We look at recent developments in the burgeoning US campaign against the PRC, and find grounds for optimism, reasons to order that leadlined anti-radiation suit off Amazon, and some trainwreck stuff you simply can’t look away from.  In Australia.  Of course.

As usual, China is trying to dodge polarization and confrontation.  And, as has been the case since the Pentagon gained control over the US government’s China policy apparatus, the US has been trying to push China into a strategic and geopolitical corner.  And Australia has been working mightily to prove itself as America’s most loyal and obedient asset in Asia.

The big news for the PRC this week was the EU not walking away from its balancer role between the US and China.  At a confab in Brussels, some significant bases for EU-China engagement were affirmed, and relatively less space was given to the US position that the PRC is a cancer on the international order that must be contained and eventually removed.

This welcome news was pretty much overshadowed by Donald Trump’s statement that he was pulling America out of the US-Russia Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces or INF treaty.  And it became immediately clear that the target of this declaration was not nasty old Russia—it was China!—and it looks like Asia can reacquaint itself with the pleasures of US nuclear weapons in the neighborhood.

And it looks like Australia chose exactly the wrong time to be America’s best nuclear buddy in Asia.  Sorry, Straya!

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Show notes

Chinese premier’s visit to strengthen Asia-Europe connectivity, openness

EU to sign trade deal with Singapore, avoid criticizing China

U.S. to Tell Russia It Is Leaving Landmark I.N.F. Treaty

Missiles for Asia?

US Nuclear Weapons Are Returning to Asia

Beyond Air-Sea Battle: The Debate Over US Military Strategy in Asia [go to 58:00 mark for Dr. Friedberg’s comment]

Donald Trump’s China ‘poison pill’ may hit Australia as US pressures allies

The British-American coup that ended Australian independence

Pine Gap: Australia’s Nuclear Target

Special China Watch reports on Korea

Perhaps no foreign affairs issue in recent history has been so thoroughly misunderstood as the backstory of U.S. engagement with North Korea.  That’s because U.S. machinations relating to North Korea are about as dirty, unsuccessful, and embarrassing as can be imagined.

Here’s your chance to understand the context of U.S.—North Korea relations: a trio of special reports I have prepared on the untold story of U.S. duplicity and failure on North Korea.  Unknown, that is, to Western observers who rely on the selective historical memories of American policy makers and pundits; but deeply known and felt reality to North Korean and Chinese policymakers for whom U.S. bad faith and betrayal is the default setting in Korean affairs.

The Deep State Plan to Sabotage Korean Peace (full episode available on Youtube)

John Bolton’s presence on the White House staff is a red flag to Chinese and North Korean policymakers.  That’s because John Bolton’s core competency is sabotaging the stated and perhaps genuine intentions of the President of the United States to pursue peace on the Korean Peninsula, and substitute “active measures” to promote regime change. 

One of the most consequential failures in modern U.S. diplomacy (or anti-diplomacy) if you prefer, was a disastrous foray into financial secondary sanctions targeting North Korea during the George W. Bush years when John Bolton ruled the North Korea regime-change roost.  The sanctions gambit—targeting a tiny, China affiliated bank in Macau—backfired and literally birthed North Korea’s first atomic bomb.

It’s history that the Chinese and North Koreans know deep in their bones, even as the U.S. government tried to deny and ignore the reality of the fiasco.  To understand the deep distrust and reflexive caution of Kim Jong Un and Xi Jinping in dealing with the United States, you need to know about the Banco Delta Asia gambit of 2005.

This is a non-paywalled China Watch offering posted on the Newsbud youtube channel per the link.  Please circulate it among your friends and encourage them to subscribe to Newsbud and get the full story of America’s North Korea boondoggle.

Shame in San Francisco: At the Olympics, South Korea Says “Enough” to a Century of Japanese and U.S. Betrayal

My Asia Brief audio report on the history Americans don’t know… but drives current events on the Korean peninsula.  Resentment at the sacrifice of Korea to U.S. Cold War ambitions and the Japanese alliance runs deep…and Koreans in the North and South are finally able to do something about it.

General MacArthur’s Conspiracy to Start a War with China! New Documentary Release & Interview! For purchase at Newsbud Store or for Purchase or View via Amazon or Vimeo

The Korean War was a desperate and dubious battle in which the US was ready to try anything and everything to overcome its strategic and tactical disadvantages.  Biological weapons, nuclear weapons…and Douglas MacArthur’s plans for a strategic breakout via escalation of the Korean conflict to a regional war.  Everything was on the table.

Douglas MacArthur made the first US attempt to parlay a Korean crisis into an existential confrontation with the People’s Republic of China.  With the US milsec establishment, his ideas are more popular—and dangerous—than ever.  My documentary uses first hand testimony and declassified archives to finally reveal the truth behind this long-suppressed event.