America’s top diplomat on Friday said the US would take action if China declined to intervene in the military deployment of North Korea, a hermit state and Beijing ally the US has long accused of playing a destabilising role in East Asia.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he has told his Chinese counterparts that Washington wants Beijing’s help in handling the North Korean “nuclear programme” and denuclearising the Korean peninsula. He said the US would bolster its defence alliances with Japan and South Korea if China refrained from intervening.
Directing his remarks at China during a fireside chat at the Aspen Security Forum in the US state of Colorado, Blinken said: “We believe that you have unique influence and we hope that you’ll use it to get better cooperation from North Korea.
“But if you can’t or if you won’t, then we’re going to have to continue to take steps that aren’t directed at China but that China probably won’t like because it goes to strengthening and shoring up not only our own defences but also those of South Korea and Japan and a deepening of the work that all three of us are doing together.”
Beijing has criticised Washington’s defence alliances in East Asia, viewing them as efforts to monitor or contain China’s military. Seoul and Tokyo resent Pyongyang’s military tests, which sometimes take place near their airspace.
North Korea has conducted “one missile launch after another”, Blinken said. On July 12, Pyongyang carried out a second flight test of its Hwasong-18 intercontinental ballistic missile.
China, North Korea’s Communist neighbour, has offered it fuel and food aid in the past and brokered international dialogue on the country’s militarisation.
Blinken’s comments followed the disappearance on Tuesday of Private Travis King, an American soldier who ran into North Korea during a civilian tour near the border with South Korea.
The secretary of state said he had no updates on King’s whereabouts but that “there are certainly concerns” he might be subjected to torture in North Korea.
The US is now working to anchor a declining Sino-American relationship, Blinken said on Friday. He, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and President Joe Biden’s special climate envoy John Kerry have all visited China within the past two months.
“It was important for us to put some stability back into this relationship, to put a floor under it, to make sure that the competition we’re clearly in does not veer into conflict, and that starts with engagement,” the diplomat said.
Blinken said China could help stem production of the illegal drug fentanyl that reaches the US through Mexico, control global climate change, and allow for the release of American detainees.
“If we weren’t engaged, we would be rightfully tagged with being irresponsible,” he said.
But challenges persist, and Blinken said on Friday the US had started a formal investigation into reports of Chinese hacking into US government emails.
Wasn't this meeting supposed to be about calming tensions between China and the United States (after months of the Biden administration acting plainly hostile and spreading laughable stories of Chinese spy weather balloons - and then quietly backtracking afterwards) ???
They go to a meeting to calm tensions and then America's top diplomat gives an ultimatum to his Chinese counterpart saying that unless China intervenes against its oldest ally, the United States will dump even more arms into the hands of its vassals next door?
Smooth diplomacy there america. No wonder everything is going to ratshit.
Tony Blinken is emblematic of the pitiful condition of the State Department today. A large but ineffective diplomatic bureaucracy that has long since stopped believing in the virtues of diplomacy. One that accepts (if not embraces) its inferiority and gladly submits to to the all-powerful Pentagon. And an institution that views granting concessions to those labelled its enemies, or even empathising with them, to be unthinkable.
Eric Hobsbawm described Europe as stumbling into the First World War for the simple reason that the mechanics of great power competition left none able to contemplate backing down from an escalating confrontation (even when it sparked from a relatively banal royal assassination) even when doing so was necessary to prevent an apocalypse. It is people like Blinken who would have us stumble into a nuclear apocalypse.
NK is sovereign and holds no Chinese military bases within it. SK is not sovereign, holds massive US military bases and does whatever the US wants, and when it does not do what the US wants it gets overthrown and they stick a new number on the end, which is why they're up to their Sixth Republic in just the last 50 years. The south has wanted to make peace with the north and unite for a long long time, as do the people, but every time there are talks about this the US demands a seat at the table and scuppers those talks. This is why I call one a vassal and not the other. China never demands seats at other people's tables when it's an issue that has absolutely nothing to do with them.
If you don't consider SK a vassal what's your take on the EU considering itself a vassal of america? A far larger group of countries with significantly more power considers itself to have been vassalised. I can't agree with the EU's take that it has been vassalised and then look at SK and see a country that is far more subservient to US interests as anything other than a vassal.
Don't be a lampshade mate. I live in Britain and moderate /r/greenandpleasant the largest British leftist community.
The EU's own words regarding their own vassalisation. I'm sorry mate but SK is far more vassalised so if the EU thinks they've already become vassalised and have to fight to reduce and escape it then yes I absolutely see SK as a vassal state.
Strange, the constant sabre rattling seems a bit odd for a country that wants to unite with its neighbour. I 'm guessing the constant missile launches towards Japan are a form of a friendly greeting.
North Korea is a paranoid, stalinist dictatorship held by the Kim family. Peace talks are a smoke screen to get international aid flowing into its borders, and once Kims get what they want, they walk away and start posturing. There can be no unification with the Kims in charge and thats why they have consistently failed.
As for the "military base" comment, China needs no military bases in NK because NK is one giant military base. Everything in that open prison of a country is bound to its military. Kims are already working with China as a buffer state, and opening military bases would be superflous.
The article linked is by two employees of a single EU institution, where the word "vassalization" is used for dramatic effect, and is certainly no official EU policy. If they wrote "EUs over reliance on US military power has made the EU a little bitch", would you say "EU admits to being a little bitch"?
