As U.S. Steps Up War Preparations Against China NATO Extends Its Reach to Asia Pacific
- Steve Rutchinski and Philip
Fernandez - 
The largest naval war exercise in a generation is being prepared by the
U.S. for later this summer. It is simply called Large Scale Exercise
2021 and will span both
the European and Asia Pacific fields of operations. It will deploy
about 25,000 U.S., NATO and Pacific Region personnel; aircraft
carriers, submarines, aircraft and unmanned vessels, with
the U.S. Marines commanding the Asia Pacific operations. To say that
the political leaders gathered for the NATO Summit on June 14 are
preparing for world war, is not to overstate the seriousness of the
situation. Australia, Japan, the Republic of Korea
(ROK) and New Zealand have
been "NATO partners" for some time now and participated for the first
time in a NATO Foreign Ministerial
Meeting in December 2020. Global expansion of NATO's field of
operations is a key element of the NATO 2030 agenda, not only into the
Asia Pacific Region, but Africa and Latin
America as well. The U.S. is driving this agenda
but other NATO powers have their own
interest in expanding into the Asia Pacific region, and are doing so
both independently and in concert with other
NATO member states. Of course it is all presented in the name of high
ideals, of "human rights," upholding a "rules-based international
order," the "rule of law" and so forth. In truth, it is
about the liberal democracies that are part of the imperialist system
of states, along with U.S. imperialism as the "indispensable" power,
keeping the world, China and Russia in particular,
subservient to U.S. dictate and so-called western interests.  The
NATO Association of Canada (NAOC, part of NATO's political wing) put it
quite shamelessly in a recent article. It wrote: "President Biden
asserts that competition with China is
an imperative step for democracy, the rule of law and the rules-based
economic system to remain fundamentally for global stability and peace.
Nevertheless, the U.S.'s strategy also
accommodates American hubris in clinging to their remaining hegemonic
prestige in the Indo-Pacific and globally."
NAOC
went on to point out that the UK has also been strengthening
its security arrangements with Japan, Brunei and the former colonial
states in Southeast Asia and the
Western-Pacific, while France is using its overseas territories
(Mayotte, La Réunion, New Caledonia and French Polynesia) to
claim
legitimacy for expanding its military presence, territorial
and sovereignty claims in the Indo-Pacific. No
sooner was President Biden inaugurated than he began
stepping up U.S. war preparations against China. The first
international trips
by Biden Cabinet officials saw Secretary of State
Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin travel to Japan
and south Korea in March as part of an anti-China tour which culminated
in the Alaska Summit with senior
government officials of the People's Republic of China. The
tour was preceded by a virtual meeting on March 12 of heads of
state of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QSD -- known as the Quad)
comprised of the U.S. India, Australia
and Japan, where Biden secured a renewed commitment to "the Spirit of
the Quad." To date it has been an informal alliance, initiated in 2007;
however, when Mike Pompeo was Secretary
of State he met with members of the Quad to push converting it into "an
Asian NATO" with "shared security and geopolitical goals." Secretary
of State Blinken made it very clear on the outset of this
tour in March just exactly what the U.S. means by preserving a
"rules-based international order." Blinken said "China
is the only country with the economic, diplomatic, military and
technological power to seriously challenge the stable and open
international system -- all the rules, values and relations that
make the world work the way we want it to." (Emphasis
added.) In Japan on March 16, Blinken and
Austin emphasized that the U.S.
and Japan will work together to counter China's destabilizing efforts.
China, they said, uses coercion and aggression
against Hong Kong and Taiwan; abuses human rights in Xinjiang and
Tibet, and asserts maritime claims in the South China Sea that violate
international law. Japan stepped up to the plate
and reiterated the U.S. claims against "China's aggressive actions in
the Taiwan Strait" and territorial claims in the South China Sea.
The statements issued following their stopover in the ROK were
less
strident, on the ROK's part at least, but clever wording by the ROK to
sidestep direct interference in China's affairs did
not escape China's attention. At the Alaska Summit
-- that included the participation of Yang
Jiechi, a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of
China's Central Committee and director of the
Central Leading Group for Foreign Affairs, and China's Foreign Minister
Wang Yi -- Blinken and Austin staged a media performance of confronting
and lecturing China. The Atlantic
Council, a think tank that is also part of NATO's political wing,
hailed the performance as a vital step of the Biden Administration for
making China realize the United States is "dealing
from a position of strength." The Chinese officials
however responded that "in front of the
Chinese side, the U.S. is not qualified to speak to China from a
position of strength." Foreign Minister Wang said, "the old
habit of U.S. hegemonic behaviour of willfully interfering in China's
internal affairs must be changed." Chinese media described the Alaska
Summit as "an unprecedented open face-to-face
confrontation between China and the U.S." that will "very likely be
given great importance in history." Biden's
"diplomacy" efforts in March were immediately followed by
numerous military exercises in the region. Navies of the Quad countries
joined for the first time in a three-day
exercise called La Pérouse, April 5-7,
spearheaded by the
French Navy. This exercise was described with more of the same language
about demonstrating "shared values with
friendly navies ensuring freedom of seas and commitment to an open,
inclusive Indo-Pacific and a rules-based international order."
