WHERE CHICOMS MUST STOP BEING CHILDREN
The past several days have seen much commemoration of the most heroic episode of liberation in modern history: that of D-Day, June 6, 1944.
As Stephen Ambrose, author of the definitive history of the Normandy Landing, explained:
"You can’t exaggerate it. You can’t overstate it. It was the pivot point of the 20th century. It was the day on which the decision was made as to who was going to rule this world in the second half of the 20th century. Is it going to be Nazism, is it going to be Communism, or are the democracies going to prevail?"
By contrast, we’ve seen very little media comment about another pivot point of history that also took place in early June years ago. The complete moral opposite of D-Day, it was the Chicom slaughter of thousands in cold blood on Tiananmen Square, June 4, 1989.
The anti-Chicom protests demanding democracy for China began in mid-April, and by late May over a million people were demonstrating in and nearby Tiananmen Square, with similar demos in over 400 Chinese cities. The Chicom leaders headed by Deng Xiopeng were in a panic, and waited anxiously for a pronouncement by the President of the United States, George H. W, Bush.
They knew that if Bush publicly gave support for the protestors’ goal of democracy for China, and asked the world to be on their side, the momentum it would give the people of China to overthrow their Communist masters would be unstoppable.
And what did Bush do? What did he say? Nothing. Not a word. Silence. Bush’s contemptible cowardice condemned the Chinese to continued tyranny. Deng interpreted Bush’s silence as the greenlight to murder the protestors en masse – which he did.
The Chicoms then proceeded to consolidate their power, allowing crony capitalists aligned with them to become immensely rich while ruthlessly suppressing any objection to their rule.
The explicit goal of the Chicom PLA (Peoples Liberation Army) has today become to replace the US as the world’s premier military power. The strategy to do so they call The China Dream.
There is a specific place in the world where the PLA is focusing their China Dream efforts. Stop them there and their dream is gone. This is, of course, the South China Sea.
For years in TTP, I’ve been warning that here is the world’s best chance for World War III[1]. This is due 100% totally and completely to Beijing’s claim it owns all of it. You can instantly see this with a map of their claim (the red line).
Note that the bottom of that red line (off the coast of Malaysian Borneo) is over one thousand miles from the southernmost point of land in China (the south coast of Hainan).
The claim is undiluted lunacy – and the longer we let them get away with it, the more the chances for war escalate. For many months now, the Chicom navy has been on a frantic pace to create artificial islands on submerged reefs, then construct upon them a military airfield and artillery batteries – such as on Fiery Cross Reef.
In a CNN report dated May 26, a US Navy reconnaissance plane overflew three of these Chicom-claimed reefs, and received angry warnings not to enter "sovereign Chinese airspace."
Three days later (5/29) in Singapore, US Defense Secretary Ash Carter declared that such "militarization" must stop. The Chicoms’ response: "US-China war is inevitable" unless the US backs down and surrenders to their claim they own the whole South China Sea.
Then they denied they were building military facilities on the reefs. But the London Daily Mail proved with pictures they are lying.
No wonder that Philippine President Benigno Aquino stated on June 3 in Tokyo that China Is Behaving Like Nazi Germany in the South China Sea. No wonder, since as the New York Post explains, China is gambling Obama doesn’t have the will to respond to its massive land grab.
So – here is what needs to be done. And here is the man to do it.
The agenda of what needs to be done is short – it contains just two action items.
One. Accelerate and support the growing Anti-Chicom Alliance emerging between the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, Japan, India, Australia, Indonesia, Singapore and Taiwan.
This is a train already moving down the track. All we have to do is get on board. Aquino and Abe are talking or meeting often with Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung. India’s Modi is denying Chinese SCS sovereignty, and has signed an oil and naval agreement with Vietnam.
This Monday (6/09), Japan, India, and Australia agreed to cooperate on "freedom of navigation in the South China Sea." In less than two weeks (6/23-24), Japan and the Philippines will hold a joint naval military drill within China’s claimed SCS waters (note the Chicom snotty reporting).
Meanwhile, the childish Chicoms managed to totally tick off Malaysia last week (6/02) by anchoring a Coast Guard ship well within Malaysian SCS waters. Indonesia is so infuriated by Chinese poaching in their SCS waters that it seized and sank a Chinese fishing boat (5/23).
The good news is that SecDef Carter seems to clearly want to board the train. After speaking in Singapore, he met with Vietnam’s leaders in Hanoi last week (6/01), pledging to help build up Vietnam’s navy (obviously against the Chicoms), then signed a 10-year defense agreement with India in New Delhi (6/03).
Two. Repeatedly and factually deny China’s historical claims to the South China Sea, and shame their face by telling them to stop behaving like children.