Thirdly, you don't have to be on the FSBs payroll to be their asset. The Soviet Union was notorious for targeting western intellectuals with propaganda to get them to regurgitate it, then mockingly called them "useful idiots" behind their back. Modern day Russia has continued this trend, and I tend to regard anyone who invokes the spectre of nuclear annihilation a sucessfully demoralizred FSB asset. You are repeating talking points made in propaganda labs.
None of this changes the fact that it is accurate that it is China's oldest ally or the fact that it is sovereign and makes its own decisions completely independent of China without their control or influence. Yes it's hugely militarised, this only adds to the argument that it is NOT vassalised because that militarisation allows it to be completely and totally secure. It is not reliant on China for its security, SK is completely reliant on the US. - as the EU put it "this is the essence of vassalisation".
Mate. Let me give you a list of what funds this institute. I also STRONGLY urge you to learn more about it. It's one of the core policy tanks of europe. I'll put this in page breaks since it'll be long.
Funded by:
Agence Française de Développement,
Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ),
Direction générale des relations internationales et de la stratégie (DGRIS),
Embassy of Lithuania in France,
Embassy of Poland in France,
Embassy of Romania in France,
Embassy of the Netherlands in Italy,
European External Action Service (EEAS),
European Investment Bank,
European Parliament,
JETRO,
Ministry of Defense Germany,
Ministry of Economy of France,
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Belgium,
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ireland,
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark,
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Finland,
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of France,
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Germany,
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Italy,
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan,
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Norway,
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Spain,
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Sweden,
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic,
Secrétariat Général de la Défense et de la Sécurité Nationale (SGDSN),
Swedish International Development Agency
Yeah yeah, this is just backtracking. If it doesn't get removed I'll be surprised. That or the "piss off". This isn't reddit. Read the rules.
I hope you at least understand my position is logical and rational now. You can't admit the EU has a vassalisation problem and then not look at several of the US's """allies""" and not see them as vassalised. The logic needs to be applied fairly to all things. In this case I think you're just not wanting to admit that the US is an empire that has vassal states beneath it. Those 1000 foreign military bases are all just for funsies obviously. China has none btw. Russia has like, 20 I think? I don't check too often. The US dwarves the entire rest of the world combined because this network of bases actively functions as a tool of the vassalisation it performs.
We're arguing semantics now, and a propaganda term like "vassalization" is not conductive to a healthy debate. Have a nice day.
The entire conversation is about semantics. "Why are you calling NK an ally vs SK a vassal."
You're just running away at this point because you don't have a response to the fundamental importance of this paper on vassalisation by the EU or the many EU officials that have publicly come out about the EU's vassalisation. You are well aware that if you acknowledge this then you must also acknowledge that it logically applies to call weaker states in far worse off situations vassals as well.
The issue here is not that my logic is faulty. It is that you are dogmatic and don't want to acknowledge that I have a pretty fair position here. Thus running away is the easiest option.
The link you posted is not an academic paper, it is a blog post by a political think tank. And the conclusions you claim it makes do not match with its content.
What you have presented isn't logic, it's emotionally charged propaganda.
And that's before we touch on the fact that you think South Korea isn't sovereign merely because it hosts US military bases.
I've presented you with a paper funded by every single major power of the EU along with several outside it, which has been making waves in every major party I've spoken to members of in Europe. You can make up cope about it all you want but this is the political reality in europe right now, a clear understanding that the war has vassalised us. I think the most obvious indication of vassalisation personally is the US blowing up Germany's fucking pipeline and Germany just going "ok then" submissively in response but hey that's just me.
The situation is fucked. We're ripping gallium and germanium out of fucking washing machines to maintain some of our manufacturing industries because everything is going so heavily to shit. To call it a massive deindustrialisation is an understatement.
But yeah whatever what do I know about europe actually living here and being involved in EU politics ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Not merely. Pretty sure I mentioned how it's subservient to US interests in negotiations. Or are you gonna tell me the US demanding a seat at the table and SK being unable to tell them to mind their own business is benevolent? Lmao.
For saying what? That the EU thinks of itself as a vassal of the US and therefore the SK which is quite clearly more manipulated and in a more precarious position with regards to sovereignty should be seen as a vassal too?
I'm pretty sure I haven't said anything else. Which part of that is wrong?
The EU does not consider itself a vassal, a politically biased think tank presumed that it will act like one in a blog post online. The TL;DR of which is:
Vassalisation - the process of becomming a vassal.
So it isn't even the ECFR considering the EU a vassal, just the author's interpretation that it might lead towards the EU becomming a vassal. It isn't one yet, they are warning that it might become one.
Also, in terms of real world vassal states and their comparison to South Korea and the EU, your statements are clearly hyperbolic and exaggerated. You are attempting to use emotionally charged language to argue, rather than actual insight pointing towards objective truth.
Mate can you reply to me once please and not multiple times? I'm not responding to multiple comments with redundant shit like a stuck record, put it all in one place, if you want respectful responses to continue then have some respect and don't do this multiple reply shit. It's a massive waste of time.
This was my first reply, and the one with the most content in it. You replied to them newest first. The second was a criticism of your argument that you were dogmatic, when I don't think you are. The third was on a completely different point that we agreed on. I made each of these as I went down the entire comment thread, not intentionally only replying to you, but just engaging with the conversation.
In any case, I've taken in your points and will continue to read through the post you've linked later. I still don't agree with your take on it (the EU is not a vassal, the article does not claim that but rather it warns of that happening), however I appreciate the arguments you've made.