AS THE world crisis of the capitalist system deepens, the US under President Joe Biden is preparing for a new world war. Biden is seriously stepping up the struggle against China, Russia and even states such as Germany that wish to have access to Russian gas and oil supplies.
It is no-holds-barred, with the US forcing the UK to reverse its turn towards China under Tory leader Cameron to one of 100 per cent hostility to China under Tory leader Johnson.
In fact, a leading Russian official has said that the United States’ practice of blackmailing other countries and imposing sanctions on them has been stepped up under the Biden administration and will never end.
‘It’s a never ending story. The US blackmails and sanctions even its allies. At the time of the previous US administration, West European companies were intimidated to such an extent that they ran away from Iran,’ said Mikhail Ulyanov, Russia’s permanent representative to international organisations in Vienna.
The US has now imposed sanctions on Turkey – a fellow member of NATO – over its acquisition of advanced Russian missile systems. Turkey has condemned the sanctions as a ‘grave mistake’ and has threatened retaliation. Turkey and Russia finalised the agreement on the delivery of the S-400 missile systems in late 2017.
In Asia, the Biden presidency is threatening China, which is refusing to be terrorised. China has retaliated with the sailing of a Chinese carrier group near Taiwan, which is the only part of China still held by the Kuomintang.
China’s official newspaper, Global Times, said the Nanchang, the first of a powerful new fleet of Type 055 destroyers that entered service last year, was part of the carrier group, and: ‘The combination of aircraft carriers and Type 055 large destroyers will become a standard configuration of Chinese aircraft carrier task groups in the future.’
Meanwhile the US, which backs the secessionist Taiwanese president, continues to sell weapons to the island in defiance of Beijing.
Last Saturday, the US Navy destroyer USS Mustin sailed into the East China Sea and edged close to China’s Yangtze River estuary before heading south.
According to the Beijing-based think tank South China Sea Strategic Situation Probing Initiative, the US Navy Theodore Roosevelt carrier strike group entered the South China Sea via the Strait of Malacca.
A Chinese military affairs expert told Global Times on Monday that the US is staging military provocations in the region and the newspaper also reported that the Chinese aircraft carrier Liaoning had led a task force alongside the Type 055 cruiser Nanchang through the Miyako Strait and into the Philippine Sea before launching exercises east of Taiwan.
The two carrier strike groups are hundreds of miles apart, but the convergence of the two nations’ naval forces highlights the growing tension in the region.
Last week, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken flew to Europe to press US allies on the need to close ranks against China. ‘When someone challenges this system, be it China or others we all have reason to object,’ Blinken said, accusing Beijing of ‘undermining this order, violating human rights and other commitments.’
Under former US President Donald Trump, the US shifted its strategic focus away from the War on Terror to a trade war, a ‘great power competition’, with Russia and China. Since Biden took office in January, he has raised the ideological war against China even higher, accusing Beijing of genocide in Xinjiang on spurious grounds, of crushing democracy in Hong Kong, and of aggression against Taiwan.
Meanwhile, Russia has warned that any attempts spearheaded by President Biden to start a new military conflict in Ukraine’s war-torn east would culminate in the destruction of Ukraine.
Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has raised the alarm, after Ukraine’s commander-in-chief accused Moscow of building up forces near their shared border, and claimed that pro-Russian separatists in the People’s Republic of Donetsk were violating a ceasefire.
Biden is intent on going from a trade war to the real thing, a new world war. Workers in the West must warn the imperialist powers that they will put an end to capitalism at home with socialist revolutions if the US and its allies attack Russia or China!
