The Duran Podcast - WSJ: US actively preparing for war with China

Episode Date: June 2, 2024

WSJ: US actively preparing for war with China

All right, Alexander, let's talk about what is happening in China with Taiwan, in the Philippines, as well, because it looks like we are moving quickly towards some sort of conflict between the United States and China. And we have an article here from the Daily Mail. but I believe that the article originally ran on Wall Street Journal, yeah, on Wall Street Journal, but let me read you what the Daily Mail has for a title. America is actively preparing for war with China overgrowing fears of Taiwan invasion and crucial piece of kit that could decide conflict hasn't even been a bit. Built Marines from the U.S. and the Philippines carried out ominous war games.

Leaders from China holds a significant advantage in the region. And all of this is about an invasion into Taiwan, according to the Daily Mail. And it is indeed from the Wall Street Journal. And the Wall Street Journal's article has the title, America's New Island fighters are preparing for conflict of stones throw away from Taiwan. Okay. So what is going on here, Alexander? Yeah, I mean, it's an absolutely, I mean, these, these are terrifying articles.

They talk about the US training now actively for a war with China. And the impression these articles give is that the United States, or at least the US military, expects this war to happen. It's not like, you know, the Cold War when, you know, the Soviets were on one side and the Americans were, the, we're on. were on the other, but there was a well-understood line, which neither side was going to cross, and they didn't want to get into a military confrontation with each other, so the war that way was avoided. That's not the situation this time at all. This is a situation where the Americans are actively training for a war that they seriously expect is going to take place. And the articles give incredible detail about how US troops are training on,

islands in the Philippines. The kid that they're missing at the moment is a kid that will enable them to move from one island to the other island hop basically, keeping under the radar, as they imagine, of the Chinese, so that the Chinese don't know quite where they are. Some of these islands, these Filipino islands, are apparently within sight of Taiwan itself. So it's all connected to this. And, well, the story. of the United States and the US military gearing up for war with China. And the issue is supposed to be Taiwan and it's all about a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. The Chinese, of course, have just carried out huge exercises around Taiwan. They've deployed their fleet around Taiwan to rehearse a naval

blockade of Taiwan. So this is the Chinese response. And the events that are catalyzing all of this, the immediate events that are catalyzing all of this is the inauguration of the new president of Taiwan, who comes from the, I would say, pro-independence wing of Taiwanese politics, the side that is supported by the United States and which ultimately seeks secession by Taiwan from China and an outright independence of Taiwan declaration of independence from China.

So all of these claims, all these assurances from the United States that this isn't the agenda, that that isn't the plan, that the United States still supports a one China policy. Clearly, according to these articles, that really isn't so. The United States seems to have committed itself to defending Taiwan from a Chinese invasion. There is no official publicly known treaty that requires the United States to do that. But it seems that is the

situation that we are now in. Biden has talked about that on several occasions. I'm starting to think that there is a secret document or agreement of some kind that has been drawn up between Taiwan and the United States, in which without the American people knowing and without Congress approving, probably the United States has made a commitment to protect Taiwan. Otherwise, why all of these exercises. And the Chinese for their part, they made it absolutely clear that Taiwan for them is the absolute most important red line. Xi Jinping told Blinken recently and Biden also, by the way, that Taiwan is for China the single most important red line of all, which must not be crossed. If it is, if there's a declaration of independence, then China will not

stand sit on its hands. So, you know, we are seeing each side now rehearsing for war. And what makes this, I think, particularly worrying is that the United States is committing itself to a war against China in a place which both of these articles acknowledge, the Chinese have the inbuilt advantage of being very close to their homeland and to their forward basis. And at the same time, against an adversary, China, which is going stronger by the year. Every month now, we read of more Chinese warships being launched. China accounts for around half the world's shipbuilding, apparently. The United States cannot build ships at even a fraction of the speed that China can.

China has just launched its first big aircraft carrier, supercarrier, comparable in most respects to American supercarriers. They're building more destroyers, which are comparable to the American Aegis class destroyers. So the military balance is shifting very rapidly against the United States in this precise area where the Americans have made this commitment. commitment. And we've just also getting reports that the Chinese are building up their nuclear forces at immense speed. They're getting help from the Russians. And Putin has been talking about that today. So has Lavrov. Lavrov is basically saying that the Chinese and the Russians now are working together. He's done a massive interview discussing those very things. And I, I, I, I, I wonder whether, given the shift in the military balance and the speed of which is happening,

there won't be some people in the United States who will say, well, we've got to take action fast. We've got to have Taiwan declare independence very soon. Perhaps as soon as this year, if Biden wins the election, or even if Trump wins the election. because if we wait too long, if we delay this one year or two years or longer, the military balance will have shifted so far to the Chinese in China's favor, that the window for us to be able to do that and to secure up Taiwan's independence will have finally and irrevocably closed.

