Stephen Bryen, who’s now retired from a stellar career at the very highest levels both in the U.S. Military-Industrial Complex and in the Executive and also the Legislative branches of the U.S. Government, and whose predictions about the war in Ukraine war thus far have consistently turned out to be true, is, for whatever reason, nonetheless a neocon (advocate for increasing yet further the U.S. empire) in the case of China; and, so, while he’s realistic about the need for the U.S. Government to withdraw from Ukraine, he is nonetheless a normal neocon in regards to China.

On November 29th, he headlined “China Alarmed As US Marine Prepare HIMARS and ATACMS for Yonaguni”, and argued that it’s a good move by Biden now, that he’ll be placing in Japan U.S. missiles that can hit Taiwan for the purpose of “stopping a Taiwan invasion,” by which stupid phrase he intends to mean that we’ll be stopping “an invasion of Taiwan,” by — you guess whom, which is, of course, according to the neocons’ plan, to be done by — China, as soon as Taiwan will announce that it is NOT a part of China, and for which purpose the U.S. Government has been arming Taiwan so that Taiwan can then (with American weapons and maybe direct Military involvement) resist the invasion by China that will be China’s inevitable response to this U.S.-planned breakaway from China by Taiwan. And THAT will then give the U.S. Government the ‘right’ to invade and conquer China — which is the real objective of all of this scheming and war-planning by Breyen and ogther neocons. The 5-Ingredient Cookb... Kelly, Benjamin Best Price: $6.49 Buy New $8.97 (as of 08:51 UTC - Details)

So, I posted a reader-comment to that article:

Here is why your article is shocking:

You have cited the Taiwan Relations Act as a ‘justification’ for your position regarding China.

The Taiwan Relations Act was merely concerning the U.S. Government and NOT America’s relations with China and with its province of Taiwan. It is logically SUBORDINATE TO the Shanghai Communique, which is an agreement BETWEEN China and U.S. Anything in the Taiwan Relations Act that contradicts the Shanghai Communique of 1972 is null and void automatically.

The Shanghai Communique, in 1972, committed the U.S. Government to — and agreed with China’s Government that — “Taiwan is a part of China.” Consistently since the 1972 Shanghai Communique, the official policy of the U.S. Government is and has been “Taiwan is a part of China.”

Your article logically implied, instead of overtly said, that Taiwan can declare independence from China — DESPITE BEING “a part of China.” Here is the (il)logic of your position:

Your article alleges that Taiwan should be able to declare independence from China despite America’s Government having formally committed itself that Taiwan is a part of China, and that U.S. taxpayers should fund this U.S. aggression against China.

Furthermore, you are assuming (likewise falsely) that Taiwan is of such vital national-security interest to the safety of America (protecting the safety of the residents in the USA), so that America, which is legally committed to Taiwan’s being a Chinese province, ought to arm Taiwan so that Taiwan can declare itself to be NOT a part of China, so that China can then be defeated by LOSING that “part of China.” That’s what you want. You want U.S. taxpayers to fund this U.S. aggression against China. It is crazy. It is loaded with false assumptions. And the very IDEA that U.S. taxpayers should fund U.S. aggression isn’t merely crazy, it is evil; and I, as a U.S. taxpayer, recognize this.

Bryen’s false assumptions here have been advocated in the greatest detail by an article from A. Wess Mitchell, who had been the successor to Victoria Nuland as the Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs during 2017-2019 in the Trump Administration; and Mitchell, like his predecessor, Nuland, was/is a total neocon; but, unlike her, he didn’t believe that America should be trying simultaneously to conquer BOTH Russia and China; he believed that we should instead aim for a temporary negotiated-with-Russia stalemate and abeyance of the war in Ukraine, so that we can then (temporarily) devote all of our resources to conquering China first (in order to attack Russia afterwards).

Mitchell headlined in the so-called National Interest magazine, on 21 August, 2021, his influential article, “A Strategy for Avoiding Two-Front War”, and he opened:

The greatest risk facing the twenty-first-century United States, short of an outright nuclear attack, is a two-front war involving its strongest military rivals, China and Russia. Such a conflict would entail a scale of national effort and risk unseen in generations, effectively pitting America against the resources of nearly half of the Eurasian landmass.

It would stretch and likely exceed the current capabilities of the U.S. military, requiring great sacrifices of the American people with far-reaching consequences for U.S. influence, alliances, and prosperity. Should it escalate into a nuclear confrontation, it could possibly even imperil the country’s very existence.

