Tag: China

Failed Coup in China

It appears the global satanists, having failed with their attempted color revolution in Iran, recently tried to unseat Xi Jinping by corrupting two members of the Chinese general staff.

According to sources cited by Reuters and Bloomberg, reports are circulating that an attempted military coup took place in China aimed at removing Xi Jinping. Two key generals have reportedly been detained, along with their families and up to approximately 3,000 military personnel.

What is known at this stage:

  • Zhang Youxia (Vice Chairman of the Central Military Commission) is suspected of organizing the coup attempt against Xi Jinping.
  • An armed confrontation reportedly occurred, involving gunfire between troops loyal to Zhang and the presidential security detail, resulting in several of Xi Jinping’s guards being wounded or killed.
  • The plans of Zhang Youxia and Joint Staff Chief Liu Zhenli allegedly included mobilizing troops to carry out a state coup against Xi Jinping.
  • The intended slogan of the operation was reportedly: “Save the Party, Save the Nation.”
  • The plan is said to have collapsed due to a suspected betrayal from within the inner circle.
  • Both generals are currently under strict control and investigation; their families and up to 3,000 military personnel have reportedly been detained as well.

Following the exposure of the alleged plot, heightened combat readiness measures were introduced, troop movements were halted, mobile phones were confiscated, and mass propaganda efforts were launched. These events coincided with Chinese military exercises simulating strikes on Taiwan and the destruction of its governing authorities.

While China’s Ministry of Defense has officially confirmed the opening of investigations into Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli—citing “serious violations of discipline and law,” a phrase often associated with corruption—the claims of an actual “coup attempt” and “armed clashes” remain unverified at this time and largely stem from social media and opposition-linked outlets. Western news agencies such as Reuters and Bloomberg tend to interpret these developments as another round of purges within the military elite initiated by Xi Jinping.

Another report was more or less in line with this, although it claims the CIA was involved.

It appears that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has been successfully running agent networks within China’s military-political elite. China’s highest-ranking general, the current Vice Chairman of the Central Military Commission, Zhang Youxia, is accused of transferring key technical data on China’s nuclear weapons to the United States. According to participants in a high-level briefing cited by The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), China’s Ministry of National Defense of the People’s Republic of China officially announced yesterday that an investigation has been launched against the general for “serious violations of discipline and law.”

In addition to alleged treason, the general is accused of corruption and abuse of office — specifically, accepting bribes in exchange for promotions and allegedly trading influence over the position of Minister of Defense. This development represents one of the largest scandals within China’s political and military elite, as Zhang Youxia was considered one of Xi Jinping’s most trusted figures. Any potential leak of nuclear data would constitute a strategic-level blow to China’s national security.

The CIA has been of dubious loyalty to the American people since its post-WWII formation. It wouldn’t be at all surprising if it was also involved in running the “protests” in Minnesota, which looks very much like a conventional color revolution, lacking only the missing national leader to serve as a popular figurehead for it.

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China Bans Exports to Japan

Not all exports, you understand, but all dual-use exports:

China on Tuesday banned exports of goods that could be used for military purposes to Japan, a move that escalates tensions between Beijing and a key U.S. ally as disputes intensify over Taiwan. The Chinese commerce ministry said in a statement that any items that have a dual use — civilian and military — would no longer be exported to Japan.

The government did not offer specifics on which items would be included in the ban. But state-affiliated media said Beijing was considering whether to include rare-earth minerals.

Japanese leaders increasingly have linked Taiwan’s fate to Japan’s own security, with Tokyo’s new Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi warning that a Chinese move against the island could amount to a “survival-threatening situation” for Japan — a legal threshold that could permit military action under Japan’s self-defense laws.

The US Secretary of War cited the Fuck Around and Find Out principle in relation to Venezuala. It appears China is in the process of applying the same principle to Japan and everyone else who attempts to interfere with the Xinroe Doctrine in the South China Sea.

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Taiwan > Okinawa

China’s strategists have begun implementing a new rhetorical wedge issue against Clown World. It turns out that China has a far better claim to Taiwan than Japan does to US-occupied Okinawa.

Articles by Chinese media questioning the history of and Japan’s sovereignty over Okinawa Prefecture surged in November, analysis showed, as Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s remarks on a Taiwan emergency sharply deteriorated Tokyo-Beijing ties.

The number of Chinese articles using terms such as “Ryukyu” — a historical name for the former island kingdom that includes present-day Okinawa — and “independence” increased by around 20-fold last month from a year earlier.