So I think this is a very, very dangerous situation. Again, it's been overlooked and it perhaps explains articles which are starting to appear in the European media from American well-connected American officials or ex-officials like Eldridge Colby writing in the Financial Times, in which he says that the United States before long is going to have to scale back its commitments in Europe because it's now facing this challenge in. with China in Asia, which it has to meet, and it cannot be strong simultaneously in Europe and in Asia in the way that it would want, you know, it would want to be. So, you know, we can see that a whole situation has been prepared now for an, you know, an actual military conflict between the United States and China. I have to say, I find this crazy. I find this. I find this. It's dangerous, but there it is. Yeah, but I mean, how do they do it?

They're already bogged down in Project Ukraine, the United States. The entire Collective West is bogged down in Ukraine, many countries in the collective West, many NATO allies that have been demilitarized. How does the U.S. pull this off? Because the Europeans, they aren't ready to take the baton and, you know, and run with Project Ukraine on their own. That's obvious. How does the United States take on Russia and China at the same time? And in Ukraine, we have moved from, or we are moving from a covert proxy type of war to a very public conflict between Russia and the United States.

Now they're going to do what. They're going to take on China. This is not going to work. It's a disaster. It's a disaster. It's an over-commitment's crisis on an absolutely epic scale. And it's extraordinary, by the way, to say this, that the people who are the advocates of war with China are the realists, because they're not in any true sense, the realists. But they're more realistic in one respect, because they're the people who are saying, look, we can't be strong in Europe and we can't be strong in Asia at one at the same time. We have to prioritize and we have to make a choice. And China is the greater challenge, so we must focus against the Chinese first. Now, there are two ways that the United States is going to deal with the situation in Ukraine.

The one is to escalate and to hope that that somehow tips the balance and wins the war against the Russians. And I think there are plenty of advocates of this. And we've seen them. They're the people who want missile strikes deep inside Russia. There are people like Elliot Cohen who write terrifying articles in foreign affairs talking about unrestricted war against Russia, in effect by Ukraine, but in a way that cannot be done without the United States, pressure of that kind to bring the Russians to heal in some fashion,

which is, of course, not going to happen. And I think then there are the others. Eldridge Colby and Co. Who say, well, look, we got this problem in Ukraine. We can't, of course, just abandon Ukraine. We've got to be honest with the Ukrainians. There's not much more we can do. But the Europeans should step in and they should take over

so that we can concentrate on China instead. Focus on China. Hope that the Europeans and the Ukrainians can hold out. but remember people like Colby come from deep inside the deep state they're not elected and they may be saying to themselves if I'm sure they are saying to themselves well we've got this president at the moment Mr Biden he's very obsessed with Russia maybe soon though he'll be out of the way we can get another president in he'll be more focused on China instead we can start to lever off leverage our forces

back to the Asia-Pacific region. And at the same time, at the same time, we need to move fast with Taiwan, get a declaration of independence from the new president as soon as possible, present the Chinese with a fait accompli. And if the Chinese challenge us, well, we can fight them on relatively equal terms,

which we might not be able to do in one or two years time. And if the Chinese back down, that will trigger a political crisis in Beijing and the fall of Xi Jinping. And I think that's exactly, that's the kind of thinking that a certain faction

within the Pentagon especially is advocated. Sounds like the same playbook with Project Ukraine. Yeah, absolutely. Everything you said, you could just swap out Taiwan for Ukraine and China for Russia. You get pretty much Project Ukraine, 2021, 22. Yeah.

