There is that famous book by decorated and World War I hero US Marine Corps Major General Semdley Butler “War is a Racket” published in 1935, it’s major thesis is that “modern warfare is an organized scam designed to enrich a small corporate and financial elite.” The anti-war literature is replete with such publications explain why and how modern wars a deliberately created for power and profit.

            The same anti-war subject matter has also invaded the global social media and recently one of the most popular podcasters, Tucker Carlson, picked up the same topic in his discussion with German economist Richard Werner (an Oxford- and LSE-educated economist, professor of banking and finance, bestselling book author, etc.) in his show entitled, “Every Major War Begins Under False Pretenses & the Central Banks Are Behind it.”

Power and markets: Roots of World War I & II.

            Two theories persists about the origins of World War I, one is that the Austro-Hungarian empire and Germany wanted to draw Europe into a pre-emptive war against Russia then England co-opted the war drawing Fortress America by baiting German U-boats to attack civilian passenger ship RMS Lusitania carrying arms and ammunition but with 128 American passenger on board and drawing America into the war helping defeat Germany.

            Based on the Marxist perspective Vladimir Ilych Ulyanov “Lenin” argued the war was a deliberate creation of the highest stage of capitalist imperialism as rival economic and global powers competing for colonies, resources and markets. The war ended 100 years of British global dominion and the started the rise of U.S. global market dominance that was completed with the advent and culmination of World War II.

            The economic shocks of the U.S. Great Depression, economic collapse in Germany and Japan all contributed to the cauldron of World War II. The U.S. had embargoed energy supplies to Japan, much like what the U.S. is aiming to do against China today. According to significant American strategic thinkers and historians President Franklin D. Roosevelt knew of Japan’s Pearl Harbor plan but allowed it to happen to draw in isolationist America into the war.

            The most credible champions of the theory that “FDR knew” are: Rear Admiral Robert A. Theobald: A retired naval commander who was at Pearl Harbor, in his 1954 book, The Final Secret of Pearl Harbor; Charles A. Beard: A prominent American historian who wrote President Roosevelt and the Coming of the War, 1941 (1948); John Toland: A Pulitzer Prize-winning historian. In his 1982 book Infamy: Pearl Harbor and Its Aftermath, among others.

Post-WWII: Cold War and the Wolfowitz Doctrine.

            The end of WWII saw the U.S. and Soviet Russia divide the world into two blocs, the socialist East and the capitalist West. In between the two blocs were the newly emerging nation-states that called itself the Non-Alligned Nations (What Mao Tsetung called the Third World) led by Egypt, India, China, Indonesia and others seeking balance in the global geopolitical architecture.

            In 1947 the Cold War started when US President Harry Truman announced the “Truman Doctrine” that outlined the policy of containment against Soviet Russia and communism, the followed British PM Winston Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” speech in 1946 warning of Soviet expansion across Europe. The containment policy agaiinst China bega in 1949 for the same fear of  communist expansion across Asia.

            The Cold War was finally resolved on December 26, 1991 when the Soviet Union formally dissolved into 15 independent republics. Its suffered the debacle from its own Afghan War, Communist Party in-fighting, 1980s crash of oil prices that was the state’s primary revenue source. In 1992 the triumphant US State Department issued the Wolfowitz Doctrine saying the U.S. must maintain global military supremacy and stop the emergence of any rival superpower.

            The 1949 US containment policy against China was officially suspended and replaced with a policy of engagement and rapprochement starting the early 1970s as the US started courting China away from the Soviet Union. The relationship blossomed through the Nixon visit in 1971 until 2009 when China bailed out the US from the Global Financial Crisis buying trillions of US T-bills and the US media was allowed to admit there was no Massacre at Tiananmen Square.

