Imagine if Iran, the Peoples’ Republic of China, and Russia suddenly announced a military pact to counter Boris Johnson which would involve the building of 12 nuclear submarines, with the contract for building said submarines being awarded to the smallest of the three, Iran.
When completed, the missile bearing submarines would lurk in and around the English Channel, the North Sea, and the Irish Sea, to keep the rogue regime currently running the UK in check.
This is the equivalent of what happened on Wednesday September 15 when Joe Biden, Boris Johnson, and Australian prime minister, Scott Morrison, held a joint virtual press conference to announce their ‘Aukus’ pact, which the BBC described as “a historic security pact in the Asia-Pacific...an effort to counter China”.
When they are ready, the armed nuclear submarines will spend much of their time loitering in and around the South China Sea. One of the aims of the pact is to stop the Peoples’ Republic interfering in Taiwan, the ‘country’ that was set up on that Chinese island in 1949 by reactionaries, led by Chiang Kai-shek, fleeing the victorious forces of Mao.
In contemporary Irish terms, its equivalent would be if, unhappy at a Yes vote for Irish unification, John Bruton led a merry band of renegades to set up a new ‘country’ on Bull Island, named the capital after the late Conor Cruise O’Brien, and proceeded to apply for membership of both the Commonwealth and the United Nations.
An ‘irresponsible move’
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Compared to the Peoples’ Republic, Taiwan is almost that small, and its claim to nationhood is certainly that contrived. Insider thinks Taiwan is not worth fighting a nuclear war, or indeed any war, to defend. The fact that French president Emmanuel Macron was not told about the Aukus pact, and that the Australians, rather than the French, nabbed the contract to build the nuclear subs, has been the aspect of this story which has made most headlines.
Insider thinks that the fact that the Aukus pact makes a war between the United States and China more likely is of greater importance than the fact French imperialism was made to feel small. The Aukus pact is a wildly irresponsible move by America’s likely one term, elderly, President Biden. That he made this pact with two mendacious right-wing outliers - Johnson and Morrison - makes it all the worse.
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The United States, Britain, and Australia have no business hanging around the South China Sea. Period.
Ireland’s Foreign Minister, Simon Coveney, had nothing to say about the announcement of the Aukus pact on Wednesday September 15, which made the end of the world a little more likely than it was on Tuesday September 14. Minister Coveney was, Insider understands, somewhat preoccupied with the fallout from the recent Katherine Zappone controversy.
Nevertheless, Insider thinks a military pact which makes a nuclear war more likely is rather more important than Katherine Zappone. Minister Coveney’s failure to use Ireland’s place on the UN Security Council to at least ring an alarm bell about the dangers of Biden’s reckless policy, is a continuation of Ireland’s long time role as a lackey satellite of the United States.
Next St Patrick’s Day they will all be in the White House, wearing silly smiles, and listening to Biden quote a line from Seamus Heaney and attribute it to WB Yeats. It will be business as usual for Irish diplomacy. The possibility of WWIII won’t be mentioned, as it might spoil the occasion.
The legacy of the Democrats
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There was understandable relief at the departure of Donald J Trump from the White House in January. There is, though, a certain kind of pro-war American liberal who despised Trump because he made America look every bit as bad as it actually is, whereas Biden restored a little of the old veneer.
Many people feared that Trump might be exactly the kind of narcissist who would blow up the world. And such fears were not without foundation. However, the notion that the Democrats are the party of “peace” is a fantasy.
The Democrats, under Woodrow Wilson and FDR, led the USA into two world wars. The Democrats got America involved in both the Korean and Vietnam Wars. And it was a Democrat, Harry Truman, who ordered the dropping of nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, instantly incinerating more than 100,000 people. More recently, then Senators - and future Democratic Presidential candidates - Joe Biden, Hilary Clinton, and John Kerry all voted in favour of the Iraq War when the issue came before the US Senate in late 2002.
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In a certain sense, the Democrats are more likely to blow up the world than Donald Trump ever was, precisely because the sort of people who read The Guardian and like to go to the theatre, have been hypnotised into thinking the Democrats are the party of peace. Despite Hiroshima, despite Nagasaki, despite Vietnam, despite Korea. Since its foundation 72 years ago, the People’s Republic of China has invaded hardly anywhere, with the absolute exception of the feudal kingdom of Tibet. Whereas the United States has been almost constantly at war. Insider thinks he knows which of these two countries poses the greater threat to world peace.
The old enemy once again
The other country about which the United States, and Democrats in particular, have a galloping paranoia, is Russia. This phobia increased greatly following Trump’s election to the White House because of the manner in which so many Democrats tried to blame Hilary Clinton’s 2016 defeat on a strange combination of Vladimir Putin and Julian Assange.
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To be clear, Hilary Clinton lost the 2016 US Presidential election - and not because of Russian interference. To suggest anything else is a conspiracy theory just as crazy as the idea, held by many on the extreme right, that Donald Trump actually won the 2020 election but was robbed by voter fraud. Just because a conspiracy theory is popular with Rachel Maddow of MSNBC and in the better fed parts of Martha’s Vineyard does not make it not a conspiracy theory.
In reality, American coastal liberals could not handle the way Trump made the USA look every bit as ghastly as it actually is for so many people who live there, and so tried to blame his victory on the Russians. It was a way for them to avoid looking in the mirror. Such people still cannot bear the truth that it was the significant widening of economic inequality under Clinton and Obama which, more than any other fact, made Trump a competitive, rather than a joke, candidate for the presidency.
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Vladimir Putin is certainly a bad man. His government likes killing journalists, but given the recent revelation that the CIA actively considered killing Julian Assange, it is arguable whether or not the United States is in any real sense Putin’s moral superior.
The situation is made that bit more dangerous by the United States’ recent humiliation in Afghanistan which occurred in the lead into the 20th anniversary of 9/11, the event which drew it into Afghanistan in the first place. The USA is a power on its way down. It fears the economic power of China in the same way Britain feared Germany’s rising economic power in the lead up to August 1914.
When the First World War kicked off, every “sensible” person on these islands, from John Redmond to the moderate leaders of the British Labour Party - and every major newspaper - supported it. If in the next few years the USA tries to start a war with China, on some pretext or other, be it Taiwan or “human rights” or whatever, and the pro-war propaganda starts, Insider will pay no heed whatever to what “sensible” people say, and neither should you.
