Chronicle of a War Foretold in the Pacific

Despite the incessant noise and fury of a deliberately murderous war from Gaza and Israel to Lebanon, which can soon be expected from Yemen to Iran as well; despite the noise and fury of an interminable war between Russia and Ukraine, which becomes increasingly globalized - with intervention of 10,000 North Koreans in Russia, payment of mercenaries of all kinds by the belligerents, and a dizzing accumulation of lethal weapons on both sides of the military fronts - a comparably peaceful silence seems to reign on the side of the Pacific Ocean, so wrongly named, which is disputed in a fierce and interminable struggle between China and the USA.However, both the USA and its allies (Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines) as well as China (supported by North Korea and Russia) are already on a war footing.

The United States recently deployed a land-based SM-6 missile system, with a conventional or nuclear warhead, and a medium range (1,600 km) in the Philippines, called the Typhoon system, with reference to joint exercises [1]. The distance from the strategic China island of Hainan is 900 km, that between Hainan and Taiwan is 1,200 km.

After military manoeuvres to completely encircle Taiwan in October, Xi Jinping’s China reaffirmed that it would never «renounce the use of force» against the island’s «separatist authorities». The presence of the aircraft carrier “Liaoning” was there to confirm China’s determination.

• All these ‘war games’ by the two camps disputing the Asian Pacific zone are not simple video games intended to fill the boredom of the military waiting for the “real war”. They are preparing the confrontation between the two super-imperialisms that aspire to dominate the entire capitalist world in the short term, the centerpiece of which is now Asia and its entire maritime zone (about 55% of world trade in 2023). An Asia where China shines, having become the world’s leading commercial power in 2012 [2].

Since the 19th Century, the Asian Pacific zone has been the site of a vast colonial expansion led by the Western imperialist powers (USA, United Kingdom, France, Germany, but also Russia), and Japan, a rising Asian power, consecrated in its imperialist role since 1904-1905, with the defeat of Tsarism, during the battle of Port Arthur (December 1904-January 1905) and that of Tsushima (May 1905). Russia lost the southern half of Sakhalin island, which was occupied by Japan: the proletarian revolution began in “holy Russia” after the Red Sunday of January 22 in St. Petersburg. Sakhalin (and the Kuril Islands) have become irredeemable lands to be recovered and preserved at all costs, since the Soviet invasion of May 1945.

This domination of the Pacific was the object of a deadly rivalry between Japan and the USA in the interwar period (1920-1941). Japan had obtained the Northern Marianas, Micronesia, Palau and the Marshall Islands, German imperial colonies that fell into its hands in October 1914, from the League of Nations (led since 1919 by Great Britain and France) by “right of conquest”.

Japan’s natural imperialist successor in the zone is China, the first great Asian power throughout its history until the end of the 18th Century. The Japanese model of imperialist conquest is now the model to be followed by this so-called “communist” (read: state capitalist) China: “Beijing has studied the Second World War in detail before setting out to conquer the Pacific” [3].

China will therefore have to wage a global war over an immense area: “China expects to fight over a vast maritime zone equivalent to that of the conquests of Imperial Japan in the summer of 1942” – nowadays that means: up to the Marshall and Solomon Islands (whose currency is the dollar); Guam (an American strategic territory since 1898, also governed by the dollar); the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore (governed by the dollar); Indochina (Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos); New Guinea, Indonesia (former Dutch East Indies), and the small atoll of Wake owned by the Americans and conquered the very day after Pearl Harbor, on December 8, 1941. [4].

During the Second World War, the Battle of Guadalcanal (August 1942-February 1943) in the Solomon Islands became the symbol of the total reconquest of the Pacific by American imperialism and its allies, until the total collapse of the Japanese Empire.

HEIGHT OF IMPERIAL JAPAN’S EXPANSION IN 1942. Daniel Marston: The Pacific War Companion: from Pearl Harbor to Hiroshima (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2011), pp. 84–85.

It is not surprising that the islands of the Indo-Pacific region, even those that are sparsely populated and officially “independent” (members of the United Nations), are, like the Solomon Islands, the outposts of the “new Pacific war” between China and the USA. In 2022-2023, the government of the Solomon Islands (capital: Honiara) – which does not have an army! – allowed Chinese security forces to “maintain order” on the islands. It even went much further: a $170 million Chinese project aims to develop the international port of Honiara (Guadalcanal Island). If it were to fall completely into the Chinese orbit, it would be a real strategic platform for the Middle Kingdom off the coast of New Guinea. [5]. And this empire is playing on velvet.

For the “West” of the Pacific (New Zealand, Australia), the Solomon Islands are still considered quasi-colonized: [6] : they must obtain visas to have the right to stay in these former possessions of Her Gracious Britannic Majesty.

The Fiji Islands, a former member of the Commonwealth until 2000, seem ready to fall into the golden Chinese purse, which spends billions of yuan without counting to carry out its conquest of the Pacific. Faced with this danger, Australia, a direct agent of American imperialism, has already carried out peacekeeping missions in the Solomon Islands and provided training for police officers in Nauru, Fiji, and even in Papua New Guinea. The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Papua New Guinea, moreover, declared on August 28 to Agence France-Presse that his country wished to “collaborate with Australia”.

