Former MI6 Chief Sir Richard Dearlove’s Henry Jackson Society published a 56-page report May 14, delivering marching orders, as its title asserts, for “Breaking the China Supply Chain: How the ‘Five Eyes’ Can Decouple from Strategic Dependency.” The report marshals statistics to show where and how the infamous “Five Eyes"—U.K., U.S., Australia, Canada and New Zealand—are dependent on China in critical economic and defense sectors. That dependence must be broken, because “more than ever before, the Five Eyes must now cooperate to prevent China expanding unopposed its authoritarian vision for the world.” In other words, the time has come for coordinated economic warfare against China.
We five led the drive for “`hyper-globalization,’ the idea that markets should prevail over almost all other considerations,” but that’s now out, the HJS writes. Three, mutually reinforcing strategies are needed to “decouple from China.” First, “negative decoupling,” which entails “constraining Chinese entities,” expanding “powers to act punitively against Chinese enterprises,” and adopting legislation reducing imports of Chinese products. Second, “positive decoupling,” wherein these five “powers” (!) should take protectionist measures to build up their infrastructure and industrial capacity, where China has bettered them. And lastly, “cooperative decoupling,” in which the “intelligence-sharing, military interoperability and historical ties between the five powers” are marshaled to get everybody else in the world to go along with their intent to “get” China.
Citing the HJS report, 14 conservative U.K. MPs have already advised the Trade Secretary that they plan to amend the Trade Bill currently before Parliament to legislate that the government must reduce strategic dependency on China. Two former senior Labour Party MPs wrote the Foreword for the report, supporting its conclusions. A political figure from four of the five “powers” wrote essays for the report with their suggestions, Sen. Marco Rubio purporting to speak for the United States.
This is no “mere” economic operation. Peter Mackay, Canada’s former Justice and Defense Minister, used his essay to propose that “Canada and its allies should review its diplomatic policy towards Taiwan to determine whether current policies dating to the 1970s have become obsolete"; that is, the Five should break relations with the People’s Republic of China and recognize Taiwan—a strategy for war. That gem is coherent with U.K. Conservative Party MP Bob Seely’s call for the Five Eyes to “work with NATO, the EU, and Indo-Pacific partners such as Japan, Taiwan and South Korea,” on this strategy. (https://henryjacksonsociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Breaking-the-China-Chain.pdf)