Until this year, now this is an important thing to understand. Until this particular year, there have been two, the entire debate in Washington has been between two types of neocons. The anti-Russia neocons who have been in the ascendant and Blinken and Sullivan and Biden himself. and of course Victoria Newland and people like that that's what they are and they've got the strategy smashed Russia

isolate China that's how we're going to win this great conflict with Beijing but really viscerally they want to smash Russia that's their overriding visceral concern because they loathe the place and they loathe Putin himself

so there's the anti-Russia neocons and then there's the anti-Chinaeacombs. That's been the only meaningful debate that has been taking place in Washington. Now, this year, in Congress, we have for the first time started to see a genuine peace camp start to coalesce,

people like J.D. Vance, Marjorie Taylor Green, people of that kind. But they are still a very, small minority and they're not influential within the wider political class and they've not been able to win i mean they're not they're not part of the arguments or the real debates that are taking place now what is happening is that the anti-china hawks are seeing the project ukraine isn't working they're saying, look, China is getting stronger, even as we're bogged down in Ukraine. The time has come to focus on China instead.

They're putting forward their arguments. They're conducting their exercises. They're preparing for war with China. And they're making their voices heard as they see that Ukraine is going down to defeat. But the argument is not played out. And I have to say this. I don't think it will ever be played out. I think much more plausibly,

we're going to end up in a situation where the neocons, and I think the majority of the neocons, are still viscerally strong anti-Russia harks, are going to lead the United States into a conflict simultaneously. In China and Europe, they're not going to be able to back off.

In either place, they will want to escalate in both places, and they're leading to the United States into a strategic disaster. I mean, a war with China is a strategic disaster anyway, but they're going to compound it because they're going to continue with the continued strategic disaster, which is the war in Ukraine.

It's not going to work out. No, it's not. It's not a good plan anyway. Are the plans? I see, one of the fundamental problems is that, I mean, there are sort of strategies there are, you know, ask the US Marine Corps to come up with a plan and how to fight China in the islands in the Philippines.

And they will do it because that's their job. But if you're talking about, you know, strategic planning, the sort of things that the political leadership is supposed to do, I get the sense there's any real plan at all. I get the sense that, you know, we've got a series of reactive move. moves by a deeply factionalized political class, determined in one way or another, to sustain American strategic global dominance, unable to admit to itself that that has already passed and still drunk on the illusion that America can indeed be powerful simultaneously in all sorts

of places. And I think that that's, that's, that's the problem. That's the, that's the, that's the crisis. And because all of these debates happen in private without any real discussion, or at least without any open discussion, there's no real way to counter this, because unless you are part of the inner group that, you know, within think tank clans and, you know, the arms industry and all of that within which these discussions stay place, you're simply not heard. And the only way you can become a part of that inner group is by becoming a neocon yourself. So this is, this is, I think, the, this is, I think, the nature of the crisis. You have to convince themselves that they are still a powerful country in the world, the most powerful country in the world, by taking

on the other two peers, peer powers. You know, we did this program with Dimitri Orloff, and he actually brought up the topic of Spain, and 17th century Spain, which is a topic I studied exhaustively as a student. I led lots of books. I tried to learn Spanish at one time. I didn't get a very far with it. But, you know, I became very, very familiar with the policy debates that were going on in Madrid at that time. Spain was the most powerful country in Europe by far in 1600. It's positioned relative to other countries in Europe, analogous to the United States, or perhaps even stronger. But Spain increasingly overextended, fighting wars in all sorts of directions. And you had people in Spain who understood that and who also understood that the Spanish economy was collapsing with,

you know, major inflation crisis and all of this. And they were coming up always with reform plans and proposals for retrenchment. And what consistently happened is that those people lost every one of those debates because their opponents, the ones who insisted that Spain must commit itself towards in Italy, in Germany, in the Netherlands, against England, against everybody all the time, in every place. They were saying that any retreat from that would somehow be a betrayal of the idea of Spain. It would be somehow, you know, Spain becoming a normal country. And then what happened eventually is that in the 1640s, the burden became too great. And there was suddenly a dramatic and extreme collapse. I mean, defeats in battles because the army became

exhausted and lost its technological edge, and you can see that with the United States, which had previously had over all the other armies. And on top of that, within Spain itself, growing unrest, and there was eventually uprisings in Catalonia and Portugal, and the Spanish monarchy almost fell. So eventually, because there was this total dogmatic refusal to accept reality, the crisis was brought on, which all those reformers were warning about, and which all of those advocates, the sort of Spanish neocons of the era, were seeking to avert by escalating in all of these other places. And it seems to me the pattern is reproducing itself exactly with the contemporary, with the modern United States. All right, we will end it there.

The durand.orgia.com. We are on Rumble Odyssey, bitch, you, telegram, rock fin, and Twitter X, and go to the Duran shop. Use the code, Get Ready 15, get 15% off all merch. Take care.