While China deploys its military hardware to Russia in order to take part in the International Army Games 2015 along with 14 other nations from August 1 through 15, the United States remains concerned that the two countries are threatening Washington’s global dominance.
In particular, the U.S. is now focusing its full attention on China and Russia after the mighty emergence of the BRICS, whose “banking system worldwide is going to replace the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank,” according to American scholar James Henry Fetzer.
And indeed, the summit of BRICS members as well as SCO that took place just two weeks ago, set a new stage of relations between Russia and China. Meanwhile, the fact that India and Pakistan joined SCO means that the ‘allied’ countries have a possibility of developing an economic space that would compete with the European Union and the U.S. by downgrading the relevance of Western sanctions as well as trading crude oil in U.S. dollars. Members of BRICS account for about 20 percent of the global GDP.
Fetzer’s comments to Press TV come after U.S. Army General Mark Milley warned on Tuesday about Russia’s nuclear capability.
“Russia is the only country on earth that contains a nuclear capability that could destroy the United States,” General Mark Milley told the members of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
“It’s an existential threat to the United States, so it has capability. Intent, I don’t know; but the activity of Russia since 2008 has been very, very aggressive,” he added.
Obama finally appointing war hawks to counter Russia?
The General is not the first one to refer to Russia – and China, for that matter – as the ‘existential threat’ to the U.S. Earlier this month, during his appointment hearing to become the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine Gen Joseph Dunford called Russia’s recent actions “nothing short of alarming.”
“So if you want to talk about a nation that could pose an existential threat to the United States, I’d have to point to Russia,” Gen Dunford told senators.
Such statements by high-ranking U.S. officials might mean one thing: the U.S. President Barack Obama has made a decision to respond to Russia’s threats seriously by putting into place ‘war hawks’.
After a long period of his rather soft policy toward Russia, Obama is finally making the steps that should have been done since Russia’s aggression started back at the beginning of 2014. However, appointing such ‘mouthy’ officials might also be done just for show, while Obama intends to stick to his soft policy no matter what his generals and officials say.
According to Fetzer, all of ‘war hawks’ are “identifying Russia and China and North Korea — and in some cases ISIS — as the major threats confronting the United States. ISIS, of course, is a creation of the United States; we know that from a defense intelligence agency document of 2012 that was recently released and has been published.”
Milley, who was nominated to be the next Army chief of staff, also stated that China and North Korea, “Each in their own different way represent threats, security threats, to the United States.”
U.S. ‘killed’ Russia and China
It must be noted that General Dunford also mentioned China as one of the concerns for the U.S. for its threatening actions in the South China Sea as well as its rapid military expanding. ISIS is also considered “alarming” to Pentagon, according to Dunford.
However, White House spokesman Josh Earnest stated later that the Obama administration is aware of Russia’s threatening actions but does not share Dunford’s opinion as his comment reflect “his own view and doesn’t necessarily reflect the … consensus analysis of the president’s national security team.”
The fact remains clear: it used to be mostly Russia who got mentioned by U.S. officials as a ‘threat’ to the U.S. national security, but now the list also includes China.
And then, of course, there is also Iran. Washington, which has been holding closed-door and back-room talks with Tehran for many years, killed two birds with one stone. Particularly, it ‘killed’ Russia and China.
Basically, the U.S. managed to tear Iran off Russia and China’s hands. Although Iran, which is an ‘observer state’ in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, has not fully sided with the U.S., it started moving in that direction.
And China has greatly suffered from this, having its stock market lose about $3 trillion recently.
The significant loses on the stock market is not the only headache for China. Beijing, which is intended to recreate trade routes through the Central Asia, might soon find out that Iran is no more interested in the project of the so called ‘new Silk Road’.
U.S. will pay for intimidating China and Russia
The U.S. will have to pay for its policy of, according to Melkulangara Bhadrakumar. The Asia Times columnist is confident that Russia and China will combine their efforts in order to not let the U.S. dominate.
The former diplomat reminds that the U.S. military doctrine named China and Russia as two enemy countries. However, the Pentagon warned that military actions against these two nations would lead to ‘immense consequences’.
The summit of BRICS, according to Bhadrakumar, strengthened the relations between Beijing and Moscow.
“He [Russian President Vladimir Putin] didn’t name the US, but the implication is clear, namely, the US cannot hope to take on Russia or China if they stand shoulder to shoulder and pool their efforts,” Bhadrakumar noted.
The columnist believes that the key aspect of the SCO and BRICS summits was the consolidation of these organizations under the Eurasian Economic Union framework.
Washington’s deterrence policy becomes irrelevant at the time when China and Russia are becoming the friends that can build relations with the EU no matter what the White House says or thinks. The U.S. cannot intimidate Russia and China. And for each such attempt Washington risks to pay a lot, the columnist concluded.
