Chas Freeman, warns in his Dec. 15 interview with Berliner Zeitung against the escalation of Sino-American relations into a war. “The U.S. is heading to this, because it neither has a strategy nor understanding of the fact that China will not tolerate humiliation.” American attempts to win an economic war against China will fail, because “We’ve incentivized the Chinese to improve their science and technology, to expand trade relations with the Global South; we’ve driven them into the arms of the Russians, and we’re driving them to forge alliances in the Middle East that will roll back American influence in the region.”
“China accounts for 36% of global industrial production and the U.S.A. for around a third. The Chinese have expanded their production capacities. They can win a war of attrition. We have seen in the case of Ukraine that our military-industrial base, or that of the entire West, is deficient. But we are not taking action against these undesirable developments. Instead, we are challenging the Chinese to break off their existing supply chains with the West.
“We see the result: China has retaliated for recent U.S. export controls with export controls of their own. They are saying: if you don’t supply us with semiconductors, we won’t supply you with the materials to make semiconductors. It’s a trade war in which both sides will lose. We are participants in a race where we are convinced of our advantages, but they don’t exist. I would say we are only challenging China in our imagination, not in the real world,” warned Freeman.
“The trend is towards war. Because the Chinese government is aware of this development, it is expanding its nuclear deterrent. This is much greater than the arsenal of minimal deterrence it has maintained in recent decades.”
“But the threat of nuclear war is not only increasing in the Indo-Pacific. There is also a threat of escalation in Europe as a result of the war in Ukraine. Fortunately, it looks like Russia will win the war, so it will not have to use nuclear weapons. With the Oreshnik missile, Russia has found a weapon that makes it possible to wage war without having to resort to nuclear missiles.
“Not forgetting the nuclear power Israel, which is preparing to become the dominant power in West Asia, the danger of nuclear war is high, but no steps are being taken to prevent it. The disarmament agreements between the U.S.A. and Russia have either expired or been broken. No new restrictions on the use of nuclear weapons are being imposed. The politicians in charge are letting us sleepwalk into disaster.”
