Pompeo Welcomes Pandemic as ‘Opportunity’ for Geopolitics

May 17, 2020 (EIRNS)—Does this “challenging time ... present geopolitical opportunities” as well as risks? the Washington Examiner asked Mike Pompeo in an interview published today.

“The opportunities are enormous,” Pompeo cheerfully replied. He described his frenetic phone calls with his counterparts in India, South Korea, Brazil, Australia, “a handful of European countries” to line them up behind the British Empire’s operation to crush “a rising Beijing.” Getting Israel to recognize the risks of the Chinese getting their hands on Israeli technology was a leading issue on his six-hour trip to Jerusalem last week, he reported.

Countries are beginning to finally “recognize, for decades we ignored the threat from the Chinese Communist Party.” Out of the pandemic, we must forge “a significant alliance [of nations] that understands that democracies will lead this world back from the coronavirus,” not “autocracies,” he pronounced. Then, when the pandemic is resolved, “the world has to join together to impose costs on China,” Pompeo added. Running with the plans of British intelligence’s Henry Jackson Society, Pompeo said that the world must demand “compensation” from China not only for those who became ill or died, but for also for economic damage from the pandemic, and he reported that he has presented a number of ideas to President Donald Trump “about how to begin to think about that.”

In a second interview published today, with Breitbart News Network’s Matthew Boyle, the Secretary of State specified that this entails crushing the Belt and Road Initiative. Boyle pitched him the softball he was looking for:

“The pandemic has definitely thrust ... into the spotlight, this whole threat of a rising Beijing,” Boyle said.

“But I know this is an issue you’ve been working on for a long time, combatting the Belt and Road Initiative. Can you kind of explain that? ... Because I think their efforts to try to, whether it be control the Eurasian land mass, whether it be building control of shipping lanes, and so on and so forth all around the world, their geopolitical quest for control and dominance is serious, and I know it’s something that you’re fighting on a regular basis. So, can you tell us more broadly about that?”

“Matt, you’ve captured it very, very well,” Pompeo replied.

“The Chinese Communist Party working inside of their own country is one thing. Their efforts to create control and influence around the world are quite another and we have a responsibility to fix that.... Your point about China’s efforts to use their wealth, state-owned enterprises, and their authoritarian regime in Africa, in the Arctic, in the straits, the sea lanes all around the world, present real risk to the United States of America and to free nations.”