Yet right after La Pérouse, the
Commander of the U.S. Seventh Fleet issued a press release on April 7
stating that the "USS John Paul Jones
asserted navigational rights
and freedoms approximately 130 nautical miles west of the Lakshadweep
Islands, inside India's exclusive economic zone (EEZ) without
requesting India's prior consent, consistent with
international law" and that it was intended to challenge India's
"excessive maritime claims." According to Indian media, India was
shocked that the U.S. would issue such a press release.
Although the U.S. has frequently conducted surveillance and
intelligence gathering in India's EEZ this was the first time a public
statement had been made by the U.S. to justify an
aggressive action to challenge India's claims of sovereignty over its
own territorial waters. It is noteworthy that India signed onto the UN
Convention of the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) in
1995. UNCLOS specifically states that "the provisions of the Convention
do not authorize other States to carry out in the exclusive economic
zone and on the continental shelf military
exercises or manoeuvres, in particular those involving the use of
weapons or explosives without the consent of the coastal State."
The U.S. has not signed UNCLOS declaring that it is not in its
national interest to do so. The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD)
Freedom of Navigation protocol declares that friend or
foe "the DoD challenges excessive maritime claims asserted by a wide
variety of coastal States including allies, partners, and other nations
on a worldwide basis to maintain global mobility
of U.S. forces." The example shows that the
"rules-based international order" the
U.S. and NATO enforce is in violation of international law. Rules are
made up by the U.S. "that make the world work
the way we want it to." In mid-April the USS
Theodore Roosevelt Carrier Strike Group
and the Makin Island Amphibious Ready Group of the U.S. Pacific Fleet
carried out "expeditionary strike force
operations" in the South China Sea. The operation was on such a large
scale it was noticed throughout Asia as a major provocation against
China. China has been responding in kind with
naval exercises of its own. Besides the French
Naval exercise which the Quad countries joined
for the first time, Britain too is stepping up its military presence in
the Asia Pacific region. On May 1, the UK
Carrier Strike Group 21 set off to participate in the NATO "Exercise
Strike Warrior" in the North Sea, which involved more than 20 warships,
three submarines and 150 aircraft from 11
different nations, after which it departed for Asia Pacific. British
Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said, "When our Carrier Strike Group sets
sail it will be flying the flag for Global Britain --
projecting our influence, signalling our power, engaging with our
friends and reaffirming our commitment to addressing the security
challenges of today and tomorrow .... the UK is not
stepping back but sailing forth to play an active role in shaping the
international system of the 21st Century."  Another
U.S. escalation of war preparations is the scrapping of missile
guidelines which was the result of the Biden-Moon Summit in May. The
ROK is no longer under any restriction
as to range or payload of its missile systems. This is what the Rand
Corporation, another war mongering U.S. "think tank" has been proposing
as a cornerstone of Biden's Korea policy.
Rand Corp. issued a paper at the start of this year advising: "The
response by the United States and the ROK should be to bolster
deterrence credibility by 1) delaying the transfer of
wartime operational control (OPCON) [which would mean the U.S.
retains control of any ROK missile systems -- TML Ed. Note]
and 2) implementing ballistic missile defence and
other forms of defence. However if these combined responses turn out to
be unsuccessful, the ROK might need to consider developing and
deploying indigenous nuclear weapon
capabilities."
International affairs critic Kim
Myong Choi succinctly pointed out
that the international community should concern itself with the grave
and provocative acts conducted in plain sight by
the U.S. rather than fixating on the measures the Democratic
People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) has to take to defend itself from
U.S. aggression. The DPRK notes that the U.S. and
the ROK carried out 110 war exercises of varying scales in 2018, more
than
190 in 2019 and 170 in 2020. Since Biden's
inauguration, U.S. war preparations, especially in the
Asia Pacific region against China, are escalating and pose a grave
danger to the peace and security of the region and
of the world. Platitudes about "an open rules-based order" are nothing
but the dictum that "might makes right." We must step up the struggle
against the danger of war, to affirm the right to
be of all nations and peoples of the world, and to renew
international relations on a modern proletarian internationalist
basis.
This article was published in
Volume 51 Number 14 - June 13, 2021
Article Link:
https://cpcml.ca/Tmlm2021/Articles/MS51143.HTM
Website: www.cpcml.ca
Email: editor@cpcml.ca
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