This requires the abandonment of the US policy of neutrality in sovereignty disputes. It is reasonable policy not to unnecessarily get involved in others’ disputes – but it’s stupid policy when it’s clearly in the national security interest to do so.
It’s stupid not to take Britain’s side against the claim of Argentina regarding the Falklands, Japan’s against China regarding the Senkakus, or South Korea’s against Japan regarding the Dokdos/Liancourt Rocks.
Further, last December the State Department demolished China’s Maritime Claims in the South China Sea – every single claim with scholarly precision.
We need to take sides – siding with Vietnam, the Philippines, Brunei, and Malaysia against China, at the very least regarding their EEZ’s, which by international law today supersede any "historical" contesting claim. Here’s the SCS-EEZ map:
This must be accompanied by a public diplomacy campaign of shaming and ridicule, maximizing the critical Chinese vulnerability of fear-of-losing-face. As explicated in The Chinese Marathon from last March:
"China, you see, has been from time immemorial a shame culture. We, along with most Western cultures, are a guilt culture. Our morality is private based on conscience, what you think of yourself; theirs is public based on humiliation or recognition, what others think of you. The Chinese call this face.
Chicoms feel they can tell any lie however bald-faced, demand everyone accede to it, and have a temper tantrum if you deny it. We have to shrug their temper tantrums off and not give a damn about their face.
In countless speeches in public fora like the UN, they are always proclaiming how they are cooperative and ‘win-win.’ We must respond that we don’t care about what they say, we only care about what they do. They must act win-win – such as start sharing the South China Sea with the other nations that border it and stop behaving like children in Kindergarten who haven’t learned to share."
OK – now we know what to do. Who is the man to do it? That would be Admiral Harry Harris, who two weeks ago (5/27) became Commander of the US Pacific Command (PACOM).
That means he’s in charge of all US military operations from California to the Indian Ocean, and the Arctic to Antarctica ("from Hollywood to Bollywood, polar bears to penguins").
Here we go folks – he could be the man of the hour, for he is a very interesting guy.
He’s the son of a USN Chief Petty Officer and a Japanese mother, born in Yokosuka, Japan (where the 7th Fleet is based) in 1956. Raised in Tennessee and Florida, he graduated from the US Naval Academy in Annapolis in 1978. He has an MA in government from Harvard, another MA from Georgetown in national security, studied at Oxford, was an MIT Fellow, and has 4400 flight hours including 400 combat hours.
Friends of mine who have served under him tell me he has more real world practical war experience than any other Admiral in modern history.
He was responsible for the planning and execution of the Naval component of Operation Iraqi Freedom, which began on March 19, 2003. He was chiefly responsible for the US Navy’s part in shock and awe. Every tomahawk missile that was launched from a destroyer or sub was partly planned by Adm. Harris.
He served as the Joint Force Maritime Component Commander afloat for Operation Odyssey Dawn, the initial action to protect anti-Gaddafi forces in Libya. Operating from the USS Mount Whitney, he launched 110 cruise missiles and coordinated attacks by French, UK, and US fighters, stopping Gaddafi cold in 12 days – an "extraordinary demonstration of military coordination and effective military action lead by one single Naval Commander."
Not only is he experienced at the operational level of war but also at the strategic, nation to nation. Subsequent to Libya, he served as the direct representative of the CJCS (Chairman Joint Chiefs) to the Secretary of State. As that was Hillary, friends say he found the assignment distasteful.
Bottom line assessment: no one understands the Pacific, the Chicoms, the China-Japan dynamic, and war at all levels like him. He is a warfighter, an extremely smart and competent one with balls of steel. The question is: Will he be allowed to put the Chinese back in their place?
The answer is: so far so good. In his acceptance speech becoming PACOM Commander, he pointedly denounced "China’s preposterous claims in the South China Sea." In an interview to TIME Magazine, he said the same, denouncing China’s "outrageous claim – preposterous claim, really – to 90% of the South China Sea."
He gave this interview on his way to Singapore with SecDef Carter. Which means our new Secretary of Defense has got his six. Ashton Carter is the one of best appointments Zero has ever made — maybe the best. If he lets Harry Harris put some steel in protecting the international waters of the South China Sea, it will give Vietnam and the Philippines the confidence to stand up to Chicom bullying.
If Carter-Harris tag-team the Chicoms in creating a robust and formidable alliance against their insufferable arrogance and imperialism, if Harris is allowed to shame the Chicoms and tell them it’s time to stop being children, to grow up and share the South China Sea with their neighbors – well, the war that looks very likely now may not happen after all.
Godspeed, Admiral Harris. May you be the one to stop The China Dream.
[1] See for example:
The Tyranny of China’s History December 2004
The Trap of Lizzie Webber March 2009
Siberia and the South China Sea April 2014
The Chinese Marathon March 2015