For decades the rhetoric around China has been swirling and the ‘intel’ says that they are gearing up for something big…..why else would they want to build a base in the South China Sea?
In the past decade the rhetoric has gotten more intense and the money has been flying out of the treasury and into the hands of the defense industry so that the US can thwart any attempts by China to do the damage we have been warned about.
This back and forth has been brewing since about 2001….at that time each saw themselves as peace loving and the other as aggressor.
SecDef, Hogsbreath, is ramping up the rhetoric in preparation (it seems)….
The Chinese Foreign Ministry on Sunday slammed US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth for a “Cold War mentality” in response to his remarks about China at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, which included him warning that the US is ready to “fight and win” a war over Taiwan.
During his speech on Saturday, Hegseth took aim at China over a range of issues, including Taiwan and the South China Sea. “China seeks to become a hegemonic power in Asia. No doubt. It hopes to dominate and control too many parts of this vibrant and vital region,” he said.
Hegseth accused China of wanting to “fundamentally alter the region’s status quo” and said Beijing’s “behavior towards its neighbors and the world is a wake-up call.”
Regarding Taiwan, Hegseth claimed that it was “public” that Chinese President Xi Jinping had ordered his forces to be prepared for an invasion by 2027. However, that claim is based on comments from US officials and has never been confirmed by Beijing.
Hegseth Says US Ready to ‘Fight and Win’ a War With China Over Taiwan
China wants to be the hegemonic power in Asia? Is that not what the US is doing?
So fast forward to today and the mash-up over Formosa (Taiwan to the youngsters out there)….the US is pouring money into the island nation by the truckload…..
The late journalist and documentarian John Pilger in 2016 commented on evolving U.S. strategies:
“When the United States, the world’s biggest military power, decided that China, the second largest economic power, was a threat to its imperial dominance, two-thirds of US naval forces were transferred to Asia and the Pacific. This was the ‘pivot to Asia’, announced by President Barack Obama in 2011. China, which in the space of a generation had risen from the chaos of Mao Zedong’s ‘Cultural Revolution’ to an economic prosperity that has seen more than 500 million people lifted out of poverty, was suddenly the United States’s new enemy…. [Presently] 400 American bases surround China with ships, missiles and troops.”
Analyst Ben Norton pointed out recently that, “the U.S. military is setting the stage for war on China. … The Pentagon is concentrating its resources in the Asia-Pacific region as it anticipates fighting China in an attempt to exert U.S. control over Taiwan.” Norton was reacting to a leaked Pentagon memo indicating, according to Washington Post, that “potential invasion of Taiwan” would be the “exclusive animating scenario” taking precedence over other potential threats elsewhere, including in Europe.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/05/13/u-s-war-on-china-a-long-time-coming/
“China is the strongest it’s ever been,” said Brigadier General Doug Wickert, the 412th Test Wing commander in the United States air force. “It has fairly aggressively built a very large force that’s been specifically developed to counter our strengths.”
Today, the PLA boasts almost a million more troops than the United States and over a thousand more tanks. It has built its navy into the largest in the world with approximately 400 warships and stacked its air force with nearly 2,000 fighter jets.
Beijing has also drastically expanded its intelligence capabilities to the point where deputy CIA Director Michael Ellis claimed earlier this week that China has become an “existential threat to American security in a way we really have never confronted before”.
This is war waiting to happen….the rhetoric keeps it in the forefront of conversations….but let us say that some incident pushes the US and Chiona into a real war not just a war of words….
A report to Congress last July examining the risk of simultaneous conflict with Russia, China, North Korea and potentially Iran reached a similar conclusion, warning that the U.S. population was not sufficiently prepared for the disruptions in supplies and services such a conflict might produce, through cyber attacks and interruption of supply chains.Keeping supplies coming would almost certainly a challenge for both sides. The U.S. Indo Pacific Command has talked repeatedly about using smaller and larger drones, including robot submarines, to create a “Hellscape” in the Taiwan Strait to block Chinese forces.Still, U.S. commanders acknowledge China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) now has its own hefty ability to target U.S. planes and ships, rendering it vital to forward locate equipment and weapons stocks early in advance – particularly as China’s missile range improves.This month, head of U.S. Indo Pacific command Admiral Sam Paparo said the “depth and range” of China’s military drills were now increasing fast, including exercises to invade and blockade Taiwan while also striking port and energy facilities.Beijing is also publicly highlighting its ability to conduct such actions, presenting them as a key part of seizing the island. “If Taiwan loses its maritime supply lines, its domestic resources will quickly be depleted, social order will fall into chaos and people’s livelihoods will be severely impacted,” said a Chinese military official in one video released by the PLA.“I remain confident in our deterrence posture, but the trajectory must change,” Paparo told congressional officials in April, warning that while his forces currently retained enough superiority to deter a Taiwan invasion, that advantage was being rapidly eroded as China built up forces.
