By Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.

February 6, 2023

You might think that provoking nuclear war with Russia would be enough for brain-dead Biden and his gang of neocon controllers. But it isn’t. They want nuclear war with China too. The Chinese government regards Taiwan as part of China, but it hasn’t tried to take it over militarily. Biden decided this isn’t good enough. He warned the Chinese that if they use force against Taiwan, the US will use force against them. This risks nuclear war.

Michael D. Swaine, an authority of Chinese-American relations who has advised the State Department, explains what is going on in an article that was published in The Diplomat, January 23: “The past year has seen a significant escalation in tension between Washington and Beijing over Taiwan, with many strategists warning that China seems poised to invade the island. In order to preserve U.S. interests, they argue, Washington must rely primarily, if not entirely, on military deterrence.

But this strategy would almost certainly backfire. Rather than preventing a war with China over Taiwan, a policy centered on military deterrence could spark one.

Those who advocate an approach based almost exclusively on deterrence believe China aspires to replace the United States as the dominant regional power in Asia through largely military means. Seizing Taiwan by force or intimidation, they say, is a necessary first step toward subjugating other Asian nations, including U.S. allies like Japan. They believe that once it has gained broader military access to the Pacific by controlling Taiwan and dominating other nearby powers, China could then go on to threaten Hawaii and the continental United States.

According to this analysis, the only option for the United States is to double down on its military presence in the region, push its allies to greatly increase their defense spending and support for the U.S. stance, and move closer to Taiwan both politically and militarily, making it a de facto security ally in Asia. The clear implication is that Taiwan, as a critical strategic location, must never be unified with China.

But this approach to the Taiwan situation is based on a very dubious analysis of both Taiwan’s purported strategic value and China’s regional intentions.

In fact, despite the views of some American and Chinese defense analysts today, historically, neither Washington nor Beijing have ever regarded Taiwan as a key strategic linchpin in the region. For China, reunification with Taiwan is above all else an issue of territorial integrity and national pride; as such, it is critical to the legitimacy of the Communist Party regime in the eyes of its people. For the United States, Taiwan is linked to Washington’s credibility as a loyal supporter of a democratic friend and an ally to others such as Japan and South Korea.

From a purely military perspective, it is highly problematic to assert that control over Taiwan would give Beijing decisive leverage over Japan, South Korea, or other Asian countries, much less the United States. And there is no clear evidence to show that China believes its security depends on militarily defeating or intimidating its Asian neighbors.

Moreover, while some Asian countries are certainly hedging against China’s growing military power and the danger of a Sino-American conflict by increasing their defense spending, the region as a whole is more worried about economic issues such as recovering from the pandemic, overcoming recession, and promoting sustainable growth through continued close economic ties with both the United States and China.

For the United States, a deterrence policy predicated on keeping Taiwan separate from China for strategic reasons is totally incompatible with its one China policy, whereby Washington opposes any unilateral move toward Taiwan independence, maintains strategic ambiguity regarding its defense of Taiwan, and remains open to the possibility of peaceful, uncoerced unification. This position remains the core of the understanding reached in 1972, which formed the basis of the normalization of Sino-American relations, in which the U.S. acknowledged the Chinese position that Taiwan is part of China while Beijing stressed that peaceful unification would be a top priority of its cross-strait policy.

If the United States were to abrogate that critical understanding by, for example, extending diplomatic recognition to Taiwan, or making the island into a full–fledged security ally (as the deterrence-only approach advocates), China would without doubt respond by dropping its part of the understanding and proceed to reverse any such U.S. actions by all means necessary, including military force. The PRC government’s legitimacy in the eyes of its citizens would simply not survive if Beijing failed to respond to such a basic challenge to its nationalist credentials.

Equally significant, China’s leaders would almost certainly resort to force even if the U.S. enjoyed superior military deterrence capabilities, a point that is apparently not fully grasped by proponents of the deterrence-only approach. Given the incredibly high political stakes involved, even a failed effort to forcibly prevent the loss of Taiwan would be viewed in Beijing as favorable to doing nothing. The latter would almost certainly result in a severe domestic crisis, putting at risk not only the personal positions of China’s leaders but the stability of the entire PRC regime.

The Biden administration seems to be inviting such desperate Chinese calculations with its erosion of the one China policy and its growing reliance on aspects of the deterrence-only approach to Taiwan.

