Trump’s Looming War With China…Ain’t Gonna Happen
If there’s one thing the Iran War has taught us – with its terrifyingly destructive hypersonic missiles, its record-time eviction of the U.S. from the Gulf and torching of all U.S. bases – it’s that a war with China would be ten times worse. Because who do you think supplied Tehran with all that scarifying military hardware and the unbeatable Beidou satellite data on U.S. bases and troops? Beijing, that’s who. Even though on March 28, China halted its ships exiting Hormuz. Did the Iranians warn them that things were about to go south in a big way or did the U.S. make China an offer it couldn’t refuse, i.e. avoid Hormuz or we zap your tankers? How long will Beijing tolerate this? The Chinese could begin strangling rare earths to the U.S. at any moment. Then keep your ears open as U.S. weapons producers scream.
Besides, how, exactly, would a U.S. assault on China go down? I’ll tell you in two words: It wouldn’t. Our vaunted aircraft carriers, which couldn’t get close to Iran’s coasts and still got hit, would have to lurk even further away from China, and even then, they’d still be sitting ducks. One of them suffered from a supposed laundry fire as it “approached” Iran; well, “approaching” China that would be a laundry fire tornado. So our multi-billion-dollar aircraft carriers would be sidelined – unless we wanted them destroyed. Which raises the question – how would we get close enough to the Chinese coast to attack it? All evidence suggests this would be much more difficult than zeroing in on Iran’s coast – and we couldn’t even do that.
So maybe we’ll use our famous stealth technology? Ho, ho! As China Pulse recently posted on X: “Goodbye to American air superiority. Chinese defense company Jingan Technology announced that its system intercepted radio signals emitted by a U.S. Northrop Grumman B-2Spirit stealth bomber over Iran…Jingan’s system successfully captured radio signals emitted by the aircraft as it returned from a mission in Iran.” This was before the news that Iran shot down several F-35s – the biggest stealth bomber boondoggle of all time. If Iran can “see” F-35s and China can “see” B-2s, the supposed stealth advantage of these weapons dissolves, though I must say any advantage to the F-35 was always opaque to me, what with its multiple takeoff and landing accidents and its finicky need for constant stroking and care.
Meanwhile there’s the American weapons production problem. Unlike the Five-Thousand-Year-Old-Civilization, we here in the U.S. don’t actually produce much anymore. Oh, we create financial instruments, but not much actual stuff, due to our thoroughly financialized version of late capitalism – unlike China’s industrial capitalism. What does this mean for war? Happily, that the U.S. can’t really wage it. At least not as effectively as the generally pacific Eurasian behemoths.
Because unlike China, our weapons production system doesn’t operate 24.7. We have arms manufacturers sure, but they’re not on the same sked as the ones in China. And then there are the rare earths and Beijing’s near monopoly of them. The U.S. can’t make weapons without rare earths. But it gets them all from…drumroll, where? You guessed it – China. And what do you think happens to that supply of rare earths if Washington attacks Beijing? It dries up instantly, as it did when Trump threatened tariffs – causing him to back off tout de suite. So the U.S. depends on China for its weapons – not a good arrangement for a hyper-capitalist terror state, because it’s essentially planning to bite the hand that feeds it. When it bites, that food will just…stop.
So the smart money would be on the U.S. ditching its plans to attack China over Taiwan and focusing instead on bullying tiny countries like Cuba in its backyard. Since it’s already shown it can’t beat Iran. But Cuba – yep, that’s where the smart money is; or so you’d think, but you would be wrong. Not that Donald “Blockade Barbarian” Trump intends to leave the Cuban commies alone – oh, no way. But that’s not the martial focus of the imperial people who really count. “Iran Is Real, But Defense Techies Still Prefer War Gaming China” reads a Responsible Statecraft headline March 27. If your response to that isn’t “uh-oh,” then all I’ve got to say is there is something wrong with you.
From a recent forum, “one can’t help but conclude that Silicon Valley’s founders are far more comfortable wargaming a confrontation with China than tying their mission to an actual hot war in the Middle East that has a rising death toll and no clear exit strategy.” Some attendees claimed the Iran Was “was just a distraction from American’s main adversary: China. As one weapons company founder said: ‘If the U.S. is sending its munitions stockpile to the Middle East that undercuts deterrence in the Pacific.’”
The view from la la land, i.e. the Trump white house, is different. There, the Washington Post reported March 16, the Trump-Xi Jinping summit got postponed because el jefe wants Xi to help open Hormuz. Ain’t gonna happen. Who does Trump think gives Tehran the satellite data on U.S. troops and bases, data that effectively helps Iran keeps the Strait closed? Duh, China. And whose ships does the great mind in the Oval Office think are allowed to pass through the Strait while western ones aren’t? Uh, Chinese and Russian ships – oh and vessels of any country that expels the Israeli and U.S. ambassadors. And if Washington (ahem, Jerusalem), won’t let those ships pass, I predict turbulence ahead for the Empire. Meanwhile, white house megabrains have delayed Trump’s March trip to China to pressure Beijing to send warships to help the U.S. reopen the Strait. Well, be sure to send me a memo on how that is going. Beijing, I bet was very impressed by this delay (not). Incidentally, Beijing – unlike the white house – “had not publicly confirmed the March 31-April 2 visit.” Ouch.
Then airhead commerce secretary Scott Bessent took to the airwaves to clarify that this delay is not due to Trump insisting “China police the Strait of Hormuz.” One Wendy Cultler, former U.S. trade negotiator told us, “this evolution in explanations seems to be an effort to lessen tensions with Beijing by providing a more generic non-China-focused reason for any postponement.” Anything you say, Wendy, but from my perch in the peanut gallery it looks like Don Corleone in the white house still smarts from attempts to slap tariffs on the Five-Thousand-Year-Old Civilization, which because of its rare earth monopoly proved to be tariff-proof.
According to Sino-expert Brian Berletic on X March 13, the actual U.S. objective regarding Iran maybe “can’t be said out loud (destroying the global economy, hoping to kill off China, while only weakening the U.S. in the process).” This would fit with strangling Beijing’s oil lifeline from Caracas, though whether it amounts to a coherent, unified policy is doubtful. Berletic sez not exactly: “The whole point of the U.S. invading Venezuela, attacking Iran, strangling China technologically for years is to strangle China completely.” But “even with a U.S.-imposed blockade in place, China is likely to achieve energy independence in 5-10 years albeit at much greater cost – at which point the U.S. will have lost its remaining leverage over China.”
Who exactly is the villain here? Well, it’s NOT the country that donated 15600 tons of rice to Cuba during a barbaric U.S.-imposed blockade that is killing infants in hospital NICUs; that country was China. The monster here is the country that initiated an unprovoked, stupendously stupid war on Iran, whose purpose, again per Berletic on March 27 “is toppling Iran and stopping the flow of energy from Iran and the rest of the region to China.”
Will the gaggle of Trump imbeciles succeed in throttling that flow of energy to Beijing? Doubtful. Because even if they interdict vessels headed to China in the Strait…there’s always Russian oil and gas. So if the Trump gangsters can’t block energy to China, will they at long last do what Washington has been threatening since maybe the Obama administration and its pivot to Asia, with an eye to a military assault? Well, let’s see how their attack on Iran goes. Last I checked, it was a big loser, with Eurasian behemoths China and Russia assisting Iran, which now wants nukes, and with North Korea offering to open its arsenal to Tehran, and you know what that includes – nukes.
So Trump’s idiotic Iran War looks like a flop. And if Washington can’t beat Tehran, please, pray tell, how will it arm-wrestle bigger, stronger, scarier Beijing into submission?
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