{"id":23564,"date":"2017-04-14T12:41:35","date_gmt":"2017-04-14T17:41:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=23564"},"modified":"2017-04-14T12:41:35","modified_gmt":"2017-04-14T17:41:35","slug":"australia-beckons-a-war-with-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=23564","title":{"rendered":"Australia Beckons a War With China"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3 class=\"headline\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/2017\/04\/14\/australia-beckons-a-war-with-china\/\" rel=\"bookmark\">Australia Beckons a War With China<\/a><\/h3>\n<p class=\"post_meta\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-92033\" src=\"http:\/\/uziiw38pmyg1ai60732c4011.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com\/wp-content\/dropzone\/2017\/04\/Screen-Shot-2017-04-13-at-9.11.52-PM.png\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 510px) 100vw, 510px\" srcset=\"http:\/\/uziiw38pmyg1ai60732c4011.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com\/wp-content\/dropzone\/2017\/04\/Screen-Shot-2017-04-13-at-9.11.52-PM.png 510w, http:\/\/uziiw38pmyg1ai60732c4011.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com\/wp-content\/dropzone\/2017\/04\/Screen-Shot-2017-04-13-at-9.11.52-PM-300x199.png 300w, http:\/\/uziiw38pmyg1ai60732c4011.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com\/wp-content\/dropzone\/2017\/04\/Screen-Shot-2017-04-13-at-9.11.52-PM-768x510.png 768w\" alt=\"Photo by Marko Mikkonen | CC BY 2.0\" width=\"510\" height=\"339\" \/><\/p>\n<div class=\"post_content\">\n<div id=\"attachment_92033\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\">\n<p align=\"right\">Photo by Marko Mikkonen | <a href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/2.0\/\">CC BY 2.0<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Australia is sleep-walking into a confrontation with China. Wars can happen suddenly in an atmosphere of mistrust and provocation, especially if a minor power, like Australia, abandons its independence for an \u201calliance\u201d with an unstable superpower.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>The United States is at a critical moment. Having exported its all-powerful manufacturing base, run down its industry and reduced millions of its once-hopeful people to poverty, principal American power today is brute force. When Donald Trump launched his missile attack on Syria \u2014 following his bombing of a mosque and a school \u2014 he was having dinner in Florida with the President of China, Xi Jinping.<\/p>\n<p>Trumps attack on Syria had little to do\u00a0 with chemical weapons. It was, above all, to show his detractors and doubters in Washington\u2019s war-making \u00a0institutions \u2014 the Pentagon, the CIA, the Congress \u2014 how tough he was and prepared to risk a war with Russia.\u00a0 He had spilled blood in Syria, a Russian protectorate; he was surely now on the team. The attack was also meant to say directly to President Xi, his dinner guest: this is how we deal with those who challenge the top dog.<\/p>\n<p>China has long received this message. In its rise as the world\u2019s biggest trader and manufacturer, China has been encircled by 400 US military bases \u2014 a provocation described by a former Pentagon strategist as \u201ca perfect noose\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>This is not Trump\u2019s doing. In 2011, President Barack Obama flew to Australia to declare, in an address to parliament, what became known as the \u201cpivot to Asia\u201d: the biggest build-up of US air and naval forces in the Asia Pacific region since the Second World War. The target was China. \u00a0America had a new and entirely unnecessary enemy. Today, low-draft US warships, missiles, bombers, drones operate on China\u2019s doorstep.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Australia Beckons a War With China Photo by Marko Mikkonen | CC BY 2.0 Australia is sleep-walking into a confrontation with China. Wars can happen suddenly in an atmosphere of mistrust and provocation, especially if a minor power, like Australia, abandons its independence for an \u201calliance\u201d with an unstable superpower. The United States is at [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[41,130,5493,7743,862],"class_list":["post-23564","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","tag-australia","tag-china","tag-counterpunch","tag-john-pilger","tag-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23564","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23564"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23564\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23565,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23564\/revisions\/23565"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23564"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}