風蕭蕭_Frank
以文會友
Asia-Pacific NATO
亞太北約：煽動戰火
https://www.jeffsachs.org/recorded-lectures/shape-nato-flames-of-war
2023 年 7 月 10 日
“我的國家，美國，已經麵目全非。我不確定誰在管理這個國家。我不相信是總統。”傑弗裏·薩克斯在澳大利亞墨爾本舉行的拯救人類和地球 (SHAPE) 研討會上發表演講時說道。“美國的行動正讓我們走上與中國開戰的道路，就像美國在烏克蘭的行動一樣。”
SHAPE 網絡研討會的 YouTube 視頻：亞太北約：煽動戰火
SHAPE 演講記錄（拯救人類和地球）
大家下午好。我要感謝你們邀請我，並感謝 SHAPE 的領導。我剛剛有幸聆聽了艾莉森·布羅諾夫斯基和文正仁的演講。我們聽到了精彩而深刻的言論。我完全同意他們所說的一切。世界已經瘋了，尤其是盎格魯-撒克遜世界，我擔心。我不知道我們這個說英語的小角落是否還有任何理智。我當然指的是美國、英國、加拿大、澳大利亞和新西蘭。
我們國家現在的政治有些令人沮喪。我擔心，這種深深的瘋狂是被美國接管的英國帝國主義思維。我的國家，美國，與 20 或 30 年前相比，現在麵目全非。說實話，我不確定誰在管理這個國家。我不認為現在是美國總統。我們是由將軍、由我們的安全機構管理的。公眾對任何事情都一無所知。主流媒體每天都在散布有關外交政策的謊言，我幾乎再也聽不到或讀不到這些謊言了。《紐約時報》、《華盛頓郵報》、《華爾街日報》和各大電視台每天都在 100% 地重複政府的宣傳，幾乎不可能突破。
這是怎麽回事？嗯，正如你所聽到的，這是關於美國保持美國霸權的瘋狂行為，軍事化的外交政策被那些智力平庸、貪婪無度、毫無理智的將軍們的思想所主導，因為他們唯一的行事方式就是發動戰爭。
他們受到英國的歡呼，不幸的是，在我成年後，英國越來越可悲地為美國霸權和戰爭搖旗呐喊。無論美國說什麽，英國都會十倍熱情地說出來。英國領導層對烏克蘭戰爭再喜歡不過了。對於英國媒體和英國政治領導層來說，這是偉大的第二次克裏米亞戰爭。
現在，澳大利亞和新西蘭如何陷入這種愚蠢的境地，對我和你來說都是一個深刻的問題。人們應該更清楚。但我擔心，正是五眼聯盟和安全機構告訴政客們，如果政客們參與其中，‘好吧，我們必須這樣做’。這是我們的安全國家，我認為我們的政客不一定在其中發揮多大作用。順便說一句，公眾在美國外交政策中根本沒有任何作用。我們沒有辯論、沒有討論、沒有審議、沒有辯論百人投票，現在是 1130 億美元，但事實上在烏克蘭戰爭上花費的錢要多得多。
到目前為止，國會甚至還沒有就此事進行過一個小時的有組織的辯論，更不用說公開辯論了，但我猜想你們的安全機構才是澳大利亞這一事件的真正推動者，他們向總理和其他人解釋道：“你們知道這是最高級別的國家安全，這是美國告訴我們的。讓我們，你們的安全機構，來解釋我們所看到的情況。當然，你們不能向廣大公眾透露這一點，但這本質上是一場在世界上生存的鬥爭。”
我本人所看到的一切，以及我作為全球經濟顧問從事這項工作已有 43 年的曆程，都表明這一信息是無稽之談。為了了解這些事態發展，人們應該看看我哈佛大學的前同事羅伯特·布萊克威爾大使和阿什利·泰利斯在 2015 年 3 月為外交關係委員會撰寫的一篇非常有說服力的文章。我想讀一下其中的幾個摘錄，因為它非常直接地闡述了目前正在發生的事情。美國的情況就是這樣的，這些報告都為建製派製定了未來計劃。
