koreaunderground

[counterpunch.org][1]

  [1]: <https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/10/16/the-us-is-set-on-a-path-to-war-with-china-what-is-to-be-done/>

# The US is Set on a Path to War with China. What Is to be Done? - CounterPunch.org

by K.J. Noh

45-57 minutes

* * *

It was gripping[, stunning testimony][2]. Before congress, a 15 year old volunteer nurse, Nayirah, struggled to compose her trembling voice, barely holding back tears, as she testified that marauding soldiers had thrown babies out of incubators in a hospital, leaving them to die on the floor.

_ Later, Amnesty International [confirmed][3] authoritatively that 312 babies had been killed this way[[1]][4]. All the news agencies ran with the story, and the country and congress were in a total uproar.

  [2]: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmfVs3WaE9Y>   [3]: <https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1990/12/19/amnesty-international-accuses-iraq-of-atrocities-in-kuwait/78f4f740-dc16-4386-976e-21f54007e7ee/>   [4]: <https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/10/16/the-us-is-set-on-a-path-to-war-with-china-what-is-to-be-done/#post-128921-endnote-1>

There was only problem: it was _completely, utterly, totally_ _fraudulent._ It was engineered, perjured, coached testimony concocted by PR experts, designed to manufacture consent for a US war on Iraq.

At the time, it was also crystal clear that the claims were absurd—Kuwait had a population of less than 1.5 million at the time, and given its birthrate, would have had a few hundred premature babies a year. It’s _inconceivable_ that over 300 of them could have been clustered in a single hospital on a single day.

Nevertheless, this was the story that was sold to the US people. Representative John Porter [stated][5],

  [5]: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmfVs3WaE9Y>

> “We have never heard…[such] a record of inhumanity and brutality and sadism…I don’t know how the people of the civilized countries of this world can fail to do everything within their power to remove this scourge from the face of the earth”.

Not long afterward, the US went to war with Iraq. It would wage war again, 12 years later, doubling down with even more monstrous lies. _ _

Today, we are facing a similar situation: the US is escalating rapidly towards a shooting war with China, and similar absurd, astonishing, and monstrous lies are being spread. In fact, the US is already engaged in “multi-domain” “hybrid warfare” with China. This is warfare just below the threshold of direct military engagement. On the ground this involves:

**_Economic Warfare_** : trade sanctions and tariff war, as well as **_technological warfare_** : attempted seizure of Chinese companies (TikTok); attacks on China’s international 5G contracts; sanctions on the primary & secondary supply chains of key sectors of Chinese industry (e.g. Huawei’s semiconductor supply chain); attacks on Ant Finance’s IPO.

**_Legal Warfare,_** or _“lawfare”,_ including over 380 anti-China bills in Congress, and 14 individual and state [lawsuits][6] against China for over $30 Trillion in “Covid damages”; the long arm “legal” kidnapping of Huawei’s executive

  [6]: <https://www.lawfareblog.com/whats-many-coronavirus-related-lawsuits-against-china>

**_Diplomatic Warfare_** , including consulate shutdowns, harassment of diplomats, breaching of diplomatic pouches and compounds, and calls for [regime change][7].

  [7]: <https://www.state.gov/communist-china-and-the-free-worlds-future/>

**_Military Brinksmanship_** and _posturing_ in the South China Sea, the East China Sea, the Taiwan straits; complete encirclement of China with strategic weapons, surveillance, and 400 offensive bases (“The Pacific Pivot”), the use of airbases in Taiwan for military actions, and [plans][8] to station intermediate range nuclear missiles all along China’s periphery[[2]][9].

  [8]: <https://www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2019/08/04/esper-us-to-soon-put-intermediate-range-missile-in-asia/>   [9]: <https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/10/16/the-us-is-set-on-a-path-to-war-with-china-what-is-to-be-done/#post-128921-endnote-2>

**_Civil Subversion_** _:_[color revolution][10], urban terror, destabilization & delegitimation operations in [Hong Kong][11] (and other places where China has interests), including millions of dollars of funneled for organization & training, and encrypted communications infrastructure built to [coordinate anti-government activities.][12]

  [10]: <https://www.qiaocollective.com/en/articles/hong-kong-color-revolution>   [11]: <https://hksar.org/washington-finally-admits-it-has-been-interfering-in-hong-kong>   [12]: <https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3103092/washington-finally-admits-it-has-been-interfering-hong-kong>

**_Academic Warfare_** : through the FBI’s _China Initiative_ , every 10 hours a case is opened against a Chinese student or researcher in the US (currently 2700 cases) and all Chinese students are considered potential “non-traditional” “collectors, spies” involved in a “thousand grains of sand” collection strategy.

**_Information Warfare_** : last but not least, we are seeing _total Information warfare_. The stories about so-called “massive human rights abuses”, “Chinese concentration camps”, “Chinese-made-and-released Covid”, “China has harmed us economically”, “China has stolen its way to the top”, “China is oppressing independent Hong Kong”, are part of this information warfare.

This is mass propaganda _to incite people to hate China irrationally and unconditionally,_ to manufacture consent for war. The US military calls this information warfare, “[the firehose of falsehoods][13]” and we are all being drenched with these lies. This is necessary to [justify war][14] against an enemy and to curtail any rational discussion or questioning.

  [13]: <https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/perspectives/PE100/PE198/RAND_PE198.pdf.>   [14]: <https://www.codepink.org/presentation_by_jodie_evans_to_no_cold_war_conference_september_26_2020>

Some of the questions that the public are kept from asking are:

_Are these allegations supported by any facts?_

_Has China threatened us? Is the US at risk from China?_

_Is this war justifiable by any means? Is it legal?_

_Do the citizens of the US want to go to war? Could the US even fight, let alone win a war with China?_

A careful, reasoned approach to these questions, would lead one to say, _No._

Before we try to play whack-a-mole with the blatant war propaganda, a more useful and clarifying approach is to ask _, why is the US telling these lies to go to war_?

For this, we have to look at history.

**Why the US is at War**

**Culture shock: the challenge to supremacy**

The earliest European travelers, were astonished to discover in China a country, in many ways, far more advanced than the West: a rich, diverse, multi-cultural civilization with sophisticated systems of governance, and vibrant cities built with complex systems of planning and management. Above all, they marveled at a harmonious multi-religious, multi-ethnic society, free of sectarian strife, and an inclusive merit-based[[3]][15] system of political power that selected the most competent people to govern and rule, regardless of creed, color, background, or religion[[4]][16]. This contrasted with the Western system of hereditary aristocratic rule within a society torn apart regularly with religious strife. These ideas of diversity, tolerance, inclusion, and earned—not inherited–privilege, would strongly influence the leaders of the Enlightenment, so much so that Western philosophers such as Voltaire and Leibnitz believed that the Chinese had “perfected moral science”, and that Chinese statecraft was the model for the West to emulate, if it wanted to develop into an enlightened civilization.

  [15]: <https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/10/16/the-us-is-set-on-a-path-to-war-with-china-what-is-to-be-done/#post-128921-endnote-3>   [16]: <https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/10/16/the-us-is-set-on-a-path-to-war-with-china-what-is-to-be-done/#post-128921-endnote-4>

These discoveries struck a hard blow at Christian and Western supremacy. Western colonization was built on a foundational belief that the West was more advanced, more evolved—closer to God—than the “barbarous” countries it was invading, subjugating, and destroying. It needed at least the pretense of being more “advanced” to justify its colonial “civilizing mission”. Reactionary thinkers like Herder—who had never visited China—lashed back rapidly by propagating a theory of the depravity of Chinese: that China was an _“immoral land with no honor”_ , an “ _embalmed mummy_ ” characterized by stagnation, in contrast with Western “dynamism”.

In addition, the Chinese system of meritocratic government was deeply troubling to a West built on stratified class privilege. A civilization without hereditary aristocrats was unfathomable and terrifying to the Western ruling class. [Montesquieu][17], (borrowing from Giovanni Botero) thus [concocted][18] the trope that China’s _more egalitarian_ system had to be [“ _despotic_ ”,][19]–despotic for him because it threatened the “liberties” (aristocratic privileges) of his class. Hegel chiselled this canard into the Western consciousness with an armchair theory of “[Oriental Despotism][20]”, whereby the Chinese had failed to evolve due to inherent, characterological flaws in its people and its political culture. Marx chimed in with the “Asiatic mode of production”, and Weber and Wittfogel also reinforced it. These allegations of “despotism”—despite being total distortions of Chinese governance–have infused all Western discourses about China since.

  [17]: <https://corpus.ulaval.ca/jspui/bitstream/20.500.11794/25244/1/30943.pdf>   [18]: <http://dictionnaire-montesquieu.ens-lyon.fr/fr/article/1377597560/en/>   [19]: <http://chinamirror.net/?page_id=4574>   [20]: <https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/hi/lectures1.htm>

**Enter the Bandits**

At the same time, “embalmed” Chinese “inferiority” notwithstanding, the West craved the exquisite consumer goods of China–tea, silk, porcelain—and this created huge trade imbalances. The Western response to balance the books was narco-trafficking: smuggling in industrial amounts of opium—at its peak, up to 9 million pounds a year. When China objected and opposed this on sovereign and moral grounds and confiscated the drugs, war was declared. Reparations were forced, concessions extracted, and the country plundered, looted, and destroyed. In one show of force to the Chinese, the Summer Palace of the Emperor was sacked by Lord Elgin, which Victor Hugo described[ thus][21]:

  [21]: <https://www.napoleon.org/en/history-of-the-two-empires/articles/the-chinese-expedition-victor-hugo-on-the-sack-of-the-summer-palace/>

> There was, in a corner of the world, a wonder of the world…All that can be begotten of the imagination…was there…Build a dream, a dazzling cavern of human fantasy with the face of a temple and palace….This edifice, as enormous as a city, had been built by the centuries…This wonder has disappeared. > > One day two bandits entered the Summer Palace. One plundered, the other burned. > > All the treasures of all our cathedrals put together could not equal this formidable and splendid museum of the Orient. It contained not only masterpieces of art, but masses of jewelry…One of the two victors filled his pockets,..the other…filled his coffers. And back they came to Europe, arm in arm, laughing away. Such is the story of the two bandits [England & France].

This violence, banditry, and racism, justified by the belief in the subhuman nature of the Chinese, became normalized practice against the Chinese over two centuries, and great American fortunes—Perkins, Astor, Forbes, Cabot, Delano (Roosevelt)–and Ivy league institutions at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia were built on this extraction and narco-trafficking. Hewing to the belief that the Chinese were less than human, Drug Barons pushed opium that addicted 10% of the population, essentially “roofie-ing” an entire nation and stealing its wealth. Just as US Southern wealth had been built on the decimation of black bodies through the slave trade, US East Coast wealth was built on the destruction of Chinese bodies through the drug trade, in what historian John K. Fairbank described as “the most long-continued and systematic international crime of modern times”.

Dehumanization, humiliation, assault, theft, rape, colonization, appropriation–these became the standard Western approach towards China and the Chinese; the Chinese people were “filthy yellow hordes”, an inferior, subhuman race, lacking agency, fit only to be colonized, exploited, enslaved, lynched, erased, and wherever possible, extinguished [through race war][22]. It would get worse.