Assertions casting doubt on Okinawa’s status as Japanese territory became more prominent, suggesting a possible propaganda campaign triggered by Takaichi’s comments, indicating her government may act if China were to launch a military attack against the self-ruled island.

The apparent aim is to unsettle Japanese society while shaping public opinion within China. Beijing views Taiwan as a renegade province to be reunified with the mainland, by force if necessary. They have been governed separately since 1949, following a civil war.

The articles were extracted from reports by media based in mainland China and Hong Kong in which “Ryukyu” or “Okinawa” and “independence” appeared close together in the text. Under the criteria, about 30 such articles were identified in November 2024.

But the figure rose to around 600 last month, soaring after Nov. 7, when Takaichi said in a parliamentary session that a Chinese attack on Taiwan could constitute a “survival-threatening situation” for Japan, potentially involving its defense forces.

In November, Chinese-linked media articles highlighted Okinawa’s past as an independent kingdom, arguing that the southern island prefecture’s sovereignty did not revert to Japan under the 1972 reversion agreement.

It’s fascinating how quickly the so-called “rules-based world order” is trying to forget the rules that established it back in 1945. But even if we ignore the rules, the historical facts are equally clear:

  • The Qing dynasty formally annexed Taiwan in May 1684, making it a prefecture of Fujian province while retaining its administrative seat (now Tainan) under Koxinga as the capital.
  • In 1879, Japan annexed the entire Ryukyu archipelago. The Meiji government then established Okinawa Prefecture. The monarchy in Shuri was abolished, and the deposed King Shō Tai was forced to relocate to Tokyo.

The Chinese claim to Taiwan predates the Japanese claim by nearly 200 years. Or, if we subscribe to the rules of the rules-based world order, by nearly 300 years.

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Australia will be Chinese

I was wondering how long it would take before people began to realize that Australia is going to be a Chinese continent.

A Chinese propagandist has sparked outrage after claiming the superpower should take control of Australia, in part due to its colonial past. The furore began when the China hawk, who goes by the name ‘BeijingDai’, shared a map to social media on Saturday with Australia labelled as a ‘Chinese vassal state’.

New Zealand, Myanmar and the Solomon Islands would be given the same classification under the plans, while much of south-east Asia would fall under ‘China’s sphere of influence’. The self-described China ‘patriot’ said occupation of Australia would be a cost-effective alternative to direct occupation of the entire south-east Asian region.

‘Southeast Asia has a huge population. If China conquers them, it will need to need them and develop them. This is a super hard task,’ he wrote on social media. He added: ‘However, annexing Australia is a very cost-effective deal. ‘Australia has over seven million kilometres of land and abundant resources, but its population is even smaller than that of Shanghai.’

He claimed Australia’s colonial history would make Chinese occupation not just cost-effective, but morally defensible.

It’s not only cost-effective and morally defensible, it’s also inevitable. Not unlike the United States, Australia sealed its own fate back in 1973 when it officially abandoned its White Australia policy. Now there are 1.5 million Chinese residents, representing about six percent of the total population. This demonstrates that China can easily flood Australia with immigrants and ensure an outright electoral majority without a single shot ever being fired.

Remember, 17 million non-British people are now resident in the UK, pretty much none of whom were there prior to 1948. There are only 27 million people in Australia. So China can, and will, take control of the continent whenever it decides to do so, now that its navy has reached effective parity in the Pacific.

And given the Clown World rhetoric about the morality of migration and the absolute priority of people seeking freedom from authoritarian governments, there isn’t anything that the West can even say, let alone do, to object.

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The Last Bluff

Big Serge explains the real reason why the USA cannot afford to provide any Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine:

The basic pattern here is well established. The United States has done what it can to backstop Ukrainian strike capabilities, but it has held them at a level where Ukraine’s damage output falls far short of decisive levels. So long as that is the case, Russia has clearly demonstrated that it will simply eat the punches and retaliate against Ukraine. Hence, when the United States helps Ukraine target Russian oil facilities, it is Ukraine that receives the reprisal, and it is Ukraine which has its natural gas production annihilated as the winter approaches. In a sense, neither side is really trying to deter the other at all. The United States has raised the cost of this war for Russia, but not enough to create any real pressure for Moscow to end the conflict; in response, Russia punishes Ukraine, which is something the United States does not really care about. The result is a sort of geostrategic Picture of Dorian Gray, where the United States vicariously inflicts cathartic damage on Russia, but Ukraine accrues all the soul damage.

