Hello All. Today I was putting together another video on the Military Industrial Complex.
But something happened yesterday that I felt like I had to address immediately.
On Monday, US president Barack Obama was in Vietnam, and he made an announcement. He decided
that the United States will now lift all restrictions on Arms exports to Vietnam. Basically now,
we'll sell them anything. Now Obama pitched this as a step that's very similar to his
policy towards Cuba. "It's just a step towards peace and really, finally putting the Cold War to bed."
As I've pointed out elsewhere, I'm a huge fan of Obama's Cuba policy. Huge! I think
it's great, I think it's fantastic. But this? This is completely different.
Let's leave aside the ridiculousness of the idea of selling weapons as a measure of peace,
and focus on what we're actually doing here. We're committing to sell weapons to Vietnam,
so that they can be used against China. To be clear, there are no specific sales going
on here, but the ban has been lifted, indicating that this is something we're going to be doing going forward.
And rest assured. It's something that we're going to be doing going forward. We know that.
Vietnam knows that. And most importantly, China knows that. This is not a move towards
peace. This is another in a long series of moves towards war with China.
It's billed as containment, or strengthening allies, or being a good partner to our friends
in Asia, but make no mistake, the US government is trying to do to China exactly what we've
done to Russia. We're trying to NATO China.
I've covered elsewhere, at some length, the way that the story we're told about Russia
and its relationship with the United States is not exactly accurate. Sure, Vladimir Putin
is the worst, he's a terrible guy, but the reason he felt compelled to get involved in
Ukraine was the progressive encirclement of Russia by NATO. NATO kept expanding, 25 years
after the end of the cold war, and when it looked like they were going to expand into
Ukraine, a country that has been historically a part of the Russian sphere of influence...
Russia acted.
Of course, obviously we are now committed. We need NATO. We need to be there. But the
reason we're there is because NATO created the situation. We're now trying to do the
exact same thing with China.
When is China in the news? It seems like now every few months there's something going on
in the South China Sea. There are some islands there, there's really nothing there of any
importance, but the Chinese have been building them up, trying to militarize them, and it
becomes an internationally reported incident every couple months or so.
China's actions around these islands certainly are aggressive, but we're only told one half
of the story when we read about it. China complains of a US policy of encirclement,
and that's exactly what we are doing. Have you heard of the Pivot to Asia?
The pivot to Asia is a conscious effort on the part of the Obama administration to focus
more resources on Asia. Some of these resources have been diplomatic. But more importantly
they've been economic and they've been military. We're trying to get Japan to re-arm. We built
a military base in Australia.
Most importantly we've been carving off historic Chinese allies. Myanmar has gone from a country
that was very firmly in the Chinese camp to one that is firmly in the Western camp. Yes,
it's fantastic that they're transitioning towards democracy, but we shouldn't forget
what this looks like to the Chinese leadership. We've also been working to do the same to
Vietnam. And in Vietnam there's no question of Democracy. It's still a Communist one party
regime, much like China, but now it's becoming our one party Communist regime.
This is an extremely frustrating process to watch, because the United States is once again
making a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy of aggressiveness of another country. Russia
didn't become aggressive because it is naturally evil. It became aggressive because we took
actions to make it happen. We are now taking the exact same actions towards China.
You know what, I don't know a ton about the region. China is certainly a scary country,
and we should be concerned about their rise and how best to peacefully manage it. But
when I look at coverage of this issue. When I look at coverage coming out of China it
is so blindingly one-sided. Today we decided to sell arms to Vietnam. Probably in the next
couple weeks, or the next couple months, there will be something else in the South China
Sea. And it will be described as if China is just out of nowhere is this crazy, crazy
aggressive country decided to take some terrible step in these islands.
But, when you look at these issues, when we look at the aggressive steps that China takes,
we also need to recognize that the United States is taking very aggressive steps against
China. Because the United States is so much more powerful than China these steps don't
look as clearly aggressive. We've got the economic weight, and the institutional weight
to make gestures that can be portrayed as friendly and pro-democracy and positive, that
come across to the Chinese as existential threats.
We need to be aware that developments in Asia are not just a question of an aggressive rising
China. They are also a question of an aggressive, defensive United States. The world will be
a much safer, happier place if we can just avoid Natoing China. Don't let them NATO China.
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