  [22]: <https://www.jstor.org/stable/1432992?origin=crossref&seq=1>

**Cold and Hot war: A Chinaman’s Chance**

Inside US territory itself, the mythology of “yellow peril”—originally a German colonial war trope—became pervasive. Newspaper editor Horace Greeley, argued that the Chinese were “uncivilized, unclean, and filthy beyond all conception, without any of the higher domestic or social relations; lustful and sensual in their dispositions; every female is a prostitute of the basest order.” Greeley, a progressive (who employed a young Marx as a reporter), was simply mouthing the platitudes of his day; much worse than rhetoric was the routine violence. Prefiguring similar present-day fears that Chinese were stealing jobs, wealth, or threatening America, thousands of Chinese were massacred, lynched, set on fire, expelled from their communities in the late 19th Century: in 1871, the LA Chinatown massacre, in 1880, the Denver Yellow Peril pogrom, in 1885 Wyoming Rock Springs massacre, the Issaquah Valley attack, the Arson of Seattle’s Chinatown, the Tacoma riot, in 1886 the Seattle Riot of 1886, the Oregon Hells Canyon massacre. “A Chinaman’s chance” became a common term: to be Chinese was to be subject to punishment up to death at any time by the whim of white people.

In response, the Chinese hid themselves inside ghettoes where they could; fled pogroms, arson, and mass lynchings, and kept their heads down, “eating bitter” and trying to stay alive. Where they managed to settle down, they were subjected to cultural erasure, economic blockade, social isolation, a ban on owing property and businesses, and a proscription on marrying and having children, in short, planned elimination ~~.~~

A minor respite during WWII, when the US allied itself with the Chinese KMT (Kuomintang) against the Japanese gave a small glimmer of reprieve, as local leaders tried to establish breathing space, and the Japanese took on the role of the bad “Asians”. This lasted until the Chinese communists liberated themselves in 1949, and wrested back their own country. “China has stood up”, Mao declared, igniting jubilation throughout the third world, and sending shockwaves of horror through the colonial west. This arrant act of self-liberation and self-determination—along with the US’s astonishment that the monstrous KMT fascists they had courted and funded had been trounced–unleased a hysterical new wave of Sinophobia during the McCarthy era. High-ranking Congressional committees demanded _“Who lost China?”—_ as if it had been theirs—and purged the State Department of the moderate “China-hands”, who had been sympathetic or informed about China and its political institutions. A paroxysm of anti-China and anti-Asian hatred would shiver and fester throughout the cold war, burning, stoking and consuming itself through two hot wars (The Korean war and the Vietnam war), counterinsurgencies (Malaya), politicide (Indonesia), and smoldering on through the Nixon era, and crackling back alive to the flushed, red hot heat of the current moment.

In a country built on settler-colonial racism, this violent, racist, anti-China hatred–one of the most enduring legacies and traditions of the West–is the noxious Petri dish in which this propaganda for war is being cultured and vectored.

To this day, these stereotypes—ideological templates–are readily applied, for example, as regards Covid. In the Sinophobic Western press, Covid-19 is allegedly caused by [dirty][23] Chinese eating habits, dishonest [cover-up][24], [depraved][25] indifference to life, [despotic suppression][26] of information, and [dangerous intent][27] towards the west. In a word, the Chinese are dirty, dishonest, depraved, despotic, and dangerous. Every day, these racist slanders are plastered and repeated, ad nauseam and ad infinitum, in Western outlets like [The Guardian][28], The Washington Post, or The NY Times, and then catapulted into orbit by Twitter and Facebook. White Supremacy and its attendant anti-Asian fear and hatred are some of the oldest, most enduring, most deep-rooted hatreds in the Western mind: underneath the shallow topsoil of civility and liberal tolerance, they fester and simmer in angry, molten layers of the subconscious, quick to erupt and flare up in white-hot violence and rage at any perceived slight or challenge to white superiority; and rapidly weaponized as [political expediency][29] requires.

  [23]: <https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/25/world/asia/china-markets-coronavirus-sars.html>   [24]: <https://www.reuters.com/article/healt-coronavirus-usa-china/coronavirus-cover-up-is-chinas-chernobyl-white-house-adviser-idUSKBN23106X>   [25]: <https://nypost.com/2020/04/14/after-chinas-deadly-coronavirus-lies-why-is-europe-trusting-beijing-on-5g/>   [26]: <https://mronline.org/2020/03/05/yellow-caking-an-epidemic/>   [27]: <https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15915/coronavirus-west-911-moment>   [28]: <https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/08/if-china-valued-free-speech-there-would-be-no-coronavirus-crisis>   [29]: <https://static.politico.com/80/54/2f3219384e01833b0a0ddf95181c/corona-virus-big-book-4.17.20.pdf>

**Realpolitik: Opening and Closure**

Miraculously, during the 70’s, a battered and bruised US, humbled from defeats in the Vietnam war, and seeking a realpolitik to untangle the quagmire, decided to open relations with China to counterbalance against Soviet Union. Despite over a century of hatred, and the containment of the Russians for being an “Asiatic Race”, the US normalized relations with Chinese, and thus began a short, temporary, realist honeymoon, a brief respite from this race-baiting and race hatred.

This idyll was not to last. After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989, two things became readily apparent: 1) there was no further political need to engage with China, since the primary reason (the threat of the Soviet Union) had gone away, and 2) it was clear for anyone understanding history and geography that China could become a challenger to the United States itself, due to its size, capacity, and dynamism.

Thus the long, unabated, and persistent thread of anti-China hatred, red-scare-yellow-peril-thinking, reinvigorated again with the persistent white fragility _about new challenges to supremacy_ , came back with a vengeance. Despite continued engagement with China from the Nixon to the Clinton era, Sinophobia remained a silent, underground political force with a tremendous gravitational pull. Two groups were important in giving these forces concrete shape and form.

**The Empire Strikes Back: Yoda and His Jedis**

[Andrew Marshall, ][30]who died last year in March, was often referred to as “[Yoda][31]“. He was the Pentagon’s Oracle, directing its secretive internal think tank, the Office of Net Assessment, for 42 years, and was top advisor to 12 Secretaries of Defense. Originally part of an elite group of econometric thinkers at RAND (Herman “Strangelove” Kahn, James Schlesinger, Daniel Ellsberg, Albert Wohlstetter), they worked on game theoretic & stochastic modeling of complex phenomena, and on how to strategize the unthinkable and the insane: how to win at nuclear Armageddon.

  [30]: <https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=43134>   [31]: <https://www.defensenews.com/pentagon/2019/03/26/andy-marshall-the-pentagons-yoda-dies-at-age-97/>

Throughout his long tenure at the inner sanctum, Marshall had two key obsessions: US Military supremacy, first against the Soviet Union; then after the fall of the USSR, against China: preventing China’s rise to power. Using a deft mixture of threat inflation (through recondite “net” assessments & heterodox “team B” reviews), classified white papers, cryptic pronouncements to the power elite, and the incessant cultivation of a cult of loyalists, Marshall kept the Pentagon’s gravy train running on time, while instilling in his followers a paranoid, “long duree” mindset of endless and moving threat inflation.

Marshall’s proteges, Wolfowitz, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Cohen, Krepinevich, Pillsbury, Herman Kahn, Richard Perle, Richard Armitage, Michael O’Hanlon, and countless other neocon heavyweights were graduates of “St. Andrew’s Prep School”, or the [“Church of St. Andrew”,][32] mentored into Marshall’s world view and strategies. These ideologues had suckled at the woozy philosophical teat of Leo Strauss (imagining they were imbibing Plato, Hegel, or Kojeve) and graduated from Ivy institutions funded from Chinese opium smuggling. Marshall fed them solid food, C-rations, and the bloody red meat that cut and sharpened their fangs for ideological and political battle.

  [32]: <https://nationalinterest.org/feature/the-church-st-andy-11867?nopaging=1>

In 1992, a fully teethed group of Marshall’s neocon proteges penned the Defense Guidance Planning (DPG) document that came to be known as the “[Wolfowitz Doctrine][33]”. A preposterous, overweening document, embarrassing upon leakage for its hubris, irrationality, and illegality, it was immediately disavowed but not discarded. A few years later, it was redacted and upgraded into the [PNAC][34] (“The Project for a New American Century”)’s _Mein Kampf-_ like document, “Rebuilding Americas Defenses”. This was, in essence, an unhinged plan for [total world domination][35] (“unipolar global dominance”) in all domains of war (“[full spectrum dominance][36]”), unfettered by international law or any sense of proportion, rationality, or morality. Borrowing from the DPG its call for the unencumbered use of aggressive, pre-emptive war, including the use of nuclear and biological warfare, it postulated a “[Pearl Harbor-like][37]” incident to operationalize. Not long after, this doctrine became realized under Rumsfeld and Cheney, bringing us the chaos, murder, tragedy of Iraq and Afghanistan and the endless catastrophic wars of the post-Bush years.

  [33]: <http://work.colum.edu/~amiller/wolfowitz1992.htm>   [34]: <https://militarist-monitor.org/profile/project_for_the_new_american_century/>   [35]: <http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a053000fullspectrum>   [36]: <https://archive.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=45289>   [37]: <https://www.newstatesman.com/node/192545>

Contemporaneously, with the Soviet Union dissolved, and the US pressing NATO right up against the flank of Russia, the US also began to cross-hatch the contours of a containment strategy against an emerging China, the next potential challenger to US global domination.

Marshall and his Jedis began the explicit, long term countermoves. Even as the Middle East continued to spiral into chaos, yet more wide-ranging and ambitious plans were hatched against the Middle Kingdom. A strategy to withdraw from the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) was initially floated (and later, with the [blessing][38] of the CFR, circulated, and eventually implemented). Aggressive forward bases were planned in the early 2000’s, then built in East Asia, along the 1st island chain, placing deadly and destabilizing strategic weaponry right up against China’s throat and belly. New alliances and strategies were drawn up, and old alliances reinforced and rekindled, and a dangerously empire-nostalgic Japan was enabled in erasing history and remilitarizing to the hilt. Eventually, as all these pieces fell into place, Hillary Clinton would stage the coming out party: the declaration in 2011, of the “Pacific Pivot/Pivot to Asia” in Foreign Policy Magazine. Clinton’s debutante declaration was a dog-whistle marvel of cant and obfuscation. A plan to move 60% of US firepower to encircle and contain China through bases, weaponry, and alliances, while engaging in multi-domain hybrid warfare, was sold as a “historical rebalancing”. With the blessing of Obama’s cabinet, Marshall’s China threat was finally getting policy primetime.

  [38]: <https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2013-04-03/why-us-army-needs-missiles>

During this time, another of Andrew’s busy, brainy proteges, military officer Andrew Krepinevich, started to work out the nuts and bolts of actual war with China. Krepinevich, at the CSBA (Center for Strategic Budgetary Assessment), under Marshall’s guidance and funding, wrote out the details of the war doctrine against China, “[AirSea Battle][39]“—a China-directed counterpart to the Soviet-era “AirLand Battle”– involving decapitating and blinding strikes deep into Chinese territory, and instantiating Marshall’s “revolution in military affairs” for US supremacy in the Western Pacific theater of war. RAND and the CFR chimed in, rendering into granular and global detail the strategies and order of battle.

