Instruction: Write an article about: IMF admits US dollar hegemony declining, due to rise of Chinese yuan, sanctions on Russia. Use the themes and topics represented by the tags provided as guidance for the content. It's not necessary to include the exact tag words in the article, but the article should reflect the essence and context of these tags.

Input: dollar, economics, IMF, International Monetary Fund

Output:
The US-dominated International Monetary Fund warns of an “erosion of dollar dominance,” noting use of Chinese yuan in global central bank reserves is increasing, while Western sanctions on Russia could strengthen other currencies.

The US-dominated International Monetary Fund (IMF) has acknowledged that the hegemony of the dollar is in noticeable decline.
At the same time, the Chinese currency, the yuan or renminbi, is slowly growing in influence, along with other currencies, according to the IMF.
In 2000, roughly 70% of global foreign exchange reserves were held in US dollars. As of 2021, that figure had fallen to just under 60%.
Meanwhile, the IMF noted that there is a rise in “nontraditional currencies” from smaller countries being held in international reserves.
The United States has veto power over IMF decisions, and the institution is notorious for acting as an instrument of US political influence.
Economist Michael Hudson has explained that “the IMF was created as an arm of US foreign policy,” and that Washington has historically weaponized the fund “to use debt leverage to force other countries to impose austerity on their populations, and to essentially say we will control what government you have, because if your government does something that the United States officials don’t like, we’re just going to raid your currency, force of austerity on you, and you’ll be voted out of power.”
The IMF has helped maintain the US dollar as the de facto global reserve currency since the fund was created in the 1944 Bretton Woods Agreement.
Hudson showed in his book “Super Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire” that Washington has used the power of this global reserve currency status to essentially make other countries pay for its wars.
But the dollar’s power is eroding, and even the IMF has begun to publicly acknowledge this fact.
The International Monetary Fund published a working paper on March 24 titled “The Stealth Erosion of Dollar Dominance: Active Diversifiers and the Rise of Nontraditional Reserve Currencies.”
The report documents “a decline in the dollar share of international reserves since the turn of the century,” with central banks around the world increasingly diversifying their holdings.
The study notes that this “decline in the dollar’s share has not been accompanied by an increase in the shares of the pound sterling, yen and euro, other long-standing reserve currencies and units that, along with the dollar, have historically comprised the IMF’s Special Drawing Rights.”
Instead, “the shift out of dollars has been in two directions: a quarter into the Chinese renminbi, and three quarters into the currencies of smaller countries that have played a more limited role as reserve currencies.”
The researchers describe this “evolution of the international reserve system in the last 20 years” as a “gradual movement away from the dollar.”

The IMF working paper explained that “the decline in the dollar’s share has been matched by a rise in the share of what we refer to as nontraditional reserve currencies, defined as currencies other than the US dollar, euro, Japanese yen and British pound sterling.”
In addition to the Chinese yuan, some of these “nontraditional currencies” that are becoming more prominent include the Canadian dollar, Australian dollar, Korean won, Singapore dollar, and Swedish krona.
In 2000, more than 98% of international foreign exchange reserves were held in the “big four” hegemonic currencies: the US dollar, euro, Japanese yen, and British pound. Less than 2% of reserves were held in what the IMF calls “nontraditional currencies.”
But as of 2021, the share of nontraditional currencies had shot up to 10% – and there is every indication that this figure will only keep growing.

The IMF report noted that this “shift is broad based,” identifying 46 central banks that have been diversifying their holdings with nontraditional currencies.
The euro is unlikely to challenge US dollar hegemony. The article pointed out that the “euro has gained little ground as a reserve currency since its creation in 1999,” remaining relatively static at around 20% of global reserves.
Yet “while the renminbi has gained some ground, it remains leagues behind the dollar as a form of international reserves,” the researchers added, on a cautious note.
The working paper was authored by Barry Eichengreen, a professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley, along with IMF economists Chima Simpson-Bell and Serkan Arslanalp.
Their study concludes that, while the dominance of the US dollar is far from over, and certainly will not end overnight, its power is waning.
A top official at the International Monetary Fund made remarks reflecting this historic shift, in a report by the Financial Times, titled “Russia sanctions threaten to chip away at dominance of US dollar, says IMF.”
The mainstream British newspaper interviewed the IMF’s first deputy managing director, Gita Gopinath, and wrote that the crushing Western sanctions imposed on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine, “including restrictions on its central bank, could encourage the emergence of small currency blocs based on trade between separate groups of countries.”
The senior IMF official conceded that “fragmentation at a smaller level is certainly quite possible,” although she added that the US “dollar would remain the major global currency even in that landscape.”
Russia sanctions threaten to chip away at dominance of US dollar, says IMF https://t.co/D0qtv9rlrr
— FT Economics (@fteconomics) March 31, 2022

The IMF executive acknowledged that the world “might see some slow-moving trends towards other currencies playing a bigger role [in reserve assets]” held by countries’ central banks.
“We are already seeing that with some countries renegotiating the currency in which they get paid for trade,” Gopinath added.
Western sanctions on Russia – one of the world’s largest exporters of oil, gas, wheat, and fertilizers – have forced Moscow’s trading partners to seek alternative payment mechanisms.
Despite the sanctions, the European Union still gets 40% of its natural gas from Russia. And the Kremlin has demanded that Europe pay for this gas in Russian rubles.
Russia’s demand that the European Union pay for its gas exports in rubles could shake up the global economy, undermining Western sanctions and forcing Europe to decide if it truly wants to be independent from the US.
Important analysis by @bidetmarxmanhttps://t.co/pIvWWXkXXp
— Benjamin Norton (@BenjaminNorton) March 25, 2022

China and Russia have also moved toward boosting their bilateral trade in each other’s currencies.
Western sanctions pushed Russian financial institutions, including both state-owned and private banks, to encourage clients to open accounts in Chinese yuan.
Bangladesh has said it is considering using yuan to evade sanctions and continue trading with Russia.
Even India, which has a right-wing, pro-US government, has created an alternative payment mechanism using rupees and rubles, to get around Washington’s sanctions.
The IMF has been careful, however, not to overstate the drop in US dollar holdings in international reserves.
Gopinath, the IMF official, predicted that “the dollar’s dominance will stay for a while.”
While US dollar hegemony is not going to suddenly disappear, it is facing more and more challengers.


Instruction: Write an article about: The US is already preparing for its next war: on China. Use the themes and topics represented by the tags provided as guidance for the content. It's not necessary to include the exact tag words in the article, but the article should reflect the essence and context of these tags.

Input: China, David Petraeus, Foreign Policy magazine, Japan, NATO, Russia, Taiwan, Ukraine

Output:
While the US and NATO wage a proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, military strategists and pundits in Washington have set their sights on China.

