On the Stupidity of Preparing to Wage War with China
Don Smith / OpEd News
Despite disastrous wars against poor, third world countries Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, the U.S. is preparing to to wage war with China, a technologically advanced nation four times its size. And the US is doing this in China’s backyard. How stupid is that?
(July 29, 2021) — The US is preparing for war with China; is surrounding China with bases, warships, and missiles; and is promoting the Pacific Defense Initiative to collaborate with other nations in Asia to confront China. Likewise, the US Senate Overwhelmingly Passes Bill to Bolster Competitiveness With China. (“When future generations of Americans cast their gaze toward new frontiers, will they see a red flag planted on those new frontiers that is not our own?” Mr. Young said during a speech on the Senate floor. “Today, we answer unequivocally, ‘No.’)
In response to these aggressive moves, China is building up its military, including hypersonic missiles. Another response is Chinese President Xi Jinping’s recent speech marking the 100th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Xi said:
“The Chinese people will never allow foreign forces to bully, oppress or enslave us ” Whoever nurses delusions of doing that will crack their heads and spill blood on the Great Wall of steel built from the flesh and blood of 1.4 billion Chinese people.”
In Xi Jinping’s Words of Warning Echo China’s Youthful Nationalism, Andrew Browne, of Bloomberg, says that President Xi Jinping’s jingoistic anti-Western speech resonates with the attitudes of most Chinese people, including young people who have been propagandized into hating the West.
The fact that US bases and weapons surround China is another reason they may hate and fear us, don’t you think?
Browne writes:
“Far more significant than Xi’s barbed comments was the roar they elicited from the packed crowds on Tiananmen Square. They were the loudest cheers, in fact, of his entire speech. If such accolades were sincere and representative of what most Chinese citizens feel, Xi’s words may augur a very dangerous era indeed….
“Plenty of Western skeptics predicted Chinese scientists and engineers inculcated with CCP dogma would never produce breakthrough innovations, and that state banks and industrial enterprises would hold back growth. They were dead wrong on both counts of course.
“China has caught up with the US in several advanced technologies, and its economy is streaking ahead. Those same observers were also wrong to assume that China’s growing middle classes and Western-educated youth would demand democratic reform.
“If anything, public sentiment is pushing China in the opposite direction. At age 100, the Party is both stoking nationalism and being led by its most vociferous proponents the country’s youth. The West should take note, before it takes any steps that cannot be recalled.”
Many people in Congress and the US military say they want to deter China without having actual war with China. Others in the self-licking ice cream cone are less reasonable: they actually want war. (As China Declares War with US Inevitable, Army General Highlights Need for Fighting Vehicles. Risk of military conflict between US and China higher than ever, experts say)
What do you think are the chances of war happening with China? 1 in 3? 1 in 2? 2 in 3? Sounds pretty dismal.
For seven decades China has been saying that Taiwan is a breakaway province. That is unfortunate, as is China’s treatment of Muslim minorities and Hong Kong. But it’s suicidal to fight or even confront China over this. China is not threatening us directly. Nixon agreed to a One China policy (though the wording left some ambiguity). There are many bad governments in the world many of them supported by the US and the US can’t afford to be world policeman.
Besides, such wars usually turn out poorly. The US got its ass whooped in wars with third world countries Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq, killing millions of people and wasting trillions of dollars. The resulting refugee crisis destabilized European politics. According to Brown University’s Cost of Wars project, “37 million people have been displaced by the post-9/11 wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and the Philippines.”
The US made a similar mess by overthrowing governments in Central America and installing repressive regimes. Refugees have been streaming north from Central American and have destabilized American politics as well.
Now the US is picking a fight with China, a technologically advanced nation four times its size, in China’s backyard!
How stupid is that?! That’s what amazes me. The entire project deserves ridicule and parody if it weren’t so dangerous.
Does America have a death wish? Someone should make a song.
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