In the case of Tomahawks, the risk-reward calculus is just not there. Tomahawks are a strategically invaluable asset that the United States cannot afford to hand out like candy. Even if the launch systems could be provided (highly doubtful), the missiles could not be made available in sufficient quantities to make a difference. The range of the missiles, however, significantly raises the probability of miscalculation or uncontrolled escalation. Ukraine shooting American missiles at energy infrastructure in Belgorod or Rostov is one thing; shooting them at the Kremlin is another thing entirely.

There is, however, another aspect of this which seems to be garnering little attention. The biggest risk of sending Tomahawks is not that the Ukrainians will blow up the Kremlin and start World War Three. The bigger risk is that the Tomahawks are used, and Russia simply moves on after eating the strikes. Tomahawks are arguably one of the last – if not the last – rung in the escalation ladder for the USA. We have rapidly run through the chain of systems that can be given to the AFU, and little remains except a few strike systems like the Tomahawk or the JASSM. Ukraine has generally received everything it has asked for. In the case of Tomahawks, however, the United States is running the most serious risk of all: what if the Russians simply shoot down some of the missiles and eat the rest of the strikes? It’s immaterial whether the Tomahawks damage Russian powerplants or oil refineries. If Tomahawks are delivered and consumed without seriously jarring Russian nerves, the last escalatory card will have been played. If Russia perceives that America has reached the limits of its ability to raise the costs of the war for Russia, it undercuts the entire premise of negotiations. More simply put, Tomahawks are most valuable as an asset to threaten with.

The USA has been relentlessly bluffing, and the Russians have been relentlessly calling those bluffs, since the launch of the Special Military Operation nearly four years ago. There can be little doubt that the Russians will do the same thing if the Tomahawks are deployed against them, and then the US military will be revealed as the paper tiger it is so far outside its zone of influence.

Which, of course, is the one thing the US military cannot afford to happen in light of its global pretensions and asymmetric war with China.

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Cold War 2.0

The strategists of Clown World have belatedly realized that the neocons are not only lunatics, but rank amateurs when it comes to assessing military capabilities and are attempting to establish some sort of Cold War-style detente with China before the asymmetric warfare of the last 25 years goes hot. A 100-page report offers some principles and initiatives conceived to replace the outmoded idea that the US military can simply enforce the will of its masters with regards to the Middle Kingdom. (PDF)

Several broad principles can guide efforts to stabilize intense rivalries

  • Each side accepts that some degree of modus vivendi must necessarily be part of the relationship.
  • Each side accepts the essential political legitimacy of the other.
  • In specific issue areas, especially those disputed by the two sides, each side works to develop sets of shared rules, norms, institutions, and other tools that create lasting conditions of a stable modus vivendi within that domain over a specific period (such as three to five years).
  • Each side practices restraint in the development of capabilities explicitly designed to undermine the deterrent and defensive capabilities of the other in ways that would create an existential risk to its homeland.
  • Each side accepts some essential list of characteristics of a shared vision of organizing principles for world politics that can provide at least a baseline for an agreed status quo.
  • There are mechanisms and institutions in place — from long-term personal ties to physical communication links to agreed norms and rules of engagement for crises and risky situations — that help provide a moderating or return-to-stable-equilibrium function.

Six broad-based initiatives can help moderate the intensity of the U.S.-China rivalry

  • Clarify U.S. objectives in the rivalry with language that explicitly rejects absolute versions of victory and accepts the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party.
  • Reestablish several trusted lines of communication between senior officials.
  • Improve crisis-management practices, links, and agreements between the two sides.
  • Seek specific new agreements — a combination of formal public accords and private understandings — to limit the U.S.-China cyber competition.
  • Declare mutual acceptance of strategic nuclear deterrence and a willingness to forswear technologies and doctrines that would place the other side’s nuclear deterrent at risk.
  • Seek modest cooperative ventures on issues of shared interest or humanitarian concern.

I think it is at least 15 years too late for any sort of meaningful rapprochement between China and the Clown World West, because the Chinese now understand what we have also learned in the interim: there is an ancient and malevolent evil that is not limited by human reason or timeframes that is the motivating force behind Clown World. Any compromise with it will eventually result in submission and destruction.

I am not the only one who is skeptical. Simplicius, too, has serious doubts about the ability of the Western states to change their course, as well as the probability that the Chinese will be convinced to alter their own.