(This article was first published at Danny Haiphong’s Substack blog. You can subscribe here.)
Russia’s military operation in Ukraine is approaching its first birthday, in February 2023. Top military brass in Russia have long declared that the conflict is not between Russia and Ukraine, but rather Russia and NATO. Simply put, Ukraine is a pawn in another U.S. war.
Europe’s economy and military have been sacrificed on the altar of U.S. warmongering toward Russia. Winter is here, and Ukraine’s prospects for getting out of the conflict with anything resembling “victory” have dissipated, if they ever really existed at all.
Such has been admitted by two of the foreign-policy establishment’s most criminal members: Condoleezza Rice and Robert Gates. In an op-ed with the Washington Post, Rice and Gates argue that time is not on Ukraine’s side. The U.S. must act fast or watch Ukraine suffer eventual defeat.
Opinion by former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice and former defense secretary Robert M. Gates: Time is not on Ukraine’s side https://t.co/TqoP9sXwsv
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) January 7, 2023

Of course, for neoconservative hawks like Rice and Gates, a negotiated settlement is simply out of the question. The only option for the U.S. political and military establishment is to fortify Ukraine with the heaviest military equipment such as armored tanks to ensure victory on the battlefield.
As geopolitical analyst Brian Berletic has noted, a major problem stands in the way of Rice and Gates’s demand: NATO is running out of weapons.
The U.S. produces about 30,000 rounds per year for its 155 mm Howitzer long-range systems, a number that Ukraine uses in just two weeks of fighting Russia on the front lines.
Russian missile strikes have made quick work of heavier equipment such as the vaunted HIMARS systems.
Only larger NATO states like the U.S. and Germany have anything left to provide.
So when Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky came to Congress begging for more weapons, he was likely disappointed in Joe Biden’s remark that the U.S. was not going to make promises to arm Ukraine with anything that could possibly lead to a World War III scenario between NATO and Russia.
Russia’s critical victory in the city of Soledar has only intensified concerns among a major faction in the foreign policy establishment that Ukraine is depleting the U.S.’s capacity to wage war elsewhere.
In this regard, no other matter of U.S. “national security” is more important than China.
The RAND Corporation, a research arm of the Pentagon, has called China a “peer” competitor and the U.S.’s greatest long-term threat.
Joe Biden’s Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin has also called China the greatest threat to the U.S.’s “security.”
The Biden administration unveiled a new defense strategy, casting China as the greatest danger to American security and calling for an urgent, concerted effort to build the military capabilities to deter Beijing in the decades to come https://t.co/aD8reqtEzT
— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) October 27, 2022

NATO labeled China a “malicious actor” in the alliance’s latest Strategic Concept document, and pledged to play a larger role in curbing the so-called “threats” presented by its rise.
A series published just after the new year in Foreign Policy, however, has blown the lid off of any subtleties to the U.S.’s preparations for a war with China.
Titled “Lessons for the Next War,” the series features 12 essays from all corners of the U.S. foreign-policy establishment. Contributors include former Obama-era CIA director and US army commander David Petraeus, former NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, and former Under Secretary of State and Trump-era NATO Deputy Secretary General Rose Gottemoeller.
Also included are representatives from a litany of hawkish think tanks, such as the US government-funded Center for a New American Security (CNAS) and the neoconservative Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD).
Accuracy and precision in battlefield sensors and munitions have shaped the war in Ukraine. This offers important implications for the Taiwan Strait, @Mauro_Gilli writes in FP's Winter 2023 issue. https://t.co/F4VffhCtZU pic.twitter.com/jZNhVx22sP
— Foreign Policy (@ForeignPolicy) January 17, 2023

Their essays cover 12 areas of economic, cyber, military, diplomatic, and propaganda warfare. An important thread runs through each contribution: Russia has failed in Ukraine (a fabrication mixed with imperial hubris), making the present moment a perfect opportunity to prepare for an upcoming war in Taiwan against China.
Foreign Policy’s chief editor Stefan Theil makes the aim of the series quite clear:
Drawing the right lessons from the first 10 months of the Russian invasion, then, not only matters for the survival of Ukraine. It is also vital for deterring and preventing a future conflict—and, if necessary, fighting one. The most obvious potential hot spot and one that involves even greater stakes is, of course, Taiwan.
Beyond repetitive lip service to “deterrence,” contributors make concrete suggestions on the best means to wage war with China. David Petraeus’s co-authored piece asserts that (all emphasis added):
Ukraine points to the imperative for the United States and its Indo-Pacific allies to prioritize the near-term ability to field large numbers of relatively inexpensive, highly mobile anti-ship and anti-air missiles that can be dispersed and maneuvered throughout the first and second island chains against Beijing’s increasingly formidable naval and air forces. Large quantities of unmanned air, sea, and ground systems can amplify these missiles in the U.S. order of battle.
In other words, the U.S.’s record $858 billion military budget needs to grow even larger to meet the challenge of China.
Petraeus was directly responsible for targeting weddings and civilian areas during his time leading U.S. forces in Afghanistan, giving him first-hand knowledge of the capabilities of the U.S.’s military arsenal.
The principles of anti-access/area denial strategy to deter and, if necessary, defeat aggression, used to great effect in Ukraine, are equally applicable in the Western Pacific, David Petraeus and Vance Serchuk write in FP's Winter 2023 issue. https://t.co/qWEwbztmSt pic.twitter.com/3igsK84Apr
— Foreign Policy (@ForeignPolicy) January 16, 2023

Former Obama-era NATO Secretary Anders Fogh Rasmussen backs up Petraeus’s emphasis on pumping weapons into Taiwan, stating:
weapons are what counts . . . With the help of its partners [Taiwan] must become a porcupine bristling with armaments to deter any possible attempt to take it by force. China must calculate that the cost of an invasion is simply too high to bear.
However, Foreign Policy’s war stenographers clarify that preparing for war with China is about much more than weapons.
Maria Shagina, research fellow on sanctions at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a bellicose think tank funded by the weapons industry and State Department, argues that the U.S. and its allies should devise a coherent plan of “economic statecraft” against China as soon as possible.
Elisabeth Braw of the Carlyle Group-funded right-wing American Enterprise Institute proposes that the U.S. and its allies secure control over the information airwaves to ensure citizens “know exactly what to look for” from so-called “subversive” state and non-state actors that counter U.S. and NATO talking points.
Of course, these so-called “preparations” are already underway. The U.S. spends hundreds of millions in its information war against China, and it recently banned Chinese semiconductor exports to compliment an already wide-ranging economic war on China.
Foreign Policy’s “Lessons for the Next War” was part of a flurry indications that the U.S. foreign policy establishment is preparing for war with China.
Two days following Foreign Policy’s series, top U.S. General in Japan James Bierman made the stunning admission in the Financial Times that U.S. is “setting the theater of war” by goading China into a Ukraine-style war over Taiwan.
US military deepens ties with Japan and Philippines to prepare for China threat https://t.co/5hZaenqwif
— Financial Times (@FT) January 8, 2023

