“It is always a simple matter to drag people along whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship.
Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. This is easy.
All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger.
It works the same in every country.” – Herman Goering
“Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind.
And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded by patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader and gladly so.How do I know? For this is what I have done. And I am Caesar.” – ?Julius Caesar
With the US more and more involved in the Asia-Pacific region as part of a “China containment strategy” and securing trade, a potential pending conflict between the US and China should first be an issue between the US and China in which no other countries should be involved. However reality shows that the US is creating strategic strongholds from which they intend to operate, if required, with all available nuclear power abilities and other advanced weapon systems getting increasingly in place. The nuclear power availability may reach up to half a million the strength of what has been dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. Both US citizens and Chinese citizens apart from all those countries within this region don’t deserve a fate at least 100 times worse than what happened in Hiroshima, either by calculation or by error. It is up to US citizens as well to accept or not accept this as war in this region will reach the US as well.
Secondly it would be wise for the super powers to start straightaway high level negotiations about bilateral “fear reduction”, reduction of arms and further more a detailed mutual cooperation to keep both the Asia-Pacific area and the world free of a potential and devastating conflict, besides improving the means by which this world is still able to provide a margin for itself. The last is a healthy economic trade environment, not based on isolation and preparing for war but based on an inclusive “all party approach” with fair principles at its core. Besides this tackling the roots of poverty and improve education at all corners around the globe. This is what I would call taking the “high road” of constructive risk reduction for the benefit of people around the world, as the concept of a potential conflict between the above superpowers and the preparations for this in place already, are not within the spirit and reasoning being required for our times to control risk and prevent war.
Military power being allowed to drive at different intervals and grades a country’s foreign policy has been allowed to use the fear part among people to take wide-range steps to defend and attack if so required, with the development of an excessive war machinery. This trend is quite clear in the US. The military industrial complex is complex in its motives. It is an advanced industry on its own and with no exception a powerful force in each country. In earlier history more often Soviet leaders were guided by the military forces, like the US was often guided by it’s own military forces. So is and will be the Chinese leadership guided by their own military forces. In some occasions the roles of those forces may get quite dominant as often they will prove with whatever intelligence that they are “right”. Intelligence of this nature has not always been evidence based and if it was evidence based not rarely this evidence was created by actions provoking the other party to act in a particular desired way, confirming the justification of distrust and escalating the steps for itself feeding perceptions. Those perceptions in the past started with the perceived impression of opponents and reached at different times the perception of potential and real enemies. Sometimes those perceptions were right, sometimes those perceptions were wrong.
Both in this and future generations however we can’t afford the potential paranoia of some military representatives guiding governments on actions being proper, as whichever country is guided by the wrong intelligence in the hour of greatest danger, – all out war will be inevitably the result at a scale never seen before.
The dynamics are complex and leaders of countries may at some extend realise the complexities of their own war departments so to say. However the influence is often significant if we watch the patterns at various countries. Those power dynamics between the civilian representatives of a country weather democratic or having the format of a “Committee” and the military are different and obvious for most countries, the super powers in particular included. They are what we call the realities of this world. Expensive realities though as a significant amount of the national budget is devoted to improve and maintain military forces and it’s intelligence to detect the actions and wrongdoings of the other party, the opponent or the enemy if worse. Sometimes history did create enemies to provide an excuse to go to war, sometimes there was a real enemy which was never stopped at an early stage. The last creating war of a different kind, what we call a justified war. But even a just war is not justified in its implications if prevention was not the early tool of choice to change the dynamics leading up to such a war. Again not always possible as there have been and there will be always people seeking power to embrace conflict and war and they always find support within the domain of their military forces. Neither the nature of military forces is bad nor the people filling the positions, but often they are the prisoners of their own restricted “target” perceptions as there is little grace under military rule once the full force of military power finds its way in either a controlled war or a non-controlled war. An order to fight is simply an order to kill the enemy as vigorous as possible.
History provides us millions of stories about people who died in conflict or war and many countries have their ways to remind those who died for their country. On those days the brief memory on the agony of war and the sadness and pain it inflicted, but every time through the generations there have been new wars and new genocides and the intentions to prevent those things reoccurring have never been strong enough in the history of man kind because if the spirit to change things really for the better was strong enough, we would not face the challenges we have today.
The point is not who is to blame for this, the point is leading nations to take responsibility to give examples and ripples of hope to turn the tide in history. Change it we must because only this way we will find the eternal blessing of being caretakers of this world. If not we will face uncontrolled destruction as when the powers of war are escalating no leaders will be able to control those powers anymore, – as no country with nuclear powers will be prepared to surrender once attacked with the devastating impact of the destruction inflicted.
It is pointless to play games with this warfare or playing the wrong card to provide evidence of superiority as such gesture could easily be miscalculated and war could start by error, – people including generals being in place at the wrong time. Such a war will come at a cost larger than ever before and lack of responsibility for taking the right direction would be to blame for this. Hence we need to stop this process as the signs and warnings are eminent on both sides of the Pacific.
Evidently the US did start this process with high gear and still silent preparations for the Pacific with not unlikely an escalation in 2012 – 2013. A nuclear error within the context of the current “build up” in the Pacific will never be considered as an error but will be responded with a full nuclear reply, – hence the reason to be proactive in efforts to reverse the reciprocal perception of both countries that each of them could be a danger for their national security as within those perceptions the build up to conflict and potential error will be eminent.
This is what responsible superpowers need to prevent as winning such a potential conflict is an illusion whilst preparing for it is not the same as prevention, – not anymore in a scenario like this.
How grave are the dangers?
Consider the following:
China’s military capacity has been changed in so far that it’s defence budget is focussed to get widespread Anti-Access/Area Denial strategies (A2/AD.), which is a concern for the US.
