The Financial Times curiously chose September 11 to run the following perhaps overly sensational headline, which pretty much checks every box of classic “global war on terror” fear-mongering, but which also pivots straight to the ‘next big war theater’ type rhetoric: US Navy Seal unit that killed Osama bin Laden trains for China invasion of Taiwan.
We are told in the article that “Seal Team 6, the clandestine US Navy commando unit that killed Osama bin Laden in 2011, has been training for missions to help Taiwan if it is invaded by China, according to people familiar with the preparations.”
“The elite Navy special forces team, which is tasked with some of the military’s most sensitive and difficult missions, has been planning and training for a Taiwan conflict for more than a year at Dam Neck, its headquarters at Virginia Beach about 250km south-east of Washington,” the report continues.
But then there’s the following admission that this could just be more typical training for repelling an amphibious assault landing of PLA forces on Taiwan’s shores, which would not at all be primarily fought by a small Seal team – no matter how elite:
The Pentagon has in recent years sent more regular special forces to Taiwan for missions that include providing training for the Taiwanese military. The Seal Team 6 activities are far more sensitive because its covert missions are highly classified.
All breathless talk of super classified Rambo-style secret missions aside, the real question is what are the American people being prepped for with such a headline which impressively manages to include bin Laden, elite Seals, military preparations, Chinese aggression, and Taiwan… and all on the day that Americans remember the deadliest terror attack in the nation’s history?
The answer lies, unfortunately, in this: the US national security state already appears in search of its next war even as two are still raging. Washington participates in both the Ukraine and Gaza wars by proxy – but neither is going very well.
Recall too that for much of the past year CIA director William Burns has consistently said US intelligence views China as the far bigger long-term threat to the United States than Russia. “While Russia may pose the most immediate challenge, China is the bigger long-term threat,” Burns wrote in a Foreign Affairs op-ed all the way back in January.
With this in mind, the CIA’s budget has recently been doubled over the last three years as part of preparations to take on China. “The CIA has committed substantially more resources toward China-related intelligence collection, operations, and analysis around the world — more than doubling the percentage of our overall budget focused on China over just the last two years,” Burns revealed in his article. These efforts have involved the recruitment of more Mandarin speakers, and Burns further described that the agency is “stepping up efforts across the world to compete with China, from Latin America to Africa to the Indo-Pacific.”
Interestingly, Burns in his public comments just days ago alongside MI6 chief Sir Richard Moore also urged the West to keep its eye on the ball: China. CNN summarizes of this segment of the Saturday FT event in London:
The CIA chief does not, however, see Putin’s grip on power weakening. “He does one thing really well, and that’s repress people at home.”
Both men expressed a continued need to focus their attention on China, with Moore warning that President Xi Jinping is likely China’s most powerful leader since Mao Zedong and has an “ambitious agenda at home and also overseas.”
“He has a very tight control over his political system, and he has an ambitious agenda at home and also overseas. And that is why we devote so much effort into understanding China, because it’s such a hugely important actor on the international stage,” Moore said.
The MI6 chief added that China’s agenda is one that in most cases “contests our interests, contests often our values.”
It’s fascinating that given everything now happening in Ukraine and Kursk, and with the Western allies actively mulling giving Kiev the greenlight to use US/UK missiles to strike deep inside Russian territory, Burns appeared to brush off the Putin threat while warning that the threat Xi poses is on a global level.
Meanwhile, some China analysts have warned that a newly passed Congressional anti-China bill will result in a coming barrage of hawkish China/Taiwan-focused media stories…
Just remember the next time you hear “China is the biggest threat to America” the US government is investing billions in propaganda to portray China in the most negative light possible. It’s incredible sad and just ridiculous.
China is the most important trading partner for the… https://t.co/eKcKhWXuJn
— Cyrus Janssen (@thecyrusjanssen) September 12, 2024
Are we already witnessing the first fruits of this newly authorized $1.6 billion to deliver anti-China propaganda overseas? Remember that in past historic instances of official US propaganda, it inevitably trickled back on the American populace. And there’s this not so small detail:
Crucially, HR 1157 doesn’t seem to contain any requirement that U.S. government financing to foreign media be made transparent to citizens of foreign countries (although there is a requirement to report grants to certain U.S. congressional committees). Thus, it’s possible that the program could in some cases be used to subsidize covert anti-Chinese messaging in a manner similar to the way Russia is accused of covertly funding anti-Ukrainian messaging by U.S. media influencers.
But getting back to the new FT piece in question, the author admits that a scenario wherein Seals train to join the fight against a Chinese invasion of Taiwan could be somewhat routine. “Seal Team 6” as a tier one force runs missions given to it by the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), and this command center regularly has elite operatives “prepare and train for a wide range of contingencies.”
FT further points out: “As the threat from terror groups has receded, special operations forces have joined the rest of the US military and the intelligence community in intensifying their focus on China.” But then there’s this highly revealing line buried deep in the report, quoting an expert on JSOC:
“With the Pentagon’s reorientation over the past few years to focus on great power competition, it was inevitable that even the nation’s most elite counterterrorism units would seek out roles in that arena, for that path leads to relevance, missions and money,” Naylor added.
We are being readied for the next war.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 09/12/2024 – 19:20
