Cold War mentality motivates moving of US military needle: China Daily editorial

The US military announced on Monday that it is planning to reinforce deployments and bases directed at China and Russia as a result of the "global posture review" commissioned early this year by the Joe Biden administration.

Details of the review remain classified, supposedly so as to not give away secrets or reveal confidential plans. But essentially the US military is "moving the needle a bit" to the Indo-Pacific, Mara Karlin, a top Pentagon policy official said.

Force adjustments in the Asia-Pacific are reportedly in the works but require further consultation with foreign governments, presumably to reach agreements on where they are to be stationed.

The review "directs additional cooperation with allies and partners across the region to advance initiatives that contribute to regional stability and deter potential military aggression from China and threats from North Korea," Karlin told reporters.

Given that the US has been making no secret about that, and it is not feasible to develop a major strategic-level change of posture in the first year of a new administration, the review seems intended to be another means to rally the US allies for another Cold War.

The US administration, legislature, including individual lawmakers, and think tanks have never stopped milling various kinds of reports and reviews on the threats the US faces in trade, security, technology, cyberspace and space.

None of them is based on facts. Instead, conjecture and speculation provide the excuse for military spending and increased subsidies to big corporations, as well as justifying the US' long-arm distorting of global supply chains.

It is no exception this time, as what has been revealed about the review indicates that having identified its major rivals, Washington is forcing the rest of the world, including its allies, to draw a demarcation line with them or at least show their neutrality.

Although Washington has reiterated to Beijing and Moscow that it does not seek to start a new Cold War, what it is doing belies those assurances.

The review is the first of several assessments being made by the administration of the US' defense priorities and policies. They include a reassessment of nuclear forces, as well as the policies associated with their potential use, and a revised National Defense Strategy reinforcing the importance of the US alliance network.

Yet, be it in Europe where the Biden administration is still not sure whether the Europeans have bought his declaration that "America is back", or in Southeast Asia and Africa, where it is trying to reassure countries that they have not been forgotten, the US is struggling to sell the attractions of a new Cold War.

Countries are well aware of what the US is up to. That it hypes up threats just to maintain its hegemony, as most of the countries it identifies as threats to the rules-based order are simply those that follow an independent line rather than falling in behind it.

Instead of remedying the damage the Donald Trump administration did to the US' relations with other countries, the review has simply reminded them that whatever the US does, it is always self-serving and damns the consequences to others.