The next day, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) released a war simulation between the U.S. and China over Taiwan. Predictably, the U.S. government concluded that Chinese efforts to invade the island would fail at a great cost to the militaries of all parties.
In May 2022, The Center for New American Security (CNAS), which is principally funded by military contractors, showcased its own war simulation on NBC’s Meet the Press.
Back in February 2022, the U.S. Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force joined the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force in conducting joint military exercises, known as Noble Fusion, in the Philippine Sea.
The US and Japan in the Noble Fusion military exercise in the Philippine Sea in February 2022
It’s important to note that U.S. war preparations with China have little do with Taiwan specifically. They’re a response to imperial decline and the rise of China and Russia.
Beijing and Moscow both present their own specific challenges to Washington’s hegemony.
Russia’s growing sovereignty and political independence from the U.S.-led West has undermined the Wolfowitz Doctrine of full-spectrum dominance over all territory of the former Soviet Union.
China’s massive socialist-led market economy is set to surpass the U.S.’s stagnant finance capitalist system in GDP terms by 2035.
Worse for the U.S. is that Russia and China have grown closer together.
In economic terms, the Russia-China comprehensive strategic partnership has grown by leaps and bounds since the Treaty of Good-Neighborliness and Friendly Cooperation was established in 2001. Bilateral trade is expected to increase by 25% and reach a total volume of $200 billion ahead of the 2024 target date.
Surging economic ties with China have given Russia further protection from U.S.-E.U. sanctions, with agricultural and energy exports to China increasing by the month.
China and Russia have also increased coordination on matters of military coordination, color revolutions, and diplomacy in the face of a common threat: U.S. imperialism.
But perhaps the biggest threat to U.S. hegemony resides in China and Russia’s leadership in the global movement for integration and de-dollarization.
China and Russia are the principle leaders of multilateral institutions such as BRICS+ mechanism and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.
These multilateral institutions set out to strengthen investment in all sectors of economic and social development between participating countries, especially in the realm of finance.
In response to starvation sanctions imposed by the U.S. and E.U., and predatory loans from Western financial institutions, BRICS+ has united the largest Global South economies, uniting Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa in an effort to develop an alternative to the U.S. dollar-dominated neoliberal economic system.
The strength of BRICS+ grew immensely in 2022. Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Iran, Argentina, and several other countries expressed interest in or applied to join BRICS+.
BRICS+ is complimented by China and Russia’s own integration projects which aim to develop the infrastructure necessary to break free from the petrodollar.
The “virtual group photo” taken at the 14th BRICS summit in 2022
China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) sports major cooperation agreements with more than 140 countries and consists of at least 2,000 development initiatives, many of which are completed or under construction.
Talks of possibly merging the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) and the BRI are already underway.
The same forces preparing for war with China have expressed deep concern about the future of the dollar amid growing Eurasian integration.
Foreign Policy admitted in its marathon 12-essay series that U.S. sanctions have led China to pursue alternatives to the dollar with its trading partners.
Zoltan Pozsar, an economist and former strategist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, recently sounded the alarm about what he termed “BRICSpansion” and the potential of China, Russia, Iran, and the Global South uniting around a new currency system backed by the wealth of commodities in their possession.
Pozsar warns of “commodity encumbrance,” or the growing possibility that resource-rich nations like Russia will use their commodities as collateral to increase reserves of credit and financing.
The interest that China and Saudi Arabia have shown in trading oil in Chinese yuan, Russia’s pursuit of an international reserve currency, and the idea of “BRICS coin” are presented as major threats to Western financial dominance.
The U.S.’s answer to fading imperial hegemony is war – and more of it.
War is an inherent feature of predatory neoliberalism, where corporations seek favorable conditions to exploit and plunder the planet’s laboring classes and resources.
War is also a permanent, and very profitable, industry dominated by a tiny few military contractors.
The ruling elite has calculated that U.S. imperialism cannot compete with China and Russia, making the rise of both an existential threat to the future of U.S.-led neoliberalism and imperialism.
This sentiment has been expressed by NATO’s Atlantic Council think tank, and in the U.S.’s successive national security strategies of “Great Power” and “Strategic” Competition.
That U.S. foreign-policy strategists and experts are planning for the next war should come as no surprise.
U.S. imperialism does not target singular “enemies”; it targets alternative development models and the nations attempting to build them.
As Henry Kissinger said, the United States “has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests.”
The Ukraine proxy war is thus a testing ground for the larger U.S. agenda of imperial expansion.
A common condition of peace and prosperity for humanity will depend in large part on undermining of this agenda, particularly within the citadel of imperialism: the United States.


Instruction: Write an article about: US waging ‘unilateral’ economic and tech war to halt China’s rise, DC insiders say openly. Use the themes and topics represented by the tags provided as guidance for the content. It's not necessary to include the exact tag words in the article, but the article should reflect the essence and context of these tags.

Input: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, China, Joe Biden, Jon Bateman, technology

Output:
The Biden administration’s aggressive sanctions aim to “kneecap” China’s tech sector. A former Pentagon official acknowledged it is a “disproportionate” and “unilateral” attack, a “form of economic containment.”

The US government has imposed aggressive sanctions that aim to “kneecap” China’s tech sector and halt the country’s rise, Washington policymakers and industry analysts have admitted.
The Joe Biden administration took the extraordinarily aggressive action this October of blocking China from importing most semiconductors, machines to create chips, and supercomputer parts.

A former Pentagon official acknowledged that this was a “disproportionate” and “unilateral” attack, amounting to a “form of economic containment.”
He said this in an article in Foreign Policy, the magazine of the DC political class, titled “Biden Is Now All-In on Taking Out China.”
Jon Bateman, an ex analyst for the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) who served in several important policy roles in the Pentagon, wrote that US officials have “imposed disproportionate measures” and “strong-armed others into compliance.”
Washington’s “mindset all but guarantees a continued march toward broad-based technological decoupling,” he concluded.
Bateman stated that the “increasing boldness of U.S. unilateral actions, and Washington’s open embrace of a quasi-containment strategy” reflect the US government’s new cold war goal: “China’s technological rise will be slowed at any price.”
Today, Bateman is a senior fellow in the technology and international affairs program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a powerful DC-based think tank that helps Washington craft policy – with plentiful funding from the US government, its allies, large corporations and banks, and billionaire oligarch family foundations.
Bateman is by no means a pro-China advocate. In April, he published a report for Carnegie called “U.S.-China Technological ‘Decoupling’: A Strategy and Policy Framework.”
In the lengthy document, Bateman “offered a concrete picture of what centrist decoupling might look like and how implementation could work at the agency level.”
Bateman wrote the Foreign Policy article as part of a debate with more hard-line hawks in elite Washington policy-making circles. He warned that their “maximalist” strategy could backfire and hurt the US and its allies, and instead promoted a more cautious, incrementalist approach.

