This piece was reprinted by OpEd News with permission or license. It may not be reproduced in any form without permission or license from the source.
Larry Wilkerson
Trump thinks he's going to run again, of course. I got news for him, I don't think the country is going to want to touch him with a ten-foot pole.
Paul Jay
I suspect that's true.
Well, in the introduction, I talked about going back to the geopolitical picture that the neocons in both parties, and they certainly exist in both parties, are licking their lips at the possibility of heating up the Cold War with Russia. Biden's already had quite inflammatory rhetoric when it comes to China. In the Democratic Party, for sure, Chuck Schumer's and others, and certainly the Republican Party want to find ways to block the renewal of the deal with Iran.
What do you make of where we're headed in terms of this geopolitical rivalry, because it looks like it's going to get more dangerous with Biden and who he's picked around him?
Larry Wilkerson
I don't disagree with your assessment. My hope is that Biden's 29 years or so in the Senate and the man that I saw from time to time as [Colin] Powell would deal with him on serious issues, the man who had his head in the right place most of the time on those serious issues, and his experience will lead him to do three things, internationally, immediately. One is, and we'll take the lesser one first and the more serious one last, to do what he said he was going to do during the campaign, and that is without any preliminary conditions to speak of, renew the JCPA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) with Iran. Now, Pompeo andothers are doing everything they can possibly do, Netanyahu, Bin Salman, and others to preclude that. But if Biden is smart and moves swiftly, I think he can do it. That's the number one thing he has to do that will calm the Levant to a certain extent. The second thing he needs to do is to go after a February renewal for at least a time period specified in the treaty, which I think is another year, maybe longer than that, a new start. We have to do that. And in doing that, we also need to-and Putin has said publicly that he's receptive to this. We need to start an entirely new dialogue and that dialogue needs to eventually invite in China, of course, most prominently, and eventually North Korea, Israel, and everyone else who possesses these weapons over the decade or so that follows. And a new and very successful arms control regime must be set up. The third thing he needs to do is clarify this strategic clarity business that Richard Haass, in the utterly stupidest moment of his life, has said needs to be with China. We do not need clarity now with regard to Taiwan, when if we had to go to war over Taiwan, we would lose and it would be catastrophic because it would go nuclear. That is not a time to have strategic clarity. That is a time to understand what Charles W. Freeman said the other night on a webinar, a man who probably knows China better than anyone in this country. He said, "We need to agree to disagree exactly as we have for the last 45- 50 years, and China needs to be allowed to work it out with Taipei and Taipei, with China, and there needs to be no confrontation whatsoever because Taipei and Taiwan and 23 million people will lose catastrophically rather than slowly and carefully and maybe with a lot of the deal written by themselves,". So these are the three things Biden has to get his hands on internationally at the same time, and you know this as well as I do. He's going to be enveloped as he's trying to do these necessary international things, he's going to be enveloped with domestic issues, not least of which is COVID-19, the economy, people out of work, people starving. This stimulus bill is a joke. It buys more F-35's, it gives money to defense contractors to, "help their COVID-19 affected entities,". Oh, please, Lockheed Martin,
run out and protect your entities. This is crazy. Pelosi was right in the sense that it needs to be two trillion. And it needs to be rewritten so that it actually helps people and helps the states and so forth. These are the problems Joe Biden is going to wrestle with. And I'm sad to say, I think the domestic ones may eat his lunch.
Paul Jay
Just to go back to Taiwan, just for people that don't follow this story closely. If I understand correctly, the current position of the United States is a bit ambiguous. If there actually was a military confrontation or Chinese incursion into Taiwan, it's ambiguous what the American response would be. And there's a lot of rhetoric about supporting Taiwan, but there's no definitive commitment to it, right?
Larry Wilkerson
Actually, Pompeo tried to take that away. Several days after the November election, Pompeo made a public remark that Taiwan is not a part of China. That's a refutation of everything Nixon, Zhou Enlai, and Mao Zedong, Ambassador Freeman, who is their translator, Kissinger, everything that they did that Jimmy Carter later on codified in a communique, it's a refutation of the whole thing, "Taiwan is not a part of China."
Paul Jay
Yeah, it's past strategic clarity. But Haass, if I understand, the head of the Council on Foreign Relations and who was an adviser to Bush, he's influential in the Democratic Party, so it's not like he's just a "nutter" out there. But the thing that's so stupid about that is, it's almost like Khrushchev sending missiles to Cuba, and this is why China and Albania criticize Khrushchev. They said, "Well, you had to know the Americans were going to call you on that and you would have to back down. There's no way the United States is going to go to nuclear war over Taiwan, which is undoubtedly where it would head.
Larry Wilkerson
Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
