U.S. strategy against Russia must succeed in order to make success of U.S. strategy against China possible; Ukraine is the U.S. proxy against Russia, and Taiwan is the U.S. proxy against China. Ukraine became a U.S. ‘ally’ or vassal-nation in 2014, but Taiwan isn’t yet officially a U.S. ‘ally’ or vassal-nation.
The plan
by the U.S. Government to add Taiwan to its empire has already been made public
by U.S. military officials (who will be quoted extensively below here); and, as
announced, it builds upon these two models:
1. the
U.S. Government’s determination to outlast Russia’s Government in the Ukrainian
war and to use that example — winning against Russia — in order to solidify and
grow the U.S. regime’s alliances with (the vassalages of) other major maritime
nations, so that those other maritime nations will join America’s war to
consume Taiwan, just as Britain still consumes the Falklands. (Both the
Falklands and Taiwan are islands claimed by a [U.S./UK] ‘enemy’ [Argentina or
China] as being its territory.) America therefore must first defeat Russia, before
it defeats China — and, then, it will control the world; and the U.N. will be
nothing more than a virtue-signaling international talking-forum, nothing of a
setter of international laws, which will instead be replaced by America’s own
“rules-based international order.” Global rule by the U.S./UK empire is the
ultimate objective. (Supporters of this objective are commonly called
“neoconservatives,” which is an international-affairs ideology that all of the
leaders and public officials in all political Parties in both the UK and the
U.S. support, and it is sometimes referred to as “the Special Relationship” —
see this, and especially this — between the U.S. and the UK, to control,
ultimately, the entire world.)
2. the
example of UK’s success in the 1982 Falklands War, which gave Britain control
over the Falkland Islands, so that, as Wikipedia says, “In 1994, Argentina
adopted a new constitution,[7] which declared the Falkland Islands as part of
one of its provinces by law.[8] However, the islands continue to operate as a
self-governing British Overseas Territory.[9]” In other words: the U.S./UK
regime plans for Taiwan “to continue to operate as a self-governing U.S.
overseas territory.” (UK will thus regain control over China, by using the
U.S., exactly in the way that Cecil Rhodes had drawn up in 1877 and carried
through by the terms of his will setting up the Rhodes Trust in 1902, with
Winston Churchill being a key part of the operation during subsequent decades.)
Here are
the details, the whole plan (to conquer both Russia and China), as described by
American military planners:
1. On 10
November 2022, the South China Morning Post bannered “Top US general vows
military support for Taiwan, warns Beijing against conflict”, and reported:
A top US
military officer pledged to support Taiwan militarily while warning Beijing to
learn from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The
remarks were made by General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, during an event in New York on Wednesday.
“The US
is committed through the Taiwan Relations Act, and President Biden has said on
many occasions recently that the United States will continue to support
Taiwan,” Milley said.
“We will
support them militarily … We would try to help train them and equip them.” …
“A
lesson that comes out of Ukraine for China is that war on paper and real war
are two different things. And what they have seen was a tremendous strategic
miscalculation,” he said.
“I think
President Xi is taking a step back and … he’s evaluating the situation.”
Milley
said it would be hard for Beijing to carry out an amphibious attack across the
Taiwan Strait.
“That’s
really difficult,” he said. “It’s really hard. And I think they’re coming to
realise that and they’re probably evaluating the situation and recalculating
what they might do.”
The 1979
Taiwan Relations Act, which governs US ties with Taipei, requires the United
States to ensure the self-ruled island has the resources for self-defence and
to prevent any unilateral change of status by Beijing. But it does not require
the US to defend the island militarily. …
Xi told
the congress that the PLA should reach its target of becoming a world-class
military capable of winning “regional wars”.
Milley
said China wanted to achieve global military superiority by the middle of the
century and regional superiority by 2027. …
The U.S.
objective is therefore to force China to invade Taiwan before 2027, while
America still has the ability to defeat a Chinese invasion from the mainland.
