COMMENT POSTED TO A STORY IN THE INDEPENDENT
What are China and the United States fighting about?
Please, first, they are not fighting, but there is an
unnecessary and unpleasant quarrel going on.
Just imagine a flotilla of Russian or Chinese or Iranian warships
entering the Gulf of Mexico and cruising within shouting distance of an American
facility.
Let's say, for example, the stolen part of Cuba called
Guantanamo, which the United States maintains as a powerful military and dirty
operations base completely against the wishes of Cubans.
All hell would break loose.
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Many of the comments below show just how effective this
propaganda from The Independent can
be in stirring up war talk among readers.
But China simply has no such policy as “we’re not afraid of
war with America” as suggested here. High officials never talk that way.
Anyone who follows China's affairs knows it does not seek
war, and it is extremely unusual for the word to even be used by a Chinese
official. China is a careful and cautious state.
Note the contrast with the United States, now fighting and
killing in half a dozen lands.
Or America’s unrelenting effort to build new military bases.
The United States maintains more than a hundred major military bases scattered
around the world.
Please, these events in the South China Sea represent
nothing more than the United States steaming half way round the world to strut around
and show the flag. It is classic school-yard bully behavior done under the
guise of nonsense about protecting shipping lanes, but those shipping lanes are
under absolutely no threat of any kind.
China's activity in the South China Sea is about its
legitimate interests in the area. Their artificial islands are small
non-military bases, intended to support Chinese fishing and mineral activities.
It is the United States which has threatening bases all over
the planet. The one in Okinawa, for example, has thermonuclear weapons,
something completely against the wishes of Japan’s people. As do the ones in Britain
and Germany, this last only recently being slated to receive a dozen
replacements by America’s newest type of thermonuclear bomb.
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Response to a reader
writing that he’s been saying to watch out for China for years:
Then you've been saying nonsense for years.
If you had said, “watch out for Americans,” you could claim
some early observational powers.
