U.S. makes endless war, China responds

“Pivoting” comprehensive military buildup in Asia brinks war with China

Editing by Carolyn Bennett

Excerpt from Peter Symonds’s article published today at World Socialist Web Site (WSWS)

Enduring U.S. brinkmanship, belligerence, wars

Human costs

Working class people in Asia, the United States and around the world confront the danger of war amid a relentless assault on living standards and social position.

The capitalist classes have exploited the globalized character of production to depress living standards in both the advanced and developing countries.

Since the eruption of the global financial crisis in 2008, these processes have accelerated markedly. Mass unemployment in Europe and the United States translates in China into falling demand for exports, a slowing economy; and downward pressure on pay, conditions and jobs.

U.S. Dependency and foreign relations violence

China as pretext, distraction, enemy

U.S. imperialism depends on China as a vast source of cheap labor yet China’s economic expansion threatens to challenge the imperialist world order that the U.S. has dominated since the end of World War II.

Over the past two decades, Washington has recklessly plunged into one war after another in the Middle East, the Balkans and Central Asia in a bid to offset its historic economic decline.

In North East Asia, the U.S. is refashioning its military forces with allies South Korea and Japan, and, in partnership with Japan, transforming Guam into ‘a strategic hub’ in the Western Pacific. Washington has extended its basing arrangements with its ally, Australia, and is seeking to do the same with the Philippines and Vietnam, enhancing the ability of the U.S. navy to block Chinese shipping of vital energy and raw materials through South East Asian waterways.

In South Asia, the Obama administration has strengthened its key strategic partnership with India, while seeking to undermine Chinese influence in Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Burma and Nepal. A decade of neo-colonial occupation of Afghanistan has transformed that country, which borders China, into a key U.S. base of operations in Central Asia.

Endurance will end

Asia will respond to U.S. relations in violence

U.S. imperialism’s consolidation of a network of military alliances … compels China to seek its own allies. U.S. imperialism heightens competition, rivalry and tensions throughout the region, and poses the danger that one of the many regional powder kegs can trigger a conflict that rapidly assumes global proportions.

 

Sources and notes

“U.S. ‘pivot’ to Asia threatens war with China —The Obama administration’s ‘pivot’ to Asia is a comprehensive military build-up throughout the Indo-Pacific region, greatly heightening the danger of war with China” (Peter Symonds), June 6, 2012, http://www.wsws.org/articles/2012/jun2012/pers-j06.shtml

 

Map Images Worldatlas

 http://www.worldatlas.com/webimage/countrys/as.htm

http://www.worldatlas.com/webimage/countrys/asia/lgcolor/cncolor.htm

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