Saturday, April 17, 2021

China Reacts After US and Japan Challenge it in Five Regions and Washington Pledges To Defend Japan With Nuclear Weapons — Rick Rozoff

Getting ugly. 

The Chinese government-supported Global Times today spoke even more bluntly to the issue in an unsigned editorial:
“Has Japan forgotten how many times it inflicted devastation on China? Has China ever truly harmed Japan and can Japan cite an example? The tiny Diaoyu Islands are just a territorial dispute between China and Japan, and in Asia there are many similar disputes. But Japan takes the dispute as a strategic level issue and hypes it up every day. What’s the point of it?

“The US-Japan alliance could evolve into an axis that can bring fatal disruption to Asia-Pacific peace, just like the Germany-Italy-Japan axis alliance before and during the WWII. The core intention of the US is to maintain its hegemony and contain China’s development through violating international laws and rules. The arbitrary act of the US could eventually end the peace in Asia-Pacific. And Japan is positioning itself as the top Asian accomplice of the US’ vicious policy.”
The editorial mentioned the use of what is now the official byword of the U.S. and its allies around the world, especially NATO – rules-based international order – saying that interstate relations should be governed by norms established by the United Nations “rather than those defined by the US and Japan.” It also returned to the World War II analogy, reminding Japan that it should be more careful in building military alliances with powers outside the region after its ill-fated experience with the Germany-Italy-Japan Tripartite Pact of eighty years ago.

  While Russians remember two invasions from the West, China remembers a century of humiliation by the West and the rape of China by the Japanese. This is not lost on the leadership of their country or their people. Just as the US is forced into a hardline position by its politics, China and Russian are forced into a hardline position because that is what the people demand based on historical memory. This is how things spin out of control. This is the US and Japan being insane.
The newly-installed administration of Joe Biden has the dangerous distinction of being the first since that of Lyndon Johnson to pursue Cold War-style confrontation toward China and Russia at the same time.

24 comments:

Peter Pan said...

Japan is not currently a military threat.

Tom Hickey said...

Japan is not currently a military threat.

Japan is not what China is concerned with. It is just warning Japan the outcome for it of an alliance with the US that attacks China now that China as the power to do it. Consider it payback. Karma is a bitch.

Tom Hickey said...

BTW, this is another reminder that things are now moving onto the ugly level. China faced by renewed Japanese militarism and Russia faced with neo-Nazis waving torches and wearing swastikas and SS symbols. This is like waving a red flag in front of bull. A presage to hot war?

It won't take much the way things are going and the speed is really picking up. That is when things can spin out of control with unintended and unwanted consequences.

Which bull is going to charge first?

Matt Franko said...

“ China remembers a century of humiliation by the West”

False...l

Matt Franko said...

Here “ “ An argument is sound if and only if the premises are true”

I can now cite your statement here as true and use it for whatever ends I want...

Matt Franko said...

Test:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Tigers

“ Flying Tigers, was composed of pilots from the United States Army Air Corps (USAAC), Navy (USN), and Marine Corps (USMC), recruited under President Franklin Roosevelt's authority before Pearl Harbor and commanded by Claire Lee Chennault. Their Curtis P-40B Warhawk aircraft, marked with Chinese colors, flew under American control. Their mission was to bomb Japan and defend the Republic of China, ”

Ok you fail the test..,, you get zero...

Now go back and try to figure it out and make and adjustment leading to corrected statement and then I’ll test you again...




Tom Hickey said...

Flying Tigers were a blip on the screen.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_of_humiliation

And the US was not primarily involved way back then, since it was not a colonial power. But the US came to fore in and after WWII in supporting Generalissimo Chang Kia-shek against Mao, in particular when the Nationalists under Chang fled to Taiwan, which begins the second century of humiliation.



https://www.uscc.gov/sites/default/files/3.10.11Kaufman.pdf

Tom Hickey said...

Blooger failed to post the whole comment. Here's another try with what was omitted.



The “Century of Humiliation” and China’s National Narratives
www.uscc.gov/sites/default/files/3.10.11Kaufman.pdf

Tom Hickey said...

Failed again. Oh, well. You can follow the link.

Peter Pan said...

China should understand that if multiple countries decide to militarize, ie. Japan, China will be increasingly outmatched in conventional armaments. Hence, they would be well advised to stop making idle threats to their neighbours.

Without their nuclear deterrent, China and its people would face annihilation. Their leadership appears to have forgotten that... or their belligerence is just a show.

Maybe everyone should just get nukes and put an end to this posturing.
Unfortunately, accidents happen. That is the real threat, not some males on top of their hierarchy acting like baboons.

