Is war on China in the offing?

US military is working hard on "setting the theater" for war on China, emulating the success it's had in Ukraine.

I don't know whether we’ll have a war on China this year, but it does appear that the western empire, led by the United States, is preparing for it in earnest. On Sunday, 10 January, Lieutenant General James Bierman, the commanding general of the Third Marine Expeditionary Force and of Marine Forces Japan gave an interview to the Financial Times in which he said that his command is working hard to replicate the empire's military success in Ukraine. 

We’re setting a new theatre…

Bierman said that the US and its allies in Asia were recreating the groundwork that had enabled western countries to support Ukraine's resistance to Russia in preparing for scenarios such as Chinese invasion of Taiwan. "Why have we achieved the level of success we've achieved in Ukraine? ... because after Russian aggression in 2014 and 2015, we earnestly got after preparing for future conflict: training for the Ukrainians, pre-positioning of supplies, identification of sites from which we could operate support, sustain operations. We call that setting the theatre. And we are setting the theatre in Japan, in the Philippines, in other locations."

Of course, this is all more than fully justified because freedom and democracy everywhere depend vitally on Taiwan not being invaded by China. Not to mention, it's the question of principle and we just don't compromise our principles, even at risk of nuclear armageddon. But on a serious note, what is it that makes western powers so reliably keen on waging war? Being good at winning wars wouldn't be the answer; these are the same forces that were unable to defeat the Taliban after fully 20 years' trying. Even their "success" in Ukraine exists only in the mainstream media narrative. 

The answer is that the empire does not measure success in terms of winning; wars are not meant to be won; they're meant to continue forever because they are excellent business for the narrow vested interests who profit from them. In this sense, the Ukraine conflict has been a smashing success: US Congress, ever committed to freedom and democracy, approved by now over $112 billion to defend our values in Ukraine. The bulk of that money - as much as 85% of it - will never reach Ukraine but will be shared among the good and the great who are defending our principles and our values. 

The price of freedom and democracy: $100 grand per head

If $112 billion sounds like a lot of money, try $35 trillion: that is the total amount of military spending through 2019 that the US Department of Defense could not account for due to "combined errors, shorthand, and sloppy record-keeping by DoD accountants." That's well over $100,000 per man, woman and child in the US and nearly a quarter of a million per household. That may be the most valuable wealth-transfer conveyor belt in all of human history and it’s done a lot of work over the decades…

As its success in Ukraine nears the same success it's had in Afghanistan, the good and the great have every incentive to keep the conveyor belt going. It is clearly time for "setting the theatre" in another location; the media will do their part, informing the populace about how bad China is, how much we should fear them and how awesome wars are. Indeed, if you didn’t know, they make us safer and richer, so what’s not to like?

The Congress will keep voting for more and more “aid for Taiwan,” and explaining to the people what a great investment this will be: for only a fraction of our budget the Japanese and the Philipino soldiers will destroy China for us. Rinse, repeat...

Why are we always at war?

Wars are always duly planned, prepared and justified. Not only will the military get busy “setting the theatre,” but the media will also do its part to engineer our consent. Over the coming months we can expect to hear all about Chinese communism, about their frightful social credit system, about them attacking us with Covid, and whatever else might foment fear and loathing against China. For the unsuspecting consumers of the media narrative, it’ll all be clear cut and they’ll be prepared yet again to support the current thing. But we should question the fact that we are always at war. If the common denominator in all wars is the western empire (read US, UK and NATO), could it be that we’re the baddies?

According to the US Congressional Research Service data, since 1991, the US launched 251 foreign military interventions. According to another study, it has initiated more than 80% of all military conflicts in the world since 1946. If one nation has started most of the global militar conflicts, this inclination must have systemic causes. I have attempted to explain the root causes of western war addiction in this article: “Deflationary gap and the west’s war addiction” The first step toward fixing a problem should be to understand its root causes, and fix it, we must. As you’ll discover if you read the article I linked, we’ll have to dump the fraudulent monetary system which is the root of all evil, and adopt honest money.

Alex Krainer – @NakedHedgie is the creator of I-System Trend Following and publisher of daily TrendCompass reports (one month’s test drive is free of charge, no strings attached). For US investors, we propose an inflation/recession resilient portfolio covering a basket of 30+ financial and commodities markets - your essential defence against the occult oligarchy’s monetary dark arts; for 2022, we significantly outperformed the S&P 500 and the 60/40 death trap investment model.