President Joe Biden has said repeatedly that the United States will intervene militarily if China attacks Taiwan, thereby treating the island as a sovereign security ally. He has also asserted that Taiwan alone must decide whether it should be independent, which denies the long-standing U.S. stance of opposition to any unilateral move toward Taiwan independence.

The government has also designated Taiwan as a non-NATO U.S. ally, giving it a status similar to sovereign nations with which it has formal security ties. It has sent senior U.S. officials to Taiwan under quasi-official conditions and sought to pressure countries against shifting their diplomatic representation from Taiwan to China, despite Washington having taken exactly the same action in 1979. And one senior U.S. defense official recently indicated in congressional testimony that Taiwan is indeed a critical U.S. strategic node central to its entire defense position in the Western Pacific, implying that the United States would be opposed to Taiwan uniting with China under any circumstances.”

It does not help matters that a U.S. General predicted on January 27 that war with China was likely by 2025: “A U.S. general said in a memo on Friday that he believes the country will be at war with China by 2025, according to several outlets that obtained a copy of the communication.

‘I hope I am wrong,’ Gen. Mike Minihan, a four-star Air Force general who leads the Air Mobility Command (AMC), said in the memo to troops under his command, which was first reported by NBC News.

However, he added: ‘My gut tells me we will fight in 2025. [Chinese President] Xi [Jinping] secured his third term and set his war council in October 2022. Taiwan’s presidential elections are in 2024 and will offer Xi a reason. United States’ presidential elections are in 2024 and will offer Xi a distracted America. Xi’s team, reason, and opportunity are all aligned for 2025.’

Minihan told AMC personnel to accept some increased risk in training as they prepare for the ‘China fight’ and sometime in February to ‘fire a clip into a 7-meter target with the full understanding that unrepentant lethality matters most. Aim for the head.’”

You might ask, how can brain-dead Biden be so stupid that he provokes war with both China and Russia? But that is just the point. Biden wants to block any challenge to American global hegemony. As the Strategic Culture Foundation noted nearly two years ago, “Similar to the Ukraine, the Biden administration’s rhetoric and conduct is serving to fuel an ever-more provocative stance by the Taiwanese leaders. This week, a senior official warned that the island’s forces would shoot down Chinese aircraft that approach the territory. This is nothing but a flagrant challenge to China’s territorial integrity and sovereignty. As in the case of the Ukraine and Russia, it is Washington’s words and actions that are inflaming the tensions between Taiwan and China. Yet the Americans accuse others of ‘aggression’ and claim to be providing ‘defense’.

The bigger picture for all of this is, of course, the geopolitical great game which Washington sees as a zero-sum challenge. Strategists in Washington have made it abundantly clear that the American imperative for pursuing its ambitions for global power and dominance is to prevent the rise of Russia and China and a multipolar world order. . . It is therefore logical, if not execrable, that Washington appears to be accelerating on a collision course against Russia and China. The speed and recklessness is correlated with the growing sense that the American Empire is in terminal demise. The Ukraine and Taiwan are providing the U.S. with a two-prong attack against Russia and China and what Washington views as its last chance to grasp on to a world that is disappearing before its eyes. America’s reckless and delusional gambling is placing the world in an extremely dangerous situation. Its rulers and their political flunkies are flicking matches at a powder-keg.”

But if the US abandons its aggressive anti-China policy, doesn’t this also mean abandoning Taiwan? Pat Buchanan has the answer to this, in a column last September: “One wonders: If China invades and seizes Taiwanese-claimed and -occupied islands within sight of the Chinese coast, and Taiwan resists, what would Biden do?

In the Nixon-Kennedy campaign of 1960, JFK called it ‘unwise’ to take a risk of being dragged into war, which could lead to a world war, over islands like Quemoy and Matsu that were not strategically defensible.

If Beijing invaded and occupied islands a few miles right off its coast, and Taiwan resisted, would Biden send the Seventh Fleet to war with China?

The basic question raised by these Biden commitments to go to war with a China with a huge army and fleet, and in its own home region, is — why?

No U.S. president after Richard Nixon has challenged China’s claim that there is but ‘one China’ and Taiwan ‘is a part of China.’

How many battle deaths, how many war dead, are we willing to sacrifice to prevent Beijing taking political control of an island of 23 million Taiwanese 6,000 miles away from the United States?