Matt Franko said...

“ blip on the screen. ”

When faced with evidence falsifying the thesis dispense figurative language and DO NOT make any adjustment....

Matt Franko said...

“Fed raising rates is stimulative in that it increases USD flow to non govt via interest income to savers in USD securities accounts....”

No it’s not the Fed is “taking away the punch bowl!”

See how your method operates?


Tom Hickey said...

Matt, either you did not read the counter or you are too clueless of history to get it.

Let me put it this way. The Han Chinese, the vast majority of the population of China look on their humiliators in the century of humiliation (1839-1939) as "the West," meaning to them "the white man." The US was not involved in this in a major way, but become so since as a result of American recognition of Mao's Chinese enemies that fled to Taiwan, with all that implies. Taiwan is a red line for China and the US is now testing it.

The other dimension is the rivalry between China and Japan with the most recent memory being the rape of China by the Japanese, who were in league with "the white man" (Germany and Italy) too.

This is a dominant narrative in China, which one will realize if one watches Chinese war films, which are the mirror-image of Hollywood war films regarding the bad guys. This is an important vehicle in creating the national narrative.

Ask most contemporary people about the Flying Tigers and they won't know what you are talking about. It's not in the narrative, while you seem to think it is dominant.

Tom Hickey said...

To be specific, the fallacy of disproportional evidence involves countering the preponderance of evidence with evidence that is marginally significant or irrelevant to the argument. It is a fallacy of relevance to the argument.

This fallacy is fairly common and shows up, for example, in most conspiracy theories. It is also heavily used in propaganda. It is also often found in political discourse. It is also commonly used on the Internet to distract from the issue at hand.

Tom Hickey said...

I want to elaborate a bit on the racial issue today. Although "the news" is increasingly featuring racial conflict, but one a limited scale generally, e.g., "hate crimes." It is a dominant theme on the Internet in right-wing circles, where it is emerging into the mainstream, e.g., the Great Replacement conspiracy theory, concerning demography shifts and the increasing number of non-whites in predominantly white populations, threatening white dominance.

There is a similar dynamic internationally in the rising conflict between the Global North/West and Global South/East, which, owing to demographics, is predominantly a racial conflict too, pitting the technologically superior "white man" (so far) and its comprador elites in other areas against the vastly more populous "non-white" cohort of (hu)mankind. Geography is the broadest sense is a key fundamental shaping the historical dialect continuously going on among oppositional forces.

This is where is it now getting ugly, and "race war" threaten to complicate other conflicts. This is a especially the case in an era of de-colonization and the original colonizers resisting this, when the colonizers were largely white and the colonized non-white.

This is broad and deep topic sociologically, with political consequences, and few want to tackle it publicly since it is a "hot potato" with reputational consequences. But failure to pay attention to it as a major factor in conflict situations has consequences. It is key in the "exceptionalism" not only of the right-wing and nationalists, since many people who are not nominally "racist" have subliminal racial bias that comes out when conditions are oppositional.

A good example of this that illustrates the point is Meghan Markle's claim that a person connected with the royal family was concerned about what the baby would look like, together with the subsequent brouhaha about it in the news and on social media. This put a magnifying glass on a much larger issue, and one that is both national and global in scope.

Then there are also religious differences that also underlie historical conflicts, and often the racial and religious intersect, complicating the issues.

While these may not be driving issues rising in waves, they are deep currents in the ocean of (hu)mankind.

I don't want to give the impression that the bad guys are the white and other are free of racial bias. That is not the case. All divisions have partisan proponents, and many Han Chinese, Jews of Israel, Muslims in historically Islamic regions, etc, are biased based on "race" and religion, not to mention Japanese, Indians, etc. It is two-way street, which makes it more dangerous since such biases lead toward the irrational.

Tom Hickey said...

China should understand that if multiple countries decide to militarize, ie. Japan, China will be increasingly outmatched in conventional armaments.

Questionable.

China is comparable in production capability to the US in WWII, if it goes on a war footing and decides to convert its manufacturing. They may already be in the process of doing it with Russian tech assistance. Even now, US carrier groups are toast if they get in range of their aircraft making it to China and returning to the ship.

And while Russia is not a large, it is technologically superior and will share tech with China if is not already. China demonstrated the ability to take down satellites some years ago. The Russian and Chinese strategy is to take out US command and control system on which the high-tech military is heavily dependent.

Plus, a land war against China on the mainland would be no cake wake, since the Chinese could mount and equip a force amounting to tens of millions and if pressed hundreds of millions. Are other countries willing and able to mount and supply a land force needed to conquer and occupy China against ongoing resistance?