It’s clear that RAND is trying desperately to make US policymakers abandon their obsolete and blinkered world view centered on the idea that any challenger must by its nature represent the selfsame kind of hegemonic exceptionalism cultivated by the US itself for over a century. The US views the entire world as a threat in the same light that a thief mistrusts all those around him—it is past guilt sublimated into national suspicion and Machiavellian subversiveness.

The US, being the pernicious by-blow of the late British Empire, has inherited all the hawkish trappings of its former parent. RAND here attempts to ween the US political culture away from this perpetually adversarial and hostile approach to foreign diplomacy because, as it has become apparent, the people ‘behind the scenes’ have slowly recognized not that confrontation with China will lead to some kind of global war, but rather the much barer reality that the US simply isn’t what it once was, and does not have the sheer overwhelming capability to bully the world’s foremost ascendant power. Thus, this RAND call to action is not—as they would have us believe—some kind of de-escalatory peacenik measure, but rather a desperate attempt to stave off the US from a historically fatal humiliation and geopolitical defeat at the hands of China.

I tend to agree that this attempt at establishing a new detente is nothing more than the desperate flailings of a failing power to avoid its now-inevitable decline and fall.

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Asymmetric Economic Warfare

Despite being more vulnerable to trade war pain due to its export surplus, China has adroitly managed to gain the upper hand in the economic conflict by taking advantage of the fact that semiconductors require input factors that are almost entirely under Chinese control.

Despite the show of progress and professed optimism for a potential de-escalation in the Madrid trade talks, the US wasted no time to launch a series of trade and tech sanctions against China immediately afterwards, just like it launched the sneak attack on Iran shortly after its 5th round nuclear talks with Tehran.

  • The US Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) tightened its chip ban on China, expanding the embargo to cover all semiconductor related software and equipment sales to China, in an effort to completely choke off China’s ability for chip production
  • Washington expanded its entity list (i.e. black list) to deny high end sales to businesses outside of China that have 50% or more Chinese ownership
  • It announced a plan to charge million-dollar port fees for any Chinese-operated shipping companies, Chinese-made ships, or non-Chinese shippers with Chinese-made ships in their fleet or on their order books, in an effort to undermine China’s shipping building industry
  • Washington also put a 721% tariff on Chinese clean energy products such as solar panels
  • It imposed 50% tariff on semi-finished copper products and copper-intensive goods (e.g., wiring, batteries) under Section 232, targeting China’s dominance in EV/tech supply chains
  • It ended de minimis exemption for low-value packages, hitting e-commerce from Chinese platforms such as Temu and Shein

Faced with the bad faith from the Trump regime, China retaliated swiftly with a suite of counter actions:

  • Beijing published its latest restrictions on rare earth products to deny any sales of China-sourced rare earth magnets, processing technology, and equipment to foreign military and semi-conductor industry
  • It revoked import license for US lumber and soybeans. China was the biggest buyer of US soybeans in the past and accounted for over 50% its export. But it has ordered no purchase in 2025
  • Beijing announced it would charge reciprocal port fees for any US-operated or US-owned shipping companies. China runs 7 out of the world’s top ten container ports and has by far the highest port calls. Though the US builds few ships and few large shipping companies are US operated, US pension funds and asset managers own large shares in some of the world’s top shipping companies like Maersk which are now subject to the port fees. This move directly targets US financial interests
  • China also tightened up export of lithium ion and graphite anode, critical for green transformation
  • It expanded the unreliable list (China’s answer to the entity list) to cover more US defense contractors, tech firms, and critical mineral companies. It also launched anti-trust investigation against Qualcomm, a large US chip manufacturer

The latest tit for tats strongly indicates China is ready to move up the escalation ladder in its confrontation with the US on trade and technology issues.

In particular, Beijing’s enhanced rare earth restrictions are expected to deal a massive blow to high tech and military production in the US and its vassals.

In its embargo of chip technology against China, the US utilized the Foreign Direct Product Rule (FDPR) to block chip export to China if non-US made chips use any American technology, software, or equipment somewhere along the supply chain.

In essence, the FDPR allows US to claim jurisdiction to any products US technology touches even if it is made overseas such as the case with TSMC and ASML. The rule gives the US extraterritorial reach.

With the new rare earth restrictions, China flips the logic back to the US. Beijing has announced any non-Chinese companies operating anywhere must obtain Beijing’s approval to export rare earth magnets or semiconductors if those products contain Chinese original rare earth, or if they are produced using Chinese rare earth technology, process or equipment.

Beijing is denying all rare earth products, technology, equipment, and technical support to foreign end users it doesn’t approve.

