http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/07 ... s-j10.htmlOn July 10–11, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) held a two-day conference on the South China Sea, from which they published a 22-page report entitled “Recent Trends in the South China Sea and US Policy.”
The CSIS has played a key role in the Obama administration’s ‘pivot’ to Asia. Their concrete recommendations for the provocative escalation of the US military encirclement and diplomatic isolation of China have been consistently carried out. A report on US policy in the South China Sea from the CSIS should be regarded as having semi-official status.
The report opens with a contrived history of the events of the past year in the South China Sea, at every turn blaming escalating regional tensions on the aggressiveness and intransigence of Beijing. The truth is that the drive to war in the region has been pushed at every turn by Washington, with the CSIS playing a leading role.
In the past six months there have been repeated armed standoffs in the South China Sea between Beijing and both Manila and Hanoi. Manila has filed a legal case—drawn up by Washington—disputing China’s claims to the sea before the International Tribunal on the Law of the Sea (ITLOS). And Washington has signed a deal—the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA)—with Manila, allowing for the basing of unlimited numbers of US forces anywhere in the country.
In the new report, the CSIS is laying out an even more aggressive agenda for Washington, with two basic thrusts: establishing the legal pretext for rejecting Beijing’s claim to the South China Sea, and escalating the US military presence in the region.
George Bush once said that Iraq would be the 1st of the 21st century wars.Two significant shifts in geopolitics emerged from Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s visit to Australia this week and his address to its national parliament.
The first is the escalation of pressure against China and the implicit threat that the three major imperialist powers in the region, the US, Japan and Australia, will undertake military action against it, as part of US imperialism’s anti-China “pivot” to Asia.
The second, and no less important development—independent of the US pivot—is the re-emergence on the world arena of Japanese imperialism, following the Abe government’s decision earlier this month to “reinterpret” the country’s constitution to allow Japan to take part in joint military action with its designated allies.
Its fairly obvious that the great powers of the world as engaging in a increasingly cut-throat 'cold war', eerily similar to the years before WW1, for global resources, markets and alliance systems.
Russia and China, despite tensions between these nuclear superpowers, are increasingly become closer as the United States, driven by a profound economic crisis, a plutocratic, authoritarian and massively unequal social crisis at home is driven to use militaristic means to maintain its dominance over the international system.
At the same time, a deeply divided EU, is being put under huge pressure by America and its wholly owns subsidiary the UK to isolate Russia, China (soon) and their allies in the Middle East. Germany, the de facto leader of the EU, is slowly but surely starting to carve out its own geopolitical agenda, with long-term consequences for the future of the EU.
Despite huge pressure from the US, the German ruling class are slowly moving into a alliance with Russia. Will the EU collapse under these internal contradictions? Who knows.
