And Now, Let´s Go Get China

U.S. President Barack Obama must think that Iran is a cinch if he can declare that his new defense strategy in 2012 is to contain China. Addicted to war and having erased the word “peace” from its diplomacy, Washington considers Beijing a threat to its “national interests” in the Pacific and Southern Asia and to its unilateral global hegemony.

Though it has only 5% of the world’s population, the U.S. has a military budget seven times greater than that of the Yellow Giant, 90 military bases outside its own borders, 11 naval fleets patrolling the world’s oceans and hundreds of thousands of soldiers scattered around the globe. Even so, it worries about a China that has no troops and no military installations outside its own territory.

Return to Asia is the Pentagon’s slogan for its plan to pave a way into the Far East and gain control of the China Seas, whose depths conceal millions of barrels of oil and trillions of square feet of gas. It won´t be short of pretexts: safeguarding maritime security, under threat from the nuclear weapons China is alleged to be concealing, combating piracy and Islamic terrorism and providing “humanitarian” aid in the wake of natural disasters.

The world’s leading military power is wrestling with the world’s leading economic power for control of the strategic Malacca Strait, which joins the West China Sea (the one that Hillary Clinton calls the West Philippine Sea) with the Indian Ocean and Europe. Half the world’s merchant shipping tonnage, carrying 20 million barrels of oil from the Persian Gulf, pass through its waters en route to Japan, South Korea and China.

Beijing marches on, without colonizing or occupying countries. It achieves its objectives using the serene and subtle “acupuncture” method instead of “surgical attacks.” For example, it has built the world’s longest pipeline, transporting Caspian Sea gas from Turkmenistan to China, without firing a single shot. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of NATO soldiers have been in Afghanistan for a decade and still haven´t managed to build the Trans-Afghan gas pipeline.

The fact that the Asian colossus is also the only provider of rare earths – used in microchips and high technology – only adds to American anxiety. Washington is taking action before it finds itself left behind by Beijing by seizing energy sources in Iraq, Sudan and Libya (and now trying to do the same in Iran), consolidating its alliance with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), arming Taiwan with antimissile systems and, in Myanmar (Burma), backing the opposition on putting pressure on the government to suspend the building of an important gas pipeline with China.

At the same time, the U.S. is adding to the 70 thousand soldiers currently stationed in South Korea and Japan, strengthening the United States Pacific Command, reinforcing military bases in South Korea, Thailand, Taiwan, Indonesia, the Philippines and Australia and obstructing the formation of “Chindia” (China + India). India was rewarded with a seat on the U.N. Security Council in exchange for its cooperation in de-escalating tensions with Pakistan and, together with Japan, acted as a counterbalance to the enemy.

Finding itself at a geopolitical disadvantage in Europe, Africa and Asia, Beijing is beginning to react without agitating relations with Washington. In November, the Chinese navy carried out unprecedented military maneuvers near the Pakistani border to serve as a warning that the Central Asian country would not tolerate a U.S. invasion. 2011 also saw China falling into the arms race trap with a 12% increase in its military budget, which even includes a new Star Wars project.

A new Cold War is breaking out.