“America’s restrictionists—zero-sum thinkers who urgently want to accelerate technological decoupling—have won the strategy debate inside the Biden administration,” he warned.
“More cautious voices—technocrats and centrists who advocate incremental curbs on select aspects of China’s tech ties—have lost,” Bateman lamented.
He acknowledged that Washington’s new cold war on China has been completely bipartisan, but “Donald Trump’s scattershot regulation and erratic public statements offered little clarity to allies, adversaries, and companies around the world,” whereas “Joe Biden’s actions have been more systematic.”
“The United States has waged low-grade economic warfare against China for at least four years now—firing volley after volley of tariffs, export controls, investment blocks, visa limits, and much more,” he wrote.
Bateman said the Biden administration’s new sanctions, however, “more so than any earlier U.S. action, reveal a single-minded focus on thwarting Chinese capabilities at a broad and fundamental level.”
“Although framed as a national security measure, the primary damage to China will be economic, on a scale well out of proportion to Washington’s cited military and intelligence concerns,” he wrote.
He added, “The U.S. government imposed the new rules after limited consultation with partner countries and companies, proving that its quest to hobble China ranks well above concerns about the diplomatic or economic repercussions.”
Bateman noted that the United States is trying to pressure allies to join its new cold war on China, leading an international campaign to economically isolate Beijing by building a “Chip 4” alliance with South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan – which control the vast majority of the global semiconductor industry.
With the announcement of new export control policies, the Biden administration has made its stance clear: China’s technological rise will be slowed at any price. https://t.co/74dKlNkFUp
— Foreign Policy (@ForeignPolicy) October 14, 2022

Bateman’s fears that these aggressive new cold war policies could backfire have already come true. Washington’s rapid attempt to decouple the US economy from China is taking a toll on US universities.
At least 1,400 scientists of Chinese descent have left US research institutions and instead gone to China, according to a report published this October by academics at Harvard, Princeton, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
The South China Morning Post reported that the “high number illustrates a ‘chilling effect’ resulting from US government policies deterring research and academic activity by scientists of Chinese descent and suggests American research could suffer.”
At least 1,400 US-based ethnic Chinese scientists exited American institutions for mainland: study https://t.co/aZd576RCJV
— South China Morning Post (@SCMPNews) October 19, 2022

The tech press has sounded similar alarm bells about Washington’s bellicose attacks on Beijing.
Electronics industry website EE Times quoted a corporate analyst who said the US “sanctions put a temporary checkmate on China developing their foundry industry at more advanced nodes.”
The website also used cold war rhetoric to refer to the aggressive US policies, writing:
The latest U.S. salvo in the chip war against China will set back its domestic chipmakers by generations, while global suppliers of semiconductors and fab tools will incur billions of dollars in lost sales because of a giant dent in demand out of China, analysts told EE Times.
The administration of U.S. President Joe Biden has strengthened Cold War measures from longer than 40 years ago. In its new rivalry, the U.S. aims to freeze China’s advancement on a new front: chip technology that is critical for economic development and military superiority.
#NewArticle: Biden Administration’s escalation of the #chipwar with #China is expected to at once hamper China’s foundry industry and cost multinational #chipmakers billions of dollars in lost sales.➡ Read now: https://t.co/KxRPZ0CXaz
— EE Times | Electronic Engineering Times (@eetimes) October 24, 2022

Wired magazine came to the same conclusion, reporting that the US sanctions aimed to “kneecap” China’s tech industry.
Wired said Washington’s “sweeping new controls are designed to keep [China’s] AI industry stuck in the dark ages while the US and other Western countries advance.”
The tech magazine quoted Gregory Allen, director of the AI governance project at the Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS), an influential neoconservative think tank in DC that is bankrolled by the weapons industry, US government, and Washington’s allies.
Allen summed it up: “The United States is saying to China, ‘AI technology is the future; we and our allies are going there—and you can’t come.’”
The Biden administration’s new export restrictions forbid companies from exporting advanced chips needed to train or run the most powerful AI algorithms to China. https://t.co/KgNbIcMVKn
— WIRED (@WIRED) October 12, 2022


Instruction: Write an article about: Invocando la Doctrina Monroe, diputado de EEUU dice que Argentina es una ‘amenaza’, tras sus acuerdos con China. Use the themes and topics represented by the tags provided as guidance for the content. It's not necessary to include the exact tag words in the article, but the article should reflect the essence and context of these tags.

Input: Alberto Fernández, Argentina, China, Doctrina Monroe, Matt Gaetz, Rusia, Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping

Output:
El congresista derechista Matt Gaetz, un aliado de Donald Trump, calificó a Argentina como una “amenaza” para la “seguridad” de EEUU, y se quejó de que su alianza con China desafía la colonialista Doctrina Monroe.

(You can read this article in English here.)
Un influyente diputado estadounidense invocó la colonialista Doctrina Monroe en el pleno del Congreso y calificó a Argentina de “amenaza” debido a su alianza con China.
El congresista republicano Matt Gaetz, un aliado clave del ex presidente Donald Trump, dijo en un discurso en la Cámara de Representantes el 7 de febrero que existe una “amenaza significativa para nuestra nación que se acelera rápidamente cerca de casa”.
“Argentina, una nación y economía importante en las Américas, acaba de unirse al Partido Comunista Chino al sumarse a la Iniciativa de la Franja y la Ruta”, declaró Gaetz.
Invocando la colonialista Doctrina Monroe, el congresista derechista Matt Gaetz, un aliado de Donald Trump, calificó a Argentina como una “amenaza” para la “seguridad” de EEUU, debido a su alianza con China.
Lea más aquí: https://t.co/AWRPXrh6IP pic.twitter.com/2fzI6IhUui
— Multipolarista (@Multipolarista) February 8, 2022

El legislador de la Florida estaba reaccionando a la noticia de que el presidente de Argentina, Alberto Fernández, visitó Moscú y Beijing para reunirse con los mandatarios Vladimir Putin y Xi Jinping el 3 y 6 de febrero, respectivamente.
Al explicar sus viajes, Fernández dijo, “Argentina tiene que dejar de tener esa dependencia tan grande que tiene con el FMI y los Estados Unidos, y tiene que abrirse camino hacia otros lados”.
Argentina se sumó a la campaña de infraestructura internacional de Beijing, la Iniciativa de la Franja y la Ruta, y China le ofreció a la nación sudamericana $23.700 millones de dólares en inversiones y proyectos de infraestructura. Moscú se comprometió de manera similar a fortalecer los lazos políticos y económicos con lo que llamó “uno de los socios claves de Rusia en América Latina”.
Argentina está atrapada con $44 mil millones de deuda odiosa del FMI.
Buscando alternativas a la hegemonía de EEUU, el presidente Alberto Fernández viajó a Rusia y China, formando nuevas alianzas y incorporándose a la Iniciativa de la Franja y la Rutahttps://t.co/h7Eg59LRjM
— Multipolarista (@Multipolarista) February 6, 2022

