Is the Quad used by the US to provoke an India-China war?

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Washington DC is keen to trigger a military conflict in Asia-Pacific and South Asia by launching military aggression against China before US President Donald Trump fights for a second term in November. To do this, the US depends on its pawns like Australia, India and Japan. The Quad, as the nexus between these four is named, has become crucial for the US’s foreign policy, which has only one goal in the region–defeating the Chinese and balkanizing China. The key message of US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s address to the second foreign ministers’ meet of the Quad members in Japan’s Tokyo reveals how desperate the US is to start a war against China.

The US, which has been the biggest imperialist threat to world peace and has killed a few hundred million people globally through war, famine and colonisation since the second world war, has been accusing China of being a threat to world peace. Ironically, China has no history of attacking a foreign country and killing its civilians or promoting terrorism like the US’s support to Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan-based Islamist groups through the notorious CIA. 

China is vilified at an industrial scale using the help of corporate-controlled mainstream press throughout the world. Pompeo has been a great promoter of violence against China.

Secretary Pompeo said:

“As partners in this Quad, it is more critical now than ever that we collaborate to protect our people and partners from the CCP’s exploitation, corruption, and coercion. We’ve seen it in the south, in the East China Sea, the Mekong, the Himalayas, the Taiwan Straits. These are just a few examples.”

Despite such a clarion call by Pompeo to unite against the Communist Party of China (CPC) and President Xi Jinping’s government, which can be called a provocation for military action against China, to retain and consolidate the US’s imperialistic hegemony in Taiwan, South East Asia, South China Sea and the Pacific Ocean, the other Quad members displayed a degree of restraint in their approach. Neither Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne nor Indian External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar mentioned China in their speeches, despite their contentions with the People’s Republic.

The US has been promoting anti-China violence in Hong Kong by funding the island city’s secessionists. In Taiwan, the CIA is using all forms of mass media to brainwash the people in believing that the Americans are their liberators. The American-occupied southern Korean peninsula is used by Japan and the US as a base against the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and China. Moreover, countries like the Philippines, etc, are wooed by the US to become its military pawns against China. 

Since the formation of the Quad in 2017 by bringing together anti-China powers like Australia, India and Japan, Trump had laid bare his agenda. Trump’s agenda is detrimental against not only the Chinese interests but the larger interests of the countries of the region that are keen to live in peace. By forcefully aggressing against Chinese sovereignty in the South China Sea, the Japanese and the US have been constantly provoking Beijing for a military conflict. China maintained a restraint in the region despite such provocations. 

The wrong reading of history, politics and military affairs, apart from the pro-capitalist doctrine of the CPC and Xi, there has been no sign of strong resistance from the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) or any attempt to forge closer military ties with the neighbouring countries to checkmate the US’s manoeuvres. By expecting peace from a boisterous and fascist Trump regime and its lackey states, China has allowed the foe to gain considerable strength. 

However, the only solace for Beijing right now is that the US’s economy will continue to stagger due to the aftermaths of the 2008 Subprime Crisis, which worsened over years and is now taking the cover of COVID-19 pandemic to whitewash itself.

According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) of the US: “CBO estimates that real (inflation-adjusted) gross domestic product (GDP) will contract by 11 percent in the second quarter of this year, which is equivalent to a decline of 38 percent at an annual rate. In the second quarter, the number of people employed will be almost 26 million lower than the number in the fourth quarter of 2019. (sic)”

Australia’s economy suffered also due to the spiralling crisis of the world’s monopoly-finance capitalist system under the guise of the COVID-19. Australia is experiencing its first recession in 30 years, as its GDP shrank by 7% in the April to June quarter (Q1) of the financial year (FY) 2020. Japan is also going through its worst economic crisis since the second world war. During Q1 of FY 2020, Japan’s economy fell by 27.8%, which portrays a gloomy image of its economy and there are bleak hopes for its resurgence as an Asian economic power anytime soon. 

