The Elephant in the Room in Anchorage Today

Today, Secretary of State Tony Blinken and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan are meeting with Communist Chinese senior diplomats, including China’s Director of the Office of the Central Commission for Foreign Affairs Yang Jiechi and State Councilor Wang Yi, in a “pop-up meeting” in Anchorage, Alaska.

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The Biden Administration has talked tough about dealing with China in the last couple of weeks, with the new US Trade Representative stating that Trump-era tariffs would “remain in place” for the time being. Following Barack Obama’s risk-averse “leading from behind with diplomacy” practices, the Biden regime believes that “talk talk” will avoid “war war.” But Obama blew up the Middle East by igniting the Arab Spring. Will Biden’s crew do the same in East Asia? That is entirely possible.

Talking tough to the ChiComs is cheap, particularly when almost all of the Hologram’s State Department political appointees (and CIA director nominee and many others) are compromised due to prior relationships with the ChiComs (see here, here, and here, for starters). Oh, and that of course includes Biden himself, as well as his vice president, Kamala Harris.

And sure enough, Biden got off to a hot start in kowtowing to Beijing, as reported by Gordon Chang at the Gatestone Institute here:

The Biden administration has just endorsed one of China’s most vicious attack lines against the United States. The new administration’s actions look as if they are setting a pattern for its responses to Beijing on the disease and other matters.

On January 26, Biden signed his executive order titled “Memorandum Condemning and Combating Racism, Xenophobia, and Intolerance Against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in the United States.”

The order states that during the coronavirus pandemic “inflammatory and xenophobic rhetoric has put Asian American and Pacific Islander persons, families, communities, and businesses at risk.”

There is nothing wrong with protecting minorities from racism, but racism is not the problem. “Political correctness presages policy incorrectness,” writes the Claremont Institute’s Ben Weingarten on the Newsweek site, commenting on Biden’s executive order. “And when it comes to matters of life and limb, political correctness can kill.”

The Chinese regime, which to this day uses geographical names for strains of virus, has been trying to ban any identification of China with the pandemic. Biden, with his executive order, is doing Beijing’s work as Chinese leaders try to deflect blame.

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Meanwhile, the PLA-N has been saber-rattling in the Yellow Sea, East China Sea, and South China Sea, with warships conducting “’intensive’ combat exercises.” While the South Koreans and Japanese were naturally concerned about these exercises, the real target of the PLA-N was to continue the ongoing intimidation of Taiwan, with the ChiComs gradually moving toward “absorption” of Taiwan into the PRC in much the same manner as Hong Kong.

And rest assured, Taiwan is the “big elephant in the room” during Blinken’s talks with the ChiComs in Alaska.

Taiwan in 2021 is Czechoslovakia in 1938.

The Communist Chinese have been pursuing a “Greater China” policy for years. The goal is to consolidate all overseas Han Chinese around the world, both economically and politically. This includes majority Chinese places like Hong Kong, Macau, and Singapore, but also extends to countries with minority Chinese populations such as Thailand, Malaysia, Brunei, and even New Zealand. And of course, the big enchilada for Beijing is Taiwan, which is where Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists (the Kuomintang) fled after being defeated by Mao’s Zedong’s Communists in 1949.

“History does not repeat itself, but it often rhymes.” – a quote frequently attributed to Mark Twain. And indeed, such is the case with China and Taiwan. In the late 1930s, German Chancellor Adolph Hitler was at work consolidating a “Greater Germany” consisting of all Germans regardless of their country of record in preparation for dominating Europe – first through the Anschluss in which Austria was annexed by Nazi Germany in 1938. Then, he set his sights on Sudetenland, a region in northwest Czechoslovakia with a majority German population. In order to avoid war over Hitler’s desire to seize the Sudetenland outright and thereby violate a French alliance with Czechoslovakia, Britain and France met with Germany and Italy in Munich in late September 1938 to conclude the “Munich Agreement” – a complete sellout to Hitler, allowing Germany to annex the Sudetenland peacefully:

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[Upon his return to London,] Chamberlain told the British public that he had achieved “peace with honour. I believe it is peace for our time.”

And that craven and cringeworthy act led directly to World War II. Chamberlain became a symbol for appeasement and defeatism, not only in Britain, but in later years by those in the West who sought to appease the Soviet Union at any cost during the Cold War.

