At the end of February 2024, Ferdinand 'BongBong' Marcos spoke before the Australian Parliament. It was an important speech, especially for the East Asian theatre and though described as 'historic' it was hardly covered in the West.
Clearly Marcos has followed in the footsteps of his late father and is on-board with the plans of US Imperialism in the region. He is a faithful satrap who is doing his duty by challenging Australia to stay faithful and keep up its zeal. Australia, though a member of the Five Eyes alliance - the Anglo-American intelligence sharing network, and AUKUS which is an Australian, British, and American military alliance, continues to struggle with full commitment. Its politics have been in a state of upheaval for years and subject to outside influence and machination - a practice the US has been engaged in for decades. And yet now the situation has intensified and all the allies and client states need rallying. Marcos certainly scored some points in Washington with this speech.
Australian prime minister Albanese praised the speech - as expected. But now it's up to him to further demonstrate his loyalty. There have been some concerns with regard to his recent attempts to heal the widening rift with Beijing - which had been exacerbated by Morrison his predecessor. China remains a critical component to Canberra's economy and this recent militarist turn is tantamount to Australia falling on its own sword. The authority London once commanded now clearly belongs to Washington - and the order is clear - China is the enemy, prepare for war.
Additionally Albanese's somewhat tepid appeals for the freeing of Julian Assange have not curried favour in the Washington Beltway - not to mention his failure to properly back Tel Aviv and its Likud-inspired wars in the Levant.
That said, he's proven faithful enough and the fact that he hosted the Marcos speech sends a message to Xi Jinping - the Anti-Beijing alliance is growing in determination and strength. War is coming.
While 'Freedom of Navigation' excursions were once met with a kind of unwilling and reticent scepticism by the Australian political establishment, the American-inspired doctrine and practice is now being openly embraced and promoted. These naval ventures which involve heavily armed flotillas have little to do with freedom but are instead exercises in provocation, power projection, and militarism. Australia in particular receives sharp and insulting rebukes from Beijing. Xi is clearly less than impressed with Canberra and seems determined to single it out for insult. Relations have been in an almost free-fall since about 2020. Albanese has attempted to remedy this. During the Obama years a then robust Biden was sent to Australia to issue public rebukes and tacit threats - it would seem Marcos has stepped in this time.
The timetable for war remains a few years in the future but it's anyone's guess. Things can change quickly but at present all the indicators suggest a pending war. There is very little if anything being done to promote de-escalation or peaceful coexistence.
Is China the aggressor? The US says as much and yet it's the US that is based on another continent across an ocean that is seeking to flex its muscle on the East Asian littoral. The US Empire was imposed on the Western Pacific/East Asian theatre in 1945 - though the US had been active in the region since the turn of the twentieth century. Japan which ravaged China during the war, was defeated by the United States and then forcibly turned into an ally or more properly a client state of the empire. Those who collaborated with Imperial Japan were utilized in places like Vietnam and South Korea - a rather outrageous point noticed in China but one that few Americans have understood. Mao won the civil war in 1949 defeating the US-backed Chiang Kai-shek who set up the Kuomintang government in Taiwan. China feared a US invasion in 1950 as American forces under MacArthur overran North Korea. The American general had wanted access to dozens of nuclear bombs which he was prepared to use on Chinese cities - but was thankfully denied by the Truman administration. The US would nevertheless all but flatten North Korea leaving the country devastated almost beyond description with millions dead - all of this on the border of Manchuria. The US also threatened war over the Taiwan Strait in the 1950's and threatened to use nuclear weapons. In response, China would begin to develop its own nuclear deterrent.
The US backed the French in Vietnam from the 1945 to 1954 - all on China's southern border. And when the French pulled out, the US helped to carve up the country and established a client state in the South. The subsequent civil war would result in millions of deaths and spread to the neighbouring countries of Cambodia and Laos. The US also established close ties with Singapore and even now sells weapons to the influential and affluent city-state. More could be said about Thailand, Burma, nuclear tests in the South Pacific, and its military bases in places like Guam.
The US has continued to occupy South Korea and Japan and also occupied the Philippines for decades - and is even now returning. At different times the US has based nuclear weapons out of all three of these countries. The US encouraged, backed, and facilitated genocide in Indonesia and Suharto fulfilled the satrap role into the 1990's. Even now, the US is moving closer to Jakarta, re-establishing the ties that waned in the aftermath of the Cold War.
Needless to say the US has long utilized Australia as a military and intelligence outpost and this relationship has only been strengthened in recent years.
The US has sought to form a military alliance with India which has fought several small-scale wars with Beijing and even now tensions remain. During the Cold War, the US aided the Dalai Lama and backed Tibetan paramilitaries, flying them from India over the Himalayas into Tibet to wage war on the Chinese military. In more recent years the US has backed and hosted Uighur Islamist groups - some of which are affiliates of al Qaeda.
With China's economic rise in the 1990's and 2000's, Beijing has established a global footprint and yet it would be hard to argue that Beijing has exhibited any form of military aggression against the United States. There are real tensions with regard to Taiwan (which is claimed by Beijing) and Hong Kong - which was returned to Beijing in 1997. But again, who is the aggressor here, the nation of China that seeks to address historical disputes on its periphery or the trans-oceanic empire that has consistently backed its enemies and has attempted to militarily encircle it? The US speaks of a rules based order and how nations like China fail to follow this regime and thus are guilty of stirring up trouble. But why should they obey this often arbitrary order that was imposed on them and the region by a nation that continually seeks to subvert their interests?
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