As US ally blows up the Mideast, China preserves Asia’s prosperity

Oct 5, 2024
United States of America, Israel and Iran relations

Launching Cold War 2.0 against a reluctant Beijing while enabling Israel to set fire to an entire region is now official American foreign policy.

The premier journal Foreign Affairs is advertising big time about a coming essay by outgoing US Secretary of State Antony Blinken – on “Biden’s Foreign Policy Legacy”, or in other words, about his own very brilliant influence on that very policy.

I can’t wait to read it – just for a laugh. The key player in the worst foreign policy team since that great American horror show starring George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz, the Blinken-Biden dynamic duo has caused damage to global stability and security at a very fundamental level. But for them, it’s always the other guy to blame – the all-purpose devil himself, China.

Now I don’t want to get into a discussion about political philosophy. Perhaps the coming article, of which the journal has offered a preview, is just a rush job.

But it may be worth pointing out, as Blinken wrote: “As secretary of state, I don’t do politics; I do policy. And policy is about choices.” But aren’t those choices inherently and highly political?

I recommend he read or reread the first chapter, titled “De la politique”, in Democratie et Totalitarisme, by Raymond Aron, a friend and mentor of Blinken’s far more illustrious predecessor, Henry Kissinger.

Aron observes that for the French, there is only one word, politique, for both politics and policy, and it’s convenient because every policy is ultimately determined by politics. As a teenager, Blinken attended a French coed in Paris, so he would have no trouble reading Aron in the original.

And more from the journal preview: “Today, China and Russia are seeking to upend the international system and aggressively challenge American interests,” he wrote.

Hmm, that’s not quite true. Let’s be clear about a basic point.

During the Cold War, the world was divided into two competing blocs. Both the Soviets and Americans chose to go toe-to-toe with each other. However, Beijing has made it clear, time and time again, that as an official policy, it doesn’t seek hegemony, or to challenge the United States’ dominant global position, or to overturn the international political and economic systems. In fact, who benefited the most from globalised trade?

In reality, Biden and the rest of Washington want to break the world into two blocs just to produce another cold war. China doesn’t want this fight, it’s the US that is dying for one.

And Asians don’t want this fight. They can do the maths. China’s gross domestic product growth went up 1,266 per cent between 2000 and 2020. That’s a lot of positive economic spillover for the whole region, even the world, including Australia.

China’s economic rise is the single biggest contributor to growing wealth and stability in the Asia-Pacific, which had to recover from the American debacles in Indochina, as well as Washington’s decades-long support for brutal corrupt dictatorships in Indonesia and the Philippines, which suffered economically as a result. But somehow, Blinken and the entire Washington establishment want to paint China as the one upsetting the apple cart.

You know who’s upsetting the apple cart and setting fire to an entire region?

Well, we all know who.

After trying to eliminate Hamas, an impossibility, while going genocidal on the Gazan population, Israel is now invading Lebanon, again.

What’s that thing about not learning from history? It invaded the country in 1982, kicked out the Palestinian Liberation Organisation – but not before causing the massacre of hundreds of Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Beirut – only to have the even more radical Hezbollah take charge.

Israel occupied southern Lebanon, but had to withdraw under sustained Hezbollah pressure. It invaded again in 2006 to try to wipe out Hezbollah. That didn’t work out, obviously. Perhaps this time will be different, as they say.

But ultimately, it wants to drag its chief sponsor, the US, into a war with Iran, much like the US war on Iraq after September 11.

With an ally like Israel, who needs enemies?

 

Republished from South China Morning Post, October 02, 2024

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