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US will be disappointed forcing SE Asian countries to get on anti-China chariot

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AaronLDY

Jul 31, 2021, 09:58

US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin wrapped up his two-day visit to Hanoi on Thursday. He wrote several tweets without mentioning China. Although this doesn't mean Austin didn't talk about China in his meetings with Vietnam leaders, it still shows the US hasn't gotten what it desires from Hanoi. It is also a public show of Hanoi's opposition to taking sides.

The US seems to be obsessed with being two-faced. It has on one hand launched a comprehensive smear against China, using confrontational measures such as unreasonable sanctions to provoke China. On the other, it emphasized that it does not "seek confrontation" but is "committed to pursuing a constructive, stable relationship with China." 

Such hypocrisy cannot hide the most virulent geopolitical goals of the US' China policies. The Biden administration recently began to attach importance to Southeast Asia, after the US had snubbed the region for a long time. Clearly, the US is now seriously thinking about how to make full use of this "ideal tool" to contain China. 

Southeast Asian countries, especially Vietnam, due to their divergence with China over the South China Sea, are viewed by the US as a good leverage against China.

However, relations between China and Vietnam are generally sound. Hanoi views Beijing as an important partner, so in spite of Washington's lure, Hanoi will keep a distance from Washington. Vietnam is reluctant to provoke China. 

Every time the US talks with Southeast Asian countries, it tries to create waves in the South China Sea. Austin's visit is no exception. By doing so, the US aims to portray itself as the guardian of regional security and regional countries' interests. 

"The US says it does not want Southeast Asian countries to take sides, but it is asking other countries to side with it to jointly contain China. Vietnam is clear about such intent, and it knows better than any other regional countries the risk of being involved in the campaign," Li Kaisheng, a research fellow and deputy director at the Institute of International Relations of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times on Thursday.

Austin said in a speech to the International Institute for Strategic Studies on Tuesday when he was in Singapore, "Beijing's claim to the vast majority of the South China Sea has no basis in international law. That assertion treads on the sovereignty of states in the region."

Such a gesture is welcomed by Hanoi, but this won't make Vietnam to take sides. "Indeed, Vietnam will possibly cooperate with the US to support its claims over the South China Sea. But due to the two countries' various contradictions, Hanoi is unlikely to ride with Washington," Li said.

After Austin's visit to Vietnam, US Vice President Kamala Harris could also visit the country in August. This reflects the increase in weight of Southeast Asia in the US' strategy to contain China. The US knows it cannot realize its goals in a single visit. So a high density of visits also shows the US' strategy to gradually woo Southeast Asian countries. 

Nonetheless, the Biden administration's Southeast Asia policy fundamentally serves US strategic competition with China, rather than based on the specific conditions of the region. Such being the case, Washington will never really care about Southeast Asia. Regional countries including Vietnam are aware of this and won't blindly follow the US. 

If the US continues to stir up the South China Sea issue and add fuel to the fire, forcing Southeast Asia to get on its chariot against China, it may be disappointed no matter how hard the US manipulates. (Source: Global Times)

9 509
Newtown
GhostBuster post time: 2021-08-01 21:45

You're looking into a mirror talking to yourself.

GhostBuster

US is out of Afghanistan and will be soon from Iraq so that the combined military forces will have another venue to flex its muscles.

Rather than making peace, US elects to stir up and cause instability anywhere peace wants to be. So that it could rack in wealth through sales of military hardware and destruction to prove its worth when leaders are indoctrinated by US metal venmon.

This is the order of the US to the world.


GhostBuster
Newtown post time: 2021-08-01 13:58

You must be referring to yourself alone!

Newtown
GhostBuster post time: 2021-08-01 00:06

Whereas they would be ignorant of your very existence.

Fred9

why dispute over china area.

GhostBuster

US punishes any nation without reason for not be aligned with its foreign policies. Its own foreign policies is simply destruction so that there will be one competitor less on its list so to speak.

The evil US has caused is more than that of the other nations combined but most nations forgot that immediately and continue to fall prey to US.


GhostBuster
Newtown post time: 2021-07-31 16:55

Others are impressed by your ignorance!

markwu

The Southeast Asian countries know it was the US which unilaterally and out of the blue started its total and insensate offensives on China that tensed bilateral relations which was coursing smoothly before.

The US' Trump triggered its attack on trade; its Biden continues the attack on technology. The administrations of both rained other asymmetric attacks by leveraging their unilateral executive orders against her, stoked by bipartisan white-man racialism and bullyism as well as outright media distortion and officialized lies.

Needless to say, doing so globally punctures their own myth of integrity and sincerity about not wanting to contain China which is only developing naturally and harmoniously with all others, including the countries which the US is now trying to pester.

China had only responded proportionately each time she was attacked if only to show her wish to rather dialogue with the US on more equal grounds in order to come to a mutual accomodation on issues that is founded on factual and rational analysis, something which the US side has been remiss despite repeated exhortations by its own more sensible experts.

Some have said the Southeast Asian nations are presented with a fait accompli of having to choose between the US for security and China for prosperity. But it is only the US which is saying 'my way or the highway' to everyone.

