The Pentagon may not be advocating total war against both Russia and China – as it has been interpreted in some quarters
by Pepe Escobar (cross-posted with The Asia Times by special agreement with the author)
A crucial Pentagon report on the US defense industrial base and “supply chain resiliency” bluntly accuses China of “military expansion” and “a strategy of economic aggression,” mostly because Beijing is the only source for “a number of chemical products used in munitions and missiles.”
Russia is mentioned only once, but in a crucial paragraph: as a – what else – “threat,” alongside China, for the US defense industry.
The Pentagon, in this report, may not be advocating total war against both Russia and China – as it was interpreted in some quarters. What it does is configure the trade war against China as even more incandescent, while laying bare the true motivations behind the sanctioning of Russia.
The US Department of Commerce has imposed restrictions on 12 Russian corporations that are deemed to be “acting contrary to the national security or foreign policy interests of the US.” In practice, this means that American corporations cannot export dual-use products to any of the sanctioned Russian companies.
There are very clear reasons behind these sanctions – and they are not related to national security. It’s all about “free market” competition.
At the heart of the storm is the Irkut MC-21 narrow-body passenger jet – the first in the world with a capacity of more than 130 passengers to have composite-based wings.
AeroComposit is responsible for the development of these composite wings. The estimated share of composites in the overall design is 40%.
The MC-21’s PD-14 engine – which is unable to power combat jets – will be manufactured by Aviadvigatel. Until now MC-21s had Pratt & Whitney engines. The PD-14 is the first new engine 100% made in Russia since the break up of the USSR.
Aviation experts are sure that an MC-21 equipped with a PD-14 easily beats the competition; the Airbus A320 and the Boeing-737.
Then there’s the PD-35 engine – which Aviadvigatel is developing specifically to equip an already announced Russia-China wide-body twinjet airliner to be built by the joint venture China-Russia Commercial Aircraft International Corp Ltd (CRAIC), launched in May 2017 in Shanghai.
Aviation experts are convinced this is the only project anywhere in the world capable of challenging the decades-long monopoly of Boeing and Airbus.
Will these sanctions prevent Russia from perfecting the MC-21 and investing in the new airliner? Hardly. Top military analyst Andrei Martyanov convincingly makes the case that these sanctions are at best “laughable,” considering how “makers of avionics and aggregates” for the ultra-sophisticated Su-35 and Su-57 fighter jets would have no problem replacing Western parts on commercial jets.
Oh China, you’re so ‘malign’
Even before the Pentagon report, it was clear that the Trump administration’s number one goal in relation to China was to ultimately cut off extended US corporate supply chains and re-implant them – along with tens of thousands of jobs – back into the US.
This radical reorganization of global capitalism may not be exactly appealing for US multinationals because they would lose all the cost-benefit advantages that seduced them to delocalize to China in the first place. And the lost advantages won’t be offset by more corporate tax breaks.
It gets worse – from the point to view of global trade: for Trump administration hawks, the re-industrialization of the US presupposes Chinese industrial stagnation. That explains to a large extent the all-out demonization of the high-tech Made in China 2025 drive in all its aspects.
And this flows in parallel to demonizing Russia. Thus we have US Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke threatening no less than a blockade of Russian energy flows: “The United States has that ability, with our Navy, to make sure the sea lanes are open, and, if necessary, to blockade … to make sure that their energy does not go to market.”
The commercial and industrial demonization of China reached a paroxysm with Vice-President Mike Pence accusing China of “reckless harassment,” trying to “malign” Trump’s credibility and even being the top US election meddler, displacing Russia. That’s hardly attuned to a commercial strategy whose main goal should be to create US jobs.
President Xi Jinping and his advisers are not necessarily averse to making a few trade concessions. But that becomes impossible, from Beijing’s point of view, when China is sanctioned because it is buying Russian weapons systems.
Beijing also can read some extra writing on the trade wall, an inevitable consequence of Pence’s accusations; Magnitsky-style sanctioning of Russian individuals and businesses may soon be extended to the Chinese.
After all, Pence said Russia’s alleged interference in US affairs paled in comparison with China’s “malign” actions.
China’s ambassador to the US, Cui Tiankai, in his interview with Fox News, strove for his diplomatic best: “It would be hard to imagine that one-fifth of the global population could develop and prosper, not by relying mainly on their own efforts, but by stealing or forcing some transfer of technology from others … That’s impossible. The Chinese people are as hard-working and diligent as anybody on earth.”
That is something that will be validated once again in Brussels this week at the biennial ASEM – Asia Europe – summit, first held in 1996. The theme of this year’s summit is “Europe and Asia: global partners and global challenges.” At the top of the agenda is trade, investment and connectivity – at least between Europe and Asia.