El representante Matt Gaetz describió con enojo los crecientes vínculos de Argentina con China como “un desafío directo a la Doctrina Monroe”.
La Doctrina Monroe, que data de 1823, fue un mensaje a los colonialistas europeos de que Estados Unidos considera a América Latina como su propio territorio colonial.
Hace dos siglos, el secretario de estado John Quincy Adams creó la doctrina, y el presidente James Monroe la convirtió en política de gobierno, insistiendo en que EEUU no intervendría en las esferas de influencia de las potencias coloniales europeas mientras reconocieran que Centroamérica y Sudamérica eran parte de la esfera de influencia imperial de Washington.
Esta actitud de que Latinoamérica es propiedad colonial de EEUU sigue muy viva hoy en día, y es completamente bipartidista en Washington.
Varios altos funcionarios de la administración de Donald Trump invocaron la Doctrina Monroe para justificar su intento de golpe en Venezuela, incluido el ex director de la CIA y secretario de estado, Mike Pompeo, más el asesor de seguridad nacional, John Bolton.
Este enero, el presidente Joe Biden se hizo eco de la retórica colonial de la Doctrina Monroe al referirse a América Latina como el “patio delantero” de Washington.
Si bien Matt Gaetz, al igual que su mentor político Donald Trump, a veces critica de manera oportunista a otras facciones de derecha como los “neoconservadores”, propone una política exterior imperialista igualmente agresiva.
Una constante en prácticamente todos los discursos de Gaetz es su demonización obsesiva de China. Aboga firmemente por una nueva guerra fría para contener a la superpotencia asiática.
Mientras muchos neoconservadores e intervencionistas liberales quieren una política agresiva contra Rusia, el mensaje de Gaetz es esencialmente que China es la verdadera amenaza para Estados Unidos, no el Kremlin, y que Washington debería buscar la guerra con Beijing en lugar de la guerra con Moscú.
En su discurso ante el Congreso, en el que declaró a Argentina como una “amenaza”, Gaetz reiteró este tema y afirmó que “China es una potencia en ascenso. Rusia es una potencia en declive. Concentrémonos, para que no nos unamos a ellos en ese destino eventual”.
Gaetz, que representa el Panhandle del noroeste de Florida, se unió a la administración Trump para apoyar firmemente el intento de golpe de estado en Venezuela.
El legislador republicano también pide con frecuencia el derrocamiento del gobierno de Cuba, mientras difunde noticias falsas que afirman que “los matones venezolanos, con algunos rusos, ahora son ‘escuadrones de la muerte’ que recorren los hogares. Están masacrando adultos y secuestrando niños”.
Gaetz está estrechamente relacionado con la extrema derecha. En 2018, invitó a un notorio bloguero nacionalista blanco, que ha promovido el revisionismo del Holocausto, al discurso del estado de la unión de Trump.
Además de su política extremista, Gaetz ha sido investigado por las autoridades estadounidenses por el presunto tráfico sexual de una niña de 17 años.


Instruction: Write an article about: After Ukraine, US readies ‘transnational kill chain’ for Taiwan proxy war. Use the themes and topics represented by the tags provided as guidance for the content. It's not necessary to include the exact tag words in the article, but the article should reflect the essence and context of these tags.

Input: China, Link 16, Russia, Taiwan, Ukraine

Output:
Washington approved the dangerous sale of the Link 16 communications system to Taiwan. This is the final link of what the US military calls a “transnational coalition kill chain” against China, and signals a commitment to kinetic war.

