What was supposed to be a satirical headline is actually just an instance of saying the quiet part out loud.
A satirical print of a headline in ‘Foreign Policy’ magazine, written by one Raymond L. Bloodthirst Jr., recently began circulating on the Internet. He said the following: “We have problems finding Asian countries willing to fire missiles at China.” The caption then criticized China’s neighbors for not being “democratic enough” to potentially sacrifice thousands of lives in this effort.
It’s clearly fake, although some people who shared it didn’t take a very close look at it and believed it to be real, and a journalist in the “disinformationbeat, who apparently works for Voice of America, tweeted hilo about the post Well, it can be hard to really blame the users who circulated the satirical headline as it is, at least in part, based on reality.
It turns out that a recent article by the RAND Corporation, a highly influential American nonprofit think tank on global nonprofit policy, had exactly the same opinion as the satirical headline. RAND wrote on Twitter about his report: “A US strategy in the Indo-Pacific that relies on an ally agreeing to permanently host intermediate-range land-based missiles risks failing due to an inability to find a willing partner.”
The section of the report outlining the key findings goes on to list US allies in the region, such as Thailand, the Philippines, the Republic of Korea, Japan, and Australia, and discusses how each would be reluctant to accept GBIRM. of the USA, either because “historic” China’s reluctance or opposition. However, it suggests that “The most likely strategy to succeed would be to help Japan develop an arsenal of ground-based anti-ship missile capabilities.” This would be the first step in getting Japan to accept GBIRMs, he says.
It seems that the satire was not too far from reality. In fact, what he did do was criticize RAND’s position by bringing to light the unsaid, which is the mark of good satire. He invites us to ridicule this position for how manifestly absurd it is. Yes, the idea of the US putting intermediate-range missiles in the vicinity of China is ridiculous, and when you mention the logical conclusion of this policy, it seems just plain stupid.
I remember a dramatic beginning, Chekhov’s gun. The idea is that a writer should make every detail of a story or work contribute to the overall narrative. Writers must not make false promises in narrative works: details that may create misleading expectations must be left out, while those that are included must ultimately participate in the resolution of the narrative. In short, you should never bring a weapon into a story that you are not prepared to use.
Reality doesn’t always match art (although we can see that real news headlines and satire are sometimes not far apart), but one has to wonder if these GBIRMs aren’t one of Chekhov’s weapons. Why else would the US want to place such weapons near China if it is not prepared to actually use them?
That is why it is such a provocative move, because placing these missiles in China’s neighborhood necessarily implies that they could be used against China. If anything, the threat of that force alone is inherently coercive and undermines China’s sovereignty and independence. It also necessarily implies that any country that decides to harbor such weapons would be complicit in this threat, that is, it would have to be “Ready to fire missiles at China.”
Such a policy is extraordinarily destructive and undermines world peace. China is a nuclear weapons state that, although it has a very restrained nuclear policy compared to other nuclear powers, would still use them if drawn into a conflict. Meanwhile, the United States would probably go to great lengths to win a direct conflict with China. After all, the US remains the only country to ever use nuclear weapons in war, having dropped two atomic bombs on Japan at the end of World War II.
We can see that provoking a conflict between these two countries could lead to a terminal nuclear war, which is an outcome that benefits no one and only endangers our existence as an organized form of life on this planet. That is why people criticize this policy, because it is absolutely insane. If no country neighboring China ends up wanting to host US intermediate-range missiles, it would be a positive development for humanity.
Statements, views, and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.