  [39]: <https://csbaonline.org/research/publications/airsea-battle-concept>

Another of Andrew’s powerful proteges was[ Michael Pillsbury. A serious operator, Pillsbury had assisted in the creation of the regime change “governmental” NGO known as the NED, the weaponization of the Mujahideen in Afghanistan, the implementation of politicide in Latin America (known as the Reagan Doctrine), but most importantly, he was credited with initiating the idea of the “China card” in 1973. Un][40]der the good offices of Marshall, Pillsbury published a book called [_“The Hundred Year Marathon”_][41] , scripting a fact-free document of [paranoid][42] threat inflation, racist scare-mongering, and orientalist slander that is now standard China doctrine. In an alphabetic royal flush of Sinophobes (Lighthizer-Mnuchin-Navarro-O’Brien-Pillsbury-Pompeo-Pence-Ross), Pillsbury is now currently the most important “China authority” of Everything Under the Heavens in the Trump Kingdom of Sinophobia.

  [40]: <https://web.archive.org/web/20150214060701/http:/www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2006/0607.ho1.html>   [41]: <https://thehundredyearmarathon.com/>   [42]: <https://china.ucsd.edu/_files/The-Hundred-Year-Marathon.pdf>

**China Syndrome** : **Blue team, Red Peril**

As the original US reason for allying with Beijing–to counterbalance Moscow–became moot, another group of China-bashers, far-right ideologues with sharp axes to grind from the cold war also began to crawl out of the cracks. Calling themselves the “[Blue team][43]” or “Panda sluggers”, they derided the US “panda-hugging” business class who wanted continued engagement with China, seeing China only as a mortal and irreconcilable communist threat. During the Clinton administration, they formed a loose coalition, coming together with funding under PNAC, using the Washington Times and Weekly Standard as their platforms. Although the “Blue Team” had no official members, published no formal policy statements, and had no offices–initially meeting in a garage, then at the Tabard Inn on N Street–they included key Congress members and staff; think tankers, journalists, and lobbyists.

  [43]: <https://web.archive.org/web/20140826113938/http:/www.ipsnews.net/2001/10/politics-us-contra-backers-now-target-china/>

Among them, former CIA analyst William C. Triplet and congressional staffer Edward Timperlake went on to write to a lurid series of conspiracy books alleging quid-pro-quo between Clinton and China ([Year of the Rat][44]; [Red Dragon Rising)][45]. This was a bizarro world where Taiwanese lobbyists with Chinese Mafia connections were acting as agents for the PRC government and manipulating the White House. They also alleged Chinese theft of military secrets, slave labor, the proliferation of WMD to Iran and other “rogue” states, and insinuated that Clinton’s “constructive engagement” was knowingly undermining the US for the benefit of the Chinese. These allegations put into ink a conspiratorial mythology about a dangerous, corrupt, and belligerent China, echoes that fed into an existing subterranean current of paranoid lies about China.

  [44]: <https://www.amazon.com/William-C.-Triplett-II/e/B006M38MOA?ref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share>   [45]: <https://www.amazon.com/Red-Dragon-Rising-Communist-Military-ebook/dp/B007NJPKGA/ref=pd_sim_351_1/135-6023983-3483165?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=B007NJPKGA&pd_rd_r=99727cf9-987c-422d-a8da-1832fbef0f3f&pd_rd_w=7NO9A&pd_rd_wg=mpL57&pf_rd_p=50fdecc9-bf07-4d35-ad07-39e73888f6b9&pf_rd_r=R0B8HV0KZJVNTS5EJ2D3&psc=1&refRID=R0B8HV0KZJVNTS5EJ2D3>

These “blue team” members, cross-pollinating with Marshall’s proteges, were a rogues gallery of high-powered political operators: Michael Ledeen, Frank Gaffney, Robert Kagan, Bill Kristol, Michael Pillsbury, Bill Gertz, Gary Bauer, Peter Navarro, Elliot Abrams, Richard Scaiffe, John Bolton were among those listed as “members”; Dana Rohrabacher, Tom DeLay, Nancy Pelosi, Robert Byrd were also considered to be fellow travelers.

These people built powerful commissions and institutions focused on attacking China, including the [Congressional Executive Commission on China][46], the[ US-China Security Review Commission.][47] The Taiwan Security Enhancement Act was also written at this time. In particular, the CECC appointed itself watchdog of Chinese trade, technology, labor and human rights, saturating Congress with an unending “blue team” litany of Chinese “abuses”.

  [46]: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional-Executive_Commission_on_China>   [47]: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States-China_Economic_and_Security_Review_Commission>

The most virulent and extreme of all these China hawks was [Frank Gaffney][48], who recycled the alarmist cold war group, “Committee on the Present Danger”, into the current “Committee on the Present Danger: China,” contending that “there is no hope of coexistence with China”. Gaffney’s ideology and [guiding principles][49] coincide with official positions on China and key US foreign policy; Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s speech and actions on China reflect his close affiliation and affinity with Gaffney.

  [48]: <https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/individual/frank-gaffney-jr>   [49]: <https://presentdangerchina.org/guiding-principles/>

**What the Pivot is: the Geostrategics of China-bashing**

Much of the “blue team’s” ideology and theorizing followed pre-existing currents of ideological posturing and hate-speech but have incorporated sharper geopolitical and geo-economic dimensions.

Western history can be seen as having several inflection points: one was 1492, the advent of the “Columbian Era”. The Columbian era is the era of sea-faring, sea-power-based Western colonial and imperial empires. The demise of the Columbian era, was foreshadowed by an Oxford geographer in 1904 who put forth what is now known as the “[Heartland Theory][50]”. In a nutshell, it is a land-based theory of power that predicts the end of sea-based powers: _“Who rules East Europe (Eurasia) commands the Heartland; who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island; who rules the World-Island commands the world.”_ It also concluded, “ _Were the Chinese…to…conquer its territory [of the Russian Empire], they might constitute the yellow peril to the world’s freedom_.” This maxim and the anxiety it provoked was red-lined in Brezinski’s “Grand Chess game”: _“No Eurasian challenger should emerge that can dominate Eurasia and thus also challenge U.S. global pre-eminence.”_

  [50]: <https://www.iwp.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/20131016_MackinderTheGeographicalJournal.pdf>

In 1992, Marshall’s protégé, Paul Wolfowitz formulated the above strands into a formal doctrine, in the above mentioned DPG (Defense Planning guidance) document:

> “Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival… that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly by the Soviet Union…to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region to generate global power…The U.S. must… protect a new order that [convinces] potential competitors that they need not aspire to a greater role or pursue a more aggressive posture to protect their legitimate interests. In non-defense areas, we must… discourage them from challenging our leadership or seeking to overturn the established political and economic order. We must maintain the mechanism for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role.”

This can be better understood by looking at a map:

![][51]

  [51]: https://2vynjo3oi9ijs29xb3fmjtn1-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/dropzone/2020/10/word-image-6.png

This is a map of the world, drawn from a topologist’s eye. It shows relationships, not distances or area. From this map you can note the following things:

\+ China has more borders than any other country in the world. This also gives it the possibility of connecting with more countries than any other.

\+ Blue lines/corridors are oceans: The top two thirds is the “world island” or “pivot state”–it contains most of the world’s population, resources, and wealth, and it can be connected as a single entity through overland routes or short ocean hops.

\+ The bottom is the Americas. It is topologically isolated from the world island. As sea lane control becomes less important, it will also lose prominence and relative power if the world island unifies. It’s clear that that unifying power will probably arise in China, whose overland paths using high-speed rail, roads, pipelines, and ports can be easily built and connected, in a “new silk road”.

\+ The US needs to fracture the world island to maintain its global power. If you color in the places where China is encircled, or where the US is waging war/fracturing societies/creating chaos, this is exactly where the fault lines of the global conflict are, and reveal what US strategy is.

Here is a second map:

![][52]

  [52]: https://2vynjo3oi9ijs29xb3fmjtn1-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/dropzone/2020/10/word-image-7.png

Image: CSBA: Shipping Lanes through the South China Sea.

The US has actually surrounded China with 400 military bases, bristling with strategic and tactical weaponry. It also has war-gamed out China’s key vulnerability: the chokepoint of the South China Sea. War in the South China Sea would disrupt $5.3 Trillion of China’s external trade and 77% of China’s oil imports[[5]][53]. In this scenario, the US does not have to win a shooting war with China in the South China Sea. The war just has to happen, and the disruption to trade could crash China’s economy. The map shows the shipping lanes that would be disrupted.

  [53]: <https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/10/16/the-us-is-set-on-a-path-to-war-with-china-what-is-to-be-done/#post-128921-endnote-5>

China’s first response to the US pivot and encirclement, especially in the South China Sea–its key chokepoint–was to build defensive military facilities along some of the islands, to deter US incursion and to raise the cost of interference. Its other response, much more ambitious, was the Belt & Road Initiative (BRI), which constitutes a long overland escape from the encirclement, similar to its “long march” during its encirclement by the fascist KMT. The BRI travels through SE Asia, then overland through Central Asia, to the Mediterranean, and then Europe and Africa. In particular:

> \+ CMEC (China-Myanmar Economic Corridor) travels through Rakhine State and exits to the Indian Ocean at Kyaukphyu port (bypassing the Strait of Malacca). > > \+ CPEC (China-Pakistan Economic Corridor) to Gwadar port transits directly to the Arabian Sea and the Persian Gulf. > > \+ Xinjiang is the key overland route for BRI to exit China to Central Asia, with Iran also a key node. > > \+ Djibouti at the horn of Africa is the entry node to Africa (the Sahel, and the South)

BRI as it does this, becomes the physical realization of Mackinder’s “heartland” in Eurasia—the pivot state connecting the “world island” into a single economic bloc, and raising China to the status of the key regional power, exactly what Brezinski and Wolfowitz, sought to prevent.

![][54]

  [54]: https://2vynjo3oi9ijs29xb3fmjtn1-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/dropzone/2020/10/word-image-8.png

Image: Mercator Institute for China Studies: Belt and Road Initiative.

Mindful of this development, and aware of the rapidly ticking biological clock on US power, the US is currently rapidly escalating hostilities in the SCS, most recently with war games, U2 incursions, belligerent passages of aircraft carriers, guided missile destroyers, submarines; China’s response has been to launch “carrier killer” missiles into the region.

Until recently, the US claimed that it was not an interested party to the SCS, just that it was concerned about “Freedom of Navigation”. Now it is openly taking about blockade [and strangulation of China][55] and [outright piracy][56] against Chinese ships through media proxies.

  [55]: <https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2020/08/24/to-defeat-china-in-war-strangle-its-economy/#747f364431a>   [56]: <https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2020/april/unleash-privateers>

It has also recently conducted drone war exercises for [assaulting][57] islands in the South China Sea, with [down-to-the-smallest detail][58] precision and preparation.

  [57]: <https://www.csis.org/analysis/marine-corps-radical-shift-toward-china>   [58]: <https://www.scmp.com/news/china/military/article/3103464/does-us-military-uniform-suggest-it-preparing-war-china>

The US is also going _directly_ after the BRI. It is [sanctioning][59] the Chinese companies alleged to have done construction in the SCS (all the claimants have done construction, including airfields; China is not unique). These companies are also involved in construction of the BRI; for example, China Communications Construction Company (CCCC) alone is reportedly involved 923 projects in 157 countries. This is an explicit attempt to [dismantle the BRI][60]. Likewise, the another “road” of the BRI is the accompanying [digital][61] communications-5G-blockchain infrastructure **.** This is yet another of the reasons why Huawei has been targeted for destruction.