In many traditions, when you paint or sculpt a Buddha, the eyes are the very last to be painted. It’s only after the eyes have been completed that the sculpture is fully alive and empowered.
The United States has approved a $75 million weapons package to Taiwan province, involving the sale of the Link 16 communications system.
The acquisition of Link 16 is analogous to “painting the eyes on the Buddha”: a last touch, it makes Taiwan’s military systems and weapons platforms live and far-seeing.
It confers deadly powers, or more prosaically, in the words of the US military, it completes Taiwan as the final, lethal link of what the US Naval Institute calls a “transnational coalition kill chain”, for war against China.
What exactly is Link 16? It is a key system in the US military communications arsenal. Specifically, it’s the jam-resistant tactical data network for coordinating NATO weapons systems for joint operations in war.
If this sale is completed, it signals serious, granular, and single-minded commitment to kinetic war. It would signal that the Biden administration is as serious and unwavering in its desire to provoke and wage large-scale war with China over Taiwan as it was with Russia over Ukraine, which also saw the implementation of this system.
More important than any single weapons platform, this system allows the Taiwan/ROC military to integrate and coordinate all its warfighting platforms with US, NATO, Japanese, Korean, Australian militaries in combined arms warfare.
Link 16 would be the deadliest piece of technology yet to be transferred, because it allows sea, air, and land forces to be coordinated with others for lethal effect.
It permits, for example, strategic nuclear/stealth bombers  (US B-1B Lancers, B-2 Spirits) to coordinate with electronic warfare and surveillance platforms  (EA Growlers, Prowlers, EP-3s), fighters and bombers (F-16,F-22, F-35s) as well as conduct joint arms warfare with US, French, British carrier battle groups, Japanese SDF destroyers, and South Korean Hyun Moo missile destroyers, as well as THAAD and Patriot radars and missile batteries.
It also allows coordination with low-earth orbit satellites and other Space Force assets.
In other words, Link 16 supplies a brain and nervous system to the various deadly limbs and arms that the Taiwan authorities have been acquiring and preparing on the prompting of the US. It ensures interoperability and US control.
It effectively prepares Taiwan to be used as the spear tip and trigger of a multinational war offensive against China.
To give a shoe-on-the-other-foot analogy, this would be like China giving separatists in a US territory or state (e.g. Hawaii, Guam, Puerto Rico, Texas) not just arms and training – already a belligerent act of war, which the US is currently doing – but connecting insurgent militaries directly to the PLA’s surveillance, reconnaissance, and command/control systems.
This coordinates and completes, to borrow the words of the US Naval Institute (USNI), the final link in a “transnational coalition kill chain” for war.
The current US doctrine of war against China is based on distributed, dispersed, diffused, network-centric warfare to be conducted along the myriad islands of the archipelagic states encircling China in the Pacific.
These are the “island chains” upon which the US has encircled and sown dragon’s teeth: tens of thousands of troops armed with mobile attack platforms and missiles.
This is to be coordinated with subsurface warfare, automated/autonomous warfare, and longer-range stand-off weapons and attacks.
Powerful think tanks like CSBA, CNAS, CSIS, RAND and the Pentagon have been working out the doctrine, details, logistics, and appropriations for this concept intensively for over a decade while advocating intensely for it.
The sale of link 16 to Taiwan realizes and completes a key portion of this, binding the Chinese island as the keystone of this “multinational kill chain”.
This doctrine of dispersion is based on a “rock-paper-scissors” concept that networked diffusion “offsets” (Chinese) precision.
China’s capacity to defend itself and its littoral perimeter with precision missiles can be undermined with diffuse, distributed attacks from all across the island chains.
Note that this diffusion and dispersion of attack platforms across the entire Pacific gives the lie to the claim that this is some inherently deterrent strategy to defend Taiwan island. Diffusion is clearly offensive, designed to overrun and overwhelm defenses: like Ukraine, this is not to deter war, but to enable it.
This thus signals that aggressive total war against China is being prepared, in granular, lethal fashion on tactical and operational levels.
On the strategic level, currently, at the CFR, CNAS, and other influential think tanks in Washington, the talk is all about “protracted warfare” with China, about pre-positioning systems and munitions for war, about ramping up to an industrial war footing for the inescapable necessity of war with China.
This discussion includes preparations for a nuclear first strike on China.
The US senses that the clock is running rapidly down on its power. If war is inevitable, then it is anxious to start war sooner rather than later.
RAND warned in 2016 that 2025 was the outside window for the US to prevail in war with China. The “Minihan window” also hints at 2025. The “Davidson window” is 2027.
The question in Washington regarding war with China is not if, but when–and how.
Link 16 makes “how” easier, and brings “when” closer.
The current administration has hardline Russophobes who want to continue to bleed Russia out in Ukraine. It wants protracted war with Russia. It firmly believes it can wage ambidextrous, multi-front war.
Many US officials also believe that war with Ukraine and war with China are connected. They see Russia and China as a single axis of “revisionist powers” (i.e., official enemies) conspiring against the US to undermine its so-called “rules-based order” (i.e., US hegemony).
Furthermore, if the US abandons Ukraine, this could weaken the Taiwan authorities’ resolve and willingness to wage war on behalf of Washington.
Earlier in the war, when Russian gains in Ukraine were uncertain, Bi-khim Louise Hsiao (Taiwan’s current vice-president elect) gloated publicly and prominently that Ukraine’s victories were a message to China, as well as proof-of-concept of an effective doctrine for waging and winning war against China. As such, the Taiwan authorities were and are a major supporter of the Ukraine proxy war.
But the converse also holds true. Based on the same premise, if the US abandons and loses Ukraine, it sends a clear message to the people on Taiwan island that they will be the next to be used and abandoned; that their US-imposed war and war doctrine (light, distributed, asymmetrical combined arms warfare) for fighting China is a recipe for catastrophic loss.
The US plans on using proxies for war against China: Taiwan, Korea, Japan (JAKUS), Philippines, and Australia (AUKUS). Thus it cannot signal too overtly its perfidious, unreliable, and instrumental mindset.
Washington has to keep up the pretense. It cannot be seen to overtly lose in or abandon Ukraine. It needs a “decent interval”, or a plausible pretext to cut and run.
Still, the US is stretched thin. For example, it is relying on Korean munitions to Ukraine, and South Korea has provided more munitions than all of the EU combined.
Moreover, the US is currently at war with itself. The fracturing of its body politic can only be unified with a common war against a common enemy. Russia is not that enemy for the US. China is. The Republicans want war with China now.
Eli Ratner and Elbridge Colby have been fretting for years about the need to husband weaponry, arms, and munitions in order to wage war against China.
Since the outbreak of Ukraine, Ratner has been working hard to pull India into the US defense industry’s supply chain, and claims to have been successful.
South Korea’s considerable military-industrial complex is being pulled into sub-contracting for US war with China.
Since many of its major Chaebol corporations got their start as subcontractors for the war in Vietnam (for example, Hyundai was a subcontractor for Halliburton/Brown & Root), the Korean economy is simply reverting back to its corporate-martial roots.
South Korea’s economy is currently tanking due to US-forced sanctions on China. Major Korean electronic firms have lost 60 to 80% of their profits due to US-imposed chip sanctions.
Under those conditions, military manufacturing and/or subcontracting looks to be the only way forward.
In this way, the US is forcing a war economy onto its vassals.
Furthermore, US aid to Ukraine benefits its own arms industry.
The business of the US is war. Not only do existing US arms companies gain, but also the entire tech industry and supply chain benefits, and is currently re-orienting around this.
Much of the US tech industry is seeking to suckle from the government teat, now flowing copiously in preparation for war.
On the other hand, the general US economy is not doing well, with massive layoffs, especially in the consumer and business tech sector.
The backstop of military Keynesianism, with the integration of think-tank lobbying groups funded by the arms industry with close ties to the administration (such as CNAS, West Exec Advisors, and CSIS) ensure that war is always the closest ready-to-hand resort for tough economic times.
The US is simultaneously trying to decouple supply chains, which creates opportunities for US firms (both domestically and subcontracting with US vassals).
Automated, AI-enabled warfare will be a key part of this development, as will be dispersed, distributed warfare platforms using proxies such as South Korea and Japan.
This fits the existing historical pattern: the history of Western technology shows that technology and machinery have always been developed first for war.
Afterwards, they become tools of entertainment and distraction, and later productive tools for general industrial use.
This pattern goes back to the earliest machines and inventions of the West: the crane, the pulley, the lever, were all military technologies – machines of war (used in sieges).
Later they became machines of illusion and distraction (used as stage machinery in Greek theater).
Only much later were they applied for general use – and exploitation – in manufacture and production.
This holds true for many other technologies, including:
Nuclear power obviously derives from nuclear weapons.
AI, too, from its inception, was conceived for automated battle management, especially to enable second strike after human life had been destroyed.
An AI war is already in the works, with US sanctions on AI-related chips and computing, along with an algorithmic race to suppress dissent and critique in the information domain.
War and business are intricately related in the west, and war is the first lever pulled when the economy stagnates critically or needs a boost.
The US needs to abandon its neoconservative fantasies of hegemonic global empire and retreat gently into that good night, for there to be peace.
Washington needs to negotiate in good faith with Russia, and begin the process of de-escalating its proxies in Ukraine, as well as in Palestine, and the Pacific.
It needs to seek win-win cooperation in a multilateral order based on international law and mutual co-existence, not its own top-down “rules-based order”.
It needs to respect the One China principle, end its interference in China’s affairs, and stop preparing and provoking war with China.
However, the US ruling class is unwilling to do so. And it has only a few levers left to pull. The military one is the closest and most ready to hand.
As Martin Luther King Jr. said, “The US is the greatest purveyor of violence in the world”.
Like a drunk at the bar after the final call – drunk with power – Washington is determined to go out with a fight.
That fight could involve a nuclear first strike. Palestine has shown what it will try to get away with: brazen genocide with the whole world watching.
The issue is no longer war or peace in Ukraine. Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell sees Ukraine as a “unified field” of war with China. He revels in the possibility of a “magnificent symphony of death” in Asia.
The coda, of course, will be a deafening fermata of silence across the entire planet. Unless we stop this insane march to war.


Instruction: Write an article about: Cold war two: US Secretary of State Blinken announces China containment policy. Use the themes and topics represented by the tags provided as guidance for the content. It's not necessary to include the exact tag words in the article, but the article should reflect the essence and context of these tags.

Input: Antony Blinken, China, Mike Pompeo, Russia, Xi Jinping

Output:
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced a new policy of containment and siege of China, to “shape the strategic environment around Beijing.” This is similar to the strategy Washington pursued against the Soviet Union in the first cold war.