            The tacit restoration of the China containment policy came in 2011 as then President Barack Obama declared the “US Pivot to Asia” to transfer 60% of US military forces to surround China, followed by Trade and Tariff Wars (2018 to 2026), technological containment and industrial reshoring – but to no avail as US economic, financial and military capabilities have suffered a precipitous decline forcing it to delegate containment to its Asian “client states.”

The Squad: U.S. Deputy Sheriffs.

            The 2026 U.S. National Defense Strategy faced with the realities of an increasingly unstable domestic financial situation with $ 39-trillion debt hanging over its head, numerous resource and armaments depleting military interventions and occupations across Eurasia,  reorients the military focus to “America First and prioritizing the defense of the  U.S. homeland and its consolidation of its control of the Western Hemisphere.

            Asia, led by China’s robust economy and accelerating technological innovation and leadership, growing by 4.4% annually has been outpacing and out competing the U.S. and the West which has often managed only under 2% growth over the years. A U.S. proxy Taiwan war

have been predicted by such U.S. military generals like Gen. Mike Minihan, Adm. Sam Paparo, Gen. Mark Milley for 2027 against China faced certain defeat – they needed an interim option.

            The Pentagon’s solution: the Squad, the U.S. with a militarized and weaponized Japan, the Philippines and Australia- supposedly to push back against alleged Chinese expansionism (which is actually defense preparedness for the long awaited aggression from the U.S.) within the First Island Chain and beyond to the Second Island chain in the Eastern Pacific. Japan has been pushed to violate its Peace Constitution, double its defense budget and arm the Philippines.

The Japan-Philippine Maritime Delimitation deal: New seed of discord.

            In the 2011 US revival of the containment policy against China the Pentagon needed to plant seeds of tensions between their vassal states, Japan and the Philippines, against China. The US pushed Japan to nationalize the Diaoyu (Senkaku for Japan) Islands thereby compelling China to pursue its claim, and the US pushed the Philippines to arrest Chinese fishermen and ships at the Scarborough Shoal (Bajo de Masinloc for the Philippines) forcing a standoff with the Chinese Coast Guard which the Philippines eventually yielded on US Asst. Sec. Kurt Campbell’s advice.

            The two controversies have sustained the U.S. intended tensions for Asia and Southeast Asia the past fourteen years, with the Scarborough Shoal standoff expanding to the Hague Tribunal controversy and the so-called West Philippine Sea claim that the International Hydrographic Organization and UNESCO do not recognize. But the U.S. needed a new source of tension to justify Japan and the Philippines escalation of aggressiveness towards China – hence the Japan-Philippines Maritime Delimitation deal that steps on China’s Taiwan territorial sea and EEZ.

            As can easily be seen on the map of China’s Taiwan lying in between the southernmost islands of Japan and the northernmost islands of the Philippines lies unmistakably the territorial waters and EEZ east of the province of Taiwan, China. Japan and the Philippines deliberately provoked China to react deploying the China Coast Guard and state maritime vessels to conduct “special maritime traffic law-enforcement operations” and patrols in waters east of Taiwan to reassert control in reaction to formal delimitation talks between Japan and the Philippines.

The call for the “Maritime Community of Shared Future”

            There is a call for a “Maritime Community with a Shared Future” envisioning a globally interconnected approach to ocean governance, calling all nations to share welfare and problems in marine security, econommics and ecology. All these can be achieved through dialogue and Win-Win solutions, meeting half way and finding multilateral answers to differences and claims. The vision: Global Ocean Governance community, Blue Economy and Ecology for sustainability and shared security interests through multilateral dialogue and joint naval patrols.

            The approach taken by the US prodded Japan and the Philippines in excluding other stakeholders in the maritime delimitation talks is a wrong step in a wrong direction. It creates conflict and destabilizes the situation, spurs regional tension and displaces dialogue and consensus building with confrontation and its escalation. It’s not too late to correct the Japan-Philippine collaborations trajectory. ###

   

Email: contact@asiancenturyph.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/asiancenturyph/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/AsianCenturyPH

Substack:

Also read: