America’s top diplomat on Friday said the US would take action if China declined to intervene in the military deployment of North Korea, a hermit state and Beijing ally the US has long accused of playing a destabilising role in East Asia.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he has told his Chinese counterparts that Washington wants Beijing’s help in handling the North Korean “nuclear programme” and denuclearising the Korean peninsula. He said the US would bolster its defence alliances with Japan and South Korea if China refrained from intervening.
Directing his remarks at China during a fireside chat at the Aspen Security Forum in the US state of Colorado, Blinken said: “We believe that you have unique influence and we hope that you’ll use it to get better cooperation from North Korea.
“But if you can’t or if you won’t, then we’re going to have to continue to take steps that aren’t directed at China but that China probably won’t like because it goes to strengthening and shoring up not only our own defences but also those of South Korea and Japan and a deepening of the work that all three of us are doing together.”
Beijing has criticised Washington’s defence alliances in East Asia, viewing them as efforts to monitor or contain China’s military. Seoul and Tokyo resent Pyongyang’s military tests, which sometimes take place near their airspace.
North Korea has conducted “one missile launch after another”, Blinken said. On July 12, Pyongyang carried out a second flight test of its Hwasong-18 intercontinental ballistic missile.
China, North Korea’s Communist neighbour, has offered it fuel and food aid in the past and brokered international dialogue on the country’s militarisation.
Blinken’s comments followed the disappearance on Tuesday of Private Travis King, an American soldier who ran into North Korea during a civilian tour near the border with South Korea.
The secretary of state said he had no updates on King’s whereabouts but that “there are certainly concerns” he might be subjected to torture in North Korea.
The US is now working to anchor a declining Sino-American relationship, Blinken said on Friday. He, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and President Joe Biden’s special climate envoy John Kerry have all visited China within the past two months.
“It was important for us to put some stability back into this relationship, to put a floor under it, to make sure that the competition we’re clearly in does not veer into conflict, and that starts with engagement,” the diplomat said.
Blinken said China could help stem production of the illegal drug fentanyl that reaches the US through Mexico, control global climate change, and allow for the release of American detainees.
“If we weren’t engaged, we would be rightfully tagged with being irresponsible,” he said.
But challenges persist, and Blinken said on Friday the US had started a formal investigation into reports of Chinese hacking into US government emails.
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Yes, this headline is biased and it is from :
“South China morning Post” which isparta voice of the Chinese government.thats actually not true legally at least. that is a Hong Kong independedt newspaper
Used to be independent, but it’s owned by Alibaba now, so don’t expect anything more than a pretense of independence anymore.
Yeah they have had quite a few anti-western articles this past year where they claim that United States military is weak and would never be able to complete against the Chinese Navy, etc etc.
can someone explain that community to me? Ive been there and I dont quite get the title- is it military memes? Is that it? halp im old
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The military industrial complex is good and we support NATO.
And we’re sick of pretending it’s not 💪
“The military industrial complex is bad” Me, who has 50 bucks invested in Lockheed Martin: I am the military industrial complex
Hi there! Looks like you linked to a Lemmy community using a URL instead of its name, which doesn’t work well for people on different instances. Try fixing it like this: !noncredibledefense@sh.itjust.works
/c/noncredibledefense@sh.itjust.works would give an instance agnostic link.
Isn’t that link still tied to the sh.itjust.works instance?
No, you should be seeing the link https://lemmy.world/c/noncredibledefense@sh.itjust.works, which will open in your own instance, where you can subscribe and comment from your lemmy.world account.
Ohh I see! Thanks for explaining
No worries. A quick rundown:
/c/communityor!community@instaceshould give an instance agnostic community link for those on v0.18 or above./u/user@instancewill do the same for users.
These should both work without creating link code. The instance you’re browsing creates the link itself.
- If you start typing @user@instance and select from the dropdown box you should get code in the form
[](https://userinstance/u/user)which will send a mention to that user (you can also change the link text in the square brackets [ ]). - The old instance agnostic form is
[link text](/c/community@instance)which should work on older versions of lemmy.
