9 February 2023
RAF Eurofighter Typhoon FGR4, the fighter involved in February’s exercises in the USA. Photo Dave_S via Flickr (CC BY 2.0).
Not only in Europe is the threat of war increasing, the US and NATO as a whole have eyes on China as well as Ukraine.
On 9 February, the day Zelensky visited Brussels, the RAF joined US and Australian air forces in exercises simulating war against China.
In December the US Congress passed the National Defense Authorization Act, ramping up military spending for 2023-24 to a record $858 billion. That’s $817 billion for the US Department of Defense and the balance for other military-related expenditure.
Violation
The Chinese government criticised the act for the way it describes China as a threat to the US. In China’s view the references to Taiwan also violate the three communiqués (in 1972, 1979 and 1982) establishing relations between the USA and the People’s Republic of China.
China was excluded from the United Nations and other international organisations after the 1949 revolution at the instigation of the USA. It said that the true government of all China resided in Taiwan – in fact the defeated Nationalist side in the Chinese Civil War, supported by the US and foisted on the population of that island.
‘The current trend in the USA is warlike.’
Whether China is right about the diplomacy, the current trend in the USA is certainly warlike. On 29 January Mike McCaul, the Republican chairman of the foreign affairs committee in the US House of Representatives, said that he thinks the USA will go to war with China over Taiwan in two years from now.
General Mike Minihan, who heads the US Air Mobility Command, told his officers that the USA should prepare for this 2025 war on China by firing a “clip” at the target and aiming for its head. Such are the ideas in some sections of the US ruling class.
Threat
In his recent visit to South Korea, NATO secretary general Jens Stoltenberg called China a threat “to our values, to our interests and to our security”. Is South Korea now in the North Atlantic?
NATO has lost all pretensions to being an organisation dedicated to the defence of Europe. It has become a worldwide alliance against any country that the US and British governments choose to call an enemy.