The Chinese economic strategists understand that in an economic war, pain flows downstream. The US thought it was in the driver’s seat – and indeed, I assumed much the same due to the fact that the US economy would benefit greatly from refraining from importing goods from China and onshoring its now-absent industrial manufacturing capabilities.

But the stranglehold China has upon the materials required for modern warmaking materials, particularly drones and semiconductors, means that the USA will have to choose between its ability to make war and its ability to maintain the global Clown World economy. And for the first time, it is not possible for Uncle Sam to choose guns and butter.

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China Warns the USA

China is no longer content to permit the USA to throw its economic weight around without consequences.

Beijing has made it clear that it won’t yield to Washington’s latest tariff threats, urging the United States to seek a negotiated settlement instead of escalating tensions.

The warning came as part of an official statement released by China’s Ministry of Commerce on Sunday. The response followed US President Donald Trump’s plan to impose a 100% tariff on Chinese imports, citing Beijing’s new restrictions on rare earth exports – vital materials used in products from smartphones to fighter jets.

“China’s position on the trade war is consistent: we do not want it, but we are not afraid of it,” the ministry stated.

The Chinese people are even less inclined to submit to US posturing on trade and interference with Chinese affairs.

We are simply sick and tired of the nonstop demonization of anything related to China by the US. This export ban of rare earth minerals is just the start. If the US does not correct its course, and stop interfering our legitimate rights for development, then we will engineer global economic collapse. Do you really think you can take China down, without us taking you down too? After that, we will let our weapons do the talking.

I was on Chinese state television during President Trump’s first term. Back then, neither the economists nor the journalist believed that Trump would start a trade war with China, which I suspect is why the initial Chinese response to all of the US provocations were so mild and passive. But now, with the panoply of sanctions, direct and indirect, that are being imposed upon China, such as the attempt to ban flights over Russian territory from landing in the USA because it provides Chinese airlines with an advantage of European and US airlines that can’t fly over Russian territory, the Chinese have decided to start playing hardball.

And Larry Johnson explains why China is, contra the expectations of economists like me who were primarily looking at the overall trade picture, actually in a very strong position vis-a-vis the USA in a trade war.

Drones
China dominates the US commercial drone market, with Chinese firms supplying the vast majority of units.

  • Import Share: Approximately 80-90% of US commercial drones are Chinese-made, led by DJI (50-70% market share) and Autel Robotics (15%). US imports of Chinese unmanned aircraft dropped 58.9% from Jan-Nov 2023 to Jan-Nov 2024 due to tariffs and restrictions, but China still holds over 70% of the residual market.
  • Broader Reliance: In 2025, US tariffs reached 170%, tripling prices and slashing imports by up to 75%, yet no viable domestic alternatives have scaled to replace this volume. Military and consumer sectors remain vulnerable, with ongoing Section 232 investigations into national security risks.
  • Implications: Disruptions could halt 80%+ of commercial operations (e.g., agriculture, surveying), per CSIS analysis.

Drone Components
US drone manufacturing heavily relies on Chinese-sourced parts, complicating diversification efforts.

  • Supply Chain Dependence: China provides 70-90% of key components like motors, flight controllers, imaging equipment, and batteries. In 2024, China restricted exports of these to the US, causing price surges of 200-300% and supply shortages.
  • Recent Trends: By April 2025, combined US tariffs hit 170% on components, disrupting global chains; 15 Chinese firms were added to the US Entity List in October 2025 for supplying parts used in conflicts. Indirect reliance persists via third countries (e.g., Vietnam assembly).
  • Implications: The US military drone supply chain is “deeply dependent” on Chinese inputs, per Forbes, with domestic production lagging; restrictions weakened Ukraine’s drone capabilities as a proxy example.

Processed Rare Earth Minerals
Processed rare earths (e.g., oxides, compounds) are essential for electronics, EVs, and defense; China controls ~90% of global processing.

  • Import Share: China supplied 70% of US rare earth compounds and metals imports from 2020-2023, with 2024 estimates holding at ~70-77% (10.4 million kg total imports). Net import reliance dropped to 80% in 2024 from >95% prior years, thanks to minor diversification (e.g., Malaysia 13%).
  • Value and Volume: 2024 imports valued at $170 million (down 11% from 2023); apparent consumption ~6,600 tons.
  • Recent Trends: In 2025, China tightened export controls on seven elements, impacting US defense; US mined 45 kilotons but exports 95% for Asian processing.
  • Implications: 70-80% exposure leaves sectors like renewables and missiles vulnerable; USGS warns of supply risks.