We did not fight to prevent China from imposing its control on 7 million people of Hong Kong. Why then does the independence of 23 million Taiwanese justify a U.S. war with the world’s most populous nation?

And if we fought a war with China over Taiwan, what would be our long-term strategic goal?

Independence for Taiwan?

But did we not cede that in the 1970s with Nixon’s trip to China, his Shanghai Communique and Carter’s severing of relations with the Republic of China?”

We must do all we can to fight against brain-dead Biden’s efforts to start nuclear wars with Russia and China simultaneously.

The Coming Existential Threat: Do We Act in Common OR Is It Going To Be Every Man for Himself?

By Gilbert Doctorow via Gilbert Doctorow

I returned to Brussels on Sunday after a month of travels in exotic and warm lands south of the equator. The re-entry shock upon arrival in Belgium was a lot greater than the 27 degree Centigrade drop in outdoor air temperature. After a month of only very limited reception of Russian news, due to satellite issues and hotel service issues, last night I switched on Russian state television’s news and talk show “Sixty Minutes” on www.smotrim.ru and got a full blast of the current state of relations with the US, which are very close to Doomsday.

Allow me to share with you the key point, namely the soon to be announced changes to the Russian doctrine on first use of nuclear weapons and their new more precise red lines that have come about from the plans for Russia’s partition and destruction that seem to be aired daily on US television.

As usual, Yevgeny Popov, State Duma member and host of “Sixty Minutes,” put a lot of video segments from Western television up on the screen, including a lengthy statement by Lieutenant General Ben Hodges, former commander of all U.S. forces in Europe from 2014 to 2017, on how the Ukrainians must be given long range precision missiles for them to attack Russian Crimea and also further into the Russian heartland. The interview from which this declaration was made does not yet appear in Google search, but from interviews posted in 2022 it is clear that Hodges is no madman, and his statements must, as Popov said, be taken with utmost seriousness.

The context, of course, for the radical escalation now being discussed in the United States is the expectation of a massive Russian offensive to begin shortly as the anniversary of the Special Military Operation approaches. The imminent defeat of Ukrainian forces has focused minds in Washington.

One of the regular panelists on “Sixty Minutes” then faced the cameras directly and said that Russia’s nuclear doctrine is under revision in light of these aggressive plans being aired in the United States, so that Russia is headed towards a policy of ‘preventive’ tactical nuclear strikes, similar to what the United States has. Moreover, if Ukraine targets Crimea and heartland Russia, then Russia will respond according to plans now being laid down.

These plans foresee counter strikes against U.S military installations in Europe and in the Continental United States using hypersonic missiles.

The panelist calls for this threat of counter strikes in Europe and the US to be made public and explicit, so that no one is in doubt about what to expect from the Kremlin.

So here we are.

The Russians are stripping away the fiction of a proxy war and revealing the co-belligerent status of the US and its NATO allies in preparation for a kinetic war with NATO.

As our illustrious former President, a man of few words, would say: “Not good!”

Allow me also to share with my readership the bitter medicine that I just shared with our daughter: look for an escape hatch!

Either, as I fervently hope, there will be an anti-war movement in the USA, in Europe arising from the shock therapy news now developing with respect to the coming kinetic war between NATO and Russia, OR failing that, it will be every man for himself.

Back in 1937 there were Jews in Berlin who decided they could ride out the storm and stay put. There were others who took the first boats out, to England, to the US, to South America. All of us in the Northern Hemisphere now may be facing the same existential choice.

Gaeng Massaman Kai

This recipe is for Gaeng Massaman Kai. The “massaman” indicates that the recipe is of a “musselman” or islamic origin, and it probably owes something to early Portuguese influences, and is similar in concept to the “sour and hot” Goan style vindaloo dishes. By Thai standards this is usually a fairly mild curry, so I find it is a good starting point.

Two points should be made:

(1) the quantities are a guide only: if you like a spice use more, if you don’t, use less. If your favorite spice is missing, try adding some…

(2) the dish is cooked “when it is cooked”. The meat should be cooked until tender and the potatoes should be cooked thoroughly, but otherwise taste it and stop cooking when you are happy. As the British chef Keith Floyd remarked in a series about South East Asian cuisine, Thai charcoal burners don’t have thermostats. I would add that most Thai cooks have neither a wrist watch nor a clock in their kitchen (which is often the back yard of the house, or even the sidewalk in front of their door).

