{"id":220625,"date":"2020-11-22T08:27:26","date_gmt":"2020-11-22T08:27:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=220625"},"modified":"2020-11-24T07:06:58","modified_gmt":"2020-11-24T07:06:58","slug":"beijing-sends-biden-a-warning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=220625","title":{"rendered":"Beijing Sends Biden a Warning"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pat Buchanan \u2013 The Unz Review Nov 20, 2020<\/strong><\/h1>\n
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Click to enlarge<\/p><\/div>\n

Because of Donald Trump, Vice President Joe Biden thundered during the campaign, the U.S. \u201cis more isolated in the world than we\u2019ve ever been \u2026 America First has made America alone.\u201d<\/p>\n

Biden promised to repair relations with America\u2019s allies. And he appears to have gone some distance to do so in the congratulatory phone call he received from Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga of Japan.<\/p>\n

According to Suga, during the brief call, Biden said Article V of the U.S.-Japan Mutual Security Treaty of 1960 covers the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea, islands Japan controls but China claims as its own.<\/p>\n

\u201cPresident-elect Biden gave me a commitment that Article 5 of the US-Japan security treaty applies to the Senkaku Islands,\u201d said a delighted Suga. And what does Article V commit us to?<\/p>\n

\u201cEach Party recognizes that an armed attack against either Party in the territories under the administration of Japan would be dangerous to its own peace and safety and declares that it would act to meet the common danger\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

Message: The U.S. will treat a Chinese attempt to take the Senkakus, tiny rocky outcroppings in the East China Sea, as an attack on the USA, and America will fight China to secure Japan\u2019s right to keep the islands.<\/p>\n

Biden has removed any ambiguity that may have existed and given Tokyo a U.S. war guarantee that covers the Senkakus.<\/p>\n

The response of China\u2019s foreign ministry was to angrily lay claim to the islands they call the Diaoyus as \u201cinherently Chinese\u201d and to dismiss the U.S.-Japan security treaty as a \u201cproduct of the Cold War.\u201d<\/p>\n

This diplomatic clash comes as Henry Kissinger was warning the Bloomberg Economic Forum: \u201cAmerica and China are now drifting increasingly toward confrontation, and they\u2019re conducting their diplomacy in a confrontational way. \u2026 The danger is that some crisis will occur that will go beyond rhetoric into actual military conflict.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kissinger continued: \u201cUnless there is some basis for some cooperative action, the world will slide into a catastrophe comparable to World War I.\u201d<\/p>\n

World War I was the worst calamity in Western civilization \u2014 until the next war to which it led inexorably: World War II.<\/p>\n

Last week, we also learned that during Chinese military exercises in August, the People\u2019s Liberation Army fired two missiles thousands of kilometers from the mainland that struck a targeted merchant ship sailing in the South China Sea. The missiles were the DF-21D and DF-26B.<\/p>\n

Both missiles are known as \u201caircraft carrier killers.\u201d<\/p>\n

The U.S. routinely moves its carriers through these waters to underscore our contention that neither the South China Sea nor the Paracel and Spratly Islands within belong to China as Beijing claims.<\/p>\n

Consistent with China\u2019s toughening policies toward its neighbors, four members of the opposition in the Hong Kong legislature were ousted last week, which led to wholesale resignations that have left Hong Kong\u2019s governing council under the total control of pro-Beijing hardliners.<\/p>\n

The era of \u201cone country, two systems\u201d for Hong Kong, dating to the transfer of sovereignty by Great Britain, appears to be over. The dissidents and demonstrators who filled the streets just months ago appear to have been routed, and the city\u2019s future looks less like the Hong Kong of yesterday than the Beijing of tomorrow.<\/p>\n

These actions are consistent with the hard lines Beijing has taken on its \u201creeducation camps\u201d for Uighurs in Xinjiang and its border dispute with India in the Himalayas.<\/p>\n

While Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has lately sought to round up like-minded nations to stand up to China \u2014 Japan, Australia, India \u2014 there appears to be a reluctance, rooted in uncertainty as to whether Communist China or democratic America represents the future of Asia.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s \u201cAmerica First\u201d policy asked the most basic of questions:<\/p>\n

Are all these half-century old alliances, these commitments to go to war for Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and the Philippines, as in Joe Biden\u2019s estimation, assets to be nurtured and even expanded to cover more territories like the Senkakus? Or are they liabilities that could drag us into wars the American people do not want to fight?<\/p>\n

While we reject China\u2019s claim to all the reefs, rocks and islets in the South China Sea and her claim to the Senkakus in the East China Sea, should we be obligated to go to war over these tiny parcels of land, especially when their legitimate owners are unwilling to fight for them?<\/p>\n

Biden repudiates an \u201cAmerica First\u201d foreign policy that puts U.S. security, sovereignty, liberty and vital interests above the interests of any other nation.<\/p>\n

But what is it, then, that Biden puts first?<\/p>\n

Globalism. A New World Order. A Crusade for Global Democracy.<\/p>\n

Been there, done that.<\/p>\n

Sixty years ago when Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy faced off, the foreign policy debate was over whether the U.S. should fight Mao\u2019s China to defend the tiny offshore islands of Quemoy and Matsu.<\/p>\n

Kennedy thought not. Kennedy won.<\/p>\n

Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of \u201cNixon\u2019s White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pat Buchanan explains that IF Biden moves into the White House he will be more likely to commit to military confrontation over one particular territorial dispute than Trump <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[78,61],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-220625","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-china","category-Commentary"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220625","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=220625"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220625\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":220774,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220625\/revisions\/220774"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=220625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=220625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=220625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}