  [59]: <https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/economics/article/3099148/us-sanctions-chinese-firm-centre-south-china-sea-island>   [60]: <https://chollima.org/new-u-s-sanctions-on-chinese-firms-are-aimed-at-undermining-the-bri/>   [61]: <https://www.silkroadbriefing.com/news/2019/05/21/us-huawei-belt-roads-new-5g-supply-chains/>

The US is also in the [process][62] of stationing intermediate range missiles all across the [SCS][63], and around the first island chain surrounding China, as well as attempting to press gang [South Korea into hosting][64] them. This is yet another layer of dangerous escalation, and very, very destabilizing.

  [62]: <https://www.armed-services.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/19-09_02-12-19.pdf>   [63]: <https://news.yahoo.com/special-report-u-rearms-nullify-093102073.html>   [64]: <http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/english_editorials/922947.html>

**Twilight of Capitalism**

The final dimension to the US-China competition is economic: this is the uncanny fact that China’s “Socialism with Chinese characteristics” works and outclasses Western neoliberal capitalism by leaps and bounds. In terms of developing an economy, raising living standards, creating public wealth, serving and meeting its people’s needs, and dealing with crises, China beats the capitalist west hands down.

Even the Trump administration, even as they claimed that such a state-led economy could never compete against the superior free-market economy of the US, have insistently demanded that China dismantle their planned economy in trade negotiations, because of its superior advantages over capitalism.

This was not supposed to be: Clintonite “Panda Huggers” had always justified, hubristically, that their engagement with China would result in China’s liberalization and total transformation—the inevitable, inexorable result of engaging with a superior Western political ideology and economic system. They also insisted that if China continued as it had with its planned economy and ”autocratic“ ways in a modern era, it would simply fail: it would end up like the Soviet Union or North Korea—it had no choice but to become more Western, more neoliberal, more capitalist. But a funny thing happened on the way to the market.

China built a system that has brought 850+ Million people out of poverty in few short decades, is slated to end extreme poverty this year, and that has already surpassed the US in PPP economy size and healthy life expectancy.

China’s thriving, effective Central government–with a [93.1%][65] approval rate—breaks all Western conceptions of development, governance, legitimacy, and of course, superiority.

  [65]: <https://ash.harvard.edu/files/ash/files/final_policy_brief_7.6.2020.pdf>

With 80% of its top leadership scientists or engineers, China also outranks the US in patents filed, top scientific papers published, and is a world leader in fields such as AI, Robotics, Quantum Computing, 5G, highspeed rail, advanced industrial production, next generation IT, materials science, and sustainable energy development, low-carbon eco-cities, and reforestation. It has also pledged to go carbon neutral by 2060, essentially giving the world an outside chance to still beat global warming—despite being a historical carbon creditor. With its scientific leadership, whole-of-society public health strategies, and its valuing of every human life, it has also shown that it can organize to defeat a mass pandemic in weeks—and by overriding capitalist markets whenever and wherever it sees fit.

Meanwhile the US still struggles with the largest number of cases and deaths from Covid–a death rate 200 times that of China’s—and is incapable of preventing Covid among its own top leadership. To boot, first in 2008, and then in 2020, the US neoliberal capitalist economy was shown up to be a jacked-up deck of cards, rescued only by massive Chinese debt-purchasing and endless printing of fiat money.

In contrast, China has demonstrated that it has developed an alternative, non-Western, non-capitalist model of development—without war, invasion, colonization, slavery, regime change, primitive accumulation—that the world can emulate and follow.

Once you realize that, you understand why the US ruling classes are so desperate to erase China and its example: China offers a threatening alternative model of development that is non-capitalist, non-Western, and non-colonial. As such, it undermines the west’s neocolonial domination of the third world and its debt-trap-based forced underdevelopment, subservience, and expropriation. It also offers a model of state-led ecological development. All this signals new possibilities of hope and transformation for the world. The ruling classes in the west will go to war to prevent this.

**Where does this all end?**

Despite China’s assurances that it does not want war, hot or cold, that it seeks win-win cooperation and co-existence with _all_ countries, and that it disdains hegemony, the US is continually escalating, provoking, and threatening China, even as it dismantles off-ramps, channels of communication and global institutions for cooperation and de-escalation.

The conclusion to draw is hard, but obvious: if things continue as they have, this can only lead to direct military confrontation and kinetic war.

The Democratic ticket as it stands, just as it silences the demands for viable reform and change by the Sandernistas, BLM, Me too, also ignores the non-interventionist, peace-demanding wishes of the majority of the people, and their demands for a better system and less violent foreign policy. It doubles down on racism, sexism, capitalism, and militarism. ** **

Biden’s doctrine toward China, if he is elected, will be a continuation of this noxious arc of history and planning. The think tank advising Biden on foreign policy, CNAS, a near-rhyming clone to PNAC, has grandfathered in most of existing anti-China doctrine, and has mapped out in obsessive detail, the next steps of a highly destructive and dangerous [strategy of confrontation][66] with China. The key difference is that it will “unite” countries more skillfully against China, pivot away from Trump’s neomercantilism towards a more “globalist” approach, and likely implement some revised version of the TPP, the 12 nation economic bloc against China.

  [66]: <https://www.cnas.org/publications/reports/rising-to-the-china-challenge>

Here are some key points to understand:

> \+ Escalation to war is bipartisan: there is no lesser evil here. The racist, capitalist, imperial ruling classes _cannot_ and [_will not_ tolerate][67] a rising or equal China in a multi-polar world. They would _rather see the end of the world_ than an end to Capitalism or White Supremacy. > >    [67]: <https://www.codepink.org/presentation_by_jodie_evans_to_no_cold_war_conference_september_26_2020>

\+ One subset of this group believes that they can actually win a war against China, or at the very least force its subjugation to the US. This submission will not happen, given the actual balance of forces and Chinese determination to resist. > > \+ US wants global supremacy but if the ruling class can’t have ordered supremacy, they are not averse to global disintegration and chaos. Proteges of Hayek and Leo Strauss, they thrive on “revolutionary disorder”. One fallback [model ][68]of US supremacy is to plunge the rest of the world back into the dark ages through hybrid [warfare][69]–while the US controls the key systems of communication, information, surveillance, finance, rent extraction, along with the corridors of maritime transport. > >    [68]: <https://www.amazon.com/Empire-Chaos-Roving-Eye-Collection-ebook/dp/B00OYVYD3G/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=Empire+of+Chaos&qid=1552925617&s=gateway&sr=8-1>   [69]: <http://www.infospecnaz.ru/en/hybrid-war-technology-and-social-media-master-class/>

\+ There is a third group of elite hawks who are [millenarian Christians][70]. Although a minority, they hold [powerful positions][71]. These believe in the salvation and rapture of the faithful as existing “contradictions” are heightened into Armageddon. These are religious zealots with no brakes or constraints on their appetite for war. > >    [70]: <https://qz.com/1270516/jerusalem-embassy-trumps-foreign-policy-looks-like-rapture-christians-plan-to-trigger-apocalypse/>   [71]: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3N2bOVd9_n8&feature=emb_logo>

\+ War, if it happens, could rapidly turn nuclear. The US no longer has “overmatch” in conventional weapons, and no longer subscribes to deterrence. Instead, its declaratory policy is to permit use against “significant [_non-nuclear_][72] strategic attacks”[[6]][73]. Since the 2002 Nuclear Posture Review, the US has explicitly prepared for [nuclear war with China][74], and threatens “intolerable damage” in response to “ _non-nuclear_ or nuclear aggression.”[[7]][75] The Chinese have disavowed nuclear first strike—their nuclear capacity is currently minimal and purely defensive—but in case of war the US military could[ easily][76] resort to the [use][77] of [low-yield nuclear weapons][78][[8]][79] or even decapitating nuclear first strikes to overcome its conventional weaknesses. China’s deterrence would then have to shift to “hair trigger”, “launch on warning”. This means that war could rapidly escalate to large scale nuclear strikes, which many scientists predict would result in nuclear winter, dooming most forms of organic life on the planet. > >    [72]: <https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/01/18/donald-trump-russia-nuclear-cyberattack-216477>   [73]: <https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/10/16/the-us-is-set-on-a-path-to-war-with-china-what-is-to-be-done/#post-128921-endnote-6>   [74]: <https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2002-04/press-releases/nuclear-posture-review-leaks-outlines-targets-contingencies>   [75]: <https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/10/16/the-us-is-set-on-a-path-to-war-with-china-what-is-to-be-done/#post-128921-endnote-7>   [76]: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRwWM6X5vNk&feature=youtu.be&t=5621>   [77]: <https://fas.org/blogs/security/2017/06/new-nukes/>   [78]: <http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/13629071>   [79]: <https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/10/16/the-us-is-set-on-a-path-to-war-with-china-what-is-to-be-done/#post-128921-endnote-8>

\+ Modern “democracies” require constant media manipulation and propaganda, to “manufacture consent” for war. As a result, we are living in time of “total deceit”, as Orwell put it: _“Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac…Political language…is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind_.” William Casey, CIA director concurred succinctly: “ _We’ll know when our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.”[[9]][80]_

  [80]: <https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/10/16/the-us-is-set-on-a-path-to-war-with-china-what-is-to-be-done/#post-128921-endnote-9>

**What then, is to be done?**

Our work is cut out for us: “In war, the first casuality is truth”. Our task is to _prevent the first casualty, challenge the lies;_ the second, to organize and work for peace.

**Think Critically**

As we approach elections, the possibility of an October surprise increases. Remember:

> \+ [Information war][81] _precedes, justifies, and enables_ kinetic war, therefore you _must_ think critically and _defensively_ ; do not take anything attacking China at face value. > >    [81]: <https://www.lawfareblog.com/toward-information-operations-kill-chain>

\+ Evaluate everything for a) source b) logic, sense, rationality c) bracket & evaluate emotional triggers or trigger words d) look at counter-evidence/arguments > > \+ Make your own judgements, draw your own conclusions: seek truth from facts

**Don’t Be Fooled by the engineering of “truthiness”:**

Stories and lies seem credible when they are 1) repeated incessantly 2) resemble pre-existing stories (especially ones that are projected from our own disowned flaws), 3) have some tiny grain of plausibility mixed in 4) seem coherent or manufacture coherence through multiple sources, and 5) tug at your heartstrings:

This means that we have to:

> \+ Watch out _for memes and repetition_ : watch out for stories are seem self-replicating, self-distributing, repetitive, and create an echo chamber: this makes them seem real and convincing even when they are lies. Even debunked stories serve as bedding for more lies. Remember also that US social media is handmaiden to the war machine—the worst is Twitter[[10]][82]—it promotes war propaganda and routinely purges counter-narratives. > >    [82]: <https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/10/16/the-us-is-set-on-a-path-to-war-with-china-what-is-to-be-done/#post-128921-endnote-10>

\+ Distinguish the _coherence_ and validation of a story that has multiple sources of verification from echo-chambered-and-planted-stories (for example, anything about China connected to _WUC (World Uighur Congress)-_[ _Adrian Zenz_][83] _–_[ _ASPI_][84] _-Nathan Ruser_ -nexus; the _Lausan-Jacobin-Nation-DemocracyNow_ -tendency; or _The Guardian-NYTimes-Washington Post-CFR_ -cabal). Outlets like these are not channels of independent verification, they are often a set of single sourced memes skillfully distributed out and repeated through different channels, part of the [fire hose][85][[11]][86] strategy of war propaganda. > >    [83]: <https://threader.app/thread/1287411708374454273>   [84]: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDkC1ZMFBCg>   [85]: <https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/perspectives/PE100/PE198/RAND_PE198.pdf>   [86]: <https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/10/16/the-us-is-set-on-a-path-to-war-with-china-what-is-to-be-done/#post-128921-endnote-11>

