CFR Writes, ‘The Myth of Neutrality: Countries Will Have To Choose Between America and China’

July 16, 2023, 2022 (EIRNS)—Foreign Affairs, the journal of the Council on Foreign Affairs (CFR), the primary British control-mechanism among the elite in the U.S., called on Richard Fontaine, CEO of the neo-con outpost of the Center for a New American Security, and a former advisor to Sen. John McCain, to make clear that the U.S. military-industrial dictatorship in Washington will not allow any nation to declare itself neutral or non-aligned in the intended fascist regime of the “rules-based order.”

Under the above title on July 12, the article notes that “As the U.S.-Chinese rivalry intensifies, other countries increasingly confront the dilemma of siding with either Washington or Beijing. This is not a choice that most countries wish to make.” While the official policy of the U.S. government, under both parties, claims that the U.S. is not demanding such a taking of sides, Fontaine asserts that

“it may not be possible much longer for countries to simply sit on the fence. When it comes to a host of policy areas, including technology, defense, diplomacy, and trade, Washington and Beijing are, indeed, forcing others to take sides. Countries will inevitably be caught up in superpower rivalry, and they will be required to step across the line, one way or another. The U.S.-Chinese competition is an inescapable feature of today’s world, and Washington should stop pretending otherwise. Instead, it must work to make the right choices as attractive as possible.”

It is of course a typical lie of the emerging fascist order in the West that China (and Russia) are the ones demanding countries “take sides.” Fontaine at least acknowledges that this process went into high gear with Trump’s war on Huawei, which not only sanctioned Huawei but also threatened all other countries with punishment if they maintained relations with the Chinese company, and the Biden administration has continued and increased such coercive policies with the “Chip Wars.” When the U.A.E. rejected the Biden Administration to stop China from building a port in their country, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair Bob Menendez said, “Our friends in the Gulf have to decide, particularly on the security questions, who they want to turn to. If it’s China, then I think that’s a huge problem.”

One must recall that then-Secretary of State John Foster Dulles famously insisted that the idea of neutrality “has increasingly become an obsolete conception, and except under very exceptional circumstances, it is an immoral and shortsighted conception.” It was such thinking that got the U.S. into the disasters in Asia, in supporting the genocidal overthrow of Sukarno in Indonesia and the Vietnam War in the 1960s.

Fontaine wants the U.S. to fully embrace such anti-human, Hobbesian thinking:

“Again and again, governments have been forced to make choices that involved real costs and which they would have preferred, had they had the option, to avoid. The number of unavoidable dilemmas will only rise as the U.S.-Chinese rivalry intensifies.... The Biden administration has signaled its desire to outstrip China in the development and production of semiconductors, quantum computing, artificial intelligence, biotechnology, biomanufacturing, and clean energy technologies. To do so, Washington will need to build domestic capacity in each area and limit China’s ability to race ahead. Countries with niche capabilities will be caught between Beijing, which wants these technologies, and Washington, which wants to minimize Chinese access to them.”

The conclusion is blunt fascism: “Countries cannot have their cake and eat it, too. The time for choosing has arrived. Countries will have to decide whether to side, or appear to side, with Washington or Beijing. The United States, rather than reassuring capitals that no such choice is in the offing, should accept this reality and help foreign capitals make the right decisions.”