Many things happened in the last two days, Europe sanctioned Chinese Communist officials and institutions, the Chinese Communist Party counter-sanctioned Europeans and institutions, the issue of cotton in Xinjiang, and the Chinese mainland people boycotted hundreds of well-known brand-name fashion companies in the world for their products in China under the official promotion of the Chinese Communist Party. 25, U.S. President Joe Biden finally held his first official press conference after taking office, setting a record for the U.S. president to take office and the first press conference The longest interval between a U.S. president’s inauguration and first press conference.
In my opinion, there was another extremely important event last week that did not receive much attention. That was Secretary of State John Blinken’s speech in Brussels. Blinken made this speech after a visit to NATO headquarters. NATO, unlike the European Union, which is a coalition of nations and an international organization for political and economic collaboration, NATO is a purely military alliance organization.
It is for this reason that this speech by Blinken is extremely important.
Let’s look at the data from Blinken’s speech. I did the calculations based on the Chinese translation from the Voice of America; there may be minor discrepancies in the English.
In this 6,600-word speech (I’m talking about the Voice of America Chinese translation), the most mentioned word is “threat,” which is mentioned 30 times. The word “challenge” is mentioned 15 times. According to the Chinese count, it is almost 200 words to mention the threat once. Of course, NATO is a military alliance, which is used to deal with threats. Blinken divided his threats into three categories, the first is the military threat, the second is the threat of technological competition, and the third is the virus and climate. Throughout his speech, he actually talked mainly about the first two, the military and technological competitive threats, and since he was speaking to NATO, this is understandable.
Blinken mentioned that these threats are increasing significantly and that this new threat “is outpacing our efforts to build the necessary threat defense capabilities. Translated into layman’s terms, this means that our defenses have declined and the threat has increased.
So who is the threat?
Throughout the speech, he mentions China 11 times, which does not include China in geographic terms such as China’s East China Sea and South China Sea, and Beijing five times. In other words, he mentioned China 16 times. By comparison, Russia was mentioned 4 times, and North Korea and Iran were mentioned once each. The biggest enemy of the United States in the past two decades, terrorism, he mentioned only 2 times. So it is obvious that the “threat” he mentioned is mainly the Chinese Communist Party, and the challenge is mainly from the Chinese Communist Party.
So what is the threat and what is it?
In Blinken’s speech, “values” was mentioned 19 times, “democracy” 13 times, and “interests” only 3 times. Obviously, Blinken believes that the threat from the Chinese Communist Party is most affected by the “values” base. This foundation of course includes democracy, freedom, rule of law, human rights, etc.
It is interesting to note that shortly after his speech, Blinken specifically mentioned “Article V” of the NATO treaty, which states that an attack on one nation is an attack on all nations. This clause has only been used once in NATO’s 75-year history, after 9/11, when NATO sent troops into Afghanistan to oust the Taliban regime and destroy Al Qaeda.
This Time Blinken mentioned the fifth article, the meaning is of course very clear, that is, if the United States is attacked, or what happened, we all have to participate.
One hundred years ago during the British Empire, Britain had a policy that “one” was greater than “two plus three,” that is, Britain’s military power was the first in the world, and must remain greater than the second place plus the third other military hegemony, at that time mainly refers to Germany and France, these European Continental countries. Some experts even believe that the current military power of the United States may be “one” is greater than “two plus three plus four plus five, all the way to ten”, that is, the overall military power of the United States, more than the world ranked second to ten, nine The total military power of the United States exceeds that of the second to tenth ranked countries in the world, combined.
Of course, that being said, if we were all lined up in the Pacific Ocean or something like that, the U.S. military might be comparable to the total military strength of these countries. But that’s not how war is actually calculated, there are other factors such as timing, location, and manpower. A war in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, for example, is completely different from being on the Asian coast.
It goes without saying that the U.S. military is super powerful. But Blinken went and emphasized Article V with NATO, of course, because the United States was preparing to face a super-military state, a super-hegemonic state.
Brinken mentioned values many times in his speech. What he meant was that NATO, the alliance, was formed with the goal of protecting our values, and that’s what it was then, and that’s what it still is.
So let’s take Blinken’s NATO speech and put it into the vernacular of the Chinese jianghu people, and it would probably go something like this.
Brothers, we used to fight together for loyalty and righteousness, and we talked about righteousness, and whoever was bullied, we all went together. Now there is a new threat, someone to challenge the status of big brother, I am a tolerance, he even bullied my Family, and beat up a few of my youngest brothers enough. You guys can’t watch me deal with it all by myself. In the beginning, the second and third when you guys were in trouble, I was a two-ribbed knife. Be a man of faith, a principle. You can’t do business with this person now, he gives you benefits, you don’t care if your brother lives or dies. So this time, we still have to swarm, to give him an end, to beat him to quit the jianghu.
Is this what it means. I think this is what it means.
I say this speech of Blinken is extremely important because of this. He is mobilizing allies, called “an arrow through the clouds, a thousand armies to meet”, or blowing the chicken (note: the whistle is commonly known as the silver chicken, here the chicken is its abbreviation), that is, blowing the whistle, to gather people to fight.