Washington’s offensive on China should not be interpreted under the optics of “fair trade,” but rather as a strategy for containing China technologically, which touches upon the absolutely crucial theme: to prevent China from developing the connectivity supporting the extended supply chains which are at the heart of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
We don’t need no peer competitors
A glaring giveaway that these overlapping sanctions on Russia and China are all about the good old Brzezinski fear of Eurasia being dominated by the emergence of “peer competitors” was recently offered by Wess Mitchell, the US State Department Assistant Secretary at the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs – the same post previously held by Victoria “F*ck the EU” Nuland.
This is the original Mitchell testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. And this is the redacted, sanitized State Department version.
A crucial phrase in the middle of the second paragraph simply disappeared: “It continues to be among the foremost national security interests of the United States to prevent the domination of the Eurasian landmass by hostile powers.”
That’s all the geopolitics Beijing and Moscow need to know. Not that they didn’t know it already.
The Mitchell testimony is the core of the War Plan. Pepe quotes the key sentence. But Mitchell’s testimony is far more profound than the Pence pronouncements.
Mitchell lays out the evil soul of the Hegemon and malign intentions. Pence is but a squawk box compared.
There is no Chinese or Russian official or businessmen (including oligarchs and billionaires) who reads that testimony and does not know for certain that the US intends to destroy both nations and the concept and execution of Eurasia as a market, the New Silk Road, OBOR, BRI and Eurasian Development.
The reaction is the Double Helix will grow tighter and develop counter-measures and asymmetrical means to continue their growth and leadership of the Eurasian landmass and multi-polar institutions.
Corrected. Mod
Did you mean “malign intentions”?
Thanks for the correction. Brain freeze.
Should be malign.
As America continues to draw the new Paper Curtain, comprised of the paper of various sanctions actions, across the world, eventually everyone is going to have to decide which side of that Paper Curtain they want to be on.
Do they want to be on the side of an old, collapsing economy where the wealth in is concentrated in fewer and fewer hands at the top, leading to the stagnation or backwards movement of consumer purchasing power? Or do they want to be on the same side of the New Paper Curtain with 1 billion Chinese and a growing economy that will certainly become soon the most powerful economy in the world?
The one thing that is becoming clear with the nearly weekly, and is it soon to be daily, barrages of more and more and more sanctions over anything and everything (except killing a journalist in a consulate, or causing thousands to starve and die from cholera) is that people and companies are going to have to choose one or the other. If I was younger and starting a business, I’d move to someplace where I could trade with China.
In PPP terms China has been the largest economy since 2014, and is still growing twice as fast as the USA. China’s growth has fallen to 6.5%, which brings much crowing from Western racists, Orientalists and Sinophobes, but they seem not to understand the law of large numbers. The increased production of a larger economy at 6.5% is greater than past years’ 10% or so, because the base is that much higher. Moreover much of the US ‘economy’ is FIRE (finance, insurance, real estate) and other financialised parasitism and fraud. Furthermore the USA’s infrastructure is crumbling, wages have been stagnant for the proles for decades, inequality is ever growing, public education is a disaster, student debt for colleges degrees is 1.7 trillion or so (from which one cannot escape through bankruptcy)another real estate bubble, and other asset bubbles are even greater than in 2007, and overall debt is through the roof, with interest rates rising. And the scientific/technological edge that the USA has long enjoyed is disappearing, as China produces far more technologists than the USA and is investing massive amounts in high technology. And the USA is run by incompetent psychopaths fully controlled by the Zionazi Fifth Columns. The USA’s one remaining strength is in the military and the means and desire to destroy and commit genocide. In those fields Thanatopia is truly ‘Exceptional’.
“The reaction is the Double Helix will grow tighter and develop counter-measures and asymmetrical means to continue their growth and leadership of the Eurasian landmass and multi-polar institutions.”
Well said, Larchmonter. And in the process, the ‘Double Helix’ is creating a new socio-economic system that will eventualy replace capitalism. We are living in a period of transition, with all its dangers… History has not ended.
Mitchell continues to lead the charge from state with his attacks on Nord Stream 2; the Germans are not buying it because a switch from nord stream absolutely makes no economic sense:
https://www.rt.com/business/441848-nord-stream-eu-us-gazprom/
mitchell is indeed rabid-is attempting to rival nuland, his predecesor.
Yes, the propaganda offensive against the “Made in China 2025” program totally gives away the U.S.’s true fears, and reveals quite clearly why they started the trade war. The Americans are frightened that they might have absolutely no influence over the Chinese in the future, technologically, economically, or militarily. So the Yanks started a trade war that they thought they could win.