\+ Watch out for _emotional trigger words:_ _“genocide”, “slavery”, “concentration camp”,“trafficking”, “sterilization”, “theft/IP theft”, “espionage”, “cyber warfare_ ”, attributed without any proof. These are trigger words designed to bypass critical evaluation, appealing to your emotions: fear, pity, and outrage. > > \+ Watch out for _projection and gaslighting_ : the US has a long history of slave and prison slave labor[[12]][87], of 3rd world debt-traps, of mistreating/torturing/killing muslims, of genociding indigenous peoples, of mass incarceration, of police brutality, of cultural genocide, mass sterilization, medical testing without consent[[13]][88]. If you see these words or allegations alleged [against China][89], especially in a context where it makes no sense, evaluate[[14]][90] whether it seems real because there is actual proof, or because it is a convenient projection of the US/West’s own _disowned violence, criminality, and brutality._ > >    [87]: <https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/10/16/the-us-is-set-on-a-path-to-war-with-china-what-is-to-be-done/#post-128921-endnote-12>   [88]: <https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/10/16/the-us-is-set-on-a-path-to-war-with-china-what-is-to-be-done/#post-128921-endnote-13>   [89]: <https://threader.app/thread/1287411708374454273>   [90]: <https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/10/16/the-us-is-set-on-a-path-to-war-with-china-what-is-to-be-done/#post-128921-endnote-14>

\+ Speak up and simply call out the propaganda for what it is: lies to enable war and war-profiteering. Don’t get trapped in the weeds of debunking—they will spread 1000 new lies before you’ve refuted a single one: “don’t expect to counter the firehose of falsehood with the squirt gun of truth”; cut it off at the root. > > \+ Do not allow yourself to be silenced. Be prepared to be criticized as a “ _human rights denier_ ”. Not having truth on their side, this is what they will always resort to: _shut the f*ck up [or else]._ Don’t be intimated, and don’t let them silence you. Make your voice heard! > > \+ Last but not least, organize! Despair is not an option! The following are good places to start:

<https://peacepivot.org/>

<https://www.codepink.org/china>

<https://www.nocoldwar.org/>

_This article was written with gratitude for the memory and inspiration of Kevin Zeese, a tireless fighter for truth, peace, and justice. Many thanks also to John Pilger for his kind feedback and encouragement._

**Notes.**

_1\. Amnesty International Iraq/Occupied Kuwait Human Rights Violations_ , MDE 14/16/90: p56 <https://www.amnesty.org/download/Documents/MDE140161990ENGLISH.PDF> [↑][91]

  [91]: <https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/10/16/the-us-is-set-on-a-path-to-war-with-china-what-is-to-be-done/#post-128921-endnote-ref-1>

2\. For a possible missile placement map, see _Barrie, Elleman, Nouwens: The End of the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty: Implications for Asia_ , P31 Map 2.2 [https://www.iiss.org/-/media/files/publications/rsa-2020/rsa20-chapter-2—the-end-of-the-intermediate-range-nuclear-forces-treaty-implications-for-asia.pdf][92] [↑][93]

  [92]: <https://www.iiss.org/-/media/files/publications/rsa-2020/rsa20-chapter-2---the-end-of-the-intermediate-range-nuclear-forces-treaty-implications-for-asia.pdf>   [93]: <https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/10/16/the-us-is-set-on-a-path-to-war-with-china-what-is-to-be-done/#post-128921-endnote-ref-2>

3\. For example, the German Jesuit Missionary, Adam Schall was appointed to high bureaucratic office in the court of the Ching Dynasty [↑][94]

  [94]: <https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/10/16/the-us-is-set-on-a-path-to-war-with-china-what-is-to-be-done/#post-128921-endnote-ref-3>

4\. Du Halde, Jean-Baptiste (1741), Brookes, Richard (ed.), [_The General History of China, 3rd ed._][95], [_Vols. I_][96], [_II_][97], [_III_][98], & [_IV_][99], London: J. Watts. & Du Halde, Jean-Baptiste (1735), [_Description Geographique, Historique, Chronologique, Politique, et Physique de l’Empire de la Chine et de la Tartarie Chinoise [A Geographical, Historical, Chronological, Political, and Physical Description of the Empire of China and of Chinese Tartary]_][100], [_Vol. I_][100], [_II_][101], [_III_][102], & [_IV_][103], Paris: P.-G. le Mercier. [↑][104]

  [95]: <https://archive.org/stream/generalhistoryof01duha#page/n5/mode/2up>   [96]: <https://archive.org/stream/generalhistoryof01duha>   [97]: <https://archive.org/stream/generalhistoryof02duha#page/n5/mode/2up>   [98]: <https://archive.org/stream/generalhistoryof03duha#page/n5/mode/2up>   [99]: <https://archive.org/stream/generalhistoryof04duha#page/n5/mode/2up>   [100]: <http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k54962623/>   [101]: <http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k56991284.r=Jean-Baptiste Du Halde?rk=107296;4>   [102]: <http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k5699174c.r=Jean-Baptiste Du Halde?rk=64378;0>   [103]: <http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k56995399.r=Jean-Baptiste Du Halde?rk=85837;2>   [104]: <https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/10/16/the-us-is-set-on-a-path-to-war-with-china-what-is-to-be-done/#post-128921-endnote-ref-4>

_5\. Department of Defense China Military Power Report_ , p133 <https://media.defense.gov/2020/Sep/01/2002488689/-1/-1/1/2020-DOD-CHINA-MILITARY-POWER-REPORT-FINAL.PDF> [↑][105]

  [105]: <https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/10/16/the-us-is-set-on-a-path-to-war-with-china-what-is-to-be-done/#post-128921-endnote-ref-5>

_6\. 2018 US Nuclear Posture Review_ , p21. <https://media.defense.gov/2018/Feb/02/2001872886/-1/-1/1/2018-NUCLEAR-POSTURE-REVIEW-FINAL-REPORT.PDF> [↑][106]

  [106]: <https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/10/16/the-us-is-set-on-a-path-to-war-with-china-what-is-to-be-done/#post-128921-endnote-ref-6>

_7\. 2018 US Nuclear Posture Review_ , p32. <https://media.defense.gov/2018/Feb/02/2001872886/-1/-1/1/2018-NUCLEAR-POSTURE-REVIEW-FINAL-REPORT.PDF> [↑][107]

  [107]: <https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/10/16/the-us-is-set-on-a-path-to-war-with-china-what-is-to-be-done/#post-128921-endnote-ref-7>

_8\. 2018 US Nuclear Posture Review_ , pp54-55 <https://media.defense.gov/2018/Feb/02/2001872886/-1/-1/1/2018-NUCLEAR-POSTURE-REVIEW-FINAL-REPORT.PDF>

Also, Chinese PLA assessment: <http://www.81.cn/jfjbmap/content/2019-06/20/content_236472.htm> [↑][108]

  [108]: <https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/10/16/the-us-is-set-on-a-path-to-war-with-china-what-is-to-be-done/#post-128921-endnote-ref-8>

_9\. Ray McGovern, Russia Gate’s Last Gasp, Consortium News_ <https://consortiumnews.com/2020/06/29/ray-mcgovern-russiagates-last-gasp/> [↑][109]

  [109]: <https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/10/16/the-us-is-set-on-a-path-to-war-with-china-what-is-to-be-done/#post-128921-endnote-ref-9>

10\. As news of horrific assaults by HK rioters on journalists spread through the mediasphere on June 12th, within hours, Twitter shut down 170,000 accounts on the ground that they were “promoting narratives favorable to the CPC”: <https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/information-operations-june-2020.html>. According to the [Guardian][110], “The major themes of the tweets were that that Hong Kong protesters were violent, and the US was interfering with the protests; accusations about Guo; the Taiwan election; and praise of China’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic”—which turned out to be true. Twitter coordinates with ASPI, a key source of anti-China propaganda. [↑][111]

  [110]: <https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/jun/12/twitter-deletes-170000-accounts-linked-to-china-influence-campaign>   [111]: <https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/10/16/the-us-is-set-on-a-path-to-war-with-china-what-is-to-be-done/#post-128921-endnote-ref-10>

11\. RAND offers a good analysis of this technique here, although it fails to mention that this is what is being used against China by the West: <https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/perspectives/PE100/PE198/RAND_PE198.pdf> [↑][112]

  [112]: <https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/10/16/the-us-is-set-on-a-path-to-war-with-china-what-is-to-be-done/#post-128921-endnote-ref-11>

12\. For example, [ASPI][113] makes unfounded allegations of Chinese slave labor while being funded by US corporations that are confirmed to use US prison slave labor [↑][114]

  [113]: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDkC1ZMFBCg>   [114]: <https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/10/16/the-us-is-set-on-a-path-to-war-with-china-what-is-to-be-done/#post-128921-endnote-ref-12>

13\. For example, the NY Times concocted [an article][115] on “non-consensual” Chinese vaccine testing, which doesn’t hold up to any scrutiny. Among other things, it confounds the risk profiles of Western m-RNA & ADV-vectored vaccines that have never been approved for human use, with the time-tested inactivated vaccines that the Chinese are using. [↑][116]

  [115]: <https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/26/business/china-coronavirus-vaccine.html>   [116]: <https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/10/16/the-us-is-set-on-a-path-to-war-with-china-what-is-to-be-done/#post-128921-endnote-ref-13>

Some good resources are available at _Qiao Collective_ : <https://www.qiaocollective.com/en/education/xinjiang>

<https://www.qiaocollective.com/en/articles/sinophobia-inc>

_The Grayzone_ : <https://thegrayzone.com/tag/uighurs/>

_Popular Resistance_ : <https://popularresistance.org/xinjiang-and-uyghurs-what-youre-not-being-told/> _World Affairs Blog_ : <https://worldaffairs.blog/2020/09/20/uyghur-xinjiang-explained-in-four-minutes/> _Roderick Day_ : <https://threader.app/thread/1287411708374454273> [↑][117]

  [117]: <https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/10/16/the-us-is-set-on-a-path-to-war-with-china-what-is-to-be-done/#post-128921-endnote-ref-14>

_**K.J. Noh** is a long time activist, writer and teacher. He can be reached at [[email protected]][118]_

[news.cgtn.com][1]

  [1]: <https://news.cgtn.com/news/2021-06-18/From-Unit-731-to-Fort-Detrick-What-is-the-U-S-hiding-from-the-world--11bPpnpvfr2/index.html>

# From Unit 731 to Fort Detrick: What is the U.S. hiding from the world?

Yuan Sha

6-8 minutes

* * *

![][2]

  [2]: https://news.cgtn.com/news/2021-06-18/From-Unit-731-to-Fort-Detrick-What-is-the-U-S-hiding-from-the-world--11bPpnpvfr2/img/8c683a7cf4d44548972001345a2111b4/8c683a7cf4d44548972001345a2111b4.jpeg

A group photo of Unit 731 in the NHK documentary. /NHK Screenshot

_**Editor's note:** Yuan Sha is an assistant research fellow at the Department of American Studies, China Institute of International Studies. A former Fulbright scholar at Columbia University, she has a PhD in International Politics from China Foreign Affairs University. Yuan has published several papers on China-U.S. security relations in Chinese academic journals and is a regular contributor to many Chinese media outlets. The article reflects the author's opinions, and not necessarily the views of CGTN._

The atrocities of the infamous Unit 731 of the Imperial Japanese Army are shocking to the world. What is more disturbing is the U.S. connections to Unit 731 and its own covert experimentations in the secrecy-shrouded Fort Detrick and hundreds of other bio-labs around the world.