我們基本上在 2015 年就被告知了中美關係將會發生什麽。關係惡化是有計劃的——不是臨時的。所以，這就是布萊克威爾和泰利斯在 2015 年寫的內容。首先，“自建國以來，美國一直奉行一項宏偉戰略，重點是獲得並保持對各種競爭對手的卓越權力。首先是在北美大陸，然後在西半球，最後是全球。”然後他們認為，“維護美國的地位”
在全球體係中占據主導地位應該繼續成為美國21世紀大戰略的核心目標。”
那麽，美國的目標是什麽？目標很簡單，就是美國在全球占據主導地位。布萊克威爾和特利斯為中國製定了遊戲計劃。他們告訴我們該怎麽做。
以下是清單，雖然我隻是摘錄了一部分：“在美國朋友和盟友之間建立新的優惠貿易安排，通過有意識地排除中國的手段增加共同利益。”這是奧巴馬已經開始的TPP遊戲，盡管他無法通過國內政治反對來實現。第二，“與美國盟友合作，建立針對北京的技術控製機製”，以阻止中國的戰略能力。第三，建立“美國朋友和盟友在中國周邊的權力政治能力”，並“提高美國軍事力量的能力，使其能夠有效地向亞洲邊緣地區投射力量，盡管中國反對。”
我覺得這份名單特別引人注目的地方在於，它是在 2015 年製定的。這是一份正在實施的分步行動計劃。美國外交關係委員會 (CFR) 預示的政策在近代曆史上廣為人知。1997 年，茲比格涅夫·布熱津斯基 (Zbigniew Brzezinski) 在美國外交關係委員會的《外交事務》雜誌上，精確地闡述了北約擴張的預期時間表，特別是將烏克蘭納入北約擴張的意圖。當然，北約擴張計劃直接導致了烏克蘭戰爭，這實際上是俄美為爭奪北約擴張而展開的代理戰爭。
現在，那些給你們帶來烏克蘭戰爭的朋友和天才們，正在為你們的鄰國帶來一場新的戰爭。正如 Moon 教授所說，北大西洋公約組織 (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) 開始在東亞開設辦事處，而東亞並不完全是北大西洋。
所以，這就是我們現在的處境。至少在美國，要看透這些事情並非易事，主要原因之一是，我不確定澳大利亞的情況如何，但我認為它與美國的情況大致相同，我們對這些事情都沒有誠實或公開審議。這些政策完全由安全機構、軍工聯合體、華盛頓的“智庫”網絡（實際上不是智庫）控製，幾乎所有資金都來自軍工聯合體。
軍工聯合體及其企業遊說團體已經接管了我任教的東海岸大學。我在哈佛大學任教 20 多年，現在在哥倫比亞大學任教。就我的經驗而言，情報機構對校園的影響是前所未有的。所有這些都是在沒有引起太多公眾注意的情況下發生的，幾乎是一場無聲的政變。沒有辯論，沒有公開政治，沒有誠實，沒有文件披露。一切都是秘密的、機密的，還有點神秘。由於我恰好是一名經濟學家，與世界各地的國家元首和部長打交道，所以我聽到了很多事情，也看到了很多事情，這些都幫助我看透了官方的“敘述”和普遍的謊言。
在我們的公開討論中，你不會發現這些。如果可以的話，我隻想說一下烏克蘭戰爭。這場戰爭是完全可以預見的，是美國基於北約擴張的霸權計劃的結果，該計劃可以追溯到 1990 年代初。美國的戰略是將烏克蘭納入美國的軍事軌道。布熱津斯基在 1997 年的《全球棋盤》一書中再次闡述了這一戰略。他認為，沒有烏克蘭的俄羅斯什麽都不是。他寫道，烏克蘭是歐亞大陸的地理樞紐。有趣的是，布熱津斯基警告美國政策製定者，確保他們不會將俄羅斯和中國推入聯盟。事實上，這與美國的利益背道而馳，布熱津斯基顯然認為這永遠不會發生。但事實卻並非如此，因為美國的外交政策既無能，又極其危險和錯誤。
1990-91 年期間，我恰好擔任戈爾巴喬夫的顧問，1991-94 年期間，我擔任鮑裏斯·葉利欽和列昂尼德·庫奇馬的顧問，時間跨度從改革後期到蘇聯解體後俄羅斯和烏克蘭獨立的初期。我密切關注著當時發生的事情。我發現美國對幫助俄羅斯穩定局勢完全不感興趣。