“Sea denial” in case of conflict would seem to be China’s military strategy in case of conflict to inflict both significant costs and erode enemy forces by targeting the weakness of the enemy in battle.
The Chinese forces are able to attack from both the air, main land China, but also from the surface of the sea and below.
Submarines play a key role in the Chinese defence systems, if attacked a hard job for anti-submarine warfare if enemy’s would take China on board in battle.
Those submarines are both conventional and nuclear and if the US would contemplate to attack China, both US forces at sea including aircraft carriers would sustain likely much losses.
Like the US made it pointless for any country to attack US homeland with missiles from both the sea and the air, China made it pointless for any country to do similar.
Advanced weapons systems on both submarines and land based missile and air forces would meet China’s aim to deny the waters near the Chinese coast to any combat forces if so required.
Whilst the antisubmarine warfare capabilities (AWS) of the United States are not that ideal anymore after the Cold War with the Soviet Union stopped, the U.S. has remained a qualitative unmatched technology on their existing submarines.
The problem for the US is that their numbers on superior submarines are down which is not likely to improve dramatically as due to US the budget deficit.
With the U.S. Navy having problems in the AWS domain, it has placed a renewed focus on ASW training and detection in the Pacific.
At present there are US submarines in both Hawaii, Guam and California with a base to be planned in both Singapore and Australia.
If U.S. submarines containing nuclear cruise missiles would strike against targets in mainland China this would provoke an immediate escalation into a 3rd world war, affecting both homeland China and the Us as well.
US submarines as due existing technology may sustain the Chinese A2/AD defence force. Most likely the US will increase it’s acquisition of well advanced submarines, including unmanned equipment and the application of fixed sensors in the seas near China to detect and destroy Chinese submarines in time of war. Hence now US coöperation being sought in both the Philippines and Vietnam to use equivalent equipment at the junction between the Chinese Sea and the Western Pacific to the early detection and destruction of Chinese submarines, again at times of war.
The incidents at the Chinese Sea lately played the US in it’s favour to get the coöperation being required from both those countries and Australia.
Whilst the US does not admit, their increased activities in the Pacific are of a potential first strike nature, with the Chinese only now increasing both their defence and target range if any country would contemplate to compromise their borders and security at a large-scale.
If the Chinese would build a first strike capability in and above the seas close to the US the US would see this as a provocation, like Cuba in the past inflicted provocation to the US with Soviet missiles being able to attack the US.
The difference is that the Soviets inflicted this at the time and the US is inflicting this now in the Pacific, trying even to build up relations with controversial states like Burma at the border of China. Hillary Clinton will visit Burma tomorrow the 30th of November 2011 to assess the situation with a view to turn the leaders to a place more favourable to public opinion, but crimes and torture and human trafficking have never been (properly) addressed.
The reasoning for the US is to secure vital Sea Lanes in the Pacific, both for the purpose of trade and military access if so required. Apart from this the containment policy towards China aims to affect both China’s trade ability as a faster growing economic power than the US, and apart from this to “tighten” the perceived “Tiger in its cage”.
Chinese wisdom will dictate its leaders to respond slow, but perhaps with more leadership than the US demonstrates at this point in time.
China has different trading partners and till so far demonstrated to play win-win in business dealings, providing the US even with excessive loans to help their war’s in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Their advised stance in matters is not to move within the changes as created by the US now, within an US context of lack of economic growth and perhaps reduced long-term sustainability, as the US like Europe “played with money” not even existing, paying towards program’s of various nature whilst the deficits increased – the last causing chaos on international markets, including recession at home.
“The United States, as the world knows, will never start a war. We do not want a war. We do not now expect a war. This generation of Americans has already had enough — more than enough — of war and hate and oppression. We shall be prepared if others wish it. We shall be alert to try to stop it. But we shall also do our part to build a world of peace where the weak are safe and the strong are just. We are not helpless before that task or hopeless of its success.”
This is what President John F Kennedy said in 1963, not too long before he was assassinated by the representatives of Pentagon and CIA hardliners. Hardliners who wanted to pursue the Vietnam war at all cost.
How just is current US policy in the Pacific region if it does take part in the “silent” preparation for war, with such forces being increasingly concentrated, – and relatively so close to China, whilst North Korea could trigger potentially this conflict among the 2 super powers.
The last 2 powers which failed to contain North Korea as a more profound threat than either China or the US could be to each other, as reason still dominates the last direction of those 2 countries with the highest nuclear and other potential of total destruction.
North Korea could trigger however a conflict where even for the 2 major super powers on earth there might be a point of no return with any small error of calculation.
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5 responses to “2013 – 2014 Genocide in the Pacific or even worse?”
Hey paul,
thats a great polemic.
before the idea of yankee troops being stationed in Darwin was announced , the plan was discussed by aussies with china and indonesia.
that is why chinese reaction is muted.
they don’t care if a few thousand troops are stationed there. america and china will not go to war. china effectively owns america, last year when chinese premier visited US it was called the landlord’s visit.
it is just empty posturing. a little extra cash for NT.
china has considerable clout in australian govt.
take care
cheers
sam
I have cut and pasted the “Julius Caesar bit” about the dangers of patriotism.
I thought it is just right for today’s times.
Thank You for sending this
Everything can be resolved through negotiations if we act civilised…and we act as we are treated.
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US is playing a major role in pushing for the WW3. To be more specific the corporate conglomerates(weapon industries,etc) that re controlling the US are pushing for it. today the world is mainly divided into two axis…on one side the US,Isreal, EU and on the other side China, Russia, Iran..if the world falls into a WW3, both sides will annihilate each other..