The U.S. and China continue to prepare for the eventuality of direct military conflict. Developments over the past several weeks indicate how this entire situation continues to get more and more perilous. 

In September, U.S. Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall gave a major speech stating that “If we are going to deter, we must be ready for war. We must be ready for a kind of war [with China] we have no modern experience with.” He argued that if there is not a major Air Force retooling—which they are aggressively pursuing—“we could fail to prevent, and might even lose a war.”

At the same time, the U.S. and China are engaged in a series of dangerous confrontations that amount to “games” of nuclear chicken around the island of Taiwan and in the South China Sea. 

All this is happening while the U.S. proxy war with Russia in Ukraine has grown more ferocious. The war has become a bloody, stalemated meatgrinder in which it is estimated that nearly half a million people have been killed or wounded. 

(See Revolution’s resource page “The War in Ukraine and U.S. Threats Against China” and our “Frequently Asked Questions” for more on the origins, nature, and history of this conflict, including several important articles by Bob Avakian.) 

Clashes in the South China Sea

The South China Sea is a portion of the western Pacific Ocean that borders several countries. The United Nations estimates that one-third of global trade travels through it. Different nations, including the Philippines and China, have claims to various parts of it. It has great commercial, economic, and military significance to U.S. and Chinese imperialists.

A tweet posted by the Philippine Coast Guard on September 25 shows a diver cutting a section of underwater rope in the South China Sea. The rope was part of a barrier Chinese forces placed to keep Philippine boats away from an area China claims as its maritime territory. The Philippine government claimed that the barrier was in violation of international law, and the cutting was ordered by the president of the Philippines. China then warned the Philippines not to “make provocation” or “stir up trouble.” The New York Times reported that worries are “rising in the region about how China might counter [Philippine] resistance, and whether there could be a risk of sparking a direct military clash among China and the Philippines and its allies, including the United States Navy fleet patrolling the region.”

The U.S. ruling class, Democrat and Republican alike, have identified China as its foremost adversary, the only one capable of mounting “a sustained challenge” to U.S. global supremacy. As for the Philippines specifically, the Biden administration announced shortly after it took office that it upholds Trump’s rejection of China’s claims in the South China Sea. Biden “warned China that any attack on the Philippines in the flashpoint region would draw a U.S. response under a mutual defense treaty.” 

The U.S. military frequently and deliberately provokes China by traversing areas of the South China Sea claimed by China. A statement from the U.S. Navy’s 7th Fleet issued in April said it will “fly, sail, and operate wherever international law allows—regardless of the location of excessive maritime claims and regardless of current events.” 

Recent events underscore how quickly and abruptly a “flashpoint” could trigger a wider conflict between rival imperialist powers, both with naval and air forces bristling with nuclear weapons. 

Putting China in a “Straitjacket”

On September 25, Joe Biden announced that the U.S. has established diplomatic relations with Niue and the Cook Islands, island nations in the Pacific Ocean. Niue has a population of about 1,700. The Cook Islands, with a population of about 15,000, is mainly known to some Westerners as a prime destination for snorkeling. Both countries are facing life and death dangers of rising sea levels, extreme storms, coral bleaching, and depletion of fishing stocks because of accelerating climate change and predatory commercial fishing—both of which are driven by intensified competition between capitalist-imperialist powers contending for world domination. 

Biden’s actions weren’t intended to address the disasters the system he presides over have inflicted on the people and environment of these islands. He is moving to strengthen the U.S. in its strategic competition with China for domination of the South China Sea and the western Pacific. The U.S. has been ramping up its military presence and developing military pacts throughout the region as part of its effort to gain supremacy over China. It has built numerous military bases that gird China’s eastern boundaries and place China in a potential “straitjacket.” U.S. and Chinese warships and fighter jets frequently engage in “games” of nuclear chicken around the South China Sea.

Control of the numerous small islands in the western Pacific was a major focus of bloody warfare between the U.S. and Japan during World War 2, warfare that culminated in the U.S. obliterating two Japanese cities with atomic bombs. 

Biden drew on that history, and made U.S. intentions for control of the Pacific today clear, when he announced at a dinner with the leaders of the Cook Islands, Niue, and 16 other Pacific Island nations that, “Like our forebears during World War II, we know that a great deal of the history of the world will be written across the Pacific over the coming years.” 

The U.S. has signaled its intention to write that history in blood.

Urgently Needed: A Force for REVOLUTION, for the Interests of Humanity

The danger of this entire situation cannot be overestimated. Neither can the urgency of bringing forward a force within the U.S. fighting for the interests of humanity. This underscores the tremendous strategic importance of struggling for people to break their allegiance to the American empire—which is after all, the greatest global perpetrator of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and environmental devastation.

As the piece from the revcoms’ ALLEGIANCE says, 

NO, to this Republic of the so-called “United States” of America, with its blood soaked red, white, and blue rag, and the system for which it stands—the economic and political system of capitalism-imperialism.... 

YES, TO A RADICALLY DIFFERENT REPUBLIC AND MUCH BETTER SYSTEM—a new socialist republic, a system which will move to abolish and uproot all this madness and give the highest expression to people’s humanity, and a future corresponding to people’s highest aspirations.

No U.S./NATO War with Russia!
Stop U.S. Threats Against China!

No World War 3!
It’s This System, Not Humanity, That Needs to Become Extinct!

We Don't Accept Their Future, It's Time to Get Organized for an Actual Revolution!