**The U.S. cover-up of Unit 731 war crimes**

Unit 731 is a biological warfare organ of the Imperial Japanese Army, which conducted horrific human experiments on prisoners of war and civilians in northeast China during WWII. They also carried out biological wars by contaminating water and farmlands with disease-carrying germs. At least 200,000 Chinese are estimated to have died in these experiments, which left a traumatic memory on the Chinese nation.

The heinous war crimes are well-documented in news reports and witness testimonies. In the documentaries of Japanese broadcaster NHK entitled "Unit 731: Elite Doctors and Human Experimentation" and "Unit 731: How Human Experimentations were Carried Out," details of the biological experimentations and germ warfare of Unit 731 on Chinese civilians were unveiled and recordings of those war criminals were released for the first time. The horrific history is also kept in the Museum of War Crime Evidence by Japanese Army Unit 731 in northeastern China.

To the astonishment of the world, such crimes against humanity were "sealed up" after the end of the war. Shiro Ishii, Head of Unit 731's human experiments escaped punishment and lived in peace until his death in 1959\. Others even became the backbone in the Japanese medical community. In contrast, many Nazi war criminals who did similar experiments in Europe were prosecuted by the Nuremberg war crimes tribunal.

Not until decades later, did the dark truth begin to emerge. In 1988, the _Los Angeles Times_ reported a secret deal between the U.S. and Japan after World War II, when the U.S. eyed to enlist Japan as a Cold War ally. The report unveiled a 1947 memorandum between the U.S. intelligence unit and General Douglas MacArthur about the U.S. intention to cover up the crimes of Unit 731 in exchange for its experimentation data.

The story was later corroborated in other news reports. A _New York Times_ report in 1995 noted that the U.S. wanted the Japanese research data of biological agents for its own potential military use, possibly on the Soviets. The U.S. not only granted immunity to Shiro Ishii and other war criminals of Unit 731 from trial but also put them on the American payroll. In 1995, the _San Jose Mercury News_ published a declassified U.S. military document that provides detailed evidence of how the U.S. intelligence tried to cover up the atrocities conducted by Unit 731.

![][3]

  [3]: https://news.cgtn.com/news/2021-06-18/From-Unit-731-to-Fort-Detrick-What-is-the-U-S-hiding-from-the-world--11bPpnpvfr2/img/c1eb37cd96cb440b9af61d30a53cc386/c1eb37cd96cb440b9af61d30a53cc386.jpeg

The name "Fort Detrick" can be seen on the cover of a report about Unit 731's anthrax test on live humans. /Xinhua

The name "Fort Detrick" can be seen on the cover of a report about Unit 731's anthrax test on live humans. /Xinhua

**The dark secret of Fort Detrick**

The U.S. was not only complicit in Unit 731 war crimes but also a leading player in the biological warfare and bioweapon development itself.

In 1956, Fort Detrick in Maryland was designated by the U.S federal government as a base for bioweapon research, with an objective to maintaining its lead on biological warfare, where the U.S. military carried out a series of appalling experiments.

But little known to the world is that Fort Detrick has a close relationship with Unit 731. In order to get the experimental data of Unit 731, the U.S. spent [approximately] 250,000 yen and invited Shiro Ishii to serve as a [bioweapons] advisor at Fort Detrick. According to the data of the U.S. National Archives database, from 1946 to 1949, nearly 60 interviews and studies of Unit 731 were conducted in Fort Detrick.

After receiving the materials of Unit 731, the U.S. began a large number of biological weapons research. In "Japan's Germ Warfare: The U.S. Cover-up of a War Crime," American journalist John W. Powell pondered that the biological weapons developed by the U.S. are very similar to those developed by Japan, as he wrote, "Infecting feathers with spore diseases was one of Ishii's ideas and feather bombs later became a standard weapon in America's BW arsenal."

But in July 2019, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention closed the U.S. Army's institute of infectious disease at Fort Detrick due to at least two "breaches of containment." But shortly after the shutdown, the labs were allowed to resume operation. The U.S. government has been silent about the shutdown in Fort Detrick.

Since the COVID-19 outbreak, questions popped up surrounding Fort Detrick. On March 10, 2020, a petition for information for Fort Detrick was posted on the White House website which later disappeared. U.S. politicians are dismissing the legitimate concerns as disinformation and conspiracy theories and tried to divert attention by pushing for false claims of COVID-19 origins.

For decades, the U.S. tried to cover up its secret experiments in more than 200 biological laboratories around the world. These hidden actions pose severe risks to human safety and international stability. With growing calls for investigations into the Fort Detrick bio-labs, it is imperative for the U.S. to improve the transparency of its biological weapon development to the international community.

[independent.co.uk][1]

  [1]: <https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/virus-biological-us-army-weapons-fort-detrick-leak-ebola-anthrax-smallpox-ricin-a9042641.html>

# US army's weapons lab shut down after inspection finds deadly viruses could escape

3-4 minutes

* * *

America’s main biological warfare lab has been ordered to stop all research into the deadliest [viruses][2] and pathogens over fears contaminated waste could leak out of the facility.

  [2]: <https://www.independent.co.uk/topic/viruses>

Fort Detrick, in Maryland, has been the epicentre of the US Army’s bioweapons research since the beginning of the Cold War.

But last month the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ([CDC][3]) – the government’s public health body – stripped the base of its license to handle highly restricted “select agents”, which includes [Ebola][4], [smallpox][5] and [anthrax][6].

  [3]: <https://www.independent.co.uk/topic/cdc>   [4]: <https://www.independent.co.uk/topic/ebola>   [5]: <https://www.independent.co.uk/topic/smallpox>   [6]: <https://www.independent.co.uk/topic/anthrax>

The unusual move follows an inspection by the CDC at Fort Detrick which found several problems with new procedures used to decontaminate waste water.

For years the facility used a steam sterilisation plant to treat waste water, but after a storm flooded and ruined that machinery last year, Fort Detrick switched to a new chemical-based decontamination system.

##

##  Forgotten Women: Survivors of Ebola 2019

Show all 12

But the CDC inspectors found the new procedures were not sufficient, with both mechanical failures causing leaks and researchers failing to properly follow the rules.

As a result, the organisation sent a “cease and desist” order to Fort Detrick, forcing it to suspend all research on select agents.

Although the United States officially abandoned its [biological weapons][7] programme in 1969, Fort Detrick has continued defensive research into deadly pathogens on the list of “select agents”, including the Ebola virus, the organisms that cause the [plague][8], and the highly toxic poison ricin.

  [7]: <https://www.independent.co.uk/topic/biological-weapons>   [8]: <https://www.independent.co.uk/topic/plague>

The army’s Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, based at Fort Detrick, says its primary mission today is to “protect the warfighter from biological threats” but its scientists also investigate outbreaks of disease among civilians and other threats to public health.

In recent years it has been involved in testing possible vaccines for Ebola, after several epidemics of the deadly virus in Africa.

A spokeswoman for the lab, Caree Vander Linden, said despite the CDC suspension order, there had not been any threat to public health or any leaks of hazardous material outside the base.

US military plan to spread viruses using insects could create ‘new class of biological weapon’, scientists warn

The shutdown of research at Fort Detrick is likely to last several months, she also told the _New York Times_.

This is not the first time the lab has been temporarily shut down due to failures in handling the dangerous pathogens inside.

In 2009, research at Fort Detrick was suspended because it was discovered it was storing pathogens which were not listed on its inventory.

The regulations on keeping close track of hazardous biological material were tightened after the 2001 anthrax attacks, which saw five people die after spores were posted to several media newsrooms and Democratic senators.

[fredericknewspost.com][1]

  [1]: <https://www.fredericknewspost.com/news/continuing_coverage/motive-relationships-in-fort-detrick-shooting-still-unknown/article_45e2c1de-f12b-5b91-bba3-e9f772caa5be.html>

# Motive, relationships in Fort Detrick shooting still unknown

Mary Grace Keller [email protected]

2-3 minutes

* * *

One month into the investigation of the deceased Fort Detrick sailor who reportedly shot two fellow service members in a Frederick business park April 6, police have no major updates to release to the public.

Fantahun Girma Woldesenbet, a 38-year-old Navy Hospital Corpsman stationed at Fort Detrick, [reportedly shot two naval sailors][2] with a rifle in the 8400 block of Progress Drive around 8:20 a.m.

  [2]: <https://www.fredericknewspost.com/news/crime_and_justice/authorities-release-photo-of-frederick-gunman/article_86e3cbe7-32fd-54bc-bba3-1e7f51646830.html>

The men were working inside a warehouse rented and used for storage by the Naval Medical Research Center, Biological Defense Research Directorate, according to the Frederick Police Department. Woldesenbet, of the 100 block of Willowdale Drive in Frederick, reportedly drove to Fort Detrick immediately after the shooting, where the post’s civilian police fatally shot him.

Shooting victim Navy Hospitalman Casey Nutt, 26, of Germantown, was released from the hospital the day of the shooting. Hospital Corpsman 1st Class Carlos Portugal, 36, of Frederick, was hospitalized for a longer stay, but as of Wednesday, he was doing well and had received outpatient care, according to Naval Medical Research Center spokesman Tommy Lamkin.

The police investigation is ongoing, but questions such as motive and details of the shooter’s relationship to the victims remain unclear.

“We are still coordinating with all of the partnering agencies involved in this investigation, and at the conclusion of the investigation we will provide the findings,” FPD spokesman Allen Etzler wrote in an email Wednesday. “We know there’s a desire from the public to receive this information, but we do not want to jeopardize the integrity of the investigation by releasing information without the full picture.”

[nytimes.com][1]

  [1]: <https://www.nytimes.com/1994/10/09/world/cia-spent-millions-to-support-japanese-right-in-50-s-and-60-s.html?pagewanted=all>

# C.I.A. Spent Millions to Support Japanese Right in 50's and 60's

Tim Weiner

13-16 minutes

* * *

 * Oct. 9, 1994

In a major covert operation of the cold war, the Central Intelligence Agency spent millions of dollars to support the conservative party that dominated Japan's politics for a generation.

The C.I.A. gave money to the Liberal Democratic Party and its members in the 1950's and the 1960's, to gather intelligence on Japan, make the country a bulwark against Communism in Asia and undermine the Japanese left, said retired intelligence officials and former diplomats. Since then, the C.I.A. has dropped its covert financial aid and focused instead on gathering inside information on Japan's party politics and positions in trade and treaty talks, retired intelligence officers said.

The Liberal Democrats' 38 years of one-party governance ended last year when they fell from power after a series of corruption cases -- many involving secret cash contributions. Still the largest party in Japan's parliament, they formed an awkward coalition in June with their old cold war enemies, the Socialists -- the party that the C.I.A.'s aid aimed in part to undermine.

