China syndrome and the next war

Erick San Juan

PRESIDENT Barack Obama’s Washington summit and White House state dinner with Chinese President Xi Jinping marked one of the administration’s last big attempts to place US-China relations on a good track. With China’s secretive and troubled massive economy affecting others in ways we’re still learning, growing American concern over cyber-espionage matched by Chinese concern about global surveillance, and China becoming still more aggressive in its extraordinary maritime claims, Obama has a lot to overcome.

Aside from a new agreement on climate change, some mutual make-nice rhetoric on spying, obvious agreement to oppose maritime piracy, and self-interested big business deals on China’s part with Boeing and Cisco, there wasn’t much to point to. Xi, in fact, was quite defiant on China’s highly aggressive maritime claims.

Obama’s China syndrome is that he seeks both to engage China and to contain China. Both are appropriate and arguably quite necessary goals for American statecraft. But they presuppose a state of creative tension between the established superpower and would-be superpower. The tension is real enough, especially coming from the Chinese. The question is whether it’s matched by creativity. (William Bradley, Obama’s China Syndrome, 9/27/2015)

Now we understand the perennial problem of a disease infecting the Obama administration–the China syndrome. The tug-of-war between engaging and containing China has proven to be a paradox because it only creates more tension in the region. It could be a choice of only one but as diplomacy dictates, peaceful resolution has to be employed in order to avoid a bloody conflict.

In a recent article “Know World War II, Avoid World War III. US Provocation and Propaganda directed against China” by Tony Cartalucci he writes, “an Asian state aggressively expanding its military, bullying its neighbors, illegally fortifying islands, and bent on regional, then global domination. Sounds familiar? Are you thinking it’s China 2015? No, it is Japan 1937-1944.

So shockingly similar is American propaganda regarding Japan during World War II to the propaganda being levelled against Beijing today that it seems almost intentional. Or perhaps those on Wall Street and Washington think so little of the general public’s ability to discern fact from fiction, they see no reason to revise the script and are going ahead with a remake faithful to the original with only a few minor casting twists.

This US government production is titled “Why We Fight: A Series of Seven Information Films” with this particular part titled, “The Battle of China” released in 1944.

It describes Japan almost verbatim as how the US today describes China.

China is depicted as a righteous victim – but as the film elaborates – it is clear that any affinity shown toward the Chinese people is only due to the fact that the US held significant economic and geopolitical interests there. Admittedly, the US military was already occupying China after extorting through “gunboat diplomacy” concessions from China’s subjugated, servile government – not unlike US troops occupying Japan today, hosted by a capitulating government in Tokyo.

Japan in the film is depicted as a “blood crazed” race of barbarians, while the Chinese are depicted as noble resistors. Of course, this narrative shifted immediately as soon as US interests were ousted from China and US troops began occupying and shaping the destiny of conquered Japan after the war.”

Time and again, together with other observers like me, we have been warning of a repeat of history just like in the past World Wars, the scenarios are the same with ‘a little twist’ and the possibility of a next world war if humankind will not heed our warnings.

Like what US Marine Corps General Smedley Butler in his book “War is a Racket” would specifically warn about a military build up aimed at Japan for the jealous preservation of American conquests in Asia Pacific. Speaking specifically about these conquests, General Butler would say: what does the “open door” policy to China mean to us? Our trade with China is about $90,000,000 a year. Or the Philippine Islands? We have spent about $600,000,000 in the Philippines in 35 years and we (our bankers and industrialists and speculators) have private investments there of less than $200,000,000.

Then, to save that China trade of about $90,000,000, or to protect these private investments of less than $200,000,000 in the Philippines, we would be all stirred up to hate Japan and go to war–a war that might well cost us tens of billions of dollars, hundreds of thousands of lives of Americans, and many more hundreds of thousands of physically maimed and mentally unbalanced men.

Of course, for this loss, there would be a compensating profit–fortunes would be made. Millions and billions of dollars would be piled up. By a few. Munitions makers. Bankers. Ship builders. Manufacturers. Meat packers. Speculators. They would fare well.

Yes, they are getting ready for another war. Why shouldn’t they? It pays high dividends.

For whatever its worth, bilateral talks between leaders can help but accidents and miscalculations happen just like in the past. So again a warning: always remember the past so you will know the future by not repeating the mistakes in history.