The US announced Tuesday that it will be expanding its diplomatic presence in the Pacific and increasing aid to the region as part of its strategy to counter Chinese influence.
Vice President Kamala Harris detailed the plan in a virtual address to the Pacific Island Forum (PIF), which is being held in Fiji. Harris said the US will be starting the process to open embassies in the Pacific island nations of Tonga and Kiribati.
She said the US will appoint its first-ever envoy to the PIF, and that the US Agency for International Development will expand its presence in the region. The US will also be tripling the amount of aid it gives to Pacific Island nations. Harris said the Biden administration will ask Congress to boost Pacific island aid from $21 million per year to $60 million.
Harris didn’t mention China by name but referred to “bad actors” that were challenging the so-called “rules-based order,” which means the US-led order that Washington accuses Beijing of challenging.
The Biden administration recently released its Indo-Pacific Strategy that calls for the US to “meaningfully expand” its diplomatic presence in Southeast Asia and the Pacific islands. The strategy also calls for the US to increase military cooperation in the Indo-Pacific region with a focus on building alliances.
Harris’ announcement came after the Solomon Islands angered the West by signing a pact with China to boost security ties. The Solomons have insisted the deal doesn’t allow China to build a military base, but the Pacific island nation has still come under an enormous amount of pressure from the US and Australia over the deal. Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare likened the Western pressure to being threatened with an invasion.
As a young farmer, I was told to never accept a penny from the US government.
Wouldn’t that be “buying” friends, like we accuse China of doing? We’re the masters of it – look at the EU/NATO – bought and paid for.
True Heading:
“US to Open New Military Bases, Increase Aid in Pacific Region to Counter China”
When your citizens buy 80% of their goods and services from China, and most US companies are multinational or rely on imported parts and services from Asia, wouldn’t it make a bit more sense to make alliances and new agreements than to waste so much energy and money on starting a war?
Certainly, when you all have each other under the barrel of a nuclear gun, compromises can be found?
You have to try for it to succeed. Nobody wins if half the arid lands on the world are destroyed. Look at Ukraine..or whatever is left of it..BEFORE the nukes drop.
Well, that’s the theory. As the Toby Ziegler character in The West Wing put it succinctly, “free trade stops wars.” Which is a riff on Otto Mallery’s “when goods don’t cross borders, armies will.”
The theory is that the more interdependent states are on each other for the things they need, the less likely they are to let arguments escalate to war and get those things cut off.
But that assumes a rationality we haven’t seen from the US government for decades.
To be fair, it’s not only the US that is lacking rationality. I’d say that’s lacking all across the globe, and I also beleive the pandemic was manufactured to create the logistical issues that are escalating this rapidly towards war. I don’t mean to say plandemic, but at the same time I can’t help but consider it seeing the lack of transparency from the lab and university in Texas that is wiping all data.
Nation-state politics tends toward irrationality.
I personally haven’t found convincing evidence that the pandemic was “manufactured,” but it was certainly jumped on as an excuse for pretty much every regime to do stuff that it would have had trouble getting away with doing otherwise, and when regimes get stupid, logistical issues inevitably follow.
There was never full access to allow an investigation to the site by WHO or US investigaors. We received misinformation throughout from China and our own government. As they were clamining “nobody could have known” I got sick in NYC in February 2020. My mother went to China to a nuclear power plant for a consulting project, they knew about this virus in October of 2019 and tried to contain news of it spreading and cover it up.
Then, more recently, a lab in Texas studying the Covid virus in the Wuhan lab near the release site and wet market they blamed, just requested approval for all related data to be deleted.
Why would they do that if there was nothing suspicous about it?
https://usrtk.org/biohazards-blog/wuhan-iab-can-delete-data/
I never said there’s nothing suspicious.
I just said I have yet to see convincing of Conclusion X.
There’s a difference.
