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Vol. 81/No. 16 April 24, 2017
(front page)
Washington tells Beijing: Back North Korea off
BY TERRY EVANS
Chinese President Xi Jinping’s April 6-7 summit with his U.S.
counterpart Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida was
completely upstaged by furor in Washington and other imperialist
capitals over North Korea’s nine-minute-long test-firing of an unarmed
missile into the Sea of Japan the day before the summit. It was also
marked by Washington’s decision to shoot 59 missiles against a Syrian
air base in response to Damascus’ use of nerve gas April 4 against Khan
Sheikhoun in Idlib province, killing at least 85 people and wounding
over 500.
The media coverage of the summit focused largely on Washington and
Beijing’s response to the developments in Korea. “If China is not going
to solve North Korea, we will,” Trump told the Financial Times before
Pyongyang’s missile test. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said, “All
options are on the table.”
The U.S. rulers pressed Beijing to get their ally in Pyongyang to back
off, with little effect so far.
On April 11 Trump announced the dispatch of “an armada” near the Korean
Peninsula. The navy strike group includes the USS Carl Vinson aircraft
carrier that conveys 60 warplanes and a crew of 6,500, a cruiser armed
with Tomahawk missiles and two guided-missile destroyers equipped with
the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System. Submarines accompany the
battle group.
Meanwhile, Washington and Seoul have been carrying on a massive
seven-week-long military exercise involving some 30,000 U.S. troops and
300,000 South Korean soldiers that practice an invasion of the North.
For the first time, the special Navy SEAL team that carried out the
assassination of Osama bin Laden is participating. Some exercises, U.S.
spokespeople said, simulate the “decapitation” of the North Korean
leadership.
And Washington has begun installation of the Terminal High Altitude Area
Defense, or THAAD, anti-missile system near Seoul, a system that Beijing
feels would enable the Pentagon to spy on its missile program as well.
Also shaping the summit was Washington’s opposition to Chinese military
expansion across the South China Sea and sharper competition between the
two countries as world trade slows. During the dinner break the first
night, Trump informed Xi that he had just unleashed the missile
onslaught on Syria. He pressed Xi to do more to help Washington against
North Korea, repeating warnings that the U.S. could act unilaterally to
force North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons program. Washington
holds the world’s largest nuclear arsenal.
Sharpening competition
The explosive growth of capitalist industry and trade with China over
the past 30 years has increased competition for U.S. capitalists. To
defend its rising influence Beijing has expanded and upgraded its armed
forces. For the first time, Washington faces a serious challenge to the
fruits it won in World War II — control over Pacific trade routes.
Beijing’s claim to some 80 percent of the South China Sea, including
more than 40 islands, is contested by Tokyo, Hanoi, Manila and other
governments in the region. Trillions of dollars of trade goes through
these waters every year.
Although a declining power, with its world order unraveling, U.S.
imperialism holds far greater firepower than any of its rivals. And the
dollar remains the world’s reserve currency. Bloody wars ending in a
standoff in Korea and defeat in Vietnam did not quell the U.S. rulers’
resolve to retain their supremacy in the region. Washington has the
world’s largest naval force, consisting of some 270 ships, including 10
aircraft carriers — more than the navies of all other countries in the
world combined — 90 surface combat vessels, 72 submarines, and dozens
more warships of varying sizes and shapes dedicated to maintaining
“freedom of navigation” for U.S. imperialism.
In recent years Beijing has built artificial island military bases
across the South China Sea. “Your access to those islands … is not going
to be allowed,” Tillerson threatened the Chinese rulers in January. But
by March 27 the Center for Strategic and International Studies reports
that China was completing the installation of aircraft hangers and
missile launchers on the islands, allowing Chinese warplanes “to operate
over nearly the entire South China Sea.”
The U.S. has opened new bases in the region and plans to position 60
percent of its warships there by 2020. From 2011 the Obama
administration began a much-ballyhooed “pivot” to Asia, increasing
Washington’s military presence in the Pacific. They said this was
necessary and possible because the wars in Afghanistan and the Middle
East were winding down.
The U.S. has the largest military budget in the world, spending $584
billion a year. China, in a distant second place, spends $143 billion.
China’s rise is fracturing long-standing alliances among capitalist
powers in the region, creating obstacles for Washington. On March 7, the
Rodrigo Duterte government in the Philippines rejected Washington’s
proposal to build facilities at the Bautista Air Base, the closest
Philippine base to the Chinese-built islands in the Spratly archipelago.
At the same time Duterte said he is reinforcing the Philippine’s own
claims to islands, ordering troops to occupy and fortify them.
At the conclusion of the summit, neither Washington nor Beijing could
announce anything of consequence. They said Trump and Xi agreed to spend
the next 100 days seeking accommodations to avoid a trade war. Beijing’s
bosses and farm enterprises enjoy a $347 billion annual trade surplus
over their U.S. counterparts.
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