The Americans have probably grossly overestimated the leverage they have on China. Trump has been very loudly saying that the U.S. imports $500 billion a year from the Chinese, and they import only $200 billion a year from the U.S. Therefore China stands to lose more. Well, at least that’s what he says. However, I doubt that even the loudmouth believes that China gets anywhere near $500 billion from the U.S. each year. For example, it’s well known that China adds only 6 percent to the value of an iPhone, or about $15. But when the phone arrives in San Francisco, the U.S. pretends that China has just exported $500 to the U.S., as that is what American consumers pay. The difference between $15 and $500 is called “transfer pricing”, and now you know why Apple was so eager to go to China. And my point is that Trump can only hurt the Chinese on the $15. If he thinks he has $500 of leverage, he is seriously mistaken, probably by an order of magnitude.
Xi Jinping might give some minor concessions to the U.S., so that Trump could save some face. But I have little doubt that he will lose the trade war that he stupidly started.
The old joke used to be “How is it that America’s oil ended up under Iraqi sand?” Now that’s obviously been updated to “How did America’s strategic minerals end up under China’s rice paddies?”
Ha ha. Or “How did China manage to steal so many good engineers from America?”
Oops, please replace $15 with $30. I initially though the price of an iPhone was $250, but it’s more like $500. (I’m Canadian and am a little vague about prices in the U.S.) I replaced the $250 with $500 and that was fine. I should also have replaced the $15 figures with $30, but I forgot.
Whether China gets $15 or $30, that doesn’t change my conclusion that the U.S. has probably grossly overestimated its leverage over the Middle Kingdom, and will almost certainly lose the trade war.
The first whimper of pain from the Trump camp could be Mike Pence’s whine that China has been meddling in the U.S. elections. One of China’s first retaliations in the trade war was to impose tariffs on U.S. soybeans. If Alibaba’s Jack Ma was right when he predicted a decades-long trade war, then the farmers must be realizing that they have permanently lost the Chinese market for the beans. These farmers were a major reason that The Donald got elected in 2016, and they will probably make Trump regret the trade war in the coming mid-terms. So that is probably what Pence meant when he complained about the alleged Chinese meddling. I doubt Beijing feels his pain, as it was Pence’s country that initiated the trade hostilities.
” For example, it’s well known that China adds only 6 percent to the value of an iPhone, or about $15″.
Er, are you asserting that the people who make the phone add only 6 percent of its value? While the people who slap in some software, advertise it and sell it add the remaining 94 percent?
Sounds to me like a rather arbitrary assignment of value. After all, who exactly decides that a processor or RAM chip costs so much, a phone shell so much, and so on? And of course Apple own the software rights, so they can assign to that whatever value they choose.
I suppose it is true that the Chinese could produce a near equivalent of the iPhone for a tiny fraction of the price Apple charges. But why exactly is that?
Er, are you asserting that the people who make the phone add only 6 percent of its value?
Yep.
While the people who slap in some software, advertise it and sell it add the remaining 94 percent?
That’s right. Now you REALLY understand why Apple was so eager to go to China.
“The more things change, the more they stay the same”… Boogieman Russia, Boogieman China… fear fear fear… same BS for the last 78 years.
May ‘Big Zig’ rot in Hell for an eternity.
The “Virginia Company” aka USofA is truly a satanic, demonic vile entity. Death, destruction, misery mayhem and spreading hatred are its M.O.
psychopaths cannot be any other way. that’s why it’s so important to learn how to spot them and to prevent them from getting into positions of power. IT’s like putting a fox in charge of a hen-house
“Thus we have US Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke threatening no less than a blockade of Russian energy flows: “The United States has that ability, with our Navy, to make sure the sea lanes are open, and, if necessary, to blockade … to make sure that their energy does not go to market.””
Someone should get Sec Zinke some dvds of the old Yogi Bear cartoons so he can see how the forces he commands of elite, highly trained Park Rangers have done in the past when trying to confront Bears.
Sec Zinke might find out that these Bears are also a wee bit “smarter than your average bear.” Right Boo-Boo?
“The bear will not ask anyone for permission. He is the master of the taiga and he will not move to other climatic zones, but he will not give up his taiga to anyone, either. And everyone should be clear about that, that’s all there is to it.”
