Back in the 2012 presidential debates, ‘smartest guy in the room’ Barack Obama haw-haw-hawed at Mitt Romney’s fretting over the shocking decline in the US Navy’s strength. When Romney pointed out that the US Navy was smaller than it was in 1916, Obama sneered, “we also have fewer horses and bayonets”.
The lickspittle media obediently guffawed along. Silly old Mormon Mitt, what do we need a big navy for these days?
They should ask China.
On Obama’s watch, China took advantage of America’s depleted naval strength to turn the Pacific into a Chinese lake. The Chinese were no slouches at throwing their naval weight around, whether it be claiming completely artificial islands in order to close off the South China Sea or ramming Vietnamese and Philippines fishing vessels. Thanks to Obama’s strategic genius, there wasn’t a damn thing the US could do about it.
Like Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping is always keen to see a Democrat in the White House and exploit their strategic idiocy. This time, in Latin America.
“Beijing and its axis has made considerable gains against the free world over the last four years,” says Matt Pottinger, a China expert and deputy national security adviser in the Trump White House.
You can almost hear the Age journo’s teeth grinding as he grudgingly admits:
Although he was a senior official in the Trump administration and is mooted to be so again should Trump win, Pottinger is respected widely as an expert on China, where he worked as a journalist for seven years.
It must have killed a Melbourne lefty to admit that, damnit, the Bad Orange Man was right.
It was bad enough that China felt confident enough to challenge America’s near-century-old supremacy in the Pacific and is undermining one of the longest-standing foreign policy doctrines of the United States. For 200 years, the Monroe Doctrine has ruled that any intervention in the political affairs of the Americas by foreign powers is a potentially hostile act against the United States.
China has tested the Democrats’ mettle – and once again found them yet again wanting.
China years ago chose Venezuela, economically stricken yet oil rich, as its beachhead in Latin America. Xi Jinping has embraced Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro accordingly. So when Maduro blatantly defrauded his way to an election “victory” two weeks ago, how did Xi react?
While most of the world saw the fraud for what it is, and even the American left suddenly decided that disputing elections was the height of democratic bravery, China was all congratulations.
“President Maduro has led the Venezuelan government and people,” said Xi, “making remarkable achievements in the cause of national development.”
China would “firmly support Venezuela’s efforts to safeguard sovereignty, national dignity and social stability, and its just cause of opposing external interference”. The last clause, of course, is a reference to resisting the US.
Just as it is in the Pacific, China is buying off corrupt tinpot dictatorships in order to establish a beachhead.
“Venezuela is important to the full range of China’s ambitions in the Americas,” says Evan Ellis, professor of Latin American studies at the US Army War College. “Including access to resources, markets in strategic sectors, political strategic objectives, and military options if it ever must fight a war with the US in the Indo-Pacific.”
That expands China’s influence-buying across the globe: the Pacific, Eurasia, Africa, even the Arctic and Antarctic. And, of course, Latin America.
“Policymakers in Australia and the US [need to] remain clear eyed about what Beijing’s true ambitions are, and about the profound lack of sincerity in any offers by Beijing to, quote unquote, stabilise the relationship.”
The Latin American beachhead gives China direct land access to the United States. In developments that should have had alarm bells ringing full-volume in Washington, Chinese nationals have been caught crossing the southern border. Photos showed groups of fit-looking, military-age men – not slouching about, but standing in line in classic at-ease pose.
But with Kamala Harris in charge of the border, nobody in Washington appeared to even take notice.
[Pottinger] argues that Xi’s policy in Latin America “is working to destabilise Latin America through things like shoring up a dictator. That policy means that you’re going to see millions more refugees walking out of Venezuela and into places like Colombia and all the way up into the US, you’re going to see more money laundering and drug trafficking,” says Pottinger.
Everywhere, China is fomenting and exploiting instability.
He cites a Xi speech from 2021 that revived a Mao Zedong slogan: “The world is in great chaos, situation excellent!” Says Pottinger: “I mean, you have it straight from the horse’s mouth. So anyone who’s sort of entertained this idea of stable ties with Beijing is really smoking dope.”
And who’s talking about stabilising ties with China?
Anthony Albanese, of course.
