Americaâs top diplomat on Friday said the US would take action if China declined to intervene in the military deployment of North Korea, a hermit state and Beijing ally the US has long accused of playing a destabilising role in East Asia.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he has told his Chinese counterparts that Washington wants Beijingâs help in handling the North Korean ânuclear programmeâ and denuclearising the Korean peninsula. He said the US would bolster its defence alliances with Japan and South Korea if China refrained from intervening.
Directing his remarks at China during a fireside chat at the Aspen Security Forum in the US state of Colorado, Blinken said: âWe believe that you have unique influence and we hope that youâll use it to get better cooperation from North Korea.
âBut if you canât or if you wonât, then weâre going to have to continue to take steps that arenât directed at China but that China probably wonât like because it goes to strengthening and shoring up not only our own defences but also those of South Korea and Japan and a deepening of the work that all three of us are doing together.â
Beijing has criticised Washingtonâs defence alliances in East Asia, viewing them as efforts to monitor or contain Chinaâs military. Seoul and Tokyo resent Pyongyangâs military tests, which sometimes take place near their airspace.
North Korea has conducted âone missile launch after anotherâ, Blinken said. On July 12, Pyongyang carried out a second flight test of its Hwasong-18 intercontinental ballistic missile.
China, North Koreaâs Communist neighbour, has offered it fuel and food aid in the past and brokered international dialogue on the countryâs militarisation.
Blinkenâs comments followed the disappearance on Tuesday of Private Travis King, an American soldier who ran into North Korea during a civilian tour near the border with South Korea.
The secretary of state said he had no updates on Kingâs whereabouts but that âthere are certainly concernsâ he might be subjected to torture in North Korea.
The US is now working to anchor a declining Sino-American relationship, Blinken said on Friday. He, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and President Joe Bidenâs special climate envoy John Kerry have all visited China within the past two months.
âIt was important for us to put some stability back into this relationship, to put a floor under it, to make sure that the competition weâre clearly in does not veer into conflict, and that starts with engagement,â the diplomat said.
Blinken said China could help stem production of the illegal drug fentanyl that reaches the US through Mexico, control global climate change, and allow for the release of American detainees.
âIf we werenât engaged, we would be rightfully tagged with being irresponsible,â he said.
But challenges persist, and Blinken said on Friday the US had started a formal investigation into reports of Chinese hacking into US government emails.
Oh god I hope not. I am sick of war. But the MIC needs its fucking wars so it can be profitable.
Really? US is essentially asking China to curb NK nuclear threats (which they essentially helped them to achieve that capability) or US will be forced to boost SK and Japan defenses.
NK is not a nuclear threat unless someone decides to attack it. The biggest threat in the world is the US that starts a new war every few months because it canât ever NOT be at war.
After Libya you have to be completely bonkers if you think the anyone is going to believe the US means well when it asks people to give up their nukes.
It is the other way around. They can cause a damage especially to SK and Japan, but the nuclear weapons wonât help them once they do as they just have limited number of them.
This news is, because they like to fly their rockets over other countries.
Letâs be more serious: the threat is not one flag or another, itâs the whole system of power that is rooted in corruption and greed. US wage more wars than others states because they sit on top of the pyramid, in their position any other nation would do the same because they are all built on the same rotten principles
After Libya you have to be completely bonkers if you think the anyone is going to believe the US means well when it asks people to give up their nukes.
Exactly the same thing could be said about Russia and Ukraine.
NK is all bark and no bite. They are rational enough to know that actually using nuclear weapons would mean the end of their regime. The threaten to use for leverage, thatâs all
Yet they are not rational enough to fire rockets flying over Japan every other week. The thing with them is that until it explodes it is only a guess what the payload is. The thing that stops them from reacting is that they calculate trajectory and see that it goes into the sea. This is very risky, because a mistake could start a hot war, even if the payload werenât explosives.