Hopefully they’ll tie it together soon, and make the dropdown @user@instance both agnostic and automatic, and also make the /u/user@instance send a mention, but that hasn’t happened yet.
I’m more keen on them making instance agnostic links for posts and comments - right now every instance assigns its own number for the url, which makes finding posts across different instances quite hard. If someone links to a comment on their instance, it’s a challenge trying to find it on my own instance where I can reply. You have to go to the community on your instance then manually search for the post, then manually search for the comment. It would be better if they used
https://yourinstance/post/hostnumber@hostinstanceand maybe also included the post title in the link.Oh wow! Any idea why they have different post numbers for different instances?
Nope, that’s just the way it was made I guess. Each instance sequentially numbers each comment and post it stores, but they all do it separately.
Beijing has criticised Washington’s defence alliances in East Asia, viewing them as efforts to monitor or contain China’s military.
That’s a criticism?
Constructive criticism maybe 😉
But criticizing a military alliance by pointing out that it hems in a potential adversary is like criticizing water by pointing out that it’s wet.
Nuclear weapons are an existential threat and we ought to worry about their proliferation but at the same time they prevent belligerents from attacking each other and creating the conditions for MAD. However, it’s a bit rich for nucelar armed states to forbid other states from the development of these weapons, especially America, who are the only state to use them in war.
I’m more curious about this stuff with US soldier Travis King. He ran into North Korea while visiting the border from South Korea? The US claims they are worried he is being tortured, but I’d be more worried about what he’s voluntarily giving over to NK.
He’s a low-ranking soldier right? Would he have much intel of value to tell NK about?
He can tell them where they can buy a Mustang at an outrageous interest rate
Who knows? That’s partly why I’m interested.
States and governments are a threat to humanity
Don’t worry, lads. When the US says “intervene”, they really meant to say “We will add more restrictions/sanctions regarding trading stuff with our fellow broskis. That’ll show em.”
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Oh god I hope not. I am sick of war. But the MIC needs its fucking wars so it can be profitable.
Really? US is essentially asking China to curb NK nuclear threats (which they essentially helped them to achieve that capability) or US will be forced to boost SK and Japan defenses.
NK is not a nuclear threat unless someone decides to attack it. The biggest threat in the world is the US that starts a new war every few months because it can’t ever NOT be at war.
After Libya you have to be completely bonkers if you think the anyone is going to believe the US means well when it asks people to give up their nukes.
After Libya you have to be completely bonkers if you think the anyone is going to believe the US means well when it asks people to give up their nukes.
Exactly the same thing could be said about Russia and Ukraine.
I agree.
Let’s be more serious: the threat is not one flag or another, it’s the whole system of power that is rooted in corruption and greed. US wage more wars than others states because they sit on top of the pyramid, in their position any other nation would do the same because they are all built on the same rotten principles
Let’s be more serious: the threat is not one flag or another, it’s the whole system of power that is rooted in corruption and greed. US wage more wars than others states because they sit on top of the pyramid, in their position any other nation would do the same because they are all built on the same rotten principles
So your belief is that China is just a few years away from building a thousand bases all around the world and starting yearly wars for profit then?
I don’t agree with you. The military industrial complex in america is unique to america and unique throughout most of history, it is a force that drives the country to war for its own benefit over and over and over. Its own presidents warned of it growing and the need to stop it before it got too bad long ago. Private military industry would have to be equally large and equally as politically powerful in order for it to reoccur elsewhere. I don’t believe that is the case anywhere else in the world currently, although I am not clear on the state of Russia’s weapons industries and their pursuit of contracts so I’m willing to yield that they might become this in future if they were to grow in economic size.
I fundamentally don’t agree that just “being the richest” makes you start constant streams of wars for profit. These are caused by various interests being pursued that create a variety of political forces. The reason it occurs in america so much is the political power of the MIC.