~ Vladimir Putin
RAND corporation says that the US would probably lose a real war…https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RR1700/RR1782/RAND_RR1782.pdf
190 pages…free download.
also: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/09/us-could-potentially-lose-next-war-to-russia-or-china-warns-rand.html
The way I see things, they already lost everything when they demolished three occupied American skyscrapers (with lots of Israeli and Saudi help) and blew up occupied parts of the Pentagon. Large scale murder adds up to a score in Hell, they say.
Treason works that way. It begins a journey with Death…
With repect to the quote: This is the original Mitchell testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. And this is the redacted, sanitized State Department version.
A crucial phrase in the middle of the second paragraph simply disappeared: “It continues to be among the foremost national security interests of the United States to prevent the domination of the Eurasian landmass by hostile powers.”
That’s all the geopolitics Beijing and Moscow need to know. Not that they didn’t know it already.
See paper entitled “The Heartland Theory and the Present-Day Geopolitical Structure of Central Eurasia”
https://www.silkroadstudies.org/resources/pdf/Monographs/1006Rethinking-4.pdf
It is sad that the american people are represented on the international stage by such louts and cretins and warmongers. And at home by craven opportunists in Congress who will do anything to protect their status and perks, paid for by the public. Do they even know the concept of ethics, or public servic
I don’t think Americans are responsible for what is happening.
We all know that our political system is, simply, unresponsive to what Americans say they want.
If it weren’t for the MIC gobbling up all the $$$ and demanding more, forever, there would be plenty of money for Americans to have decent existences and actually help the rest of the world.
Katherine
I agree, with strong reservations.
Non-Anglos abroad (before they understood the Good AND Evil complexities of this place) used to say, concerning THE Empire Identity of the British and The Republic(an) identity of the Americans:
“In any restaurant anywhere in the world, British diners act like they own the place. Americans act like they don’t care who owns it.”
Well, that was a fairly accurate distinction that became less and less true since Dallas November 22, 1963.
Since then most of the positive features of the American Soul ( a composite of the World Soul….but with a certain English or Anglo “dominion”) steadily eroded until the perceptions of America by others around the world (jncluding a great many of better, brighter English) were submerged such as to reach the lowest levels of materialist consciousness………… eliciting not the love or respect of others around the world…….but the fear and loathing and disgust frequently expressed by commenters on this blog…as though American Vileness Through And Through was always there in Every American from Day One…and among the English, Dutch, Germans, Scandinavians, Italians, Greeks, Spanish, Mexicans, Chinese, Russian ……and others peoples transplanted here…In the Aggregate Whole of This Place………….NONE are or will be redeemable…………. Ever!
That’s almost like saying “Humanity is lost. It cannot be saved. It should be flushed.”
The problem with the “decent Americans” Katherine seeks to defend is their littleness and weakness, their aggregate acceptance in “keeping their heads down low” and tolerating Nov 22, 1963 and more and more and more piled on to their heads by Empire Controllers of Culture………..to “run out the clock” of their lives in their much more comfortable than most other inhabitants of the earth …………material conditions of life.
And the fact is, that a great many human beings, in any similar “lucky place” at any other time in history be it now in Western Europe or centuries ago in the periods of Mercantile Wealth of Spain, Britain, the Netherlands or others……were and are… NOT that different!
The Little Ego dominates their identity, their very soul.
Ultimately either the Nascent Awakening of the American Ichabod Cranes gathers momentum and fully matures within ONE generation of September 11, 2001 or….the suffering that will visit this place will be extreme.
AND, I would add, in agreement with the many haters and resenters of that Silent and Stupid Majority here…..(with the “unfortunately” caveat) well deserved!
Yes, the US’ actions toward trade with China will probably backfire. The huge danger I see in all of these ridiculous bully tactics of the US will probably culminate in war. The actions and rhetoric emanating from the likes of brainiacs like Bolton, Zinke, Mitchell, Pompeo, Nuland, McCain, and just about every other US spokesperson, reeks with desperation. They know they are headed down the proverbial toilet of twilight empires. And you know what desperate people do – stupid (and dangerous) things.
“free market competition”. LoL
As expected from the world’s no.1 exceptionally rotten criminal entity.
ameriKKKa is an existential threat to not only China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, etc; it’s an existential threat to the rest of the world.
The rest will never be in peace unless ameriKKKa thoroughly collapses.
All the problems in the world boil down to one fact: that the US deep state thinks the whole belongs to the US.
The US is 15,000 miles away from the Eurasian landmass, so it should not have any business to conduct malignant activities against normal, commercial and security relations between Russia, China and the Eurasian countries. Russia and China are neighbours to these countries and they have every right to have normal relations with countries in in Eurasia.
The US is suffering the psychopathology of a gangster mentality creating destruction and chaos around the world
The ‘psychopathology of the gangster’ has been the USA’s modus operandi since at least 1776.