Now, let us look at the “historical rhymes” with respect to Taiwan in 2021:

  • Xi Jinping’s Greater China is analogous to Hitler’s Greater Germany
  • Xi Jinping is a totalitarian Communist; Hitler was a totalitarian Nazi
  • Hong Kong is analogous to 1938 Austria, and the ChiComs continue to tighten the screws as they absorb the former British protectorate into the PRC
  • Taiwan is analogous to the Sudetenland – both were/are flashpoints that could trigger a real shooting war

What will the US, the Quad countries (US, India, Australia, and Japan), and other countries around the world (especially the UK and France) do to protect the sovereignty of Taiwan if the PLA and PLA-N decide the time is right for a cross-strait invasion? And there is no time like the present, given that the Biden regime is compromised in favor of Beijing from top to bottom, as described above. What would Biden do?

Leading up to the Anchorage meeting, there has been much discussion in the US media about a possible war with China, as well as recommendations from various “experts” and commentators on what the Biden regime should or should not do. For example, one of the US foreign policy establishment’s favorite mouthpieces, Foreign Affairs Magazine, states that the rivalry with China is all about “values” while concluding:

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Today, smart policymakers can negotiate periodic pauses in competition or isolate areas of cooperation, such as countering climate change, amid intense ideological rivalry. Avoiding unwise interventions is more a matter of exercising good judgment than of banishing ideology.

Just like the Communists, the foreign policy establishment speaks in codewords, too. In this case, “avoiding unwise interventions” is code for “avoiding US involvement in a PLA/PLA-N military invasion of Taiwan.”

Advising a firm hand with Beijing, another Establishment DC outlet (Hill-dot.com) weighed in with stronger recommendations for Biden and Blinken in Anchorage:

The choice of venue is unfortunate. Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev first met with former President Ford in Nov. 1974 in Vladivostok, which was interpreted by the Chinese as an insult to Beijing at a time when the U.S. sought good relations with China to balance Soviet power. Although this is ministerial, a meeting in Alaska only serves to support China’s illegitimate claim to be an Arctic nation. Many other venues would have better served U.S. national interests.

Regardless, Blinken still has an opportunity to advance U.S. security and to pressure China with immediate effect by advocating support of Commerce’s ruling [cracking down on technology-related business transactions between China and the U.S. that the department determines pose a threat to national security]— an important battle in a long war to separate U.S. technology and investment from China, to denounce Beijing’s territorial and economic expansionism, and to protest China’s human rights abuses including in Xinjiang and Tibet.

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But there are many appeasers in the US who seek to give Beijing the green light to absorb Taiwan into the PRC in order to “avoid war.” Here is one particularly execrable article that postulates a future PLA military operation to “reunify Taiwan.”

If China bull-headedly turns to violence to take Taiwan by force, the U.S. Government’s overriding priority will be to safeguard American security, freedom, and prosperity. If Biden resists the temptation to respond immediately, he can dramatically shift the balance of power back in America’s favor by adopting realistic and attainable diplomatic and military strategy that features isolating, resisting, and containing China.

If China is foolish enough to gamble its future by attacking Taiwan – and America is smart enough to stay out of the war – the PRC will be severely weakened from its current status.

[B]y staying out of a China vs. Taiwan war, not only would we maintain our current strength, our national security would be stronger. Conversely, if we foolishly insert ourselves into their fight, we will suffer severe damage to our Armed Forces at a minimum, placing our national security around the world at higher risk; in a worst-case, American cities could smolder in radioactive waste for years to come.

Translation: it is in America’s best interests to let the PLA take Taiwan militarily without any US (or Quad countries) military support provided to the Taiwanese. That’s appeasement worthy of Neville Chamberlain. The author neglects to mention the other end results of his proposed scenario: the Taiwanese semiconductor industry which supplies the world will be taken over by the ChiComs, Xi’s Communist regime will be emboldened on the world stage, and the Quad countries will be demoralized and likely seek accommodations with Beijing because the US will have failed to support Taiwan’s sovereignty (while wondering what the US would do on their behalf when push comes to shove with the ChiComs).

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Let us pray that Biden does not take that last bit of advice and blink on Taiwan. If he does, then the last comparison between Taiwan 2021 and Czechoslovakia will come true: Biden will have become Neville Chamberlain. And remember what happened after the 1938 Munich Agreement was signed.

The end.

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