Suffice to say that the struggle is engaged between the two super-imperialisms to develop a solid fifth column, bought for hard cash.

On the Chinese side, which has particularly studied the lessons of the crushing of Japan by the USA, it is likely that its ruling capitalist class has studied all the economic aspects. In particular the mechanisms of military and economic domination of the Indo-Pacific by Japanese military power from 1942 to 1945.

During this period, Japan had dangled before the countries of Asia, largely colonized by the West, the formation of a “co-prosperity sphere” with the slogan: “Asia for the Asians!” (a slogan now taken up by Xi Jinping). In other words, a self-sufficient bloc of Asian countries that would no longer depend on Western countries. They would be led by China alone, to eliminate the distant “Western” countries (Australia, New Zealand, USA), South Korea and Japan as well as their allies (Philippines, Vietnam probably). This would be the application of the principle “Make China great again” opposed to that of Trump: “Make America great again”.

Initially, strong in its status as the second power tied with the USA, China is counting on a policy of small steps, by buying the ruling classes (in particular in the Pacific island groups), nibbling away and occupying fully militarized strategic islets.

But the great Chinese dragon knows that, faced with its mortal enemy the great Yankee dragon, Asian co-prosperity can only be achieved by developing an entire military arsenal. China’s goal is to be able to field forces comparable to those of America and its allies by 2040, or even 2049 (the centenary of the proclamation of the so-called “People’s China”).

Having developed an aggressive verbal policy (the so-called “wolf warrior diplomacy”), China is passes on to action: a capillary policy of taking control of the islets and atolls in the South China Sea occupied by Vietnam (also designated “communist”); the Philippines and Malaysia. The Middle Kingdom prides itself on being the leading army in Asia, ahead of India, Russia and Japan. It has the largest arsenal of conventional ballistic or cruise missiles in the world (more than 2,000, some of which are intermediate-range). It believes it will soon be able to have six aircraft carriers. The shipyards are working at full capacity to launch military ships, but also coast guards and militarized fishing boats, essential in its strategy of occupying the islets and atolls. Faced with this, the USA will remain first in terms of aircraft carriers (eleven) for a very long time. They have 13,000 combat aircraft, including F-35 Lightnings and F-22 Raptors, which are among the most powerful combat aircraft in the world. Finally, they have – since the proclamation of China as a “systemic enemy” by both Democrats and Republicans – the pharaonic project of building a number of warships allowing them to regain their status as the largest fleet in the world [7].

For the moment, the war remains more ideological than bloody (« it has to bleed » sang Boris Vian [8]). The ideological war brings together all the old clichés distilled by the ruling classes on both sides of the imperialist fronts: Peace, Progress, Construction of the Community of the Future, Democratic Values, Freedoms… The old clichés have difficulty hiding the fact that these are the sole interests of the capitalists (both private and state).

The “peaceful and progressive”, “unsuspected purity” of capitalist China, in the absence of being “democratic” (Xinjiang?, Tibet? Inner Mongolia?…), is constantly reaffirmed by its sluggish representatives, as in September 2024: “deploy concerted efforts to meet the various global challenges, jointly promote peace, development and progress in the world, and advance the construction of a community with a shared future for humanity.” [9].

As for the Western bloc, a stakeholder in this pending war in the Indo-Pacific, it currently finds equally weak representatives in certified geopolitical “researchers” who are blowing small breezes of “peaceful” and “democratic” hope. For example, we can read about the Chinese dragon, that it is only a quasi-vegetarian “paper tiger”, still without experience: “This inexperience of war is therefore a factor of peace or at least imposes certain limits on any future armed engagement of the People’s Liberation Army” [10].

Concerning the “democratic purity” of the West (which like Caesar’s wife remains beyond suspicion) it is affirmed by the same certified researcher with a honeyed, simultaneously warlike and good-natured, ‘personality imagination’ that is only concerned with the capitalist interests of America and its allies: “… realism and firmness of Europeans towards the People’s Republic of China are the best strategy to defend our (sic) interests and our values (re-sic), to contribute to reducing the risks of armed confrontation between this new great power and the United States or its neighbors”.

The ultimate fireworks in this personality imagination of the democratic religion: “and in order to convince it to gradually accept international standards and perhaps one day to convert to democracy.” [11].

There is no doubt that such speeches in pure evangelical style will not stop the march towards war in the Indo-Pacific. The two warring camps present could only respond with an inextinguishable Homeric laughter…

The great forgotten in all these war games remains the proletariat. It is up to them to demonstrate, at the end of decisive and long battles, that the comedy has lasted long enough and that they are now moving on to serious matters: not lamentations about peace and the stupor created by the fear of the reality of war, but a resolute struggle against it, by overthrowing the deadly system engendered by the very existence of capitalism (both private and state).

Pantopolis, 5 novembre 2024. Original article in French.