Though the C.I.A.'s financial role in Japanese politics has long been suspected by historians and journalists, the Liberal Democrats have always denied it existed, and the breadth and depth of the support has never been detailed publicly. Disclosure of the covert aid could open old wounds and harm the Liberal Democrats' credibility as an independent voice for Japanese interests. The subject of spying between allies has always been sensitive.

The C.I.A. did not respond to an inquiry. In Tokyo, Katsuya Muraguchi, director of the Liberal Democratic Party's management bureau, said he had never heard of any payments.

"This story reveals the intimate role that Americans at official and private levels played in promoting structured corruption and one-party conservative democracy in post-war Japan, and that's new," said John Dower, a leading Japan scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "We look at the L.D.P. and say it's corrupt and it's unfortunate to have a one-party democracy. But we have played a role in creating that misshapen structure."

Bits and pieces of the story are revealed in United States Government records slowly being declassified. A State Department document in the National Archives describes a secret meeting in a Tokyo hotel at which Eisaku Sato, a former Prime Minister of Japan, sought under-the-table contributions from the United States for the 1958 parliamentary election. A newly declassified C.I.A. history also discusses covert support sent that year.

But the full story remains hidden. It was pieced together through interviews with surviving participants, many well past 80 years old, and Government officials who described still-classified State Department documents explicitly confirming the Kennedy Administration's secret aid to the Liberal Democrats in the early 1960's.

The law requires the Government to publish, after 30 years, "all records needed to provide a comprehensive documentation of major foreign policy decisions and actions." Some State Department and C.I.A. officials say the Kennedy-era documents should stay secret forever, for fear they might disrupt Japan's coalition government or embarrass the United States. Other State Department officials say the law demands that the documents be unsealed. A Secret Operation That Succeeded

The C.I.A.'s help for Japanese conservatives resembled other cold war operations, like secret support for Italy's Christian Democrats. But it remained secret -- in part, because it succeeded. The Liberal Democrats thwarted their Socialist opponents, maintained their one-party rule, forged close ties with Washington and fought off public opposition to the United States' maintaining military bases throughout Japan.

One retired C.I.A. official involved in the payments said, "That is the heart of darkness and I'm not comfortable talking about it, because it worked." Others confirmed the covert support.

"We financed them," said Alfred C. Ulmer Jr., who ran the C.I.A.'s Far East operations from 1955 to 1958. "We depended on the L.D.P. for information." He said the C.I.A. had used the payments both to support the party and to recruit informers within it from its earliest days.

By the early 1960's, the payments to the party and its politicians were "so established and so routine" that they were a fundamental, if highly secret, part of American foreign policy toward Japan, said Roger Hilsman, head of the State Department's intelligence bureau in the Kennedy Administration.

"The principle was certainly acceptable to me," said U. Alexis Johnson, United States Ambassador to Japan from 1966 to 1969. "We were financing a party on our side." He said the payments continued after he left Japan in 1969 to become a senior State Department official.

The C.I.A. supported the party and established relations with many promising young men in the Japanese Government in the 1950's and 1960's. Some are today among the elder statesmen of Japanese politics.

Masaru Gotoda, a respected Liberal Democratic Party leader who entered parliament in the 1970's and who recently served as Justice Minister, acknowledged these contacts.

"I had a deep relationship with the C.I.A.," he said in an interview, referring to his years as a senior official in intelligence activities in the 1950's and 1960's. "I went to their headquarters. But there was nobody in an authentic Government organization who received financial aid." He would not be more explicit.

"Those C.I.A. people who were stationed in the embassy with legitimate status were fine," he said. "But there were also covert people. We did not really know all the activities they were conducting. Because they were from a friendly nation, we did not investigate deeply." Recruitment Was 'Sophisticated'

The recruitment of Japanese conservatives in the 1950's and 1960's was "a pretty sophisticated business," said one C.I.A. officer. "Quite a number of our officers were in touch with the L.D.P. This was done on a seat-by-seat basis" in the Japanese parliament. A second C.I.A. officer said the agency's contacts had included members of the Japanese cabinet.

As the C.I.A. supported the Liberal Democrats, it undermined their opponents. It infiltrated the Japan Socialist Party, which it suspected was receiving secret financial support from Moscow, and placed agents in youth groups, student groups and labor groups, former C.I.A. officers said.

Obstructing the Japanese opposition "was the most important thing we could do," one said.

The covert aid apparently ended in the early 1970's, when growing frictions over trade began to strain relations between the United States and Japan, and the growing wealth of Japan made the agency question the point of supporting politicians.

"By that time, they were self-financing," a former senior intelligence official said. But the agency used its longstanding relationships to establish a more traditional espionage operation in Japan.

"We had penetrations of all the cabinet agencies," said a C.I.A. officer based in Tokyo in the late 1970's and early 1980's. He said the agency also recruited a close aide to a prime minister and had such good contacts in the agriculture ministry that it knew beforehand what Japan would say in trade talks. "We knew the fallback positions" in talks over beef and citrus imports, he said. "We knew when the Japanese delegation would walk out."

Useful though it may have been, the inside information rarely gave American trade negotiators the upper hand with the Japanese. 'The Reverse Course' Of American Policy

The support for the Liberal Democrats had its origins in what some historians call "the reverse course" of American policy toward Japan after World War II.

>From 1945 to 1948, the American forces who occupied Japan purged the Government of the right-wing militarists who had led Japan into war. But by 1949, things had changed. China went Communist. The Soviet Union exploded its first atomic bomb. Washington was fighting Communism, not ferreting out rightists.

The American occupation forces freed accused war criminals like Nobusuke Kishi, later Japan's Prime Minister. Some of the rehabilitated politicians had close contacts with organized crime groups, known as yakuza. So did Yoshio Kodama, a political fixer and later a major C.I.A. contact in Japan who worked behind the scenes to finance the conservatives.

These politicians also drew support from a group of retired diplomats, businessmen and veterans of the Office of Strategic Services, the World War II precursor of the C.I.A. The group's leader was Eugene Dooman, an old Japan hand who quit the State Department in 1945 to promote "the reverse course."

During the Korean War, the Dooman group pulled off an audacious covert operation, bankrolled by the C.I.A.

Japanese conservatives needed money. The American military needed tungsten, a scarce strategic metal used for hardening missiles. "Somebody had the idea: Let's kill two birds with one stone," said John Howley, a New York lawyer and O.S.S. veteran who helped arrange the transaction but said he was unaware of the C.I.A.'s role in it.

So the Dooman group smuggled tons of tungsten from Japanese military officers' caches into the United States and sold it to the Pentagon for $10 million. The smugglers included Mr. Kodama and Kay Sugahara, a Japanese-American recruited by the O.S.S. from a internment camp in California during World War II.

The files of the late Mr. Sugahara \-- researched by the late Howard Schonberger, a University of Maine professor writing a book nearly completed when he died in 1991 -- described the operation in detail. They say the C.I.A. provided $2.8 million in financing for the tungsten operation, which reaped more than $2 million in profits for the Dooman group.

The group pumped the proceeds into the campaigns of conservatives during Japan's first post-occupation elections in 1953, Mr. Howley said in an interview. "We had learned in O.S.S., to accomplish a purpose, you had to put the right money in the right hands."

By 1953, with the American occupation over and the reverse course well under way, the C.I.A. began working with warring conservative factions in Japan. In 1955, these factions merged to form the Liberal Democratic Party.

The fact that money was available from the United States soon was known at the highest levels of the Japanese Government.

On July 29, 1958, Douglas MacArthur 2d, the general's nephew, who was then United States Ambassador in Tokyo, wrote to the State Department that Eisaku Sato, the Finance Minister, had asked the United States Embassy for money. Mr. Sato was Prime Minister of Japan from 1964 to 1972 and received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1974.

Ambassador MacArthur wrote that such requests from the Government of Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi were nothing new. "Eisaku Sato, Kishi's brother, has tried to put the bite on us for financial help in fighting Communism," his letter said. "This did not come as a surprise to us, since he suggested the same general idea last year."

Mr. Sato was worried, an accompanying memo explained, because a secret slush fund established by Japanese companies to aid the L.D.P. was drained.

"Mr. Sato asked if it would not be possible for the United States to supply financial funds to aid the conservative forces in this constant struggle against Communism," the memo said. While it is unclear whether Mr. Sato's request was granted directly, a decision to finance the 1958 election campaign was discussed and approved by senior national security officials, according to recently declassified C.I.A. documents and former intelligence officers.

In an interview, Mr. MacArthur said the Socialists in Japan had their own secret funds from Moscow, a charge the left denied.

"The Socialist Party in Japan was a direct satellite of Moscow" in those years, he said. "If Japan went Communist it was difficult to see how the rest of Asia would not follow suit. Japan assumed an importance of extraordinary magnitude because there was no other place in Asia from which to project American power." A Close Call In 1976

In 1976, the secret payments were almost uncovered.

A United States Senate subcommittee discovered that Lockheed Corp., seeking lucrative aircraft contracts, had paid $12 million in bribes to Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka and the Liberal Democrats. The conduit was Mr. Kodama -- political fixer, tungsten smuggler and C.I.A. contact.

Then a retired C.I.A. officer living in Hawaii phoned in a startling tip.

"It's much, much deeper than just Lockheed," Jerome Levinson, the panel's staff director, recalls the C.I.A. man saying. "If you really want to understand Japan, you have to go back to the formation of the L.D.P. and our involvement in it."

Mr. Levinson said in an interview that his superiors rejected his request to pursue the matter.

This package was received as the result of a FOIA request made to the CDC by Twitter user @gumby4christ (https://twitter.com/gumby4christ).

The request was originally for "all documents pertaining to CDC inspections of the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick from January 1, 2018 through December 31, 2019." In order to expedite processing, this request was later narrowed to ask for exactly the same information provided to WJLA reporter Diana DiGangi, which served as the basis for her article published Jan. 22, 2020: https://wjla.com/news/local/cdc-shut-down-army-germ-lab-health-concerns.

[news.antiwar.com][1]

  [1]: <https://news.antiwar.com/2021/05/31/us-sells-off-2-million-barrels-of-stolen-iranian-oil/>

# US Sells Off 2 Million Barrels of Stolen Iranian Oil - News From Antiwar.com

Author: Dave DeCamp

2 minutes

* * *

The US sold about 2 million barrels of stolen Iranian crude oil it acquired by seizing a tanker off the coast of the UAE in February, [_The Associated Press_ reported on Monday.][3]

  [3]: <https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-middle-east-iran-iran-nuclear-global-trade-826ea21eb3d9f9fed3681b0ae6b4aa3a>

The Iranian oil came from the MT Achilleas, a tanker the US seized near the UAE port city of Fujairah. The US justified stealing the oil and seizing the tanker under the guise of sanctions enforcement. According to _AP_ , US court documents allege that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) tried to sell the oil to China.

The Trump administration designated the IRGC as a terrorist organization, giving the US government the ability to seize IRGC assets. The US forced the Achilleas to sail to Houston, Texas. The US government then sold the 2 million barrels of oil for about $110 million.

The Iranian oil showed up [in figures released by the US Information Energy Agency][4]. The figures listed about 1 million barrels of crude oil that it said was “imported” from Iran, raising eyebrows since the US stopped buying Iranian oil decades ago.

