By Makhdoom Babar
(Director General GRIP)
In the year 2022, the U.S. made a political mischief under Joe Biden’s leadership to provoke Chinese leadership and to ridicule Washington’s own pledges and accords made with China, and sent the then U.S. Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi who, by the U.S. Protocol’s Blue Book, stands number three in the U.S. government hierarchy on an official visit to Taiwan, a move that was criticized by all sane global leaders and intellectuals. And now, with Donald Trump at the helm of affairs in Washington, who has been claiming that he will not toe Biden’s Langley-driven doctrine about China and that he came to office with the aim of stopping wars and bringing peace to the world, he has himself negated his own claims and has actually gone a step further than Biden and has gotten another China containment plan by approving an unprecedented military supply deal of over a billion U.S. dollars for Taiwan.
The whole world knows that there is but one China on planet Earth and that Taiwan is an inalienable part of China’s territory, with the Government of the People’s Republic of China being the sole legal government to represent the whole of China. This solid fact was crystal-clearly recognized by the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) via its Resolution No. 2758 back in 1971.
Right from the beginning, the one-China principle has been the red line in China’s relations with the global community, and since then, 181 countries, including the United States of America (the U.S.), have established diplomatic relations with China on the basis of the one-China principle. The one-China principle is a universal consensus of the international community and a basic norm in international relations.
Back in 1979, the United States made a clear commitment in the China-U.S. Joint Communiqué on the Establishment of Diplomatic Relations. The Joint Communiqué stated that, “The United States of America recognizes the Government of the People’s Republic of China as the sole legal government of China. Within this context, the people of the United States will maintain cultural, commercial, and other unofficial relations with the people of Taiwan.” Apart from this document, the U.S. signed a total of three historic documents with China that are regarded as fundamental political documents, and these three agreements ensured stability and progress in bilateral ties over five decades. In all three documents, Washington very clearly acknowledged that “there is but one China and Taiwan is part of China.”
Successive U.S. presidents are on record to have, while discussing various matters of bilateral interest with Chinese counterparts, again and again reaffirmed Washington’s commitment to respect and remain obliged by the one-China principle.
However, in utter disregard of China’s stance on Taiwan, totally contrary to UN resolutions, and in acute negation of the U.S. government’s official political and diplomatic commitments to respect the one-China principle blatantly challenging China’s red line on Taiwan and ignoring all legitimate warnings from Beijing made in the backdrop of UN resolutions and the three agreements between Beijing and Washington. Washington has now okayed this unprecedented $11.1 billion arms deal for Taiwan, including 82 HIMARS rocket systems, 60 howitzers, Javelin anti-tank missiles, etc., for which no military experts in the world could find any reasonable requirement by Taiwan other than using these weapons against its own mainland or to provoke and contain the mainland’s leadership.
One can clearly see that first via Pelosi’s visit in 2022 and now through this mega arms deal, Washington is trying to use Taiwan as a chess piece against mainland China, while on the other hand it is doing the same with the Philippines by establishing a surprising number of military bases there and arming the Philippine Navy with Indo-Russia jointly manufactured BrahMos missiles for targeting Chinese patrolling ships in the South China Sea. Both U.S. moves, intended under Washington and Langley’s China containment methodology, have so far failed to provoke China into aggression, and Beijing has shown restraint by keeping the matter limited to military drills in the area to showcase its preparedness and might to deal with any such U.S.-generated mischief or misadventure.
It remains a widely known fact that the CIA has been working against China for decades and that during the past couple of decades it has put major focus on nurturing certain politicians in Taiwan and generating a handful of separatists seeking so-called independence from the Chinese mainland. While the U.S. State Department and the Pentagon have been making numerous “contributions” to heavily militarize this region of China with loads of top-grade military weapons, overtly and covertly, and with flying tons of U.S. dollars to Taiwan, the CIA has very cunningly exploited the greed and weaknesses of certain politicians in Taiwan, coupled with organizing separatist groups.
The CIA has very smartly exploited both U.S. politicians and political forces in Taiwan to create tension, as Langley has miserably failed to create any major problem for the Communist Party leadership on the mainland, apart from spreading propaganda about Xinjiang, Tibet, and Hong Kong, which again did not sell well to the global community and sane world leaders.
Diplomatic and security analysts believe that no observer of cross-Strait relations doubts that such military weapons supplies may degenerate into military hostilities. These global observers firmly believe that by engaging in such dirty business and blatantly playing with fire, the U.S. will only leave more ugly records of gross meddling in other countries’ internal affairs in history, as it has left a recent example in Venezuela.
Political and military affairs experts are of the firm opinion that the complete reunification of China is the trend of the times and an inevitability of history, and that there is absolutely no room for “Taiwan independence” elements and external interference. These experts and observers are of the clear opinion that this move by the U.S. seriously violates the one-China principle, maliciously infringes on China’s sovereignty, and blatantly engages in political provocations, earning widespread opposition from the international community.
Global Peace and Security specialists firmly believe that the U.S., both at the White House and in Langley, must not fantasize about undermining China’s development and revitalization or its military abilities to defend every inch of its land. They believe that the one-China principle has become a basic norm governing international relations and an integral part of the post-Second World War international order.
Experts including former Ambassadors, ex-Generals, former top intelligence officials, senior journalists, celebrated intellectuals, and senior academicians at the Global Research Institute for Peace (GRIP) after a recent RTC on the issue have sincerely suggested that the U.S. must revisit its policies based on lies and deceit. They must not fantasize about manipulating geopolitical games, and they must not fantasize about distorting facts at will.
The GRIP experts also believe that U.S. political leadership, which has not shown even an iota of change in mindset from Biden to Trump over the Taiwan matter, and which lectures the global community on respecting social and democratic values and treating nations’ sovereignty as sacred, must follow these principles first. If whatever U.S. congressmen and senators say in their speeches carries even an iota of truth, then what was Nancy Pelosi doing in Taiwan back in 2022 during Joe Biden’s tenure at the White House, and now this mega Taiwan militarization move via okaying a mass weapons deal with Trump in the Oval Office?
The GRIP experts very strongly suggest that the U.S. must take credible actions to strictly observe the one-China principle and the provisions of the three China-U.S. joint communiqués, deliver on the “Five NOs” commitment made by U.S. leadership (i.e., not seek a “new Cold War”; not seek to change China’s system; the revitalization of its alliances is not against China; not support “Taiwan independence”; and not look for conflict with China), and not go further down the wrong and dangerous path. Not only the U.S. and China, but the entire global community cannot afford a U.S. China military clash, which would lead to nothing but the destruction of humanity and the world. They say that if the U.S. cannot honor its own commitments made at international and diplomatic levels in black and white, then Donald Trump should not expect any other country or state to honor their respective deals, agreements, and commitments a situation that could lead the world into massive turmoil, with Trump standing far away from his claims of war stopper and peace broker, but instead emerging as a top destructor, a title he would definitely not like to have against his name for coming generations to see.
–The Author is President of The Daily Mail, Pakistan and Director General of Global Research Institute for Peace (GRIP) and can be reached and makhbabar@hotmail.com