The head of the US State Department has publicly confirmed that Washington is waging a new cold war against China.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken delivered a historic speech in which he essentially announced a policy of containment and siege of Beijing, similar to the strategy that Washington pursued against the Soviet Union in the first cold war.
“We cannot rely on Beijing to change its trajectory. So we will shape the strategic environment around Beijing to advance our vision for an open, inclusive international system,” he said.
“The scale and the scope of the challenge posed by the People’s Republic of China will test American diplomacy like nothing we’ve seen before,” he argued.
Blinken even made implicit military threats against China.
“President Biden has instructed the Department of Defense to hold China as its pacing challenge, to ensure that our military stays ahead”, he said.
In order to wage this new cold war, the US State Department announced the creation of a “China House”, focused specifically on isolating Beijing.
Blinken made these remarks in a May 26 talk titled “The Administration’s Approach to the People’s Republic of China,” delivered at George Washington University, a major DC-based college that has a revolving door with the US government.
The speech was co-sponsored by the powerful think tank the Asia Society. Blinken praised the organization for “forging closer ties with the countries and people of Asia to try to enhance peace, prosperity, freedom, equality, sustainability.”
The Asia Society was founded by billionaire oligarch John D. Rockefeller III, a key political operative with deep ties to US intelligence agencies, who worked closely with the US government and para-state organizations like the Council on Foreign Relations to wage the first cold war on the Soviet Union.
Blinken’s speech was very similar to one given in July 2020 by Donald Trump’s former CIA director and secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, in which he condemned China as “the primary challenge today in the free world” and openly called to “change” the government in Beijing.
The central thrust of Blinken’s speech was that, after World War Two, the United States created the global political and economic architecture that governs the world today, and this has allowed Washington to dominate the planet.
China, however, now poses a unique challenge to that unipolar US hegemony, he lamented, calling Beijing “the most serious long-term challenge to the international order”.
“After the Second World War,” Blinken said, “we and our partners [built] the rules-based order.”
He described this liberal capitalist “rules-based order” as one in which “people, ideas, goods, and capital move freely.”
In the nearly 7,000-word speech, Blinken reiterated this talking point constantly, using the phrase “rules-based international order,” “rules-based order,” or “international order” nine times.
“China is the only country with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to do it,” he declared.
With arrogant American exceptionalist rhetoric, Blinken described the United States as “magical,” and depicted China as a threat to the “magical” US system and its liberal capitalist order.
“We have profound differences with the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese Government”, he stressed, adding that the US goal is “to outcompete China in key areas.”
Blinken’s speech reflected the deep neoliberal ideology of the US government, and showed how its capitalist economic system fundamentally clashes with China’s socialist model.
The US secretary of state accused Beijing of supposedly unfairly competing in the “rules-based order” because its government intervenes in the economy and implements socialist policies.
“Unlike U.S. companies and other market-oriented firms, Chinese companies don’t need to make a profit – they just get another injection of state-owned bank credit when funds are running low,” he complained.
Blinken harshly condemned China’s socialist policies, while calling for more neoliberal policies to be implemented.
“We will push back on market-distorting policies and practices, like subsidies and market access barriers, which China’s government has used for years to gain competitive advantage,” he declared.
The top US diplomat claimed that state intervention in the economy is unfair, calling instead for “competition” on a “level playing field” – ie, one in which corporations dictate policy, not governments.
“We’ll compete with China to defend our interests and build our vision for the future,” Blinken asserted.
He put a particular emphasis on the technological sector. Blinken accused China of “unfair technology and economic practices,” by which he largely meant state intervention to foster their growth.
The secretary of state complained that US corporations are heavily regulated in China, and that Beijing puts many restrictions on them.
“For too long, Chinese companies have enjoyed far greater access to our markets than our companies have in China”, Blinken grumbled.
He lamented that “The New York Times and Twitter are prohibited for the Chinese people,” that “American companies operating in China have been subject to systematic forced technology transfer,” and that “Beijing strictly limits the number of foreign movies allowed in the Chinese market.”
In his speech, Blinken boasted that the United States is building and strengthening a group of “allies and partners” in order to challenge China.
He mentioned the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or Quad, with Japan, Australia, and India; as well as AUKUS, the US military alliance with the United Kingdom and Australia.
Blinken likewise bragged of expanding NATO’s imperial sphere of influence into Asia, stating, “we’re building bridges among our Indo-Pacific and European partners, including by inviting Asian allies to the NATO summit in Madrid next month [in June].”
He was specifically referring to Japan and South Korea, which already participated in a meeting in NATO headquarters in April.
NATO expanding into Asia-Pacific to militarily encircle China as well as Russia

“We are not looking for conflict or a new Cold War”, Blinken claimed in the speech. But at the same time, he contradicted this reassurance with his calls for containing and besieging China.
The US secretary of state also targeted Russia. And he warned about the growing alliance between Beijing and Moscow.
“President Xi and President Putin declared that the friendship between their countries was – and I quote – ‘without limits,'” he cautioned.
Blinken warned that the Eurasian powers are carrying out joint military exercises.
“Russian President Vladimir Putin poses a clear and present threat,” he declared.
“The foundations of the international order are under serious and sustained challenge” by both China and Russia, Blinken claimed.
A significant part of Blinken’s speech was dedicated to accusing China of outlandish misdeeds.
Without presenting a shred of evidence, he claimed China is committing “genocide and crimes against humanity” in its Muslim-majority province Xinjiang.
This is despite the fact that the State Department’s own lawyers concluded there is insufficient evidence for these hyperbolic allegations.
Blinken also implicitly reiterated US support for separatist movements in Tibet and Hong Kong, stating, “We stand together on Tibet, where the authorities continue to wage a brutal campaign against Tibetans and their culture, language, and religious traditions, and in Hong Kong, where the Chinese Communist Party has imposed harsh anti-democratic measures under the guise of national security.”
In a deeply hypocritical diatribe, Blinken claimed China had “perfected mass surveillance,” while making no mention of NSA mass spying.
Blinken accused Beijing of “harming workers and companies in the United States,” without acknowledging the rampant abuse of workers by Amazon, Uber, Walmart, and other US corporations.
The top US diplomat even went so far as to attack China for “standing with governments that brazenly violate” sovereignty and territorial integrity, while completely ignoring US support for Israeli colonialism against Palestinians, the Saudi and Emirati war on Yemen, or the invasion and occupation of Syria by NATO member Turkey, let alone the US wars on Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, and Somalia.
Hinting at the debunked myth of “debt-trap diplomacy,” Blinken fearmongered about economic agreements that countries have made with China, stating, “We’ve heard firsthand about buyer’s remorse that these deals can leave behind”.
“Under President Xi, the ruling Chinese Communist Party has become more repressive at home and more aggressive abroad,” he claimed.
Antony Blinken’s speech had striking similarities with one given by his predecessor, Mike Pompeo, at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in July 2020.
Both secretaries of state complained that China threatens US global hegemony, and argued that the China of today is fundamentally different from the China in 1972, when President Nixon took a historic visit to the country to normalize relations.
In his speech, titled “Communist China and the Free World’s Future,” Pompeo essentially argued that Nixon’s historic visit was a mistake.
Washington thought that, by opening up, it could change China’s political and economic system. But ultimately it was not able to do so, both US secretaries of state lamented.
“We can’t treat this incarnation of China as a normal country,” Pompeo insisted. “We, the freedom-loving nations of the world, must induce China to change.”
Trump’s secretary of state accused Beijing of challenging the “rules-based order,” the same concept that Blinken has endlessly repeated.
“If we don’t act now, ultimately the CCP will erode our freedoms and subvert the rules-based order that our societies have worked so hard to build,” Pompeo warned.
Blasting “China’s virulent strain of communism,” he declared that “Communists almost always lie.” (This was quite ironic, given Pompeo himself quipped in April 2019, “I was the CIA director. We lied, we cheated, we stole. We had entire training courses.)
“We have to keep in mind that the CCP regime is a Marxist-Leninist regime,” Pompeo said. “General Secretary Xi Jinping is a true believer in a bankrupt totalitarian ideology.”
He portrayed China as a monstrous squid, stating, “Every nation will have to come to its own understanding of how to protect its own sovereignty, how to protect its own economic prosperity, and how to protect its ideals from the tentacles of the Chinese Communist Party.”
Pompeo’s remarks were more combative, but cutting through the rhetoric and looking at the ideas expressed, Blinken’s speech was very similar.
Like Blinken, Pompeo’s complaints were ultimately rooted in China’s socialist model. Many Chinese companies “don’t answer to independent boards, and many of them are state-sponsored and so have no need to pursue profits,” he complained.
Blaming China for the global Covid-19 pandemic, Pompeo called China “the primary challenge today in the free world.”
“Securing our freedoms from the Chinese Communist Party is the mission of our time,” the top US diplomat insisted.
Both speeches serve as confirmation that the United States is waging a new cold war on China, and that this aggressive strategy has bipartisan support in Washington, among both Republicans and Democrats.


