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54988
From: ryan, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Bigger than NATO and Coming to the Pacific
URL: https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/07/24/its-bigger-than-nato-and-its-coming-to-the-pacific/
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just an fyi... July 24, 2024 It’s bigger than NATO and It’s Coming to the Pacific by Eugene Doyle Photograph Source: U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Dylan Lavin – Public Domain Hit pause right there. Very few people have tuned into the fact that what is happening isn’t “NATO” moving into our region – it’s actually far bigger than that. The US is creating a super-bloc, a super-alliance of client states that includes both the EU and NATO, the AP4 (its key Asia Pacific partners Australia, New Zealand, South Korea and Japan) and other partners like the Philippines (now the Marcos dynasty is back at the helm). It explains why, in the midst of committing genocide in Palestine, Israel still managed to send defence personnel to participate in RIMPAC 2024 naval exercises: they’re part of our team. It is taking the Military Industrial Complex to a global level. Where do you think it will lead us to? New Zealand is about to sacrifice what it cannot afford to lose for something it doesn’t need: gambling we can keep the strength and security of our trading relationship with China whilst leaping into the US anti-China military alliance. The Chinese have noticed. Writing in the South China Morning Post last week, Alex Lo gave an unvarnished Chinese perspective on this. In a piece titled “NATO barbarians are expanding and gathering at the gates of Asia,” he says: “Most regional countries want none of it, but four Trojan horses – South Korea, Japan, Australia and New Zealand – are ready to let them in”. “Has it crossed Blinken’s mind that most of Asia, including the Indian subcontinent, don’t want NATO militarism to infect their parts of the world like the plague?” Whilst in Washington for the recent NATO summit Prime Minister Chris Luxon told the Financial Times that he viewed China as a strategic competitor in the Indo-Pacific. In the next breath he said he wants New Zealand to continue to develop trade with China and double the country’s overall exports over the next 10 years. Good luck with that if we join a hostile alliance. And since when has New Zealand declared that China was a strategic competitor? That’s an American position, surely not ours? New Zealand could “add value” to its security relationships and be a “force multiplier for Australia and the US and other partners”, Luxon said while being hosted in Washington. New Zealand was also “very open” to participating in the second pillar of AUKUS. Firmly placing New Zealand in the anti-China camp in this way was immediately lambasted by former PM Helen Clark and ex National Party leader Don Brash. What has been abandoned, they argue, without any public consultation, is our relatively independent foreign policy. They sounded a warning about where real danger lies: “China not only poses no military threat to New Zealand, but it is also by a very substantial margin our biggest export market – more than twice as important as an export market for New Zealand as the US is.” “New Zealand has a huge stake in maintaining a cordial relationship with China. It will be difficult, if not impossible, to maintain such a relationship if the Government continues to align its positioning with that of the United States.” Prudent players, like most of the ASEAN countries, continue to play a more canny game. Former President of the United Nations Security Council, Kishore Mahbubani, a Singapore statesman with immense experience, offers a study in contrast to Luxon. He says the Pacific has no need of the destructive militaristic culture of the Atlantic alliance. In a recent article in the Straits Times, Mahbubani said East Asia has developed, with the assistance of ASEAN, a very cautious and pragmatic geopolitical culture. “In the 30 years since the end of the Cold War, NATO has dropped several thousand bombs on many countries. By contrast, in the same period, no bombs have been dropped anywhere in East Asia. “The biggest danger we face in NATO expanding its tentacles from the Atlantic to the Pacific: It could end up exporting its disastrous militaristic culture to the relatively peaceful environment we have developed in East Asia,” Mahbubani says. Clark and Brash are right to sound the alarm: “These statements orient New Zealand towards being a full-fledged military ally of the United States, with the implication that New Zealand will increasingly be dragged into US-China competition, including militarily in the South China Sea.“ The National-led government is also ignoring calls by Pacific leaders to keep the Pacific peaceful. The danger is that a small group of officials in New Zealand’s increasingly militaristic and Americanized foreign affairs establishment are, along with a few politicians, sending the country into dangerous waters. Luxon’s comments are really so close to Pentagon positions and talking points that he is reducing himself to little more than a glove puppet for the Americans. New Zealand needs to be a beacon of diplomacy, moderation, cooperation and de-escalation or one day we may find out what it’s like to lose both our security and our biggest trading partner. Kiwis, like the Australians last year, may suddenly discover our paternalistic leaders have put us into AUKUS or some American Anglosophere-plus military alliance designed to maintain US global hegemony. The New Zealand government needs to commit to a referendum or some form of electoral mandate before such a radical shift in our position. Luxon seems to be following in the path of many Western leaders who preach the jihad of Democracies against Autocracies but dispense with the inconvenience of having a genuine dialogue with the population. It seems Democracy is just too precious a thing to allow the public to mess it up. As a good friend told me today: “There’s no rush. Have a proper consultation with New Zealanders – after all they did it over whether to change our fucking flag, so why not over whether we join a hostile military alliance!” |
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54989