But in order to force such an invasion, the U.S. would first need to provoke a
blockade of Taiwan by the mainland forces. The way to do that is to flood
Taiwan with U.S.-and-allied weapons and training in how to use them, so as to
make increasingly difficult for the mainland to enforce a Chinese blockade and
take over the island; but, also, for the U.S. and its allied forces to break
through that blockade. This latter — the means of breaking through — is where
#2 comes into play:
2. On 1
October 2022, the U.S. Naval Institute Magazine (or “Proceedings”) headlined
“Prepare the Logistics to Break a Chinese Blockade of Taiwan: If China attempts
a quarantine of Taiwan, the United States and its allies must be prepared to
quickly deploy merchant shipping.” It said:
U.S.
shipping will be vital to ensuring Taiwan retains access to the global
logistics supply chain and matériel. Unfortunately, the U.S. merchant fleet is
a shadow of its World War II zenith. Globalization and the complexity of global
supply chains have eroded the reach of U.S. merchant shipping; just 125 U.S.
naval supply ships currently are in service and some 140 U.S.-flagged merchant
ships globally.1
Luckily,
there are historical blueprints for achieving success in either scenario: Great
Britain’s Ships Taken Up from Trade (STUFT) of Falklands War fame and Operation
Earnest Will from the Gulf War each illuminates a path for the United States to
quickly generate and protect a naval logistics enterprise. These events are
ripe with lessons that should be considered as the United States marshals
resources for a potential conflict in the Indo-Pacific.
STUFT
The
Falklands War is frequently held up as an example of what a modern, “missile
age” naval conflict might look like. One often-studied aspect of the conflict
is the herculean logistics enterprise that sustained a carrier strike group at
the ends of the earth for 74 days. STUFT was the key legal mechanism employed
by the Admiralty to requisition British-flagged ships for government use to
move men, matériel, and stores to the theater of operations. From luxury liners
converted to troop carriers to fishing trawlers converted to submarine hunters,
47 British commercial vessels were activated at the behest of the First Sea
Lord Admiral Sir Henry Leach, who stated simply, “Man and support the Fleet.
Money is no object.”2
When
Great Britain emerged victorious from the Falklands conflict, the fusion of
military and commerce was cited as a critical enabler of a victory more than
8,000 miles away and some 3,500 miles from the nearest friendly port. Though
the Admiralty was able to retrofit and get its fleet of STUFT sailors underway
mere weeks after hostilities began, its legal authority was rooted in three
major factors.
First,
the “Royal Prerogative,” the loosely defined residual powers of the Crown, held
by the king or queen and delegated to the executive arms, gave the government
the power to requisition ships. This authority dates to as early as 1138 CE.3
Second, the 1907 Hague Convention (VII) outlined policy governing how nations
may convert merchant ships to warships. …
Last, a
six-part criteria governing a merchant ship’s transition to combatant was met
that allowed the vessels to retain the privileges of a warship, including
mandates governing flag state, crewing, and adherence to the laws of war.4
These
measures allowed the Admiralty to convert commercial ships to lawful combatants
and scale its transport fleet in just seven weeks, birthing the logistical
enterprise necessary to win a war on the other side of the planet.
Operation
Earnest Will
If the
Falklands War offers a template for how the United States could assemble a
commercial-military fleet, Operation Earnest Will demonstrates why one may be
necessary. …
In
post-conflict arbitration of the Falklands War, Argentina levied several
complaints of improper behavior at Britain. The British cruise liner Queen
Elizabeth II, employed as a troop transport, was cited for improperly flying
noncombatant flags when, as a warship under Hague conventions, she could have
been subject to lawful attack from Argentinian forces.7
While
Argentina may only have been able to take issue with elements of STUFT’s legal
credibility following the cessation of hostilities, China undoubtedly would not
make the same mistake. Given China’s access to global media outlets and
international governance mechanisms such as the United Nations, one can assume
that a major international effort led by the United States to build a
blockade-breaking merchant fleet would face myriad attempts at sabotage,
destruction, and delegitimization well before hoisting colors. …
If the
United States and its allies attempt to undermine a quarantine of Taiwan, they
will need to be aware they will be repudiating a competitor whose credibility,
at home and abroad, relies on the success of the operation. A logistics mission
of this nature cannot singlehandedly end such a conflict, but it can serve as a
basis for de-escalation, giving ample breathing room for diplomatic
negotiations before a strained geopolitical situation boils over into open
conflict. Therefore, such an operation cannot be intended purely for
stability’s sake. It will need to be scoped and prepared for with the realistic
expectation that unless diplomacy or other international pressures external to
the actual operation defuse the situation, the situation likely will escalate
into open hostilities.