Around the time you got sick, the US government was babbling about stopping “community spread.” At that time, I told my wife (who works in epidemiology at the University of Florida) “that’s BS — it’s already IN community spread in the US, and was by the time it was noticed.” And whaddayaknow, earlier this year, her department went back and tested door swabs they had taken in January of 2020 to test for influenza strains, and found COVID-19.
It was probably spreading in China by August of 2019. Satellite footage from that time frame shows a massive increase in hospital traffic in Wuhan.
There are a lot of things we haven’t been told by various parties, and probably for various reasons. But so far nothing I’ve seen is explicable only by it having been e.g. a lab leak or intentional release. While that could be the case, proving it is a different matter.
There were international military games that were realized in the month of October 2019. I find it very coincidental that the virus surfaced towards the end of December.
As for the reports that there were a higher volume of cars detected parked at the hospitals they are in my humble opinion, questionable. Firstly, I believe those reports came from Bellingcat and if not my recollection is that they came from Britain. Second, there are no open parking lots in China but parking buildings.
There is no proof of intentional release but plenty of circumstantial evidence.
Feel free to name any month of any year in which there aren’t international military games.
There were The Military Games in Wuhan in on Oct 18-27 2019, with 9300 athletes from 109 countries participating, including 172 US military personnel. There were also outbreaks in retirement communites relatively near Ft Detrick (our bio weapon lab) in Jul. 2019, of a mysterious flu-like disease reported on the news in Virginina. At the Greenspring Retirement Community, three died and many fell ill.
Ft Detrick also had violations of protocol around that time with viral samples of at least one pathogen leaked. The FOI report on that has the pathogen blacked out.
The lab was closed from Jul 2019 to Nov 2019. Following the cease and desist order from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in which the USAMRIID laboratory at the base was shut down in August of 2019 for at least two “breaches of containment”, the announcement to resume operations on a “limited scale” was made on November 25, 2019. The two breaches reported to the CDC by USAMRIID staff demonstrated failures of biosafety level 3 and 4 protocols in the Army laboratory to “implement and maintain containment procedures sufficient to contain select agents or toxins”.
Our bio lab at Ft Detrick, MD was shut down in Jul 2019, and a mysterious respiratory illness affecting nursing home patients in Jul 2019 in Virginia (reported at the time on CBS News broadcast) – Greenspring Retirement Community – 3 dead! Maybe China should start demanding investigations of this.
Why would we forget about and not ever mention the Wuhan Military Games held in Wuhan China Oct 18 -27, 2019, with 9,308 military athletes from around the world competing, including 172 US military athletes. What a golden opportunity for a false flag release of the virus or a us military athlete or supporting member infected who visited Wuhan and then blame it on China?
The Military World Games are a multi-sports event organized every four years, one year before the year the Olympic Games are organized.
There can be no conclusion X with a close investigtation. That tells me someone in China and/or high in our gov doesn’t want a conclusion.
I am convinced that the pandemic was started by bad actors.
Look at the facts:
1. Trump had run a 6 months simulation Jan’19 to Aug ’19 about a virus starting to spread in China and the consequences. Other books had also predicted the spread almost to a tee.
2. Trump cut all funding to the CDC in China.
3. There were International military games in Wuhan which ended at the end of October 2019.
4. NATO had been talking about how to deal with China and had a meeting in mid November 2019.
5. Trump had started a trade war with China 1 or 2 years earlier.
6. What is the singlemost item which by itself caused the most damage to China, mainly politically? Covid.
7. Who had the motive, means and opportunity to introduce the virus in China?
8. Obama had prohibited the Gain of Function research in 2014. Trump allowed it to restart in 2017.
Now it turns out that NATO had secret biolabs in Ukraine and NATO continues to actively degrade China.
I am convinced that the virus was released on purpose to downgrade China.
Maybe, I mean frankly I can’t figure out who had the motive. I’m not sure whether they did it to destroy China or Western Civilization. But as much sense as your bullet points make, it might be Russia that would benefit most from the decline of both.
xx
You know, it’a good that are at least opening embassies. Without China, we wouldn’t even have representation in these Pacific nations that no one ever heard of or cared about.