Instruction: Write an article about: UN lies about US military occupation of Syria, reporter calls out Ukraine hypocrisy. Use the themes and topics represented by the tags provided as guidance for the content. It's not necessary to include the exact tag words in the article, but the article should reflect the essence and context of these tags.

Input: Dana Stroul, Donald Trump, Edward Xu, Farhan Haq, Fox News, Kurds, Mark A Milley, oil, Syria, Tom Bowman, UN, United Nations

Output:
US troops have illegally occupied Syria’s oil-rich territory for years, but a top United Nations official, Farhan Haq, falsely claimed “there’s no US armed forces inside of Syria”. Chinese reporter Edward Xu called out the UN’s hypocrisy on Ukraine.

US troops have illegally occupied Syria’s oil-rich territory for years, but a top United Nations official falsely claimed “there’s no US armed forces inside of Syria”.
In a press briefing on March 24, Farhan Haq, the deputy spokesman for UN Secretary-General António Guterres, sparred with Chinese reporter Edward Xu.

Xu pressed Haq about a US airstrike on Syria, which killed a dozen people, following an attack on US troops that have been illegally occupying Syrian territory.
“Do you think the presence of the US military in Syria is illegal or not?” Xu asked.
“That’s not an issue that we’re dealing with at this stage”, Haq replied.
Xu countered, “A foreign ministry based presence in another country without invitation, sounds like something else to me”.
The UN spokesman then falsely claimed, “There’s no US armed forces inside of Syria… It’s not a parallel situation to some of the others… I believe there’s military activity. But, in terms of a ground presence in Syria, I’m not aware of that”.
This statement is simply not true.
US troops have illegally occupied Syria's oil-rich territory for years, but a top United Nations official falsely claimed "there's no US armed forces inside of Syria"
A reporter called out his lie, exposing the UN's hypocrisy on Ukraine.
Full video here: https://t.co/9rOeW53fT8 pic.twitter.com/fp42QG9Fje
— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) March 29, 2023

The New York Times published an article on March 4 revealing that US General Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has demanded that troops remain in Syria.
“America still has more than 900 troops, and hundreds more contractors, in Syria”, the Times reported.
In a March 24 newswire on the US airstrike in Syria, the Associated Press reported that “American troops have been in Syria since 2015“.
The news outlet Kurdistan24 has published video footage of US armored vehicles occupying oil wells in Syria.

In 2018, the Washington Post printed an article boasting, “In Syria, we ‘took the oil’“.
The piece quoted the director of research at the neoconservative, US government-funded think tank the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), who proudly stated, “We have this 30 percent slice of Syria, which is probably where 90 percent of the pre-war oil production took place… This is leverage”.
US state media outlet NPR followed up in 2020, stating very clearly: “U.S. forces in northeastern Syria have a relatively new mission: securing oil fields not only from ISIS, but also from Syrian government and Russian forces”.
NPR noted that its embedded reporter Tom Bowman “has been travelling with American military forces”.
Bowman explained that President Donald Trump “agreed to keep a small number, about 600 or so, to secure these oil fields not only from ISIS but also from Syrian government and Russian forces. Now, they want their Kurdish forces, their allies, to use the proceeds from the oil to pay for their operations”.
For his part, Trump was strikingly honest about what Washington was doing in Syria. He told Fox News, “I left troops [in Syria] to take the oil. I took the oil. The only troops I have are taking the oil. They’re protecting the oil. I took over the oil… We have the oil. Right now, the U.S. has the oil”.
Here’s irrefutable video evidence of Trump “fighting the deep state” ?
“I left troops [in Syria] to take the oil. I took the oil. The only troops I have are taking the oil. They’re protecting the oil. I took over the oil… We have the oil. Right now, the U.S. has the oil” pic.twitter.com/IYaep53GP5
— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) March 31, 2023

A hard-line neoconservative activist Dana Stroul, who oversaw Washington’s Syria Study Group, boasted in 2019 that the US military “owns” one-third of Syria, including its oil-rich “economic powerhouse”.
When President Joe Biden came to power in 2021, Stroul was made the top Middle East policy official in the US Department of Defense.
The top Pentagon Middle East policy official, neocon Dana Stroul, confirmed Biden is keeping troops to illegally occupy sovereign Syrian territory
Stroul once boasted that the US military "owns" 1/3rd of Syria, including its oil-rich "economic powerhouse"pic.twitter.com/NIEJ9elxhs https://t.co/01kZ22dhJ4
— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) August 15, 2021

An official UN transcript of the March 24, 2023 press briefing follows below:
Journalist Edward Xu: A couple of questions on Syria. Yesterday, there’s a drone attack to a US base in north-east Syria which resulted in one death and six injured. After that, US launched an air strike, also killed 11 people in Syria. Any reaction from the Secretary-General on this incident?
UN Deputy Spokesman Farhan Haq: Oh, well, of course, we continue to be worried about all of the continuing tensions, and we are trying to see what can be done to lower the tensions from different forces in Syria and will continue with those efforts.
Edward Xu: Do you not urge everybody to respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Syria?
Farhan Haq: Well, of course, that’s a given, and obviously, it’s important that the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Syria is respected. At the same time, you’re aware of the complexity of the situation of foreign forces, but we call for them to exercise restraint.
Edward Xu: But, do you think the presence of the US military in Syria is illegal or not?
Farhan Haq: That’s not an issue that we’re dealing with at this stage. There’s been a war.
Edward Xu: But, is that… because it sounds very familiar this week. We talk a lot about the UN Charter, the international law and relative resolutions. But, it sounds to me, a foreign ministry based presence in another country without invitation, sounds like something else to me.
Farhan Haq: I’ll leave your analysis to you. That there’s… At this stage there’s no…
Edward Xu: What’s the difference between the situation in Syria and the situation in Ukraine?
Farhan Haq: There’s no US armed forces inside of Syria. And so I don’t have a… It’s not a parallel situation to some of the others.
Edward Xu: You’re sure there’s no US military personnel in Syria?
Farhan Haq: I believe there’s military activity. But, in terms of a ground presence in Syria, I’m not aware of that.
Edward Xu: Okay. Five US service members were injured in that attack. If there were no US service members in Syria, how could they got injured? That’s weird, right? Should I ask you about that? And by the way, if you’re talking about the resolution, the international law here is the resolution from Security Council 2254 (2015), I believe, it says in its PA [preambular] paragraph, “reaffirming its strong commitment to the sovereignty, independence, unity and territorial integrity of the Syrian Arab Republic and to the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations”.
Farhan Haq: Yes. I’m aware of that. And as you see, that is accepted by the members of the Security Council itself.
Edward Xu: Yeah. So, again, back to my question, is that illegal to have presence in Syria for the US base, according to the relevant resolution that I just read out?
Farhan Haq: The relevant resolution does call for that and we call on all countries to respect that. I wouldn’t go beyond that at this stage.