China/Encirclement

China/Encirclement (Politics,  War/Preparation,  mid-level deep event)
Interest of	• Brian Berletic • German Marshall Fund/Young Strategists • Peter Navarro
USA and allies encirclement of China.

China is geographically encircled by allies of the United States. This is part of a long-term plan, and a continuation of such concepts as Mackinder's Heartland theory and Cold War containment, which led to the encirclement of Russia before.

War against China

John Pilger's documentary The Coming War on China

A 2016 RAND Corporation document titled, “War with China: Thinking Through the Unthinkable", (along with comments by US officials to the effect ) indicates that the United States has plans ready to go to war with China within a "window of opportunity" that would close between 2025 and 2030.

For that the US Marines have done away with all their main battle tanks and other weapons systems to focus on Navy-centric warfighting. The war would focus on challenging the Chinese Navy in the South China sea, to cause enough disturbance and through that bring about economic hardship.

Maritime Choke Points

Full article: Choke point

China is dependent on it's access to sea lanes for trade and import of resources. In a military scenario, the US could simply decide to not engage China's Navy directly as a first step, but close the sea lanes to Chinese ports. China, unlike other countries, does have a number of these choke points to consider.

History

The renewed focus officially started in 2012, with President Barack Obama's Pivot to Asia, a large scale redeployment of US military resources to East Asia, followed by diplomatic, economic and propaganda offensives. President Donald Trump focused on the economic aspects of the strategy, and made a major contribution to making a large proportion of the US population accepting the notion of China as an enemy.

 

Related Quotations

Page	Quote	Author	Date
2021	“In a blunt opening statement before the talks in private, Mr Anthony Blinken said the US would "discuss our deep concerns with actions by China, including in Xinjiang, Hong Kong, Taiwan, cyber attacks on the United States, economic coercion of our allies". "Each of these actions threaten the rules-based order that maintains global stability," he said. In response, Mr Yang Jiechi accused Washington of using its military might and financial supremacy to suppress other countries. "It abuses so-called notions of national security to obstruct normal trade exchanges, and incite some countries to attack China," he added. Mr Yang said human rights in the US were at a low point, with black Americans being "slaughtered".”	China US	March 2021
AUKUS	“For $360 billion, we're going to get eight submarines. It must be the worst deal in all history”	Paul Keating	15 March 2023
Kim Beazley	“In the event of a war between the United States and China, Australia would have absolutely no alternative but to line up militarily beside the US. Otherwise the alliance would be effectively dead and buried, something that Australia could never afford to see happen.””	Kim Beazley	2006
Peter Dutton	““It would be inconceivable that we wouldn’t support the US in an action if the US chose to take that action...maybe there are circumstances where we wouldn’t take up that option, (but) I can’t conceive of those circumstances.””	Peter Dutton	13 November 2021