Pompeo Argues for the U.S. To End Engagement with China

July 23, 2020 (EIRNS)—Secretary of State Mike Pompeo conducted the tail-end of the Four Musketeers, who each presented their China containment speeches over the last few weeks—the others he named were Robert O’Brien , William Barr, and Chris Wray. Pompeo indicated (and it should come as no surprise) that he was the choreographer of this particular vaudeville show, and no doubt this was due to his unique capabilities at West Point where he was the first in his class in “engineering management.” The speech itself was the ultimate “chamber of horrors” description of a world which accepts the P.R.C. Pompeo chose the Richard Nixon Library at Yorba Linda perhaps to highlight that his new China policy was the end of the engagement policy with the People’s Republic of China that began with Nixon’s visit in 1972.

And on that end he was most explicit. “The old paradigm of blind engagement with China simply won’t [work].... We must not continue it and we must not return to it.” He later claimed: “The truth is that our policies—and those of other free nations—resurrected China’s failing economy, only to see Beijing bite the international hands that were feeding it.” And then quoted from Barr’s speech that “ ‘The ultimate ambition of China’s rulers isn’t to trade with the United States. It is to raid the United States.’ ” He droned on and on in the same vein. We were “hoodwinked by Beijing’s talk of a ‘peaceful rise.’ ” And that the CCP runs a Marxist-Leninist regime and “General Secretary Xi Jinping is a true believer in a bankrupt totalitarian ideology.” “When it comes to the CCP, I say we must distrust and verify.” “People’s Liberation Army is not a normal army.... Its purpose is to uphold ... the Chinese Communist Party elites and expand a Chinese empire, not to protect the Chinese people.” .”..Communists almost always lie.”

He also urged other nations to come on board his China-bashing bandwagon, calling for a “new alliance of democracies” but expressed some disappointment that not even NATO was terribly interested. “And if we don’t act now, ultimately ... our children’s children may be at the mercy of the Chinese Communist Party,” he lamented. He had some difficulty during the Q&A with the moderator. When asked about the relationship between China and Russia, he just said we have to talk to Russia about arms control, but punted on the implications of the question, i.e., China is not alone. When asked about the importance of personal relationships, like the one between Trump and Xi earlier, he said these are important, but they must produce concrete results. And then the question of how he could attack the CCP and not think he was attacking the Chinese people, he went on about how all individuals are created by God and individuals in China should also have a say in their future. Attending the event were also prominent Chinese dissidents Wang Dan and Wei Jinsheng, so that there were at least two Chinese who paid attention.

After the speech, Pompeo gave an interview to Fox News, in which he repeated the lie, fully disproven, that China “closed down Wuhan to the rest of China but didn’t close down travel to the rest of the world.”