Thousands bases all around the world are there because the local governments allowed it to begin with. Criminals don’t have a country they exists all over the world.
lmao “criminals” being anyone the US decides is against american interests
This is top tier nationalism. You’re trying to tell me Iraqis want the US bases there? What about Guantanamo? You think Cuba wants the US occupying a part of its country with an illegal blacksite it uses for torturing people? Pull the other one mate.
This is top tier nationalism.
Why are you calling it nationalism and not nazism, stalinism or americanism? Because nationalism doesn’t have a flag it’s a nations thing. I can’t talk about Cuba because i don’t live there but in Europe as of today military bases are in place because all europeans governments are ok with these. Corruption doesn’t have a flag. USA bribes europe, if europe were stronger they would be the one bribing USA government to be his colony.
It is the other way around. They can cause a damage especially to SK and Japan, but the nuclear weapons won’t help them once they do as they just have limited number of them.
This news is, because they like to fly their rockets over other countries.
I think you miss the value of nuclear weapons as a defensive tool. Nuclear weapons completely prevent any foreign military attempt to invade your country because any invading army can be resoundingly obliterated. Even if you can eliminate the ability to launch them it doesn’t matter because they can easily be hidden and used inside a city against an invading army after they move in.
In terms of strategy there is literally nothing you can do to attack a country with nukes. Your invading army WILL get nuked. That’s the point. The fact they only have a small number is irrelevant to their defensive value.
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Did you read the article? It essentially says “tell your little brat (that you created and use to destabilize the region) to STFU or we will be forced to supply SK and Japan with weapons for defense, and we are sure you won’t like that”
Wasn’t is the USSR that created North Korea?
I don’t think China would ever invade NK, it would not be popular with the Chinese people either as a massive part of modern Chinese history is their participation in the Korean war. The US are asking them to lean on them with trade sanctions, since China allows people to travel over the China/NK border without checks or border police there is a lot of dark trade that happens there.
You are talking as if China is a democracy. Since when what’s popular with Chinese people matters?
I mean we don’t even have to go far. We can just look at covid pandemic where covid lockdowns were literal lockdowns.
You are talking as if China is a democracy. Since when what’s popular with Chinese people matters?
It produces democratic results and that’s why it remains popular with the people. Understanding Chinese history is important here as the “Mandate of Heaven” is an important component of Chinese politics, losing the Mandate of Heaven is very very bad and results in justification among the population for revolution.
We can just look at covid pandemic where covid lockdowns were literal lockdowns.
They were literal lockdowns in my country and much of the rest of europe too. We just ended them earlier while China tried to continue them for a few months longer.
NK is all bark and no bite. They are rational enough to know that actually using nuclear weapons would mean the end of their regime. The threaten to use for leverage, that’s all
Yet they are not rational enough to fire rockets flying over Japan every other week. The thing with them is that until it explodes it is only a guess what the payload is. The thing that stops them from reacting is that they calculate trajectory and see that it goes into the sea. This is very risky, because a mistake could start a hot war, even if the payload weren’t explosives.
They bite well enough when they have the chance. For example, the Lazarus Group, a North Korean hacking team, stole ~$600 million in a single cryptocurrency hesit. In total they’ve probably stolen over $2 billion, and that’s no doubt continuing to grow.
They’ve developed weapons-grade hacking technology that they readily employ, it wouldn’t be a good idea for them to have weapons-grade nuclear technology.
Their threats are aimed at their own citizens. It’s all political theater. Look at all the horrible things that the evil Americans want to do to our people, but through our strong military and nuclear threats we are able to hold them off and protect your lives! It’s how the Kim Jong regime holds onto power. As long as they’re protecting their citizens from us, their citizens are much less likely to overthrow their dictators. Putin uses a lot of the same tactics against his own people.
There’s citizens have no information from the outside world, so when North Korea launches nuclear missiles over Japan and South Korea, who do you think picks it up on radar? Hint it’s not the North Koreans
That’s literally all I’ve heard in the USA my entire life.
