In a World where we are constantly informed that the main threat to us is (by one of the Impeachment witness's own statement) the declining state of Russia, we are occasionally reminded of the real threat in, I might add, a region far more important to American interests than Europe ever was - China (not mentioned once in the Canadian Military Journal while Russia is everywhere in it). A telling story is of the Chinese Ambassador to the US, who speaks whip good English and went to Johns Hopkins, Yankeesplaining to Bret Baier how those prison camps they've set up for Chinese Muslims are really "training camps" and that people can go home for the Weekends.
This is a reminder not only of the fact that, if the Four want to investigate pure bore Islamaphobia, they should demand to see these camps where a million Chinese Muslims have their heads shaved and are in chains. It is also a reminder of another of the many ways that China's influence is exerted around the World. The Ambassador has an army of staff, aides, advisors, consultants and lobbyists in the US to help him deliver his insidious message of "soft dictatorship with a capitalist face". But, too obviously, the US does not have such a network in China. Much like commercial trade with China is not truly reciprocal, neither is the trade of ideas.
China has many more non-Yellow Hordes to enable and amplify its message amongst the Media, Academia, the Beltway and above all the Elites. Witness Albright's millions slaving for China, the money the Feinstein's have made while there was a Chinese Bond driving them around, the feckless almost chillingly naive and dangerous apologizing by the Biden's, the Bloomberg's and the Obama's of the World, the NBA sellout and the bizarre musings of such as Tom "Wouldn't it be great if we were China for a day" Friedman. Even our own PM, while waging a battle with the Chinese over the Rule of Law once praised the Chinese kind of oppression. An early maddeningly corrupt example of their influence was the Watergate That Never Was, the Buddhist Shrine scandal, in which a POTUS and his wife almost certainly traded military secrets for campaign donations from China.
The results are clear of the past 20 years of coddling, advocating for, embracing and generally turning a blind eye to China's aggression. They've just gotten bigger, more insidious, more dangerous. More sophisticated and larger armed forces that literally build island bases to menace key Pacific shipping lanes and US allies. Industrial espionage backed up by a systematic policy of trading intellectual property for trade access to China. Enjoying all of the benefits of membership in the WTO without abiding by its rules if inconvenient to them. Oppression of Muslims, Christians, Tibetans, Dissidents and Hong Kong. Bullying and threatening Chinese abroad who dissent and foreigners who produce films or tv shows they do not like and of course basketball executives who say things they do not like. The Belt and Road Initiative that spreads their poisonous "No questions asked" policy of building infrastructure in Africa and Asia in return for their loyalty in the UN and so that they can loot resources for their insatiable economy. These are just a few of the many indicators that alcoholic, clownish, oil-addicted Russia is the Bambi to China's Godzilla when it comes to any foreign threat assessment.
Meanwhile, "Experts" like Vindman and Yovanovich are convinced that the Ukraine is on the "front line" in a terrible fight with the "newly aggressive" but actually declining Russia. Indeed, to hear them US interests and that of the Ukraine are practically one. I was one of the first to bemoan and decry the negligence and immorality of the West's betrayal of the Ukraine in its extremis. My question is, is there a NATO in China? Hasn't there been a NATO in Europe these 70 years and why can't it do more to hold the line in Eastern Europe (like not buying Russian pipelines for a start) so that the US can do more in the Far East, the Pacific which MacArthur rightly dubbed "America's Future"? Isn't it just as if not more likely that, to borrow one of the "Geopolitical Expert's" favourite sayings that, if we don't have someone fighting for us in and around China, we will have to fight them here? (maybe, intellectually, commercially, politically and socially, we already are. Does anyone except a blind shill for "free trade" or China think the "Trade War" with China only just started when Trump took office?)
Right now on the "Front Line" with China is a defanged, economically parlous Japan, a still poor vulnerable Southeast Asia, some students in Hong Kong and a diminishing band of dissidents. Time for the US to turn its vigilant eyes East before it's too late. This will take a systematic effort to overcome the PR blitz and influence peddling operation of the Chinese perhaps with new anti-corruption laws against helping oppression. It will take, to use a favourite Chinese word, the re-education of the American People on the threat. Sadly, that process may have to start first with the re-Orient-ation of bureaucrats, politicians, soldiers and other "experts" on China's dire threat to human rights, security and fair trade.
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