As always, Escobar is as enlightening as he is entertaining. But how do Xi/Putin bring this monster down before things get really ugly?
The hostile powers that will dominate Europe, China and Russian Federation, are presently in the manufacture stage of Nazi mimicking propaganda plus the total destruction of innocent, ancient, sovereign, Syria as the drama the propaganda needs to be believed. The US support of the genocide of Yemen is seldom mentioned but is part of years of the US normalising genocide since the end of WW11. The pathologically insane Prince of the Saudi family will remain in power just not be welcome in the West. I think that The Saudi king just sent America 100,000
million or maybe billion dollars to pay for the slaughtered US journalist. Khashoggi. Dismembered alive.
”The commercial and industrial demonization of China reached a paroxysm with Vice-President Mike Pence accusing China of ’reckless harassment’ trying to ’malign’ Trump’s credibility and even being the top US election meddler /…/ ”
The horseshit about this or that country meddling in US elections assumes wrongly that US elections are something important, which they are absolutely not. Further, Pindo arrogance postulates that there is no genuine anti-American contempt and/or ridicule — let alone any justified such emotions — prevalent outside the Exceptionals’ and Indispensables’ home territory. The election meddling meme is just a piece of self-invented nonsense serving as ”proof” (Pindo style, mind you) of selfsame Pindos’ fabulous ”democracy” allegedly coveted by all the world’s non-Exceptional, dispensable countries, peoples, and leaders.
Still, it’s a most promising sign that more evil-doers are implicated in this meddling business. More and more adversaries lining up right in front of the US.
”Even before the Pentagon report, it was clear that the Trump administration’s number one goal in relation to China was to ultimately cut off extended US corporate supply chains and re-implant them – along with tens of thousands of jobs – back into the US.”
I usually agree in full with Pepe, but the above verdict of his constitutes an exception to this rule. Put bluntly, Trump personifies corporate greed, and even though he might be Pindo president his regime is in no position whatsoever to dent neoliberal orthodoxy (assuming there was some genuine interest in doing that to begin with). The only possibility that would allow shifting any manufacturing jobs to the US under prevalent neoliberal religious hegemony would be to pay substantially lower wages — a fatal blow to Joe and Jane six pack’s sense of superiority as labour aristocracy. It’s not just worth the political risks. Better feed them anti-Chinese, anti-Muslim, and anti-Mexican paranoia.
‘a fatal blow to Joe and Jane six pack’s sense of superiority as labour aristocracy.’
Its the classic double bind dilemma, stuck between a rock and a hard place without the imagination to even consider alternative solutions.
When the penny drops, as it will, it will be as Bush the 1st predicted, lamppost time.
The American Empire will instinctively demonize any country that even remotely stands in the way of American Full Spectrum Dominance of the planet–whether that be military (like Russia), economic (like China), political (like Cuba or Venezuela), or even religious (like Iran).
This is what America’s increasingly unhinged Two Minutes of Hate against China and Russia are really about: vilifying opposition to America’s malignant vision of a unipolar US World Order.
All other stated rationales are American pretexts and deceptions.
Well .. this Transatlantic Zio Anglosaxon drive has been in place since the famous Article by Halford Mackinder : ” The Geographical Pivot of History ” published April 1904 which accompanied the Japanese Russian War declared February 1904 , financed and supported by Zio Anglosaxon Banking Interests . Policies which have been detrimental to the TRUE Interests of Europa and Russia … but Beneficial to the Zio Anglosaxon Financial Overlords ruling Great Britain and the USA … Policies which led to the Disastrous Bolshevik Coup against a prosperous Czar Russia , WW 1 and the destructiion of prosperous Germany . directly leading to WW 2 and the Destruction of Europe as well as lost Centuries in the development of Russia , costing Millions of European and Russian Lives , often the most corageous and brilliant Lives on all sides of the Conflict and War .
On one point i do disagree with Pepe Escobar .. and the Narrative… I find it legitimate .. to try to repatriate the European and American Industries which led by the greed of Western Multinational Companies betrayed their Homelands and their Common People by transferring Industrial Know How and Workplaces from their Origin in the Western World to Asia … a Process without which China would not have been in the Position it is in .. today . For a long time more than 50 % of the Industries of China were owned by Western Multinationals.. I have no precise numbers for the percentages of this .. today …
https://www.iwp.edu/docLib/20131016_MackinderTheGeographicalJournal.pdf
mod-to note: Caps have been revised; Please, no use of caps (see moderation policy rule #1) to avoid being sent to trash.
The Mackinder gost again again.