“Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.”
Pablo Picasso

A copy of The Imperial Cruise by author James Bradley was gifted to me last year by an 80+ year old Marine who lived close enough by to be considered a neighbor. Never met an ex-marine or a retired marine, the ones I a have met, at any age, consider themselves a Marine. We had many discussions over the years on our beliefs regarding politics, foreign interventions and military service. This was the book that convinced him to discourage his Grandson from following the family tradition of military service. I just found out he has passed, it seems appropriate to recognize the evolution of peoples beliefs and values as they become aware of greater scope of information.

The last question from the audience in the video below is regarding how the American public was kept uninformed of the foreign policy implications of the voyage.

The question is you know back in 1905 what was the coverage? In 1905 this was front page news, the President's daughter was off to Asia. But the reporters new very little about Asia. When this Imperial Cruise landed in China there were huge demonstrations. There were anti-American posters all over the walls. There were posters mocking Alice Roosevelt. The New York Times wrote there were disgusting placards. They never filled the American public in. So all they wrote about were sumo matches, successful trips and lunches. They detailed about what Alice Roosevelt wore, how many trunks of clothes she had, she changed at 3 pm for this reception, she put on a dress and blah, blah blah.

Then they replayed Taft's speeches. You know the Manila Chamber of Commerce told Taft it is on the brink of economic collapse. Taft got up and made a speech about how we are going to build railroads in the Philippines. The Philippines are a nation of 7,000 islands. The press just portrayed the administrations line. Which was how the press worked in 1905, was not exactly investigative journalism.

[video:https://youtu.be/D0AJ59vqzzg?t=246]
(starts at 4.06 mark total length 51 min)

Geographical implication of island of Formosa (Taiwan) for Japan and United States.

As tensions rise between Japan and China, is Tokyo backing a loser in Taiwan? July 13, 2021

This specific region is the centre stage of where any war involving China will take place and its fate is likely to indicate who will win, and who will lose. Recently declassified documents concerning the US ‘Indo-Pacific strategy’ set out by Donald Trump’s administration imagined a war scenario and indicated that preventing China from ‘dominating’ this island chain was a key objective.

If China reunifies with Taiwan, it automatically controls this region and as a result, immediately assumes military hegemony over Japan. This is why Tokyo is becoming increasingly vocal on the issue.

In some ways, history is repeating itself. Japan annexed Taiwan from the Qing Dynasty following the Sino Japanese war in 1895, an occupation which lasted 50 years. Seizing Taiwan was the first objective in Tokyo’s broader aggression against Beijing.

However, this time round Japan is the weaker, defensive power, even though it’s important to acknowledge that a conflict between the US, China, Taiwan and Japan is highly unlikely, not least because of the scale of economic integration between them. Japan thrives on the Chinese market and there’s no getting away from this.

Unites State track record of intervention in the Chinese Civil War has not been filled with outstanding successes. Gary Brecher in his April 12, 2021 article The War Nerd: Taiwan — The Thucydides Trapper Who Cried Woof cover many past attempts and future possibilities.

It’s a full-time job, keeping track of the US/NATO campaign to start a fire somewhere on China’s borders. It’s like tracking an inept arsonist by satellite image: “Oh, there he goes again…the idiot started a trash fire next to a concrete wall.”

Of course, no one who matters in the defense business wants total war with China. They just want to keep those trash fires burning, hoping one of them will blaze up big, like a gender-reveal wildfire. And even if none of them do, it’s good for business, because most war scares are about funding. The US Navy always, always wants more ships. What’s scarce is plausible reasons to buy them.
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Only Taiwan offers any hope to US military planners. And even that hope isn’t much. Back in the 1950s, US intel had high hopes that the remnants of the Kuomintang in Taiwan could be used to stage a Pacific D-Day, storming the beaches of Fujian and overthrowing the Communists. US rightists even had a slogan, “Unleash Chiang Kai-Shek,” which was kind of like threatening to unleash your Papillon-Shih-Tzu cross on the Lion Safari Park next door.

Truman listened to his saner generals and announced in 1950 that the US wouldn’t intervene in China/Taiwan disputes over the Formosa Straits. But the US elite was deeply factionalized even then, at the height of American power, and powerful elements of the DoD weren’t willing to let China alone.

MacArthur’s open 1951 revolt in Korea showed that elite commanders were willing to use nukes (34 of them, to be exact) to get rid of the CCP.

A real war with China was off the table, once the US military lost its 1950s infatuation with nukes, for the simple reason that nukes were the only possible way the US could win a war with China. The USSR came to the same conclusion during its 1969 border war with China, and may even have sounded out the US for permission to use these taboo weapons against Mao.

The only real scenario which offers US forces a chance to accomplish anything in military terms depends on China invading Taiwan. That’s the only reason you see so many articles in the Anglo media asking hopefully, “Will China Invade Taiwan?” I swear, they’re like kids on Christmas Eve, dreaming that Chinese fleets will swarm the Formosa Straits, making the Americans’ obsolete naval and air assets meaningful again.
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Very few of these articles bother much with what’s going on in China itself. China is just The Enemy, the red force in some Fort-Irwin scenario that gives aspiring officers a chance to shine. The thing is, and it’s weird you even have to say this: China is a big strong country coming out of an era of deep national humiliation and suffering, proud of its new prosperity. China’s success in lifting a desperately poor population into something like prosperity will likely be the biggest story from this era, when the canonical histories get distilled.

A nation hitting this stage is likely to include a lot of people, especially young men, who are itching to show what their country can do. Their patriotic eagerness is no doubt as gullible as most, but it’s real, and if you pay any attention in the online world, you can’t help seeing it.
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If you know any recent Chinese history, any at all, then the PRC’s desire to reintegrate Taiwan doesn’t seem a very aggressive or frightening development, for the simple reason that the US used to be the most fierce advocate of Taiwan/Mainland China unity, to the point of madness. Until Nixon and Kissinger abandoned Taiwan for Beijing, the US was, to use a newspaper word, “adamant” that there was only one China.

And even after the big visit, years passed before the US acknowledged publicly that the PRC existed. Until 1979 — 1979! — the US insisted with a straight face that Chiang Kai-Shek’s exiled elite in Taiwan were the only legitimate government of China, all China, from Xinjiang to Taipei. The PRC did not exist. There was no US diplomatic representation in Beijing, no official contact. Everything had to be done by a farcical go-between, usually some European country willing to concede that Taiwan did not actually rule in Beijing.

At this point, the US/NATO elite believed more strongly than the PRC elite does now that there is only one China — that the mainland and Taiwan were part of the same country. That was the whole basis for ignoring the PRC.

The Australian 60 minutes propaganda video provided by CB had an odd segment. First time I had seen the idea of a Democratic Commonwealth proposal for Taiwan with potentially Japan and South Korea. The discussion even included an invitation for America, Australia and Canada. Grant Newsham featured in the program is a regular contributor in Asia Times pushing for greater Japanese participation in military action on behalf of Taiwan.

[video:https://youtu.be/kA2KaEKs1LA?t=873]

What is on your mind today? (Responses to Covid questions and dialog to be conducted at The Dose diary)