Given these high stakes, avoiding a two-front war with China and Russia must rank among the foremost objectives of contemporary U.S. grand strategy. Yet the United States has been slow to comprehend this danger, let alone the implications it holds for U.S. policy. So far, Washington’s efforts to grapple with the “simultaneity” problem (as it’s called in Pentagon circles) have been overwhelmingly focused on the military side of the problem. The 2018 National Defense Strategy (NDS) replaced the two-war standard with a laser focus on fighting one major war with America’s most capable adversary — China. In its wake, a debate has erupted among defense intellectuals about how to handle a second-front contingency.

By comparison, there has been much less discussion of how, if at all, U.S. diplomacy should evolve to avert two-front war and, more broadly, alleviate the pressures of strategic simultaneity. While the Trump administration rightly inaugurated a more confrontational approach toward China, this was not accompanied by a rebalancing of diplomatic priorities and resources in other regions to complement the NDS’ justified focus on the Indo-Pacific. Nor does the Biden administration appear to be contemplating a redistribution of strategic focus and resources among regions. This misalignment in the objects of U.S. military and diplomatic power is neither desirable nor sustainable. America will have to limit the number of active rivalries requiring major U.S. military attention, improve the functionality of its existing alliances for offsetting the pressures of simultaneity, or significantly grow defense budgets—or some combination of the three. …

Unlike Dr. Bryen, Dr. Mitchell believes that the U.S. Government should target Russia first, China second. In Foreign Policy magazine, on 6 September 2024, he headlined explicitly “U.S. Strategy Should Be Europe First, Then Asia: Without a secure Europe, the United States risks becoming a hemispheric potentate on the margins of the world.” To him, Asia is “on the margins of the world” — Mitchell wants America to conquer all of The West, first — then take the rest. He says, “While it is true that there are serious and pressing national security problems in Asia and the Middle East, these can only be dealt with effectively once the Atlantic foundation of Washington’s global strength is secure.” However, whereas (because of the U.S. Governmen’s ever-expansionist imperialism) both Russia and China do, actually, face “serious and pressing national security problems,” America doesn’t — we’re more than 3,000 miles of ocean away from any potential invader — the real threat to the American people is the American Government itself (since 1945), which is sometimes called the “Deep State,” which rules us, and which the scientific studies in political science show to be America’s richest 1% of America’s richest 1% — the individuals who have purchased and are actually served by our (aristocratically) s‘elected’ Government.

Basically, the U.S. Government — in BOTH of its Parties — is set upon conquering both Russia and China, but is not yet exactly clear about whether to do both of them simultaneously, or instead one-after-another (in accord wth the “forever-war” tradition of the United States Government, which President Truman instituted right at the end of World War Two (WW2), on 25 July 1945.

Both of these plans — aggression against Russia, and aggression against China — both using as excuses that ‘we’ are ‘democracies’ whereas ‘they’ are ‘autocracies’, and ignoring that the ONLY country that has been scientifically analyzed to determine whether it is a “democracy,” is the U.S., and all of those studies have found that it definitely is NOT at all a democracy, but instead an aristocracy, rule-by-only-the-richest — both of these plans are plain evil. But what keeps them going is the insanity of neocons, and it is bleeding dry the U.S. itself, hollowing-out the middle class to serve the super-rich who profit from all these wars, and it is at the same time turning the U.S. into a blood-sucker against its colonies (‘allies’), which are required to pitch in even more, year after year, in order to do the master-nation’s bidding, and, like Trump keeps saying, “pay their fair share”, by buying more of our weapons. 33 Questions About Ame... Thomas E. Woods Best Price: $2.91 Buy New $9.99 (as of 07:05 UTC - Details)

Of course, the reality is that if EITHER of these wars starts, the war will end up going nuclear and so being WW3, for the simple reason that neither Russians NOR Chinese will accept coming under the U.S. yoke; BOTH nations — Russia and China — would rather have a WW3 than become a part of such a supremely evil empire as the U.S. empire — and ALL of its supporters, or “neocons” — undoubtedly is. The U.S.-and-allied side would lose because the aggressor is CLEARLY the U.S., and because both Russia and China have the means to annihilate the aggressors and would do that even if it will mean annihilating the entire world in a nuclear war.

The least damaging outcome that still remains possible for the American people — after the latest “Tweedle-dum versus Tweedle-dee” ‘election’ — is a Second American Revolution, this one not to get rid of the British imperialists, but to get rid of the American-and-British imperialists. Though this would, tragically, be a war, what other option would be available to us in order to prevent WW3, a global war, which would be vastly worse than any such merely domestic war would be.

The insane people who rule in Washington DC are enemies of the entire world, including of the American people, and CAN be dealt with BY the American people. It would be a service not only to ourselves, but to the entire world. It would be a noble thing to do. And it’s the best of the bad (and both of the options ARE bad) options that are still available to us.

Or, to put this another way: How much longer will the U.S. Government’s war against the world continue? Will it NEVER stop, until it destroys the entire world?

This originally appeared on Eric’s Substack.