So while the USA is in a stronger overall position and will benefit greatly from onshoring manufacturing and industrial capacity during a trade war, China is in a much stronger military position if the trade war becomes an actual war, either direct or by proxy.

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Draining the Western Brains

High-level thinkers don’t communicate with the masses because we quite literally can’t. The problem with Western civilization is not that its high-level thinkers are unable to communicate with the masses, because high-level thinkers have never been able to effectively communicate with the masses. It’s a little ironic that one of the better popularizers fails to understand the importance of the popularizer’s role in translating and transmitting the original thinker’s ideas to a public that is more than two standard deviations below him.

I deal with it by showing high-level thinkers how to communicate with the masses.

Like Wilber and Spiral Dynamics… they CREATED the models that I apply in my work, but they didn’t communicate them in a way that made the average person care. I did. I was like “ARENT BITCHES CRAZY? HERE’S WHY” and showed them.

High-level thinkers have to use their abilities to appeal to the masses more than everyone else. NO ONE IS COMING TO HELP.

But this isn’t really the issue anyhow. The issue is that the current rulers of Western Civilization hate it and every element of it, and would like nothing better than to destroy it if they could only figure out how to kill the golden goose and yet keep its golden eggs.

Most high-level thinkers are banished and deprived of platforms and popularizers due to their inability to accept the satanic, anti-Western, anti-Christian, anti-American Narrative that has been required of any public intellectual for the last fifty years.

As one reader here has noted, China responded to Wang Hunin by promoting him to the Chief Ideologue of the Chinese Communist Party despite the fact that he didn’t even belong to the Party, whereas the USA responded to me by deplatforming me and systematically depriving me of opportunities and resources.

This isn’t a complaint. It’s merely an observation. One of the benefits of being a high-level thinker is far less interest in the prizes and fancy pants with which the status-obsessed midwits are obsessed. But imagine the amount of scientific resources now being wasted across the West on finding useless results “consistent with the theory of evolution by natural selection” that could be more profitably spent on actual science if I had even a fraction of the respect and institutional support that Mr. Hunin enjoys in China. And that’s just one topic…

One of the reasons that China has already far surpassed the West, and that Russia inevitably will as well, is that both societies genuinely value their intellectual elites. The West, despite its pretensions to being “an open society” is in an increasingly fragile state of intellectual sclerosis, where even the most obvious truths must go unspoken, and better yet, unobserved. This is why I anticipate that the most promising young Western intellectuals will be officially incentivized to move to China and to Russia over the next three decades, a policy that will eventually be followed by entrepreneurial and technological booms there.

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Focus on the Homeland

A long overdue shift from maintaining the failing Pax Americana to defending the US homeland would be a very welcome change.

Pentagon officials are proposing the department prioritize protecting the homeland and Western Hemisphere, a striking reversal from the military’s yearslong mandate to focus on the threat from China. A draft of the newest National Defense Strategy, which landed on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s desk last week, places domestic and regional missions above countering adversaries such as Beijing and Moscow, according to three people briefed on early versions of the report.

The move would mark a major shift from recent Democrat and Republican administrations, including President Donald Trump’s first term in office, when he referred to Beijing as America’s greatest rival. And it would likely inflame China hawks in both parties who view the country’s leadership as a danger to U.S. security.

“This is going to be a major shift for the U.S. and its allies on multiple continents,” said one of the people briefed on the draft document. “The old, trusted U.S. promises are being questioned.”

Why the American people should give one quantum of a damn about “old, trusted US promises” given to foreigners when none of the promises given to them have been kept is an obvious question. But Simplicius and others doubt that this “major shift” is real anyhow.

Recall the US even under Trump has dragged its feet for years on initiatives to pull troops from Iraq, Europe, etc. An excuse is always somehow resurrected at the last moment which buys the MIC time and keeps US occupation forces perpetually in places where their presence stirs conflict, exacerbates tensions, and unnecessarily provokes so-called “adversaries” like Russia, China, or Iran. US troops in Syria, for instance—which Trump has likewise failed to pull—have done nothing but facilitate conflict, act as JTACs for Israeli strike corridors, etc.; the claim of being some sort of ‘peacekeepers’ is a sham.

If the troops are brought back from Europe and the Middle East, the borders are manned, and the mass repatriations begin, then perhaps we can take some of these pronouncements seriously. But until then, it’s all just irrelevant noise.

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