By Joseph Thomas
Triumphalism followed the election of US President Donald Trump, particularly among those opposed to US foreign policy under US President Barack Obama. In particular, hope was rekindled that America would withdraw from the many, provocative conflicts it was cultivating, ranging from the Middle East to East Asia.
However, triumphalism and hope are now dashed, as the new US administration moves clearly and in earnest to not only continue on with these confrontations, but expand them.
For students of history, particularly those following events in Asia Pacific, the prospect of the US moving its confrontation with China forward for control over the region is hardly a surprise.
The United States had occupied the Philippines, declaring it a US territory from 1898-1946. It had also been involved in the military occupation and several armed clashes in China with Chinese forces, including during the Second Opium War and the Boxer Rebellion. Such conflicts saw Chinese fighters attempt to remove by force foreign influence, including supposedly Christian missionaries used to impose US and European sociopolitical control over China.
During this period of overt American colonisation throughout Asia Pacific, the annexation of Taiwan was also considered, as an American analogue of Britain\u2019s annexation of Hong Kong.
In Thomas Cox\u2019 1973 book, Harbingers of Change: American Merchants and the Formosa [Taiwan] Annexation Scheme , published by the University of California Press, Cox wrote:
It should be noted that Parker\u2019s advocacy of the US annexation of Taiwan was backed not by political ideology, though it was certainly presented as such publicly, but by US business interests at the time, particularly those of the Nye Brothers, merchants involved heavily in US-Chinese trade, including the movement of opium across the region.
Regional dynamics would change just before, during, and immediately after World War 2, with a resurgence of localised power and independence movements ousting Western colonial powers. This included the ousting of British and French holdings across the region such as in Myanmar, Malaysia, Indonesia and across Indochina which included Laos, Cambodia and of course Vietnam.
The ousting by force of French administrators from Vietnam brought the United States back into the region more directly and on an unprecedented scale.
And while the United States would claim its reasons for intervening in Southeast Asia were predicated on preventing a \u201cdomino effect\u201d of spreading communism, leaked documents known as the \u201cPentagon Papers\u201d made it abundantly clear that America was simply continuing its hegemonic pursuits vis-a-vis China in an effort to encircle, contain and eventually subdue a rising Beijing.
The US State Department\u2019s own Office of the Historian, in a section titled, \u201c 189. Draft Memorandum From Secretary of Defense McNamara to President Johnson ,\u201d dated 1965, states explicitly:
The papers openly advocate US global hegemony, stating:
And again, just like during deliberations over the possible annexation of Taiwan during the 19th century, US ambitions in Asia Pacific may be rhetorically presented as pursuit of a particular ideology, but are in reality underpinned by economic interests which seek to move into and subsequently dominate markets globally, displacing anything and everything preexisting, through coercive diplomacy, or through indirect or direct military force.
Fast-forward to the 21st century. During the administration of former US President Barack Obama, the US \u201cpivoted\u201d toward Asia in an attempt to reassert itself in a region quickly escaping out from under what remained of over a century of US-European hegemony.
The pivot failed, with the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) being categorically resisted and rejected across Asia, and feigned US rapprochement with several of China\u2019s neighbours turned into confrontations across Southeast Asia as Washington attempted to replace governments friendly with Beijing with those that would toe an anti-Beijing line.
In an attempt to conceal what is a decades-long agenda, and the continuation of Obama\u2019s \u201cpivot,\u201d US President Donald Trump\u2019s counsellor Steven Bannon, as revealed by a Guardian article titled, \u201c Steve Bannon: \u2018We\u2019re going to war in the South China Sea \u2026 no doubt\u2019 ,\u201d would claim that China, along with \u201cIslam,\u201d presented a menace to the \u201cJudeo-Christian\u201d West.
This ideological rhetoric is aimed at distracting the public, convincing them that US policy toward China is now determined by Trump\u2019s ideological, xenophobic tendencies, rather than merely the latest logical iteration of Obama\u2019s \u201cpivot,\u201d and the Vietnam-era\u2019s full-scale military containment strategy.
Also noteworthy in Bannon\u2019s incomplete thought is his omission of so-called Christian missionaries in China and the role they played in the attempted invasion, occupation and subjugation of China during the 19th century by US-European interests.
The Guardian would report:
And while the Guardian attempts to pose as sounding the alarm over the Trump administration\u2019s seemingly xenophobic and confrontational stance, its own omission of America\u2019s longstanding attempts to encircle, contain and subjugate China regardless of who occupies the White House or what rhetoric accompanies each iteration of US policy toward China, serves as complicity.
For policymakers across Asia, understanding history and the special interests that have and still do drive American foreign policy is key to seeing through inflammatory rhetoric, and essential in analysing and preparing solutions for continued attempts by Washington to reassert itself in a region an ocean away from its own shores, in a modern-day continuation of Western colonialism the nations of Asia Pacific have fought hard to escape and rise above over the past generation.
Joseph Thomas is chief editor of Thailand-based geopolitical journal,\u00a0 The New Atlas \u00a0and contributor to the online magazine \u201c New Eastern Outlook \u201d, where this article first appeared .
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