Pompeo and O’Brien Reject ‘Turning Other Cheek’ and Virtually Declare War on China

Oct. 10, 2020 (EIRNS)—U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien appear to be trying to start a war against China involving not just the U.S. but other countries as well. Pompeo has given a flood of radio interviews since returning from Tokyo after the Quad meeting with the foreign ministers from Japan, India and Australia on Oct. 6, during which he hyped up the alleged threat of China to the participants, among other things. “The Indians are seeing 60,000 Chinese soldiers on their northern border,” Pompeo claimed in an interview with Fox’s Guy Benson Show yesterday. “I was with my foreign minister counterparts from India, Australia, and Japan ... four powerful economies, four nations, each of whom has real risk associated with the threats imposed—attempting to be imposed by the Chinese Communist Party. And they see it in their home countries too,” he said. In fact, neither Japan, nor Australia, nor India mentioned China in their readouts on the meeting.

Pompeo described his meeting with Indian External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar as “productive.” “They see the people of their (Quad) nations understanding that we all slept on this for too long. For decades, the West allowed the Chinese Communist Party to walk all over us. The previous administration bent a knee, too often allowed China to steal our intellectual properties and the millions of jobs that came along with it. They see that in their country too,” he told Benson.

In an Oct. 9 interview on the Larry O’Connor Show, Pompeo claimed that in each of the other countries of the Quad, people now see the Chinese Communist Party as the threat that he claims it is.

“The world has awakened. The tide’s begun to turn. And the United States under President Trump’s leadership has now built out a coalition that will push back against the threat and maintain good order, the rule of law, and the basic civic decency that comes from democracies controlling the world and not authoritarian regimes,”

he declared.

In his third interview, also Oct. 9 on Fox News’

“The Daily Briefing,” Pompeo said that the U.S. under the Trump Administration has begun to build out the edifice of the structure and the allies and the coalition to push back against China. “We aim to protect the American people from the threat that the Chinese Communist Party poses,”

he said.

O’Brien, using the same kind of language in a speech in Utah earlier this week, claimed that China has attempted to “seize” control of the Line of Actual Control (LAC) that separates China and India by force as part of its territorial aggression, reported Press Trust of India today.

O’Brien also fired off a vicious attack on the Belt and Road Initiative. “Beijing’s signature international development program, One Belt One Road (OBOR), involves impoverished companies taking on opaque and unsustainable Chinese loans to pay Chinese firms employing Chinese laborers to build their infrastructure,” he proclaimed. Many of these projects are unnecessary, shoddily built and are “white elephants,” he claimed further. “And now these countries’ dependence on the Chinese debt leaves their sovereignty eroded and with no choice but to hue to the party’s line on UN votes or any other issue that the Chinese Communist Party considers a red line.”

But here’s the kicker: “The time has come to accept that dialogue and agreements will not persuade or compel the People’s Republic of China to change. There’s nothing to be gained from looking the other way or turning the other cheek. We’ve been doing that for too long,” he said. To Hell with the Sermon on the Mount, he proclaimed in Satanic tones.

The U.S. has responded in two ways to China’s alleged territorial and economic aggression, O’Brien went on. First, improve the resiliency of U.S. institutions, alliances and partnerships to prevail against the challenges that China presents; and the second is to impose tangible cost in order to compel Beijing to cease or reduce actions harmful to America’s vital national interest and those of its allied and partner nations.

“President Trump has taken decisive action to meet these objectives. He is working to prevent companies that answer to the CCP’s intelligence and security apparatus,” O’Brien said. He claimed that Chinese telecommunications giants Huawei and ZTE have been prevented from accessing Americans’ personal and private data and national secrets.