I turned on the news this afternoon to find out that the People’s Republic of China is conducting military training exercises in the Taiwan Strait — an international body of water separating China and Taiwan (officially the Republic of China). One hundred and ten miles wide, the Taiwan Strait is considered internal territorial waters by China.
China considers Taiwan part of its sovereign territory. Few Americans know much about Taiwan’s history and why China considers the 168 islands that make up Taiwan part of the mainland. All Americans hear is that Taiwan is a democracy and China is a communist state. Once the word “communist” is invoked, most Americans immediately think China is an existential threat. The great red-baiter Joseph McCarthy lives on. Sure enough, the news show I was watching made certain that viewers knew that China was communist. This, of course, had nothing to do with the story. It was an attempt by a Sinclair-owned news station to poison the news.
Sinclair’s “news” story included interviews with two right-wing Republican congressmen, one of whom was Lindsey Graham, the senior senator from South Carolina. Graham, known for getting the vapors and crying on TV, said it was imperative for the United States to immediately send additional troops to Japan and South Korea, and place nuclear weapons near China. Another Republican said the US needed to immediately send massive amounts of weapons to Taiwan so they can defend themselves. No Democrats were interviewed; neither were any anti-war congresspeople.
The majority of our political leaders in Washington D.C. are warmongers, including many Democrats. Fueled by fantasies such as American exceptionalism and manifest destiny, many of our leaders at all levels of government think the United States is a beacon of freedom (except for having the largest incarceration rate in the world) and democracy (except for gerrymandering, laws meant to restrict voting rights for people of color, and the recent expulsion of two Black representatives from the Tennessee House); that the God of the Christian Bible is on our side, and he will lead us to victory in every war we fight (even though we haven’t won a military conflict since 1945). With minds filled with American grandeur and supremacy, virtually everyone, from Democratic president Joe Biden to Republican lunatics too numerous to count, thinks the United States is an unassailable, impregnable fortress of good.
Even people who live in other Western countries have been charmed by America’s rhetoric and press releases. Recently, a commenter on a post titled The United States Advances “Democracy” One Bloody, Violent War at a Time had this to say: The USA has done bad things, but generally with the intention of trying to do good. Is the American prime directive try to do good? Is the United States a do-gooder on the world stage? Do our political leaders really put “good” above all else?
A cursory reading of American history suggests that we have never been a nation primarily motivated by good. Most people would agree that peace is good. So how do we square this ideal with the fact that the United States has been at war somewhere in the world for most of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries; that the US has troops and contractors deployed in virtually every corner of the world? War does not bring peace. All war does is bring a cessation of hostilities. Bloodshed and destruction happen until both sides agree to stop killing each other. Is this cessation “peace?” Of course not. The reasons for the hostilities remain, festering until coming to a head once again in the future. This is exactly what is happening in Ukraine. The United States (and NATO) is fighting a proxy war against Russia. Saber-rattling warmongers want to do the same with Taiwan, delusionally thinking that Taiwan can fight a war with China and win. All the United has to do is provide Taiwan with billions of dollars of fancy weaponry, just as we are currently doing in Ukraine. Further, many Americans think we can willy-nilly threaten sovereign states such as Iran, North Korea, Russia, and China with nuclear war without challenge. What happens when a country we have backed into a corner economically with embargoes, tariffs, and other punishments that only hurt the people in the street, decides that its only hope is the use of nuclear weapons against the US? What happens if these countries band together, much as Western nations have done with NATO? When economic and political survival is at stake, nation-states can and do use extreme measures to allegedly protect themselves. This is exactly what the United States did in World War II with the bombing of Dresden, the bombing of Tokyo, and the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
If and when the United States finds itself in a conventional war with a major world power; one where boots must be put on the ground, it is doubtful that the US would win such a conflict. As with all such wars, the willingness to use extreme measures to win only increases as time goes on. The unthinkable becomes possible, as was the case at the end of World War II. The US is losing its primacy in the world, and instead of evolving with the times, America is determined to use violence and death to maintain its power and economic superiority. And when the whole world is on fire someday? Americans will proudly wave foam fingers in the air, saying “We’re #1, we’re #1!” Finally, they will be right.
Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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All of these thoughts have been constantly on my mind in the last few months, and nowhere have I read a more articulate depiction of the craziness than here, so thank you, Bruce, for your usual lucidity. May every voter in the country read this and think seriously about what it is saying. The only way I can make sense of U.S. foreign policy is to assume that it is due to lobbying and political contributions from armament industries. Why do we insist on endless death in the Ukraine, why do we not try with all of our might to avert more death? Why do we try to goad China into war? Why can’t we work with China, Ukraine, Russia and every other nation on earth to make the world a better place, cure cancer and dementia instead of endlessly devising and employing more destructive weapons? I am not naive. Why are alleged Christians always so quick to side with Satan on these issues? It is all so disgusting and heartbreaking.
Bruce, this is spot-on. All I can add is that the reasons why countries from China to Cuba have become enemies have to do, at least in part, with American saber-rattling or slashing. And then, hypocritically, we fight proxy wars or impose sanctions or embargoes against the very countries that have governments we don’t approve because of what we did, whether militarily, economically or clandestinely. (Examples: The US installed or supported the Shah of Iran, Saddam Hussein and Fulgencio Batista and any number of other despots in Latin America and Africa.)
Christians are running out of time for their nonsense to come true. Their reliance on the establishment of Israel has given them a deadline that their god won’t meet.
@Clubschadenfreude I think you’re onto something there with the connection between US warmongering and the peculiar eschatology of evangelicalism. It’s like they WANT the world to suffer a mighty conflagration to entice their deity to perch itself on the clouds and whisk away its followers, leaving the rest of the world to burn each other down.
I don’t necessarily disagree with anything in the piece or the comments. But it would break my heart to see the Chinese boot on the neck of the Taiwanese people the same as happened to those in Hong Kong. China wants to be a World Power. And even their ‘junior partner’ Russia still has ‘sphere of influence’ aspirations as we know. The problem for the people in the countries they seek to control is that both are authoritarian dictatorships – with Russia unquestionably now a late-stage fascist state. People really will be prepared to fight and die rather than live under those regimes as China or Russia try to take over their territories and install their sympathetic leaders. And due to all of the long and complex historical reasons – these people look to the US for help and protection as they somehow believe that the US will defend democracy abroad. I don’t think people in Taiwan or Ukraine realise that the US is teetering on the brink of authoritarian dictatorship itself. The world is a crazy – and a scary place right now.