US defense secretary says war with China neither imminent nor unavoidable, stressing need for talks
US defense secretary says war with China neither imminent nor unavoidable, stressing need for talks
United States Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin has told a gathering of top security officials he doesn’t see war with China as imminent, nor unavoidable, despite rapidly escalating tensions in the Asia-Pacific region.
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Now I'm worried.
"stressing need for talks" is language used when a war is looming. Otherwise, constant talks between nations are something that doesn't need mentioning at all.
I mean, he was in Singapore talking about Asia-Pacific tensions, which adds some context. As a standalone headline, yeah, an umprompted reassurance like that is terrifying.
"Apple assures users new iPhone with neural implant won't take over their mind while asleep to be used for data collection and ads placed in dreams"
"Glock assures customers it's new model of handgun'definitely will not shoot backwards at the person firing it', more at 11"
Well if I wasn't 100% sure that's exactly what they do before, I am now.
I can't remember where I've seen it, but several high-level American military leaders, like generals and planners, have stated that war with China is inevitable within something like the next ~3-6 years. There was even a leaked internal memo on it. It's not just them or me talking shit. The US Navy and Marine Corps has even started restructuring and practicing for it. They've started switching their doctrines to using smaller spread out units and the Marine Corps even got rid of tanks entirely. There's also been a political efforts to move chip manufacturing from Taiwan to the continental US and establishing general manufacturing in Mexico to develop economic independence from China.
I just got up, so I'm too lazy to post links, but do an internet search. It seems pretty real.
People have been saying shit like this for 30 years. It’s not inevitable, but there is a risk and they want to be prepared for it.
It's a good thing military leaders are not in charge of determining when a war is necessary or not
I think war with China is still unlikely. China still depends too much economically on the US and friends, and the US and friends still depend too much on China for making stuff.
There's a very serious game of brinksmanship going on right now in the South China Sea, with China playing this (to me) weird and bitchy game of using military vessels to damage other countries' vessels or people, but with the "not weapons" parts of their military vessels (water cannons or flares or etc). To me it is just fuckin weird pussyfooting "I'm not touching you I'm not touching you" behavior, but they're doing it to countries like the Philippines that have defense agreements with the US which is the kind of thing that has the potential to escalate in sudden and unplanned fashion sometimes. This is a pretty good overview. I agree with you that it would be terrible for both countries, but sometimes weird and unplanned shit happens when weapons and big nations are involved.
Also, this statement from the OP article I don't think is fully accurate:
Neither side budged from their longstanding positions on Taiwan — which China claims as its own and has not ruled out using force to take
The US doesn't have a longstanding position on Taiwan, other than that we give them weapons and like to talk loudly and pointedly about democracy and how much we like them. We've spent 60 years refusing to say one way or another whether we think they're part of China, or whether we would defend them if China attacked them with military force, and for some reason that's been working so far. Diplomacy is weird.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
This is a pretty good overview
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I see, so it's the naval version of the stick battles on the Indian border
While this is true, the fact that war would be a bad idea doesn't necessarily mean it won't happen. People make bad decisions all the time.
It would destabilize the global economy and trade. there is absolutely no chance anyone would risk that. Or maybe they would. who am I to know?.
We said the same thing about Putin invading Ukraine. We somehow believed that the neoliberal globalized economy would allow only wars to destabilize certain regions to make resource exploitation easier for the global powers. Well turns out eventually the global powers are facing off with each directly after running out of proxies.
They said the same thing before WW1 as well. People back then were saying the world is too connected and a big war would disrupt everything so badly that no one would risk it.
But then the sleepwalking took over.
I mean, it would probably be a good opportunity for a handful of really rich people to further their control and ownership globally...so as long as our billionaire overlords value human life over their own personal power we should be good.
That's a good point...... Oh...oh no... Oceania is going to war with Eastasia and Eurasia
We've been shifting imports out of China for quite a few years now. If you look at "made in" labels, I'm sure you've noticed that they've changed from China to Taiwan, Thailand, El Salvador, hell I got a shirt recently that was made in Jordan. I'd never seen that before.
While a lot of stuff is still made in China, that shift means it won't cause a huge destabilization, at least for the US. Of course it will still cause problems, but they're already trying to limit the potential damage.
Pandemic accelerated it a lot. Couple projects I was on were to move production lines out of China to Mexico, Malaysia, and India. The move to India was pre-pandemic to avoid Trump tariffs. The other two were during the pandemic to avoid Chinese lockdowns.
China <> US relations have actually been at a much better place this last half a year. This articles pretty big on the fear mongering.