“We’re protecting you from:
Soviet CommunistsArab TerroristsIllegal AliensCommunist ChinaISISPutin’s Russia”I guess when your country can’t go 2 years without starting a war somewhere, you get used to it. -
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Wasn’t this meeting supposed to be about calming tensions between China and the United States (after months of the Biden administration acting plainly hostile and spreading laughable stories of Chinese spy weather balloons - and then quietly backtracking afterwards) ???
They go to a meeting to calm tensions and then America’s top diplomat gives an ultimatum to his Chinese counterpart saying that unless China intervenes against its oldest ally, the United States will dump even more arms into the hands of its vassals next door?
Smooth diplomacy there america. No wonder everything is going to ratshit.
Tony Blinken is emblematic of the pitiful condition of the State Department today. A large but ineffective diplomatic bureaucracy that has long since stopped believing in the virtues of diplomacy. One that accepts (if not embraces) its inferiority and gladly submits to to the all-powerful Pentagon. And an institution that views granting concessions to those labelled its enemies, or even empathising with them, to be unthinkable.
Eric Hobsbawm described Europe as stumbling into the First World War for the simple reason that the mechanics of great power competition left none able to contemplate backing down from an escalating confrontation (even when it sparked from a relatively banal royal assassination) even when doing so was necessary to prevent an apocalypse. It is people like Blinken who would have us stumble into a nuclear apocalypse.
They go to a meeting to calm tensions and then America’s top diplomat gives an ultimatum to his Chinese counterpart saying that unless China intervenes against its oldest ally, the United States will dump even more arms into the hands of its vassals next door?
Curious as how you refer to NK as China’s “ally”, but South Korea is US’s “vassal”. Pushing a narrative, are we?
Pushing the world onto the brink of nuclear apocalypse
And there we have it, the hallmark of every FSB shill, nuclear scaremongering. Piss off.
NK is sovereign and holds no Chinese military bases within it. SK is not sovereign, holds massive US military bases and does whatever the US wants, and when it does not do what the US wants it gets overthrown and they stick a new number on the end, which is why they’re up to their Sixth Republic in just the last 50 years. The south has wanted to make peace with the north and unite for a long long time, as do the people, but every time there are talks about this the US demands a seat at the table and scuppers those talks. This is why I call one a vassal and not the other. China never demands seats at other people’s tables when it’s an issue that has absolutely nothing to do with them.
If you don’t consider SK a vassal what’s your take on the EU considering itself a vassal of america? A far larger group of countries with significantly more power considers itself to have been vassalised. I can’t agree with the EU’s take that it has been vassalised and then look at SK and see a country that is far more subservient to US interests as anything other than a vassal.
the hallmark of every FSB shill
Don’t be a lampshade mate. I live in Britain and moderate /r/greenandpleasant the largest British leftist community.
Many administration officials, in various author interviews since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, have expressed the view that Europeans may whine and complain, but that their increasing security dependence on the US means that they will mostly accept economic policies framed as part of America’s global security role. This is the essence of vassalisation.
The EU’s own words regarding their own vassalisation. I’m sorry mate but SK is far more vassalised so if the EU thinks they’ve already become vassalised and have to fight to reduce and escape it then yes I absolutely see SK as a vassal state.
The south has wanted to make peace with the north and unite for a long long time, as do the people, but every time there are talks about this the US demands a seat at the table and scuppers those talks
Strange, the constant sabre rattling seems a bit odd for a country that wants to unite with its neighbour. I 'm guessing the constant missile launches towards Japan are a form of a friendly greeting.
North Korea is a paranoid, stalinist dictatorship held by the Kim family. Peace talks are a smoke screen to get international aid flowing into its borders, and once Kims get what they want, they walk away and start posturing. There can be no unification with the Kims in charge and thats why they have consistently failed.
As for the “military base” comment, China needs no military bases in NK because NK is one giant military base. Everything in that open prison of a country is bound to its military. Kims are already working with China as a buffer state, and opening military bases would be superflous.