For the first time, the Indian economy experienced a -23.9% GDP contraction in Q1 of the FY 2020-21. Though the government announced a lot of liquidity-infusing measures, it didn’t provide any impetus through cash transfer to the poor to generate demand. This will cause sluggish growth in the coming quarters too, and Moody, the rating agency, has predicted India’s GDP to grow at -11.9% in the FY2020-21. 

The gloomy economic situation of the Quad members would desist them from military adventurism against China, which successfully fought against COVID-19 pandemic and is looking at retaining positive growth. After the Chinese GDP growth contracted by -6.8% in the Q1 of the FY 2020-21, in Q2 it rose to 3.2%, which puts it ahead in the economic race vis-à-vis the Quad members.

To economically defeat China’s bandwagon, the US has been using its “Trade War” against China and has been wooing its allies and lackeys to substitute Chinese imports with American ones. Trump has been also trying to titillate India with anti-China xenophobic rhetoric. After the US, India became the second country to officially acknowledge a “Chinese hand” behind the COVID-19 pandemic. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist regime has been unconditionally following the US narrative on China and assisting Washington DC in its nefarious nexus. 

Trump knows that it’s Modi’s compulsion to maintain a strongman image before his ardent followers. The pro-white supremacist Hindutva fascist camp wants to wage a war against China only when the US and other imperialist powers would throw their weight behind New Delhi in such an endeavour, or else it will be an optics of ignominy for them. For this reason, New Delhi, despite Pompeo’s provocations, has limited its anti-China role in phrase-mongering and firing salvos. 

Among all Quad members, India is the only one that has been entangled in a bitter military faceoff with China at eastern Ladakh since May 2020. In the month of June, 20 Indian soldiers were killed in Galwan valley during a fistfight with the PLA soldiers. Despite provocations from Pompeo since April, the Indian government has maintained restraint due to its poor economic condition and has avoided the path of military confrontation fearing its repercussions on its economy. 

The engagement in diplomacy paid off during Jaishankar’s Moscow visit, where, during the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation’s sidelines, he held a discussion with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and signed a joint statement that detailed the disengagement through a series of steps by both PLA and Indian Army in the volatile region. Apart from Jaishankar-Wang meet, Indian Defence Minister Rajnath Singh also met his Chinese counterpart Wei Fenghe and discussed the ways to dissolve the conflict. 

However, while the Indian establishment has been taking steps to peacefully resolve the conflict without souring the overall India-China bilateral relationship, the US pressure on India to wage a war against China has increased significantly. The rhetoric of Indian mainstream press peaked under American influence and, consequently, the far-right Indian government had to crack the whip on Chinese businesses and even mobile apps to appease Washington DC.

As the election draws closer, Trump is desperate to have a war, fought by a proxy without harming American lives, to woo his blood-thirsty, white-supremacist voters. Using India as cannon fodder in the war against a superpower like China, the US wants to kill two birds with one stone. On one hand, it wants to drain the resources of Beijing in the aftermath of the COVID-19 recovery phase in fighting a war, while on the other hand, it’s using the Indo-China war as a subterfuge to impose further trade sanctions on China, thereby hurting its export-oriented economy. Japan and Australia are keen to join the league but only as cautious capitalist countries, they aren’t likely to engage directly with China but use pawns like India to bear the burnt. 

In such a scenario, it’s quite imperative for world peace that the Quad’s agenda is opposed vehemently and its conspiracy to act as a vessel of the US’s imperialist strategy, which suffered blows in the Korean War and Vietnam Liberation War, is exposed to the people. The Quad, under the US’s imperialist agenda, will push the region into a reign of anarchy, violence and bloodbath, which is abhorred by the people of all nations. It’s for the sake of peace, unity and co-existence of diverse nationalities in South and South East Asia, an anti-imperialist movement against the Quad’s conspiracies is required. Only that can prevent a predatory war involving China and others.