By Tony Fox

From Socialist Labour No. 9

Chinese President Xi Jinping and Trump at Mar-a-Lago on 7 March; the Chinese leadership are playing a dangerous game.

Donald Trump’s election in the US in November was on the basis of ‘America First’ and racist attacks against Mexicans, Muslims, women and every target reactionary forces traditionally use to divide the working class. His volt face over Syria after the alleged Sarin gas attack by Assad on 4 April with the launching of 59 Tomahawk Cruise missiles on 7 April added to the bellicose threats to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) makes the world a very dangerous place now.

On 13 April, the US dropped the biggest bomb since the nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on the 6th and 9th of August 1945 on north eastern Afghanistan. The Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB) bomb was considered too destructive in all its wars since WWII because of the outcry over destruction of the Japanese cities. Clearly this bomb was dropped to demonstrate to all its rivals, Syria, Iran, North Korea, Russia and China, that the USA was in war mode and ready to commit the most extreme crimes against humanity. The bomb is the equivalent of 20,000 pounds of high explosives and wipes out everything within a radius of 1,000 yards, killing people up to 1.7 miles away.

The pretext for the cruise missile strikes was an alleged chemical attack on the town of Khan Sheikun, for which the US blamed the Syrian government without any evidence. There is no reason to believe that this story is anything but a provocation by the CIA and / or its proxy Salafi-Jihadi armies to justify its intervention. The Syrian government (which categorically denied the accusations) had absolutely no interest in carrying out such an attack – unlike the opposition, which has no future unless Western bosses rush to its rescue.

Note that we are talking about the very same opposition that has repeatedly used chemical weapons in the past, something that has even been admitted by UN officials [1] and that the incident took place on the second the day of the international Conference in Brussels on supporting the future of Syria and the region – a conference co-chaired by EU foreign affairs chief, Italian woman Federica Mogherini with the United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres and the participation of more than 70 countries and international organisations.

The USA has a long record of staging similar incidents to justify its interventions (remember the Iraqi maternity unit in which babies that were allegedly thrown out of their incubators in Kuwait in 1990, the non-existent weapons of mass destruction in Iraq in 2003, Gaddafi’s “black mercenaries” in 2011 etc.).

The US have now returned to their previous objective and threaten Syria with further military attacks. Just a few days before the US strikes, the US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson stated that Assad’s fate was to “be decided by the Syrian people”, which was a major concession on the US objective of regime change in Damascus. The redeployment of a US navy strike group off the waters off the Korean Peninsula (after some delays!) together with the barrage of threats about putting American nukes in the South Korea, decapitation strikes against Kim Jong-un and regime change in the DPRK marks a sharp escalation of the US war threats in Asia.

The USA and NATO who have been constantly organizing to surround, effect regime change and break-up the Russian Federation and China, especially since the fall of their puppet Boris Yeltsin in 1999. Trump is now back in line with overall imperialist policy. Trump would have been impeached and removed if he had not fallen into line with the second Cold War strategy moving inexorably towards WWIII.

The very attack on Syria was already a threatening shot across the bows of North Korea. Chinese President Xi Jinping met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago, his mansion in Palm Beach, Florida on 6 and 7 April. Trump boasted he had developed an “outstanding relationship” with him. The missile barrage occurred on the night of the 6th but China made no real objections.

“Its U.N. ambassador, Liu Jieyi, never mentioned the suspected chemical weapons attack in Syria, or the U.S. airstrikes, at an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council on the 7th. Liu focused instead on the need for a political solution to the six-year Syrian conflict. The only other foreign leader to be hosted at Mar-a-Lago during Trump’s presidency so far is Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, a close U.S. ally” (on 10/2/17). [2]

The Chinese leadership is playing a dangerous game here, overthrowing the North Korean government could result in US troops and missiles on their border, the very thing they went to war against the USA and UN-sponsored invasion in 1950 to prevent.

Those of us who happened to be born in the countries of the imperialist West have a special obligation to contribute to the development of an anti-war movement that will not tolerate even the slightest amount of violence by ‘our’ government leaders against third world countries. “The nation that oppresses another nation forges its own chains” as Karl Marx wrote in 1870.

Notes

[1] BBC News, UN’s Del Ponte says evidence Syria rebels ‘used sarin’, 6 May 2013, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-22424188

[2] The Tampa Tribune Vivian Salama and Julie Pace, Associated Press, President Trump lauds ‘outstanding’ relationship with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, Friday, April 7, http://tinyurl.com/ljox3bh