The article linked is by two employees of a single EU institution, where the word “vassalization” is used for dramatic effect, and is certainly no official EU policy. If they wrote “EUs over reliance on US military power has made the EU a little bitch”, would you say “EU admits to being a little bitch”?
Thirdly, you don’t have to be on the FSBs payroll to be their asset. The Soviet Union was notorious for targeting western intellectuals with propaganda to get them to regurgitate it, then mockingly called them “useful idiots” behind their back. Modern day Russia has continued this trend, and I tend to regard anyone who invokes the spectre of nuclear annihilation a sucessfully demoralizred FSB asset. You are repeating talking points made in propaganda labs.
None of this changes the fact that it is accurate that it is China’s oldest ally or the fact that it is sovereign and makes its own decisions completely independent of China without their control or influence. Yes it’s hugely militarised, this only adds to the argument that it is NOT vassalised because that militarisation allows it to be completely and totally secure. It is not reliant on China for its security, SK is completely reliant on the US. - as the EU put it “this is the essence of vassalisation”.
The article linked is by two employees of a single EU institution
Mate. Let me give you a list of what funds this institute. I also STRONGLY urge you to learn more about it. It’s one of the core policy tanks of europe. I’ll put this in page breaks since it’ll be long.
Funded by:
Agence Française de Développement,
Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ),
Direction générale des relations internationales et de la stratégie (DGRIS),
Embassy of Lithuania in France,
Embassy of Poland in France,
Embassy of Romania in France,
Embassy of the Netherlands in Italy,
European External Action Service (EEAS),
European Investment Bank,
European Parliament,
JETRO,
Ministry of Defense Germany,
Ministry of Economy of France,
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Belgium,
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ireland,
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark,
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Finland,
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of France,
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Germany,
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Italy,
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan,
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Norway,
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Spain,
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Sweden,
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic,
Secrétariat Général de la Défense et de la Sécurité Nationale (SGDSN),
Swedish International Development Agency
Thirdly, you don’t have to be on the FSBs payroll to be their asset. The Soviet Union was notorious for targeting western intellectuals with propaganda to get them to regurgitate it, then mockingly called them “useful idiots” behind their back. Modern day Russia has continued this trend, and I tend to regard anyone who invokes the spectre of nuclear annihilation a sucessfully demoralizred FSB asset. You are repeating talking points made in propaganda labs.
Yeah yeah, this is just backtracking. If it doesn’t get removed I’ll be surprised. That or the “piss off”. This isn’t reddit. Read the rules.
I hope you at least understand my position is logical and rational now. You can’t admit the EU has a vassalisation problem and then not look at several of the US’s “”“allies”“” and not see them as vassalised. The logic needs to be applied fairly to all things. In this case I think you’re just not wanting to admit that the US is an empire that has vassal states beneath it. Those 1000 foreign military bases are all just for funsies obviously. China has none btw. Russia has like, 20 I think? I don’t check too often. The US dwarves the entire rest of the world combined because this network of bases actively functions as a tool of the vassalisation it performs.
We’re arguing semantics now, and a propaganda term like “vassalization” is not conductive to a healthy debate. Have a nice day.
The entire conversation is about semantics. “Why are you calling NK an ally vs SK a vassal.”
You’re just running away at this point because you don’t have a response to the fundamental importance of this paper on vassalisation by the EU or the many EU officials that have publicly come out about the EU’s vassalisation. You are well aware that if you acknowledge this then you must also acknowledge that it logically applies to call weaker states in far worse off situations vassals as well.
The issue here is not that my logic is faulty. It is that you are dogmatic and don’t want to acknowledge that I have a pretty fair position here. Thus running away is the easiest option.
The link you posted is not an academic paper, it is a blog post by a political think tank. And the conclusions you claim it makes do not match with its content.
What you have presented isn’t logic, it’s emotionally charged propaganda.
And that’s before we touch on the fact that you think South Korea isn’t sovereign merely because it hosts US military bases.
man you really reminded me just how stupidly unhinged from reality your average tankie is
For saying what? That the EU thinks of itself as a vassal of the US and therefore the SK which is quite clearly more manipulated and in a more precarious position with regards to sovereignty should be seen as a vassal too?