  [4]: <https://www.eia.gov/petroleum/imports/companylevel/>

Although the process of stealing the oil began before the US and Iran started indirect negotiations to revive the nuclear deal in April, it is certainly a provocative move that sends a bad signal to Tehran. It also shows a continuation of Trump-era policies, as [the Trump administration’s Department of Justice stole several shipments ][5]of Iranian gasoline that was headed for Venezuela.

[bloomberg.com][1]

  [1]: <https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-21/u-s-stock-futures-dip-after-news-on-health-of-north-korea-s-kim>

# U.S. Stock Futures Dip After News on Health of North Korea’s Kim

By Naoto Hosoda

3 minutes

* * *

U.S. stock index futures dropped after conflicting [reports][2] about North Korea’s Kim Jong Un’s health condition, after he underwent a medical procedure, and concerns over the energy market.

  [2]: <https://edition.cnn.com/2020/04/20/politics/kim-jong-un-north-korea/index.html> (Website)

Contracts on the S&P 500 slid as much as 1.2%, before paring their loss to 0.6% as of 9:02 a.m. in London. Futures dropped 0.3% on the Nasdaq 100 Index and 1% on the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Europe’s Stoxx 600 traded 1.5% lower as oil and gas shares dragged on the benchmark.

The U.S. is [seeking details][3] about Kim’s health after receiving information that he was in critical condition after undergoing cardiovascular surgery last week, U.S. officials said. Meanwhile the South Korea President Moon Jae-in’s office said Kim was conducting “normal acitivities” in a rural part of the country.

  [3]: <https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-21/kim-surgery-report-fuels-speculation-about-north-korean-leader> (Kim’s Condition Was Critical After Surgery, U.S. Officials Say)

With U.S. and South Korea giving differing accounts of the North Korean leader’s health condition, there’s a [lingering][4] mystery.

  [4]: <https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-21/kim-surgery-report-fuels-speculation-about-north-korean-leader> (Mystery Surrounds Kim Jong Un’s Health After Surgery Reports)

North Korean “succession risk is causing global equity markets to buckle,” Stephen Innes, chief global market strategist at AxiCorp, wrote in a research note. “But as we’ve seen countless times before a rise in geopolitical risk in the Korean Gulf is usually a faders paradise.”

![Index futures drop after reports on Kim's health][5]

  [5]: https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/ifd8Av_JMMyk/v2/-1x-1.png

The underlying S&P 500 halted a two-day gain on Monday and the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell more than 2%. Chevron Corp. and Exxon Mobil Corp. led losses in the blue-chip index as West Texas oil futures expiring Tuesday turned [negative][6] for the first time, primarily because the end of the May contract forces physical receipt at a time when storage capacity is low. June prices fell below $22 a barrel.

  [6]: <https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-20/oil-worth-less-than-nothing-points-to-a-deepening-global-crisis> (Oil Spirals Below Zero in ‘Devastating Day’ for Global Industry)

After the close of U.S. trading, International Business Machines Corp. [reported][7] a drop in first-quarter revenue and pulled its profit forecast for the year. Separately, President Donald Trump plans to sign an executive order temporarily [suspending][8] immigration into the United States as the country tries to contain the spread of the coronavirus.

  [7]: <https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-20/ibm-reports-falling-revenue-and-withdraws-forecast-on-virus-woes> (IBM Reports Falling Revenue, Pulls Forecast on Virus Woes (2))   [8]: <https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-21/trump-says-he-ll-suspend-immigration-to-u-s-over-virus-concerns> (Trump Says He’ll Suspend Immigration to U.S. Over Virus Concerns)

_— With assistance by Tugce Ozsoy_

[cyberscoop.com][1]

  [1]: <https://www.cyberscoop.com/court-rules-encrypted-email-tutanota-monitor-messages/>

# Court rules encrypted email provider Tutanota must monitor messages in blackmail case - CyberScoop

Shannon Vavra

3-4 minutes

* * *

The Federal Court of Justice (BGH) in Germany has ruled that encrypted email provider Tutanota must monitor for three months the messages of accounts implicated in a blackmail case.

[The decision][2], which impacts two accounts in all, comes months after the [Regional Court of Cologne ruled that Tutanota must provide said emails][3]. Tutanota had asked BGH to re-examine that decision given that Tutanota does not consider itself a telecommunications service and therefore should not be required to [monitor][4] them under [German][5] law.

  [2]: <http://juris.bundesgerichtshof.de/cgi-bin/rechtsprechung/document.py?Gericht=bgh&Art=en&Datum=Aktuell&nr=118375&Frame=4&.pdf>   [3]: <https://www.cyberscoop.com/germany-court-ruling-tutanota-email-monitoring/>   [4]: <https://www.cyberscoop.com/tag/surveillance/>   [5]: <https://www.cyberscoop.com/tag/germany/>

The Cologne decision also [appeared to contradict an earlier ruling][6] from the Hanover Regional Court, which affirmed Tutanota did not provide telecommunications services, according to Tutanota.

  [6]: <https://www.cyberscoop.com/germany-court-ruling-tutanota-email-monitoring/>

BGH ruled late last month that the Tutanota request was admissible, but unfounded. BGH found that providers like Tutanota that provide “over-the-top” services are also considered to be providing telecommunications services under the Code of Criminal Procedure. The ruling only surfaced in German press in recent days.

BGH’s dismissal of Tutanota’s appeal means Tutanota must provide unencrypted incoming and outgoing emails of the two implicated accounts. But the legal circumstances surrounding the decision could set a precedent for broader surveillance for users of Tutanota and other email providers like it, Tutanota warned.

“We consider this decision to be absurd,” Tutanota told CyberScoop in a statement Friday.

The decision will only impact unencrypted incoming and outgoing emails, as Tutanota can’t decrypt data that has already been encrypted, Tutanota added. It also said this should serve as a warning that for customers interested in maintaining their [privacy][7], [encryption][8] is paramount.

  [7]: <https://www.cyberscoop.com/tag/privacy/>   [8]: <https://www.cyberscoop.com/tag/encryption/>

“This ruling shows again how important end-to-end encryption is,” Tutanota said. “All data transmitted without end-to-end encryption can be accessed by third parties.”

The decision comes as nations around the world have sought to weaken encryption to benefit law enforcement investigations. Just last October the U.S., U.K., Australia, New Zealand, Canada, India and Japan issued a joint announcement advocating for increasing law enforcement access to encrypted data. Other efforts to [require tech companies to provide law enforcement access to encrypted devices and services][9] have accumulated on Capitol Hill as well.

[wjla.com][1]

  [1]: <https://wjla.com/news/local/cdc-shut-down-army-germ-lab-health-concerns>

# Army germ lab shut down by CDC in 2019 had several 'serious' protocol violations that year

Diana DiGangi

5-6 minutes

* * *

![A sign on the door of a Biosafety Level 4 laboratory at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases in Fort Detrick, Md., Wednesday, Aug. 10, 2011. \(AP Photo/Patrick Semansky\)][2]

  [2]: https://wjla.com/resources/media2/16x9/full/1015/center/80/2b0d96fa-a4ad-4e8b-bb4b-5ca5ffc5c0c4-large16x9_AP_110810090750.jpg

A sign on the door of a Biosafety Level 4 laboratory at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases in Fort Detrick, Md., Wednesday, Aug. 10, 2011. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)

FREDERICK, Md. — In 2019, an Army laboratory at Fort Detrick that studies deadly infectious material like Ebola and smallpox was shut down for a period of time after a CDC inspection, with many projects being temporarily halted.

The lab itself reported that the shutdown order was due to ongoing infrastructure issues with wastewater decontamination, and the CDC declined to provide the reason for the shutdown due to national security concerns.

**READ:[Army germ research lab in Md. that was working on Ebola treatment is shut down by CDC][3]**

  [3]: <https://wjla.com/news/local/army-germ-research-lab-in-frederick-was-shut-down-by-cdc> (https://wjla.com/news/local/army-germ-research-lab-in-frederick-was-shut-down-by-cdc)

ABC7 has received documents from the CDC outlining violations they discovered during a series of inspections that year, some of which were labeled "serious."

Earlier that year, the US Army Medical Research Institute [had announced][4] an experiment at the Fort Detrick laboratory that would involve infecting rhesus macaque monkeys with active Ebola virus to test a cure they were developing.

  [4]: <https://www.usamriid.army.mil/press_releases/GLP_EBOV_Final_28_MAR.pdf> (https://www.usamriid.army.mil/press_releases/GLP_EBOV_Final_28_MAR.pdf)

Several of the laboratory violations the CDC noted in 2019 concerned "non-human primates" infected with a "select agent", the identity of which is unknown — it was redacted in all received documents, because disclosing the identity and location of the agent would endanger public health or safety, the agency says. In addition to Ebola, the lab works with other deadly agents like anthrax and smallpox.

Select agents are defined by the CDC as “biological agents and toxins that have been determined to have the potential to pose a severe threat to public health and safety, to animal and plant health, or to animal or plant products.”

Here are some of the violations the CDC observed during inspections of Fort Detrick that year:

## OBSERVATION 1

Severity level: Serious

The CDC reported that an individual partially entered a room multiple times without the required respiratory protection while other people in that room were performing procedures with a non-human primate on a necropsy table.

“This deviation from entity procedures resulted in a respiratory occupational exposure to select agent aerosols,” the CDC wrote.

## OBSERVATION 2

Severity level: Serious

The CDC reported that the lab did not ensure that employee training was properly verified when it came to toxins and select agents.

“These failures were recognized through video review of laboratorians’ working in BSL3 and ABSL3 labs,” their report said. “[These] indicate the [lab]’s means used to verify personnel understood the training had not been effective, leading to increased risk of occupational exposures.”

The CDC went on to specify that a laboratorian who was not wearing appropriate respiratory protection was seen multiple times “partially entering” a room where non-human primates that were infected with [redacted] were “housed in open caging.” They also observed a laboratorian disposing of waste in a biohazardous waste bin without gloves on.

## OBSERVATION 3

Severity level: Moderate

In this violation observation, the CDC went into more detail on the incident of the worker not wearing gloves while disposing of biohazardous waste, writing that “biosafety and containment procedures must be sufficient to contain the select agent or toxin.”

The corrective action they recommended was to confirm that relevant personnel have been trained to wear gloves to prevent exposure to hazardous materials.

## OBSERVATION 4

Severity level: Serious

In this observation, the CDC notes that the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases had “systematically failed to ensure implementation of biosafety and containment procedures commensurate with the risks associated with working with select agents and toxins.”

The violation specifically observed involved “entity personnel [...] propping open” a door while removing “large amounts of biohazardous waste” from an adjacent room, “[increasing] the risk of contaminated air from [the room] escaping and being drawn into the [redacted]” where the people working “typically do not wear respiratory protection.” {mf}

## OBSERVATION 5

Severity level: Moderate

The CDC reported that the laboratory failed to safeguard against unauthorized access to select against. They wrote that personal protective equipment worn while decontaminating something contaminated by a select agent had been stored in open biohazard bags, in an area of the facility that the CDC has redacted for security reasons.

“By storing regulated waste in this area, the entity did not limit access to those with access approval,” they wrote.

## OBSERVATION 6

Severity level: Moderate

The CDC reports that someone at the lab did not maintain an accurate or current inventory for a toxin.

## OBSERVATION 7

Severity level: Low