With people like Hesgeth in charge I’d say war is inevitable and that will allow a number of countries to join with China to revenge previous slights by the U.S. or old actions against them.
Keep an eye on the BRICS when push comes to shove. chuq
It seems that chest thumping for war is contagious. The UK and some European countries say they are ‘preparing for the inevitable war with Russia’, and America keeps poking China with a big stick hoping to provoke it into starting something. When governments are weak, they start wars to divert the public attention and gain popularity and prestige. Like Thatcher did with Argentina and The Falklands, and Reagan with Grenada.
But Russia and China are not Argentina or Grenada.
Best wishes, Pete.
I agree….they are not some small insignificant island that we can push around. chuq
You are correct about the money and the rhetoric. What some people don’t understand is that we have lagged so far behind China in our military preparedness and development that if we were to have a hot war with them, we would be decimated in less than an hour … so any such move would be absolutely foolhardy —and besides that, I am sure that Trump should just “Give” Taiwan to the Chinese, no struggle required … which would be a sort of saving grace I guess for the rest of us.
THat Taiwan/China thing is an internal dispute…..none of our business. chuq
Yes, this. Taiwan is no “bastion of democracy” as the politicians in DC are claiming. It was basically a military dictatorship under perpetual martial law until the late 1980s or early 1990s.
But the media makes us believe that they are all about the democracy…..silly on the face of it chuq
Well, it was sort of a democracy? Kind of? They had elections, but there was only one political party allowed. Basically you voted for whoever the military told you to vote for. During the martial law period, from about 1949 to 1987, it’s estimated that the government imprisoned, tortured or killed over 140,000 people suspected of having communist sympathies.
We already intervened more or less directly in the China – Taiwan issue back during the Korean War. Truman sent the US fleet into the Taiwan Strait to prevent the communist government on the mainland from invading. Then we passed the Sino-American Mutual Defense treaty with the ROC (Republic of China, the Taiwan government), and then the Formosa Resolution which directed massive amounts of financial and military aide to Taiwan. Later in 1958 there was the second Taiwan Strait Crisis,. when we sent Nike and Hercules missiles to the island to expand and improve the missile batteries that we’d already given them. The US didn’t recognize the CCP as the actual government of China until 1979. Anyone out there remember Nixon’s visit to Beijing in 1972? Does the term “Ping-Pong diplomacy” ring a bell?
What it boils down to is that our relationship with Taiwan is complicated and, oh, let’s call it “ethically challenged” because of our helping to prop up what was basically an abusive dictatorship for decades.
Of course one could argue, with justification, that the situation in mainland China was far, far worse at the time. No one knows for sure how many people were executed, imprisoned or starved to death during Mao Zedong’s rule. Just his failed “Great Leap Forward” policy resulted in ruining the agricultural system and causing something like 30 million people to starve to death.
I still say it was an internal situation…..but it was the Cold War and that is what we did….involve ourselves. chuq
Oh, I agree, it should have been something we never got involved with in the first place. The US has a long and sordid history of propping up abusive dictators in the “fight against communism” and it’s the ordinary people who ended up suffering for it while ultimately we accomplished nothing.
Iraq comes to mind…..friend then foe…..Chile in the 70s….and the list goes on. chuq
I think you have a valid point there. China’s conventional military technology is as good, if not better than what we have in most areas, and it outnumbers us. Plus Taiwan is 6,000 miles away from the nearest major military supply system in California while mainland China is only about 70 miles away. Hegseth can bluster all he wants but if it came down to it, there’s an excellent chance China would have all of the advantages in a military conflict in that area.