I’m pretty sure I haven’t said anything else. Which part of that is wrong?
f you don’t consider SK a vassal what’s your take on the EU considering itself a vassal of america?
The EU does not consider itself a vassal, a politically biased think tank presumed that it will act like one in a blog post online. The TL;DR of which is:
However, it is far from clear that any of this debate will translate into policy measures that will affect US foreign economic policy. Many administration officials, in various author interviews since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, have expressed the view that Europeans may whine and complain, but that their increasing security dependence on the US means that they will mostly accept economic policies framed as part of America’s global security role. This is the essence of vassalisation.
Vassalisation - the process of becomming a vassal.
So it isn’t even the ECFR considering the EU a vassal, just the author’s interpretation that it might lead towards the EU becomming a vassal. It isn’t one yet, they are warning that it might become one.
Also, in terms of real world vassal states and their comparison to South Korea and the EU, your statements are clearly hyperbolic and exaggerated. You are attempting to use emotionally charged language to argue, rather than actual insight pointing towards objective truth.
Mate can you reply to me once please and not multiple times? I’m not responding to multiple comments with redundant shit like a stuck record, put it all in one place, if you want respectful responses to continue then have some respect and don’t do this multiple reply shit. It’s a massive waste of time.
This was my first reply, and the one with the most content in it. You replied to them newest first. The second was a criticism of your argument that you were dogmatic, when I don’t think you are. The third was on a completely different point that we agreed on. I made each of these as I went down the entire comment thread, not intentionally only replying to you, but just engaging with the conversation.
In any case, I’ve taken in your points and will continue to read through the post you’ve linked later. I still don’t agree with your take on it (the EU is not a vassal, the article does not claim that but rather it warns of that happening), however I appreciate the arguments you’ve made.
Maybe nato should drop a giant lawn dart inside of a 30m radius target near a major military base every few days. Just keep doing that until they get the point that we all are putting up with them and they aren’t a real threat.
I’m not a religious person, but this shit makes me pray for more competent diplomats than Blinken.
He said the US would bolster its defense alliances with Japan and South Korea if China refrained from intervening.
They will do that anyway. Plus new military bases in the Philippines. But dprk super evil for building defense capabilities within its borders, ok. But all that and also the intense militarization of Japan, for example, can be seen as a direct result of the desire to have functioning self defense. If you cannot see that, look at the past and research what Japan did in Korea, its not pretty, really, really, really not pretty.
The secretary of state said he had no updates on (Travis) King’s whereabouts but that “there are certainly concerns” he might be subjected to torture in North Korea.
Ye, and there certainly are concerns that they clone him and mix his DNA with killer dolphins to create an unstoppable super soldier. How come thousands defect from dprk and no one cares, and those people get TV shows and whatnot (used for propaganda), but if one guy does the opposite even the highest US officials cannot resist conspiracy theories?
“It was important for us to put some stability back into this relationship, to put a floor under it, to make sure that the competition we’re clearly in does not veer into conflict, and that starts with engagement,” the diplomat said.
Literal bullyspeak. If you forgive me the anthomorpization, that’s the language someone uses when beating his wife and then looks for reasonable ways to stop the escalation of the abuse.
And that leads me to also not give any value to statement such as
Blinken said China could help stem production of the illegal drug fentanyl that reaches the US through Mexico, control global climate change.
While that is true, everything points to the conclusion that from the side of the US the desire to escalate things is far greater than finding solutions for any problems. Like, who benefits from all the now all so en vogue China-blame regarding the fentanyl crisis, how many lives does it save? China has tried to control (regulate) that substance since 2019. Imagine how many deaths could have been avoided if there had been better relations and cooperation between those countries.
Meanwhile, the US openly suggests that it’s bad that poppy production in Afghanistan has stopped.
I have no idea what the context of that quote relates to, but poppies are used in things other than heroin too (medical uses)