First you must prepare a massaman curry paste. This can be prepared in advance and stored in the fridge in a preserving jar for several weeks or even months.

Massaman Paste

• 10 to 20 dried red chiles
• 1 tablespoon ground coriander seed
• 1 teaspoon ground cumin
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon (from fresh bark)
• 1 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1 teaspoon ground star anise
• 1 teaspoon ground cardamom
• 1 teaspoon ground white pepper
• 4 tablespoons chopped shallots (i.e. the small red skinned onions)
• 4 to 6 tablespoons chopped garlic
• 2 (2-inch) pieces lemon grass stalk, sliced into thin rounds
• A cube about half an inch on a side of galangal root, roughly chopped
• 1 tablespoon kaffir lime skin (ordinary lime skin will do if you can’t get it)
• 1 tablespoon “kapi” (preserved shrimp paste – note this smells awful until after you cook it, but it is quite essential to the flavor)

To this you add a little salt: preferably about 1-2 teaspoons of fish sauce.

The galangal is roasted before use. The ground spices should preferably be fresh, in which case you should briefly toast them in a wok without any oil to bring out the flavor before grinding them.

The ingredients are blended to a fine paste (traditionally in a heavy granite mortar and pestle, but you can use a food processor just as well, and with far less effort). Note if you can get fresh red chiles you can usefully use them instead of the dried ones.

Curry

• About 1 pound of chicken (you can also use pork or beef), cut into the usual “bite size pieces”
• 3 cups coconut milk
• 2 tablespoons roasted peanuts (unsalted of course)
• 5 peeled, but whole, small onions
• 5 small potatoes, peeled and partly boiled
• 3 bay leaves
• 5 roasted cardamom fruits (i.e. the whole pod)
• A small piece of roasted cinnamon bark
• 3 tablespoons palm sugar (you can use a light brown sugar instead if you can’t get palm sugar)
• 3 tablespoons tamarind juice (this is the “sour” ingredient – you can use white vinegar instead if you can’t get tamarind juice. The juice is made by soaking tamarind paste in a little water then squeezing it out, and running it through a seize to extract the juice from the pulp)
• 3 tablespoons lime juice
• 1 to 3 tablespoon curry paste (above)
• About 1 to 3 teaspoons crushed garlic (optional)

Instructions

1. Allow the coconut milk to separate and you will have about 1 cup of thick “cream” and two cups of thin “milk”. In a small saucepan bring the milk to a simmer and add the chicken or pork. If you are using beef you will need another two cups of milk. simmer the meat until it is beginning to become tender (beef takes longer, hence the additional milk).
2. Put the coconut cream in a wok and bring to a boil, add the massaman paste and “stir fry” until the flavor is brought out and maximized. The coconut oil will separate out and can be skimmed off with a spoon or ladle. (this removes much of the vegetable cholesterol or whatever it is called, and makes the dish much less trouble for those watching their weight or heart).
3. Add the remaining cream and curry paste to the meat.
4. Add the peanuts. Taste and adjust the flavor until it is (just) sweet (by adding sugar), sour and salty (by adding tamarind juice, lime juice and fish sauce).
5. Add the remaining ingredients and cook until cooked.
6. Note: The potatoes we use are a yellow fleshed sweet potato of the type sometimes called a yam in the US. Western style potatoes can be used, but absorb less of the sauce and flavor. The potatoes act as a “moderator” to reduce the heat of the curry, and should not be left out.
7. You can either serve it on a bed of rice, or double the amount of potato and serve it alone.
8. Accompany it with a dressed green salad and a bowl of pickled cucumbers. The traditional Thai table also offers chiles in fish sauce (Phrik nam pla) chiles in vinegar (phrik nam som or phrik dong), powdered chile (phrik phom – not to be confused with the powdered chile mix sold as chili powder in the US – it only contains chiles), sugar, and often MSG. You can if you wish add about a teaspoon of MSG to the above recipe to bring out the flavors, but I personally don’t think it is necessary.

And finally a word of warning to those who burn their tongues on the chiles: chile/curry cooked this way is oily – drinking water does not alleviate the burn; it spreads it around your mouth and throat. You should use a sweet effervescent beverage such as Coke, Pepsi or 7-Up to wash the burn away as quickly as possible. If you do not suffer the burn, I suggest you accompany the meal with a beer Singha is traditional, but any strong flavored lager type beer will do), or a robust red wine.