They bite well enough when they have the chance. For example, the Lazarus Group, a North Korean hacking team, stole ~$600 million in a single cryptocurrency hesit. In total theyâve probably stolen over $2 billion, and thatâs no doubt continuing to grow.
Theyâve developed weapons-grade hacking technology that they readily employ, it wouldnât be a good idea for them to have weapons-grade nuclear technology.
Their threats are aimed at their own citizens. Itâs all political theater. Look at all the horrible things that the evil Americans want to do to our people, but through our strong military and nuclear threats we are able to hold them off and protect your lives! Itâs how the Kim Jong regime holds onto power. As long as theyâre protecting their citizens from us, their citizens are much less likely to overthrow their dictators. Putin uses a lot of the same tactics against his own people.
The US will do that anyways. The MIC money printer must always brrrrrrrrr.
In this case US is saying: âHey China, do this, or we will be forced to sell more equipment for our allies for their defenses from NK and you.â
Iâm not a religious person, but this shit makes me pray for more competent diplomats than Blinken.
He said the US would bolster its defense alliances with Japan and South Korea if China refrained from intervening.
They will do that anyway. Plus new military bases in the Philippines. But dprk super evil for building defense capabilities within its borders, ok. But all that and also the intense militarization of Japan, for example, can be seen as a direct result of the desire to have functioning self defense. If you cannot see that, look at the past and research what Japan did in Korea, its not pretty, really, really, really not pretty.
The secretary of state said he had no updates on (Travis) Kingâs whereabouts but that âthere are certainly concernsâ he might be subjected to torture in North Korea.
Ye, and there certainly are concerns that they clone him and mix his DNA with killer dolphins to create an unstoppable super soldier. How come thousands defect from dprk and no one cares, and those people get TV shows and whatnot (used for propaganda), but if one guy does the opposite even the highest US officials cannot resist conspiracy theories?
âIt was important for us to put some stability back into this relationship, to put a floor under it, to make sure that the competition weâre clearly in does not veer into conflict, and that starts with engagement,â the diplomat said.
Literal bullyspeak. If you forgive me the anthomorpization, thatâs the language someone uses when beating his wife and then looks for reasonable ways to stop the escalation of the abuse.
And that leads me to also not give any value to statement such as
Blinken said China could help stem production of the illegal drug fentanyl that reaches the US through Mexico, control global climate change.
While that is true, everything points to the conclusion that from the side of the US the desire to escalate things is far greater than finding solutions for any problems. Like, who benefits from all the now all so en vogue China-blame regarding the fentanyl crisis, how many lives does it save? China has tried to control (regulate) that substance since 2019. Imagine how many deaths could have been avoided if there had been better relations and cooperation between those countries.
Meanwhile, the US openly suggests that itâs bad that poppy production in Afghanistan has stopped.
Wasnât this meeting supposed to be about calming tensions between China and the United States (after months of the Biden administration acting plainly hostile and spreading laughable stories of Chinese spy weather balloons - and then quietly backtracking afterwards) ???
They go to a meeting to calm tensions and then Americaâs top diplomat gives an ultimatum to his Chinese counterpart saying that unless China intervenes against its oldest ally, the United States will dump even more arms into the hands of its vassals next door?
Smooth diplomacy there america. No wonder everything is going to ratshit.
Tony Blinken is emblematic of the pitiful condition of the State Department today. A large but ineffective diplomatic bureaucracy that has long since stopped believing in the virtues of diplomacy. One that accepts (if not embraces) its inferiority and gladly submits to to the all-powerful Pentagon. And an institution that views granting concessions to those labelled its enemies, or even empathising with them, to be unthinkable.
Eric Hobsbawm described Europe as stumbling into the First World War for the simple reason that the mechanics of great power competition left none able to contemplate backing down from an escalating confrontation (even when it sparked from a relatively banal royal assassination) even when doing so was necessary to prevent an apocalypse. It is people like Blinken who would have us stumble into a nuclear apocalypse.