From: ryan, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: Bigger than NATO and Coming to the Pacific
URL: https://thehill.com/opinion/international/4788110-china-naval-power-south-china-sea/
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China’s alarming rise on the seas is shifting the global order by Jeremy Hurewitz, opinion contributor - 07/24/24 1:30 PM ET In 2005, as a journalist based in Shanghai, I wrote a story about a decrepit Ukrainian aircraft carrier acquired by China and renamed the Liaoning with plans to retrofit it for its navy. In a plot out of a spy novel, the Chinese first attempted to acquire the decommissioned carrier in the 1990s through a businessman who claimed that it would be used as a floating casino to avoid alarming the West, contradicting China’s then-constant claim of its “peaceful rise.” When the Liaoning first arrived in drydock in 2005 it didn’t exactly trigger alarm bells amongst Western national security officials. The ship was antiquated, and the overall response was a shrug of collective shoulders as Chinese naval power lagged far behind the U.S. Cut to nearly 20 years later and China stands by many measures as a peer to the U.S. Navy. China currently features over 370 warships, including frigates, destroyers, submarines and other vessels, more than the U.S.’s approximately 290 ships. This includes China’s two aircraft carriers, the Liaoning and the Shandong, a Chinese-built vessel and a third, the Fujian, currently undergoing sea trials. There is speculation that a fourth is being built that will feature nuclear propulsion. China’s “peaceful rise” was a smokescreen for activities such as its widespread industrial espionage and hacking. The story of the Liaoning and the transformation of its navy is just another example. China has risen and it is not peaceful. For anyone doubting that the latest example has taken place in an obscure part of the South China Sea known as the Scarborough Shoal. This small string of coral islands is claimed by The Philippines and is within their 200-mile exclusive economic zone. It sought to solidify its claim by beaching a rusted freighter on the shoal and has kept a contingent of Marines on the boat ever since. China, which claims that Chinese fishermen have used the shoal as a fishing ground since the 13th century, rejects the claims of The Philippines and sees the shoal as within its “nine-dash line” of control. The Philippines took the matter to international arbitration and in 2016 essentially won its case. Unfortunately, China has not respected the ruling, calling it “ill-founded,” and has harassed and impeded Filippo vessels visiting the shoal, sometimes using the world’s largest coast guard vessel, dubbed “the monster.” This behavior has gotten more aggressive with the ever-bolder Chinese navy using increasingly dangerous tactics to stop resupply missions to the Filipino Marines. This includes aiming a military-grade laser at Filipino ships, ramming them and blasting them with high-power water hoses. In a recent skirmish, a Filipino Marine lost a thumb in the ruckus. There is a real danger this situation could get out of control and pull in the U.S. The Philippines and the U.S. have a mutual defense treaty and the U.S. is compelled to intervene if its partner is attacked. While this line has already seemingly been crossed, diplomats have been at pains to not call Chinese aggression an “attack.” Currently, all sides are working to tamp down the tension, but China shows no signs of backing down. This is part of China’s long game of controlling the South China Sea and projecting naval power far beyond its shores. It fears a conflict over Taiwan and losing its sea access to the U.S. and coalition partners. So it has taken over other small shoals such as the Spratlys Islands, where it has constructed a small military base. It is attempting to bully smaller neighbors like Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei as well, with a mix of economic and diplomatic coercion combined with establishing new realities on the sea as China flexes its expanding naval power. Chinese naval power isn’t just what it currently has sailing the seas. It is centered around its manufacturing prowess. China is now the world’s largest shipbuilder, an extraordinary rise from 1999 when it produced only 5 percent of the world’s ships. While it likes to point to native innovation fueling the rapid rise of its shipbuilding sector, it is more specifically the result of billions of market-skewing subsidies invested into the sector. These subsidies have hurt its biggest competitors, neighboring South Korea and Japan, and China now produces approximately 50 percent of the world’s new ships every year. The U.S. by contrast produces less than 1 percent of new ships annually. As with the “national champions” such as Huawei that China supports in other sectors, these shipbuilding companies blur the lines between commercial and military applications, often in plain sight. These “dual use” sights deliberately obscure the sharing of resources among commercial and government projects to give China an advantage. Just as America’s support for Ukraine is revealing weakness in our military manufacturing infrastructure’s ability to keep up with the demands of resupplying in a hot war, our lack of shipbuilding capacity does not bode well for a war in the South China Sea. The U.S. Navy is, of course, a formidable fighting force — still perhaps the best in the world. But in a war where the Navy would stand to lose ships to a relative peer like China, not having the ability to replace them in a reasonable time will not only impact our ability to succeed but will also affect our ability to project power and avoid other wars. China faces significant problems such as population decline and a massive real estate debt bubble, but its steely focus on national security interests like building its navy is altering the global balance of power. The U.S. has taken a step forward to address the erosion of its manufacturing base with the successful CHIPs Act as the leading example. However, the U.S. must urgently expand its ability to support its military to counter China’s desire to dominate the Pacific. Jeremy Hurewitz is the head of Interfor Academy and the author of the forthcoming book “Sell Like a Spy.” |
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