Taiwan and the South China Sea are the likeliest points of conflict — but conflict is not an option. The stakes could not be higher — and Washington may be off on the wrong foot.
U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ arrogant dismissal of a federal district judge’s ruling against the Trump Administration’s ban on refugees and certain Muslim travelers, because he presides on an “island in the Pacific,” is a reminder of how islands in the Pacific have been colonized, commodified, and militarized. From Hawaii to Okinawa, Pacific islanders are demeaned and their islands relegated to vacation getaways and military outposts for the U.S. empire.
The U.S. has Beijing surrounded by 200 bases lining the East China Sea, it has already caused the beginning of an arms race. For the first time in many years, China is increasing its military budget at the same time the U.S. continues to spend more than China and the next 11 highest-spending countries. The U.S. is depriving its own people of money that could be used to fund scientific research, healthcare, education; it is also backing China into a corner.
Postwar U.S. authorities helped rehabilitate erstwhile collaborators with the Japanese occupation in the name of fighting communism. Generations later, it’s led to the grandson of a despised Philippine collaborator endorsing the re-militarization of his country’s former occupiers — by the grandson of a war criminal, no less.
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