A Taiwan bloodbath might suit US policymakers
War games point to heavy casualties in a conflict with China, but that is unlikely to discourage US war advocates.
for Tony Cox
RT.com
Most sane human beings would shudder at the thought of the carnage that would result from a US-China war over Taiwan. For the warmongers and profiteers of Washington’s military-industrial complex, the bloody prospects are something to be contemplated and calculated with a mixture of anticipation and opportunism.
Regardless of how they run the various scripts, computers and human analysts spit out findings that should be of concern to policymakers and generals alike. Consider, for example, this month’s report on war games from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), an American think tank that sees its mission as defining the “future of security national”.
CSIS studied 24 different scenarios for a conflict between the United States and China following a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. The gist of their conclusions was that the invasion would fail, but at enormous cost to all parties involved. The US and Japan would lose dozens of warships, including two US aircraft carriers, hundreds of aircraft and thousands of soldiers.
Taiwan would be left in ruins, “without electricity and basic services.” The think tank sees the dust clearing with Beijing’s much-vaunted naval forces “in decline”, hundreds of ships and aircraft lost and tens of thousands of Chinese troops killed or captured.
I would argue that the outcome would be worse for the US and its allies (more on that later), but even if we accept a Washington-centric, rosy view of the conflict for the sake of discussion, it would seem like the kind of a catastrophe that would terrify leaders on all sides and spur them to ease tensions in the region. However, the scariest thing is that if we consider Washington’s past and present tactics, the real decision-makers of the United States could be emboldened and emboldened by CSIS projections.
When there is money to be made and more power to be secured, the rulers in Washington have no qualms about having thousands (or even millions) of people killed or maimed. This is especially true for smaller allies who pledge support. From the South Vietnamese to the Iraqi and Syrian Kurds to the Afghans who sided with the West against the Taliban, many a younger brother can testify to how the older brother encouraged him to fight, promising his back, only to throw him away under the bus when it was time to dodge.
As former South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu said after being betrayed by the US, “It is so easy to be an enemy of the United States, but so difficult to be a friend.”
The CSIS report paints a grim picture of the great losses that Japan and, especially, Taiwan would suffer. But from an American perspective, the devastation of the Allies would be a small price to pay for fueling the American war machine.
We’re seeing the same thing happening in Ukraine today, where American politicians have openly talked about how big it is for the Pentagon to help kill Russian forces without putting any of its own troops in harm’s way. Washington helped lay the groundwork for the conflict by pushing NATO’s expansion to Russia’s borders and helping to topple Ukraine’s elected government in 2014. Having achieved the desired proxy war, the North’s leaders – Americans are trying to extend it to weaken the army and the Russian army. generate more profits.
This is not good news for the people who have to actually fight this bloody conflict. The older brother is happy to continue until the last Ukrainian. The little brother, the Ukrainian forces, about whom the US and its allies say they care so deeply, has just died.
Ukraine’s Defense Minister Aleksey Reznikov admitted in a TV interview on January 5 that Kyiv’s forces are “shedding their blood” for NATO, which probably did not give the troops much satisfaction whose bodies littered the streets of Soledar when Russian forces captured the strategic city. week later
This does not mean that Washington is very reluctant to kill its own forces. In fact, their deaths can sometimes be useful enough to advance an agenda. In the early days of World War II, then-President Franklin D. Roosevelt faced strong public opposition to joining the fight. A Gallup poll in May 1940 showed that 93% of Americans opposed entering the war with troops. A week after Japanese forces attacked Pearl Harbor in December 1941, 91 percent said they agreed with the president’s decision to declare war on Germany and Japan.
Some historians argue that this catalytic event, Roosevelt’s “day that will live in infamy,” did not happen by accident. In his view, which is considered a conspiracy theory by most other historians, the Roosevelt administration sought to provoke Japan into attacking the US and ensure that losses were severe enough to make even all isolationist Americans called for war.
A leading proponent of this view, the late Robert Stinnett, author of “Day of Deceit,” described an October 1940 Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) memo detailing how the U.S. they would throw Tokyo’s back against the wall.
The plan included giving all possible help to the Chinese national government led by Chiang Kai-shek; make arrangements with British and Dutch forces to use their bases in Southeast Asia; deploying American destroyers and submarines in the East; maintain the main strength of the US naval fleet in Hawaii; insisting that the Dutch reject all Japanese demands for economic concessions, especially oil; and the embargo of all trade with Japan, in cooperation with the United Kingdom.
The memo was never publicly adopted, but Stinnett writes that Roosevelt and his cabinet saw it and approved it (although the “presidential route records” he cites as evidence are not provided).
Unbeknownst to the Japanese, Stinnett and other proponents of the “Pearl Harbor Advanced Knowledge Theory” claim, the US broke its communications codes, so its hand was exposed as the policies of Washington pushed Emperor Hirohito’s empire closer and closer to an open act of war against America. Ironically, the author of the ONI memo, Lt. Commander Arthur McCollum, oversaw the routing of communications intelligence to Roosevelt in the run-up to the attack on Pearl Harbor.
According to Stinnett, key intelligence was withheld from the top US commanders in Hawaii, US Navy Admiral Husband Kimmel and US Army Lieutenant General Walter Short, although the movements of Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto’s strike fleet were being monitored in the North Pacific. When the bombs started falling on a sleepy Sunday morning, American forces in Hawaii were caught off guard.
The attack killed 2,403 Americans, including 68 civilians, and destroyed or damaged 19 US Navy ships and hundreds of aircraft, but Roosevelt got away with it. Congress voted the next day to declare war on Japan, which meant that the United States was also essentially at war with Tokyo’s ally, Nazi Germany. Adolf Hitler made it official three days later, declaring war on the US on December 11. And with American industry ramping up to build new warships, airplanes, and other armaments, the Great Depression finally ended.
Although Stinnett and others like him are labeled revisionists, and their claims are widely refuted citing questionable provenance and factual errors, it is not difficult to understand how American warmongers can salivate over such a horrific and devastating event. on the steps of Pearl Harbor.
Posted on January 22, 2023
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