And the target is quite clear: the Chinese Communist Party.
This group fight, however, may not only be a military confrontation, but economic, political, diplomatic, and technological all together. If it were a military confrontation, it might be easier for the United States to just go ahead and do it. But now the U.S. is facing a situation that is not like this, but all kinds of over-the-limit warfare, all kinds of strategic tactics, and the Chinese (Chinese Communist Party) is good at this, so Blinken has to speak clearly with Europe.
So, this NATO speech of Blinken, in my opinion, is a declaration of war against the Chinese Communist Party. Of course, this is not an American whim, not some new threat that the US suddenly discovered last month or at the end of last year, but it has been alerted and deployed for a long time.
Biden placed special emphasis on diplomacy and allies when he was campaigning with Trump. Because Biden spent a long time in the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, is a European pass, and European politicians are quite familiar with. He agrees that the Chinese Communist Party is the biggest threat and the biggest competitor, but he disagrees that Trump should confront the Chinese Communist Party “alone”, and he thinks he should bring in traditional allies to fight in a group.
In fact, Trump does not want to blow the whistle to gather everyone, but he is a tough personality, really offended a lot of people. Now that Biden is here, Blinken went to emphasize that “America is back”, that is, the past is all Trump’s fault. Of course, Blinken’s speech also mentioned this issue, the Europeans asked “how long to come back?” So he spoke hard, talking about common values, talking about history, that is, to talk about the righteousness to talk about the way of the rivers and lakes, but also to talk about the past together to fight the rivers and lakes of the old days.
In fact, Europe has already started to move. Last week, the EU announced sanctions against four Xinjiang officials and one Xinjiang institution, although it did not hurt, as if it was just yelling a few words on the side, but in the end, it was a good call for big brother and saved personal anger. But the EU did not expect Beijing to lose its temper, not only to turn around and sanction ten people in Europe, but also to sanction six institutions, and so doubled back.
At this point in time, the drama may become more and more interesting. What about the China-EU Investment Agreement? What about the China-EU strategic partnership? What about China’s trade with the European Union, which last year was the second year it surpassed China-U.S. trade, and what will happen later?
For the Americans, if the Chinese Communist Party imposes massive sanctions on Europe, such as a universal boycott of European companies, as it did with Australia, the U.S. strategy will basically be half successful. Because the U.S. does not expect Europe to send troops, as long as the Europeans can roughly cut the political and economic umbilical cord with the Chinese Communist Party and yell a couple of words on their side, that’s all that matters.
On Wednesday, Biden made an appearance at the White House and held his first press conference after taking office, and his performance was really ordinary, without any highlights, but at least he didn’t leak, didn’t cut off in the middle, didn’t answer questions that were off-topic, and basically managed to focus. Of course, the collective help of the following media reporters is also very important.
Some Japanese media were disappointed that Biden remained soft when mentioning the Chinese Communist Party, and did not mention supporting Taiwan and emphasizing relations with Asia-Pacific allies.
I want to tell a story.
There was a time in Guangzhou in the 1980s when I used to drink coffee at an outdoor cafe next to a traffic intersection. It was one of the most chaotic places in Guangzhou in terms of traffic, with five or six roads intersecting at a distance of less than a hundred meters. I always saw a strange man directing traffic, he didn’t wear a police uniform or any signs, but he was very serious about blowing his whistle at various vehicles. Strangely enough, some cars listened to his command and some did not. I observed for a while and found that any cars that listened were usually foreign cars, while local vehicles, especially the big bus at the bus terminal next to him, never listened to his command. But the result was that he would go along with the disobedient vehicles to change his instructions. So then, the traffic in that place, in fact, is on its own, and no one directs it almost.
Finally I asked a friend who is a traffic police officer in Guangzhou, he told me that the man is actually a mental patient. At first the police drove him away, but later found that he stood in the middle of the road whistle, you can let the passing cars slow down, reduce all kinds of small accidents, so he was there.
In fact, a lot of times, I am similar, the world happens a lot of things, always feel and what we have to do with ourselves, in fact, the world has its own way of running, with you or without you actually not too much difference.
Biden is a weak president, there is Obama, He Jinli, there is a huge power behind the Democratic Party team, he can decide how many things himself?
Outside the circle of people who do not know, will think you are the decisive figure, and the circle of people who know, they know that this is just a railroad police, the tracks are laid, how to drive the train, and he that baton actually does not have much to do with.
The main thing that determines the direction of the country is the national interest. Trump said in white, is the United States first America first, the Democratic Party is particularly dissatisfied. But Trump is right, which country is other countries first, put the interests of other countries before their own country? Such countries do not exist. It’s just that the Democrats have more concepts and more words to wrap around this core of America’s interests first. In the past seventy years, the CCP has not given up the idea of dealing with the United States for a single day. Even during Hu Yaobang’s time, the basic idea of defeating capitalism and eliminating capitalists has never changed. Only then the CCP was too small and the US didn’t care much, but now of course it is different.
In other words, this fundamental conflict between the United States and the CCP is the core of the relationship between the two countries, whether expressed in terms of trade interests or in terms of values, there is really not much difference.
A full-blown conflict between the CCP and the Western world is inevitable.
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