{"id":324013,"date":"2022-11-07T03:00:06","date_gmt":"2022-11-07T08:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sgtreport.com\/?p=324013"},"modified":"2022-11-06T23:27:35","modified_gmt":"2022-11-07T04:27:35","slug":"the-self-licking-boot-of-us-militarism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sgtreport.com\/2022\/11\/the-self-licking-boot-of-us-militarism\/","title":{"rendered":"The Self-Licking Boot Of US Militarism"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>by Caitlin Johnstone, <a href=\"https:\/\/caitlinjohnstone.com\/2022\/11\/05\/the-self-licking-boot-of-us-militarism\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Caitlin Johnstone<\/a>:<\/em><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" style=\"width: 35%;\" src=\"https:\/\/caitlinjohnstone.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/medium.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p>A new Bloomberg article titled \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/articles\/2022-11-03\/-sloppy-talk-on-china-threat-by-us-is-decried-by-some-skeptical-experts\">\u2018Sloppy\u2019 US Talk on China\u2019s Threat Worries Some Skeptical Experts<\/a>\u201d discusses the dangerous cycle in which pressures in the US political establishment to continually escalate hostilities with Beijing provokes responses that are then falsely interpreted as Chinese aggression.<\/p>\n<p>Bloomberg\u2019s Iain Marlow writes:<\/p>\n<p><!--more Read More--> TRUTH LIVES on at\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/sgtreport.tv\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" data-auth=\"NotApplicable\">https:\/\/sgtreport.tv\/<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The hawkish narrative \u201climits room for maneuver in a crisis,\u201d said\u00a0M. Taylor Fravel, director of the Security Studies Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Any effort to defuse tension could be characterized as \u201cconciliatory or not tough enough,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">China has been consistent on Taiwan and there\u2019s little public evidence to suggest it\u2019s sped up the timeline to take Taiwan, said a former senior US official who worked on China policy but asked not to be identified.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">The former official said the hawkish tone in DC has contributed to a cycle where the US makes the first move, interprets Chinese reactions as a provocation, and then escalates further.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Bloomberg quotes\u00a0Bonnie Glaser, director of the Asia program at the German Marshall Fund, who says this cycle of self-reinforcing escalation\u00a0could \u201cend up provoking the war that we seek to deter.\u201d<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Good article on how the US&#8217;s approach to China makes war more likely.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;[It&#8217;s a] cycle where the US makes the first move, interprets Chinese reactions as a provocation, and then escalates further. [We&#8217;ll] end up provoking the war that we seek to deter&#8221;<a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/Vf1jQmjavB\">https:\/\/t.co\/Vf1jQmjavB<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Arnaud Bertrand (@RnaudBertrand) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/RnaudBertrand\/status\/1588669063584448513?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">November 4, 2022<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>We just saw this same self-perpetuating cycle of military escalation exemplified against North Korea, where tensions have again been flaring after a long pause. The US and South Korea initiated a provocative military drill designed to menace the DPRK, Pyongyang responded by launching missiles in its own show of strength, and the Pentagon announced an extension of the drills in response to that response.<\/p>\n<p>Antiwar\u2019s\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/news.antiwar.com\/2022\/11\/03\/us-south-korea-to-extend-massive-aerial-war-games-after-norths-missile-launches\/\">Dave DeCamp explains<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The US and South Korea\u00a0are extending massive aerial war games\u00a0after North Korea put on a massive show of force in response to the drills.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Washington and Seoul\u00a0started their Vigilant Storm exercises on Monday, which were initially scheduled to run 24 hours a day for five days. This year\u2019s Vigilant Storm is the largest-ever iteration of the drills, involving nearly 100 American warplanes and 140 South Korean aircraft, and about 1,600 planned sorties.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Pyongyang made it clear it would respond to the Vigilant Storm drills, and it launched\u00a023 missiles on Wednesday, which is said to be the most North Korea has fired in a single day. North Korea also fired over 100 artillery rounds on the same day and\u00a0launched six more missiles on Thursday.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin\u00a0announced the extension of Vigilant Storm\u00a0after a meeting with his South Korean counterpart, Lee Jong-sup. \u201cI\u2019ve consulted with Minister Lee and we\u2019ve decided to extend Vigilant Storm, which is our long-scheduled combined training exercise, to further bolster our readiness and interoperability,\u201d Austin said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>\u201cSo they launch these war games, provoke a bunch of North Korean missile launches and then say they have to extend the war games because of the missile launches,\u201d\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/DecampDave\/status\/1588360367146553344\">tweeted<\/a>\u00a0DeCamp.<\/p>\n<p>DeCamp quotes another DPRK official who warns that the extension of the US-ROK war games may provoke further escalations, saying \u201cThe irresponsible decision of the US and South Korea is shoving the present situation, caused by provocative military acts of the allied forces, to an uncontrollable phase.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/caitlinjohnstone.com\/2022\/11\/05\/the-self-licking-boot-of-us-militarism\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>Read More @ CaitlinJohnstone.com<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Caitlin Johnstone, Caitlin Johnstone: A new Bloomberg article titled \u201c\u2018Sloppy\u2019 US Talk on China\u2019s Threat Worries Some Skeptical Experts\u201d discusses the dangerous cycle in which pressures in the US political establishment to continually escalate hostilities with Beijing provokes responses that are then falsely interpreted as Chinese aggression. Bloomberg\u2019s Iain Marlow writes:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[141651],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sgtreport.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324013"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sgtreport.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sgtreport.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sgtreport.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sgtreport.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=324013"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.sgtreport.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324013\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sgtreport.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=324013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sgtreport.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=324013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sgtreport.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=324013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}