In response to an FT article by Geoff Dyer on 27th April 2015, entitled 'US-Japan defence pact aims to check China'
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/83bffa24-ecf7-11e4-bebf-00144feab7de.html#ixzz3YagcDXW0
"While the administration insists that its approach to the region does not represent an effort to contain China"
This is disingenuous. The fact that politicians on every continent still expect people to believe such nonsense is based upon a delusion that could be paraphrased as: 'We are the honest ones, we don't lie or spin, that's what the other lot do'.
Anyone who has read a half decent history book knows that expansion and containment are what dominant powers do - that's how they get to become and remain dominant powers. The strategies always end in failure eventually because, and this is so simple that even a politician should understand it - they stretch themselves too far militarily and financially...and very importantly...other people don't like it.
The history books write about this largely at a distance of decades or centuries...but nowhere do any of them contain the message: 'this kind of thing stopped after the second world war, when mankind reprogrammed his DNA and took out all the selfish genes - the ones related to the acquisition of power through military might, economic hegemony and carefully designed propaganda and spin'. History hasn't ended, we are just being encouraged to think it's different now - it's not. The same 'games' are being played; the actors, like Mr Kerry, just wear different clothes and have a different hairdo - they don't wear powdered wigs anymore.
The delusion goes on:
"In what appeared to be a veiled reference to China, John Kerry, US secretary of state, said: 'We reject any suggestion that freedom of navigation, overflight, and other lawful uses of the sea and airspace are privileges granted by big states to small ones, subject to the whim and fancy of a big state'"
If Mr Kerry wanted to tell the truth all he needs to do is to add a few words to the end of that sentence: 'except when we do it'.
The people of the US and the west deserve better than this - but to get it we're going to have to wake up and challenge this rubbish when we hear it. Here's my tenpenneth Mr Kerry: your pathetic attempts to claim the moral high ground are no more convincing than the same garbage that comes out of Beijing, Moscow or any other capital city whose politicians are still playing this game - that would be all of them. Grow up. If you want to make things better - talk and trade, create incentives that bind people together, and for God sake stop rigging markets - how can we proclaim that free trade and market capitalism creates wealth, opportunity and liberty for people, when our monetary policy is being run by a Politburo that operates out of the Eccles Building?
In the case of China you could start by getting Congress to lift the block on increased voting rights for China on the IMF, tell the IMF that you have no objection to the Renminbi becoming part of the SDR this October, give up attempts to boycott the AIIB, and maybe even ask if you can join. Yes join, get over it. And tell Mr Abe that distracting his population from the mess he's creating at home, by setting up a foreign 'boogy man' is an old trick that the history books are full of. One that always ends in tears for the young people who have to do the bleeding and the dying when the politicians start a war.
Then you can start making demands for a bit of 'quid quo pro' from China, without sounding like a twit.