Current
Sea State
The
Falklands War and Operation Earnest Will present two examples of a modern, mass
mobilization of merchant fleets to augment the military. For a presumed
conflict in the Indo-Pacific, this military-civil fusion will have to take
place on a much larger scale. …
Recommendations
Given
the insufficiency of the U.S. maritime logistics apparatus, recapitalization
alone will not meet the demands of a future conflict. In austere budget
environments, bold spending to address the gap in logistics capability is
unlikely. Further, given the intractable nature of Jones Act reform, it is
unrealistic to assume the legislation could be altered on a timeline necessary
to meet the moment. To address the gap between U.S. logistics capabilities and
needs, low-cost, high-yield solutions must be emphasized. Given these
considerations, the United States should take a two-pronged approach. …
This is
a score on which the United States and its allies have already made
considerable progress. Of the Quad nations, Australia and India have begun
using variants of the MH-60 Seahawk helicopter, and Japan has announced
intentions to use F-35 variants for carrier aviation. While these efforts are
not a panacea for interoperability, it is clear the technical capacity for such
measures exists. Fortunately, measures to ensure interoperability are firmly at
the Department of Defense level and only require strong communication with
counterparts and modest investments to realize them, not vast expenditures or
mobilizing enormous fleets.
Reflagging
operations. The United States must secure a series of flag-state agreements
with commercial carriers and their host nations to protect commercial shipping
in the event of a Chinese quarantine or open hostilities and provide credible
deterrence against further escalation. The United States needs a system to
rapidly acquire scalable tonnage. Fortunately, it has a proven template for
executing such an endeavor. The Maritime Security Program (MSP), administered
by MarAd, is a public-private partnership that allows the U.S. government to
effectively “charter” U.S.-flagged ships with U.S. crews to execute maritime
logistics for military operations. Notably, MSP vessels have carried 99 percent
of cargoes destined for Afghanistan and Iraq since 2009. The program is
currently congressionally capped at 60 vessels, despite efforts to expand
capacity.8
Given
the gaps in the U.S. commercial fleet’s tonnage, the solution for fielding a
scalable logistics solution in such a conflict must come from allies. Such a
solution would take features of STUFT, Operation Earnest Will, and the MSP
program to rapidly generate sealift capacity.
First,
the United States must research and establish a short list of candidate
nations. Criteria should include the extent of their trade relationship with
Taiwan, volume of shipping tonnage available, and likelihood of their support
of assertive operations to counter Chinese hostilities. Several regions offer
opportunities, such as Southeast Asia, Europe, Africa, and Latin America. By offering
modest subsidies and a planning framework to allies from these areas, the
United States could lay the groundwork for deploying a large fleet of allied
shipping—flagged, crewed, operated by partners in a broader effort to check
Chinese aggression and protected by the laws of armed conflict and U.S. naval
power.
Two key
considerations should be factored into this calculus. First, ensuring that the
companies involved are not underwritten by Chinese investment banks—as of 2018,
3 of the top 15 shipping portfolios, including 2 of the top 5, were held by
Chinese banks.7 Further, ensuring that the ships are not crewed by hostile
nationalities—in this case, Chinese. Fortunately, as the commercial shipping
industry is crewed in large part by Filipino and Indian sailors, this is a
secondary consideration.
The
scenario in which conflict breaks out is admittedly more complicated. Given the
number of Chinese shipping firms and their dominance in world shipping volume,
if a conflict were to break out, world maritime shipping would likely
bifurcate. Countries that have demonstrated interest in a “Free and Open”
Indo-Pacific, such as Germany, France, and Great Britain, likely would side
with the United States in such a scenario. These countries, when combined with Nordic
shipping companies, have competitive domestic shipping industries that,
combined, rival Chinese preeminence in terms of tonnage and dollars invested.
Is there
any mystery regarding “Why does the U.S. Government support nazis all around
the world?” The U.S. Government (starting on 25 July 1945) continued on from
where Germany’s Nazi Government left off — and has been far more successful at
it than Hitler’s Government was.
https://moderndiplomacy.eu/2022/11/14/americas-plan-to-defeat-both-russia-and-china/
***Eric
Zuesse: Investigative historian Eric Zuesse's new book, AMERICA'S EMPIRE OF
EVIL: Hitler's Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change,
is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave
it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world's wealth by
control of not only their 'news' media but the social 'sciences' — duping the
public.