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.
!noncredibledefense creaming themselves at this headline.
can someone explain that community to me? Ive been there and I dont quite get the title- is it military memes? Is that it? halp im old
It’s a community for defense-themed shitposting.
The military industrial complex is good and we support NATO.
And we’re sick of pretending it’s not 💪
Yes, this headline is biased and it is from :
“South China morning Post” which isparta voice of the Chinese government.thats actually not true legally at least. that is a Hong Kong independedt newspaper
Used to be independent, but it’s owned by Alibaba now, so don’t expect anything more than a pretense of independence anymore.
Hi there! Looks like you linked to a Lemmy community using a URL instead of its name, which doesn’t work well for people on different instances. Try fixing it like this: !noncredibledefense@sh.itjust.works
Beijing has criticised Washington’s defence alliances in East Asia, viewing them as efforts to monitor or contain China’s military.
That’s a criticism?
Oh god I hope not. I am sick of war. But the MIC needs its fucking wars so it can be profitable.
Really? US is essentially asking China to curb NK nuclear threats (which they essentially helped them to achieve that capability) or US will be forced to boost SK and Japan defenses.
The US will do that anyways. The MIC money printer must always brrrrrrrrr.
In this case US is saying: “Hey China, do this, or we will be forced to sell more equipment for our allies for their defenses from NK and you.”
“Forced to”? Lmao, that’s a good one.
NK is all bark and no bite. They are rational enough to know that actually using nuclear weapons would mean the end of their regime. The threaten to use for leverage, that’s all
Yet they are not rational enough to fire rockets flying over Japan every other week. The thing with them is that until it explodes it is only a guess what the payload is. The thing that stops them from reacting is that they calculate trajectory and see that it goes into the sea. This is very risky, because a mistake could start a hot war, even if the payload weren’t explosives.
They bite well enough when they have the chance. For example, the Lazarus Group, a North Korean hacking team, stole ~$600 million in a single cryptocurrency hesit. In total they’ve probably stolen over $2 billion, and that’s no doubt continuing to grow.
They’ve developed weapons-grade hacking technology that they readily employ, it wouldn’t be a good idea for them to have weapons-grade nuclear technology.
Their threats are aimed at their own citizens. It’s all political theater. Look at all the horrible things that the evil Americans want to do to our people, but through our strong military and nuclear threats we are able to hold them off and protect your lives! It’s how the Kim Jong regime holds onto power. As long as they’re protecting their citizens from us, their citizens are much less likely to overthrow their dictators. Putin uses a lot of the same tactics against his own people.
That’s literally all I’ve heard in the USA my entire life.
“We’re protecting you from:
Soviet CommunistsArab TerroristsIllegal AliensCommunist ChinaISISPutin’s Russia”I guess when your country can’t go 2 years without starting a war somewhere, you get used to it. -
There’s citizens have no information from the outside world, so when North Korea launches nuclear missiles over Japan and South Korea, who do you think picks it up on radar? Hint it’s not the North Koreans
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Nuclear weapons are an existential threat and we ought to worry about their proliferation but at the same time they prevent belligerents from attacking each other and creating the conditions for MAD. However, it’s a bit rich for nucelar armed states to forbid other states from the development of these weapons, especially America, who are the only state to use them in war.
Don’t worry, lads. When the US says “intervene”, they really meant to say “We will add more restrictions/sanctions regarding trading stuff with our fellow broskis. That’ll show em.”
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States and governments are a threat to humanity
I’m more curious about this stuff with US soldier Travis King. He ran into North Korea while visiting the border from South Korea? The US claims they are worried he is being tortured, but I’d be more worried about what he’s voluntarily giving over to NK.
He’s a low-ranking soldier right? Would he have much intel of value to tell NK about?
Who knows? That’s partly why I’m interested.
I’m not a religious person, but this shit makes me pray for more competent diplomats than Blinken.
He said the US would bolster its defense alliances with Japan and South Korea if China refrained from intervening.
They will do that anyway. Plus new military bases in the Philippines. But dprk super evil for building defense capabilities within its borders, ok. But all that and also the intense militarization of Japan, for example, can be seen as a direct result of the desire to have functioning self defense. If you cannot see that, look at the past and research what Japan did in Korea, its not pretty, really, really, really not pretty.
The secretary of state said he had no updates on (Travis) King’s whereabouts but that “there are certainly concerns” he might be subjected to torture in North Korea.
Ye, and there certainly are concerns that they clone him and mix his DNA with killer dolphins to create an unstoppable super soldier. How come thousands defect from dprk and no one cares, and those people get TV shows and whatnot (used for propaganda), but if one guy does the opposite even the highest US officials cannot resist conspiracy theories?
“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.
Literal bullyspeak. If you forgive me the anthomorpization, that’s the language someone uses when beating his wife and then looks for reasonable ways to stop the escalation of the abuse.
And that leads me to also not give any value to statement such as
Blinken said China could help stem production of the illegal drug fentanyl that reaches the US through Mexico, control global climate change.
While that is true, everything points to the conclusion that from the side of the US the desire to escalate things is far greater than finding solutions for any problems. Like, who benefits from all the now all so en vogue China-blame regarding the fentanyl crisis, how many lives does it save? China has tried to control (regulate) that substance since 2019. Imagine how many deaths could have been avoided if there had been better relations and cooperation between those countries.
Meanwhile, the US openly suggests that it’s bad that poppy production in Afghanistan has stopped.
I have no idea what the context of that quote relates to, but poppies are used in things other than heroin too (medical uses)
Maybe nato should drop a giant lawn dart inside of a 30m radius target near a major military base every few days. Just keep doing that until they get the point that we all are putting up with them and they aren’t a real threat.
