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Red lines and mushroom clouds

By Marko Beljac - posted Wednesday, 16 December 2015


The United States also seeks strategic dominance with respect to China in order to make the red lines Washington has set for Beijing brighter than a thousand suns. By contrast, again, the United States has no red lines as the Pacific is an American lake.

The differentiated setting of red lines in Asia supposed to be achieved through the full spectrum of military capabilities from conventional to nuclear.

Obama's "tilt to Asia" has resulted in a shift of firepower to Asia, a shift backed up the doctrine of AirSea Battle, a maritime version of AirLand Battle that NATO adopted in the 1980s. Critical to AirSea battle, as with AirLand Battle, are deep strikes to the rear of the operational theatre. In the case of AirSea Battle that rear is the Chinese hinterland for the red lines are on China's borders, recall.

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In the nuclear realm the US possesses strategic nuclear superiority over China, and the deployment of Ballistic Missile Defense in Asia and the US homeland, it is at least hoped, would prevent Chinese nuclear forces from striking the United States following an American first strike.

China responds by placing multiple nuclear warheads upon its missiles, perhaps by changing, either now or later, its long standing doctrine of minimum nuclear deterrence, and augmenting its conventional capacity to deny the United States Navy and Air Force access to strategic areas near its borders that is the Washington imposed red lines.

This could eventually lead Beijing to also adopt a high alert status, that is launch on warning, for its nuclear arsenal.

Although our focus in both Europe and Asia is on current events we need to understand that the roots of the problem lie deeper and can be found in the manner that the US has pursued an "imperial" foreign policy "by design," to use the words of a leading international relations theorist, John Mearsheimer, following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

This includes expanding NATO geographically further and further eastward and expanding its declaratory mission from defence to incorporate offensive interventionism, and that beyond the European theatre of operations to boot for Washington is not constrained by red lines.

In Asia this includes containing rising Chinese power as China is a state that refuses to bend itself to Washington's will or readily acquiesces to its Washington imposed place as a subordinate power in regional and global affairs.

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As the world slowly becomes more multipolar the expansive US setting of red lines, whilst maintaining freedom of action for itself, undermines global strategic stability, for the setting and counter setting of red lines compels the military forces of the great powers to increasingly engage in military exercises in close proximity to each other.

Upon the end of the cold war Mikhail Gorbachev had called for Europe to become a largely demilitarised "common home" that would offer Moscow a safe and secure place within her borders. This vision was explicitly rejected by the triumphant western powers led by the United States, and it was rejected against the wishes of the people of Europe including those of the east.

We should remember that one reason why we averted catastrophe in the 1980s was because the absurd nature of the superpower conflict encouraged the rise of a peace movement from below as people perceived that the world was approaching Andropov's red line. The protesters of 1989 in the east were a part of that peace movement. This movement was armed with a doctrine or vision known as "common security."

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About the Author

Mark Beljac teaches at Swinburne University of Technology, is a board member of the New International Bookshop, and is involved with the Industrial Workers of the World, National Tertiary Education Union, National Union of Workers (community) and Friends of the Earth.

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