Tom Hickey said...

BTW, my analysis above is similar to Samuel Huntington's Clash of Civilizations. There is a good summary of it at Wikipedia here. While my views are similar to his, they were developed independently. While I have read about it, I have not read Huntington's work, so I am not sure exactly how we may agree and differ. But the Wikipedia article is a good summary of the basic ideas and possible objections. Huntington proposed his thesis in the early to mid-1990s, and the objections listed have largely been disconfirmed by subsequent events in my view.

I think that is a one of the key factors at this moment in the historical dialectic, which I summarize under the rubric of the conflict between liberalism and traditionalism as dominant civilizational ideologies, with Western liberalism itself struggling in its extreme with Christian traditionalism. This is key dynamic in US politics now.

Tom Hickey said...

Labour disclosure 'shows antisemitism was weaponised against Corbyn,' activists say, Middle East Eye.

Peter Pan said...

There will be no land invasion of China. Nor will China invade Japan. The age of conquest is over. If military spending reflected that reality, it would be lower than the nearly 2 trillion per year that it is currently.

If Japan wants to waste their resources on their military, there is nothing China can do about it. An arms race would be stupid, but what reaction do you expect when bellicose statements are being made?

The cheapest deterrent is nuclear armaments. Don't be surprised if a few countries decide to exit the non-proliferation treaty.

Japan is a lukewarm ally of the US. They won't blindly agree to Washington's schemes. Nor will the Taiwanese. I don't see what you're getting excited about. The worst outcome will be a few conventional skirmishes. That may be the desire, for testing purposes.

The doctrine of MAD can only be broken via an accident, or by a leadership that is homicidal on top of being psychopathic. In any case, it's out of ordinary people's hands.

Tom Hickey said...

The doctrine of MAD can only be broken via an accident, or by a leadership that is homicidal on top of being psychopathic. In any case, it's out of ordinary people's hands.

Probably true.

Accident, miscalculation, misunderstanding, and miscommunication are real risks, and they are apparently not be taken into account. The margin for error is pretty tight.

Even if one believes that God is the only doer of action, as long as one is a character in the drama, one must play one's assigned part as an actor in the play, and as the actor, just witness the unfolding of the drama written by another hand without identifying oneself with the character.

Even though it is out of ordinary people's hands, there is still a moral obligation to speak out against perceived evil, regardless of whether it is intended.

If one has been assigned another role, then one must play that as a character and witness it as the actor playing the part.

Tom Hickey said...

I could have said, "God or nature" (Spinoza "deus sive natura") above. Or The Force.

Tom Hickey said...

The Baal Shem Tov put it succinctly.

The Besht taught: one should believe with one's deeds, words and every movement, that everything is God Himself. For it is He who controls man and limits His divine presence in him. Realizing this one will not seek any kind of reward for one's deeds, since it is God Himself who is the doer, not oneself.

The Baal Shem Tov
in Alan Unterman
The Wisdom of the Jewish Mystics
NY: New Directions, 1976, p. 48

Ahmed Fares said...

"I am come as Time, the waster of the peoples,
Ready for that hour that ripens to their ruin.
All these hosts must die; strike, stay your hand—no matter.

Therefore, strike. Win kingdom, wealth, and glory.
Arjuna, arise, O ambidextrous bowman.
Seem to slay. By me these men are slain already.

You but smite the dead."
—Bhagavad Gita

The following verse was revealed after the Battle of Badr in which the Muslims defeated an army more than three times their size. The Prophet Muhammad had cast a handful of pebbles at the enemy before the beginning of the battle.

And you did not kill them, but it was Allah who killed them. And you threw not, [O Muhammad], when you threw, but it was Allah who threw that He might test the believers with a good test. Indeed, Allah is Hearing and Knowing. —Qur'an 8:17

Peter Pan said...

Even though it is out of ordinary people's hands, there is still a moral obligation to speak out against perceived evil, regardless of whether it is intended.

Then speak out against belligerence. Denounce bellicose statements.

If you are in a leadership position, ignore bellicose statements. Do not be belligerent, or make bellicose statements.

To take an example, China does not want to invade Taiwan. Makes no strategic sense, and the two countries civilian population are on good terms. But due to their "One China" rhetoric, China can be forced into an invasion in order to save face.

Strip away the belligerent pretense and there are no issues worth waging war over. Or just ignore it. Ordinary people have the good sense to ignore it, as they see it for what it is. I'm not being facetious by calling it primate behavior. When your leaders act like baboons, call them on it.

The last thing you should do is be a blind patriot.