NK is sovereign and holds no Chinese military bases within it. SK is not sovereign, holds massive US military bases and does whatever the US wants, and when it does not do what the US wants it gets overthrown and they stick a new number on the end, which is why theyâre up to their Sixth Republic in just the last 50 years. The south has wanted to make peace with the north and unite for a long long time, as do the people, but every time there are talks about this the US demands a seat at the table and scuppers those talks. This is why I call one a vassal and not the other. China never demands seats at other peopleâs tables when itâs an issue that has absolutely nothing to do with them.
If you donât consider SK a vassal whatâs your take on the EU considering itself a vassal of america? A far larger group of countries with significantly more power considers itself to have been vassalised. I canât agree with the EUâs take that it has been vassalised and then look at SK and see a country that is far more subservient to US interests as anything other than a vassal.
the hallmark of every FSB shill
Donât be a lampshade mate. I live in Britain and moderate /r/greenandpleasant the largest British leftist community.
Many administration officials, in various author interviews since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, have expressed the view that Europeans may whine and complain, but that their increasing security dependence on the US means that they will mostly accept economic policies framed as part of Americaâs global security role. This is the essence of vassalisation.
The EUâs own words regarding their own vassalisation. Iâm sorry mate but SK is far more vassalised so if the EU thinks theyâve already become vassalised and have to fight to reduce and escape it then yes I absolutely see SK as a vassal state.
The south has wanted to make peace with the north and unite for a long long time, as do the people, but every time there are talks about this the US demands a seat at the table and scuppers those talks
Strange, the constant sabre rattling seems a bit odd for a country that wants to unite with its neighbour. I 'm guessing the constant missile launches towards Japan are a form of a friendly greeting.
North Korea is a paranoid, stalinist dictatorship held by the Kim family. Peace talks are a smoke screen to get international aid flowing into its borders, and once Kims get what they want, they walk away and start posturing. There can be no unification with the Kims in charge and thats why they have consistently failed.
As for the âmilitary baseâ comment, China needs no military bases in NK because NK is one giant military base. Everything in that open prison of a country is bound to its military. Kims are already working with China as a buffer state, and opening military bases would be superflous.
The article linked is by two employees of a single EU institution, where the word âvassalizationâ is used for dramatic effect, and is certainly no official EU policy. If they wrote âEUs over reliance on US military power has made the EU a little bitchâ, would you say âEU admits to being a little bitchâ?
Thirdly, you donât have to be on the FSBs payroll to be their asset. The Soviet Union was notorious for targeting western intellectuals with propaganda to get them to regurgitate it, then mockingly called them âuseful idiotsâ behind their back. Modern day Russia has continued this trend, and I tend to regard anyone who invokes the spectre of nuclear annihilation a sucessfully demoralizred FSB asset. You are repeating talking points made in propaganda labs.
f you donât consider SK a vassal whatâs your take on the EU considering itself a vassal of america?
The EU does not consider itself a vassal, a politically biased think tank presumed that it will act like one in a blog post online. The TL;DR of which is:
However, it is far from clear that any of this debate will translate into policy measures that will affect US foreign economic policy. Many administration officials, in various author interviews since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, have expressed the view that Europeans may whine and complain, but that their increasing security dependence on the US means that they will mostly accept economic policies framed as part of Americaâs global security role. This is the essence of vassalisation.
Vassalisation - the process of becomming a vassal.
So it isnât even the ECFR considering the EU a vassal, just the authorâs interpretation that it might lead towards the EU becomming a vassal. It isnât one yet, they are warning that it might become one.
Also, in terms of real world vassal states and their comparison to South Korea and the EU, your statements are clearly hyperbolic and exaggerated. You are attempting to use emotionally charged language to argue, rather than actual insight pointing towards objective truth.
States and governments are a threat to humanity
Beijing has criticised Washingtonâs defence alliances in East Asia, viewing them as efforts to monitor or contain Chinaâs military.
Thatâs a criticism?