Moreover, there is a historical undertow behind this. Many in the region are still alive to remember how their countries were treated by the colonizers - Britain, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, France, Japan and the United States come to mind. They have also read how China's Admiral Zheng He's fleet had passed by but colonized no one and expropriated nothing.

Just some small recollections suffice. Spain colonized the Philippines; the US beat Spain and re-colonized that country whose citizens then rebelled whereupon US forces killed over 200,000 of its citizens, even stealing three cathedral bells.  Later the US military used its Subic Bay as well as Thailand's airbases to attack Vietnam. Some 3 million died there.

Earlier, the US took exception to Indonesia's Soekarno being friendly with China without being unfriendly with the US which then saw it fit to start its nefarious Project Haik to arm insurrectionists encamped in that country's Sulawesi with view to a coup de'tat whereupon Soeharto as army reserve general emerged, only to be incited by the US' CIA next to cause a domestic bloodbath of genocidal and politicidal proportions with over 2 million citizens massacred.

The islamists there must now be wondering why the US still incarcerates Muslims in its Guantanemo camp, derogatorily using dogs on them.  To keep someone alive but psychologically destroy him out of spite seems the only possible motive. Countries should bear this in mind when the US next executes its shakedown policies on any country which crosses its will on anything it fancies.

This is the same US which had beaten Spain earlier but over its other conquest of what is now called Florida, and then said it had the receipt to prove it had legally bought that state, however omitting to explain why Sitting Bull's (and 3 million other indigenous natives) thumbprints were not on that receipt. Was it because they were already massacred?

Next, Blinken, Sullivan, Campbell, Cotton, Pelosi and now Austin are some of the new names stitched in the US imperial insignia.  Are they even aware of the historical undertows with regards US views and malfeasance on Southeast Asia, for that matter the benighted reputation of their own country?

Won't they have to feign surprise if they are asked for their opinion why the US which talks about human rights, freedom and democracy over autocracy can blithely ignore its own racist history of throwing its African slaves into jail so as to indenture them as forced labor using local laws that are racially defined to marginalize and exploit Africans specifically? The lady of justice seems to have worn her mask over her eyes by mistake.

Yet, Austin has gone around to try and rally support for the US' military role as bodyguard of the region. He should be asked what will the US do for the region's prosperity which is all the more needed, given its prevailing economic contractions, a devastation which will be worse should any military conflict arise.  After all, a weapon too touted will be fired. 

So far, the US has offered nothing for the economic recovery of Southeast Asia and India, for that matter Europe, Africa, Latin America, you name it;  it only arm-twists nations not to buy Huawei but Ericsson at thrice the price and not even one third the performance.  If 5G is the way to bring about economic recoveries, that action alone shows the world the US does not have the prosperity of others in its mind and heart. It only wants to dominate them while hypocritically yakking about equality and alliancing. Thick face, black heart, hence concluded.

The situation remains tough. People urgently need business orders for jobs and vaccines for recovery. China gives out massive buy-orders for what the region produces and supplies massive quantities of vaccine to save lives. Yet the US accuses her of usurping US economic supremacy and exercising vaccine diplomacy.

What does China need to do with others so that the US won't find fault with her? What has the US done to show it walks its talk, so far only delivered with a loose tongue that also happens to be forked?

Furthermore, it is conventional wisdom when hiring a bodyguard, his reputation must be unsullied and of pedigree consistency. The US has neither.

Its military objective is generically composite of Mahan (naval power extension), Kennan (geopolitical containment) and Acheson (domino regime change).

Kennan, for instance, was, to a fault, dismissive of Southeast Asia, and Acheson was later crossed by McNamara who, contrite in the aftermath of the Vietnam campaign, concluded:

"External military force cannot substitute for the political order and stability that must be forged by a people for themselves."

Even on the matter of the Indo-Pacific Quad expanded from its string of military bases surrounding China, the US has shown it is only a conceptual afterthought predicated on kennanish containment to brew achesonian regime change using mahanian naval power.

Quad 1 was the US, Japan, Australia and India.  Quad 2 was the US, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan.  Now Quad 3 is the US, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Jordan.

All three Quad's are furthermore being umbrella-ed under the asianization of the european Nato, exampled by the British aircraft carrier sailing into the East, and permanently emplacing two destroyers there, perhaps to erase its own memory of two of its then new battleships sunk in 1 hour after leaving Singapore during WWII.

Meanwhile, Southeast Asian leaders will gingerly note how the US treats its military allies. India, abandoned when Blinken struck a meeting with anti-Modi's activitists on Indian soil, to boot.  Afghanistan, ignominously abandoned in the middle of the night. Saudi Arabia, Biden had called it a pariah state.

China on the other hand, insults no one, trades freely with everyone, and helps out everywhere - over 125 countries trade with her, and over 140 countries work with her on the BRI upliftment projects.

So why is the US so uptight about China, especially when her naval growth is only to protect her sovereignty from foreign encirclement and her trade routes with those nations - because the very linchpin of global transformation remains economic prosperity for all, the more urgent these days in the aftermath of the pandemic.

Indeed, why?


Newtown

 "Vietnam is reluctant to provoke China." Is that why it's compulsory for Vietnamese students to learn Chinese at school?