Michael Klare Courtesy TomDispatch

July 4, 2024 In his years in power, Joe Biden and his top foreign policy officials have come up with a distinctly more aggressive and militarized approach to a rising China and, in particular, its claims to areas of the South China Sea or the island of Taiwan. As an old Cold Warrior who lived through the era of “containing” Soviet power, the president has taken a strikingly similar approach toward China, even if he’s repeatedly denied that it’s a policy of “containment.” Typically, American Green Berets have recently been stationed on the Taiwanese island of Kinmen, just a few miles off the coast of the People’s Republic (though the head of the United States Indo-Pacific Command insists that it’s not a permanent change). Four new military posts are also being established in the Philippines, all of them strategically closer to China than the other U.S. bases there. Meanwhile, last year the U.S. Marines opened their first new base in 70 years on the Pacific island of Guam as a “strategic hub” for the region, even as the American military command in Japan was also being strengthened. (Imagine for a moment, how this country would react if China were challenging America’s “aggressive” behavior by establishing military bases throughout, say, the Caribbean or off the Mexican coast. Truly beyond belief, right?) And then, of course, there’s Australia, where the U.S. is now stockpiling military supplies (and conducting joint war games) for a possible future conflict with China over Taiwan and, as TomDispatch regular Michael Klare makes strikingly clear today, that’s just the beginning when it comes to future military connections with that country. (Think nuclear submarines!) And all of this is happening, as Klare points out, while American power globally is actually on the wane and its crucial alliances (in a world where the Global South is finally rising), increasingly… well, let’s not say “white” but, as Klare makes clear today, distinctly Anglo-Saxonified. Tom

Trusting the Five Eyes” Only

The Anglo-Saxonization of American Foreign Policy and Its Perverse Consequences

By Michael Klare

Wherever he travels globally, President Biden has sought to project the United States as the rejuvenated leader of a broad coalition of democratic nations seeking to defend the rules-based international order” against encroachments by hostile autocratic powers, especially China, Russia, and North Korea. We established NATO, the greatest military alliance in the history of the world,” he told veterans of D-Day while at Normandy, France on June 6th. Today… NATO is more united than ever and even more prepared to keep the peace, deter aggression, defend freedom all around the world.”

In other venues, Biden has repeatedly highlighted Washington’s efforts to incorporate the Global South” — the developing nations of Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East — into just such a broad-based U.S.-led coalition. At the recent G7 summit of leading Western powers in southern Italy, for example, he backed measures supposedly designed to engage those countries in a spirit of equitable and strategic partnership.”Click here to read more of this dispatch.