Obstreperous China and Russia may need to be nuked — implies US Admiral Charles Richard — that happy creature of the American Establishment

04 February 2021

The United States causes the initial major trouble . . .

. . . and then we use other nations' attempts to self-defense themselves as an excuse to further expand our threatening actions against them.

In a perfect bit of national psyche self-projection

US Navy admiral Charles Richard published the following in the Proceedings [of the U.S. Naval Institute]. Because Richard currently heads the United States Strategic Command, what he says carries weight:

While DoD’s [Department of Defense] focus has been on counterterrorism, Russia and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) have begun to aggressively challenge international norms and global peace using instruments of power and threats of force in ways not seen since the height of the Cold War—and in some cases, in ways not seen during the Cold War, such as cyberattacks and threats in space.

Not surprisingly, they are even taking advantage of the global pandemic to advance their national agendas.

These behaviors are destabilizing, and if left unchecked, increase the risk of great power crisis or conflict.

More than a decade ago, Russia began aggressively modernizing its nuclear forces, including its non-treaty-accountable medium- and short-range systems.

Its military forces often engage in unsafe actions in close proximity to U.S. military forces . . . .

[Admiral Richard naturally ignores the fact that it is often the US that puts its forces in threatening adjacency to the Russians'.

He makes, for instance, no mention of the United States' uninvited Syrian intrusions. Or NATO's long-escalated encroachment upon Russian borders.]

The People’s Republic of China . . . . Like Russia, it acts aggressively to challenge democratic values and shape the global economic order to its benefit.

Consequently, the U.S. military must shift its principal assumption from “nuclear employment is not possible” to “nuclear employment is a very real possibility,” and act to meet and deter that reality.

In the end, it comes back to the threat.

Sure it does, Admiral

In the United States, "something" — usually imaginary, or almost exclusively self-created — is always a threat.

If you read Richard's article, you will notice that there is not an iota of genuine examination, regarding Chinese or Russian perspectives.

Instead, Admiral Richard just pictures both nations as single-mindedly hostile for — he would have us infer — no good reason.

Admiral Richard is, as I have suggested, a good example of Americans projecting our own rabid pillaging mentality upon the rest of the world.

Self-defense, for instance, is not a strategic quality that we permit our supposed adversaries to indulge.

Self-defense, when others display it, is — according to American leadership — always strategically "destabilizing".

Consider a contrasting . . .

. . . and more adeptly Sun Tzu-like perspective.

In a 2015 interview with Isabelle Kumar (EuroNews), Professor Noam Chomsky characterized the United States as one of two globally leading "rogue" nations.

He referred to a "threat to peace" global opinion poll — whose then-existing public access URLs have apparently since been closed — to support his characterization:

Noam Chomsky: "There are two states that rampage in the middle east carrying out aggressions, violence, terrorist acts, illegal acts, constantly.

Isabelle Kumar: “And who exactly are you referring to?”

Noam Chomsky: “The United States and Israel. The two major nuclear states in the world.

"[T]here’s a reason why, in international polls, run by US polling agencies, the United States is regarded as the greatest threat to world peace by an overwhelming margin.

"No other country is even close.

"It’s kind of interesting that the US media refused to publish this.”

Isabelle Kumar: “[D]oes this [Iran nuke] deal make you think of him [then President Obama] in slightly better terms?

"The fact that he is trying to reduce the threat of nuclear war?”

Noam Chomsky: “Well, actually he isn’t. He’s just initiated a trillion dollar programme of modernisation of the US nuclear weapon system, which means expanding the nuclear weapon system."

Isabelle Kumar: “Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu obviously doesn’t want the Iran nuclear deal to work . . . .”

Noam Chomsky: “We should ask why.”

Isabelle Kumar: “Why?

Noam Chomsky: “Iran has very low military expenditures, even by the standards of the region, let alone the United States.

"Iran’s strategic doctrine is defensive, it’s designed to hold off an attack long enough for diplomacy to start, and the United States and Israel, the two rogue states, do not want to tolerate a deterrent.

"No strategic analyst with a brain function thinks that Iran would ever use a nuclear weapon . . . . the country would simply be vaporised . . . .”

Isabelle Kumar: “How far is the US and its allies responsible for what we’re seeing now in terms of the terrorist attacks around the world?”

Noam Chomsky: “[T]he worst terrorist campaign . . . by far is the one that’s being orchestrated in Washington.

"That’s the global assassination campaign. There’s never been a terrorist campaign of that scale.”

Isabelle Kumar: “When you say global assassination campaign…?”

Noam Chomsky: “The drone campaign . . . .

"[T]he United States is systematically, publicly, openly . . . carrying out regular campaigns to assassinate people who the US government suspects of intending to harm it someday.

"[W]hen you bomb a village in Yemen . . . and you kill somebody – maybe the person you were aiming at [or] maybe not . . . how do you think they are going to react?

"They’re going to take revenge.”

Exactly.

A video of the Chomsky interview is here

Global Conversation, Noam Chomsky: US is world's biggest terrorist, YouTube (07 April 2015)

The moral? — With Kool-Aid drinkers like Admiral Richard in charge . . .

. . . the United States is going to continue to parasitize humanity for the American Plutocracy's sole benefit.

And don't overlook the mundane, threat-exaggerating, motivating fact that the US Navy is a major component of America's nuclear arm.

More taxpayer money will begin to flow to Admiral Richard's Navy — as our always self-righteous American Establishment gleefully follows his advice.

What will China and Russia do then?

What History says always happens.

The arms race will escalate. Until someone trips over a tightened string, and everything goes kaboom for a while.

And afterward, predictably, we will use that "unfortunate" and entirely foreseeable "incident" — meaning millions and millions of folks dead and the environment devastated — as a further excuse to arm ourselves out the very large American wazoo.

In sum, in the United States, it is culturally defining to be dumb-as-shit and self-righteously narrow-sighted, at the same time.

Well done, Admiral.

You (dis)credit your Service with your unhelpful, unthinking and uninsightful ordinariness.

As former Army colonel, now professor, Andrew Bacevich once pertinently wrote:

If the four-stars abandon obfuscation for truth, then and only then will they deserve our respectful attention.

PeteFree.com

Obstreperous China and Russia may need to be nuked — implies US Admiral Charles Richard — that happy creature of the American Establishment