and gas flows,
China could maintain some low profile support for
Russia without compromising itself with its European
clients. China does not seem opposed to transforming
Eastern Europe into a focal point not only for the
meager European forces, but also for part of the U.S.
forces.
Indeed, in the event of a Russian victory in Ukraine –
or even a simple status quo, similar to that which
prevailed from 2014 to 2022 in Donbas – the countries
bordering Russia (the Baltic countries, Finland, and
even countries farther afield like Romania) would
probably require a strengthening of the U.S. presence
on their soil. This is the only guarantee recognized
today as dissuading Russia from pushing its possible
advantage further. However, anything that is likely to
ultimately weaken the U.S. “pivot” toward the Pacific
and reduce the volume of American forces there is good
for China.
From the Chinese point of view, these regional
considerations could explain the increasing visibility
of trade between China and Russia. $240 billion worth
of goods were exchanged in 2023, increasing by 26.3
percent over the previous year. Chinese exports to
Russia jumped 47 percent in one year and nearly 65
percent compared to 2021. Russia thus moved from 10th
to 6th place among China’s economic partners in terms
of trade values between 2022 and 2023.
|
|