20 世紀 90 年代初，美國安全機構的理念是美國主導的單極世界或美國霸權。 20 世紀 90 年代初，美國拒絕了幫助穩定蘇聯經濟和俄羅斯經濟的措施，同時開始計劃北約擴張，這與美國和德國對戈爾巴喬夫和葉利欽的承諾直接相悖。因此，北約擴張問題（包括向烏克蘭擴張）是美國自 20 世紀 90 年代初開始的一項計劃的一部分，並最終導致了烏克蘭戰爭。
順便說一句，美國深度參與了 2014 年烏克蘭親俄總統被推翻的事件。
這是一場政變，在很大程度上是美國的政權更迭行動。我碰巧看到了其中的一部分，我知道美國投入了大量資金來支持 Maidan。美國的這種幹預令人厭惡，破壞了穩定，都是將北約擴大到烏克蘭和格魯吉亞的計劃的一部分。
當人們看地圖時，它確實是布熱津斯基 1997 年的想法：在黑海地區包圍俄羅斯。烏克蘭、羅馬尼亞、保加利亞、土耳其和格魯吉亞都將成為北約成員國。這將是俄羅斯在東地中海和中東的力量投射的終結。這些“安全”天才就是這樣。
普京提出的外交回應一再遭到美國及其北約盟國的拒絕，包括聯合國安理會批準的《明斯克二號協議》，但隨後被烏克蘭忽視。
2021 年 12 月 17 日，普京提出了一份非常合理的文件作為談判的基礎，即《美俄安全協議草案》。核心內容是俄羅斯呼籲結束北約擴張。可悲的是，美國置之不理。我在 2021 年 12 月底給白宮打電話，與我們的一位高級安全官員交談，並懇求道：“談判。停止北約擴張。你們有機會避免戰爭。”當然，無濟於事。美國對普京的正式回應是，北約擴張與俄羅斯是不可談判的，俄羅斯對此絕對沒有發言權。
這是一種令人難以置信的外交方式，因為它是一條直接通往戰爭的道路。我希望大家都明白，這場烏克蘭戰爭早在 2022 年 3 月就接近結束，就在 2 月 24 日俄羅斯入侵一個月後，雙方達成了一項談判協議。美國阻止了談判達成的協議，因為它是基於烏克蘭的中立。美國告訴烏克蘭繼續戰鬥，結束談判，拒絕中立。
因此，我們正處於一場不斷升級的戰爭中，可能演變成核戰爭，如果俄羅斯在戰場上遭受慘敗，就會發生核戰爭。俄羅斯目前還沒有在戰場上失敗，但如果失敗了，很可能會升級為核戰爭。俄羅斯不會被趕出頓巴斯和克裏米亞，然後溫順地帶著道歉回家。如果需要升級，俄羅斯會升級。所以，我們現在處於一個極其危險的漩渦中。
日本完全陷入了這種漩渦。澳大利亞也是如此。看到澳大利亞接受這種魯莽的利用真是太可悲了。以魯莽、挑釁和昂貴的方式為新軍事基地支付巨額費用，這將養活美國軍工綜合體，同時給澳大利亞帶來沉重的負擔。
美國的這些行動正將我們推向與中國開戰的道路，就像美國在烏克蘭的行動一樣。隻有亞太戰爭才會更加災難性。美國及其盟友與中國開戰的整個想法，其含義、愚蠢和魯莽都令人難以置信。所有這些都與澳大利亞真正的安全利益完全脫節。中國對澳大利亞不構成威脅。它對世界也不構成威脅。
順便說一句，我不知道中國曆史上有過一次海外入侵，除了蒙古人短暫統治中國並試圖入侵日本的時候。除了被台風擊敗的蒙古入侵外，中國沒有發動過海外戰爭。這不是中國治國方略的一部分，這樣的戰爭也不符合中國的國家利益。
讓我擔心的是，美國在安全方麵極度神經質，他們的目標是成為第一，但卻無法像他們所認為的那樣成為第一。這很可悲，但倫敦每天都在為之喝彩，這裏仍然夢想著很久以前全球帝國的輝煌。
最後，請允許我用一分鍾時間說說應該做些什麽。
首先，如果拜登站出來表示北約不會擴大到烏克蘭，烏克蘭戰爭可能會結束。通過談判達成安全協議的基礎已經存在了 30 年，但迄今為止一直被美國拒絕。
其次，在亞洲開設北約辦事處的想法愚蠢得令人難以置信。請告訴日本人停止這種魯莽行為。
第三，美國武裝台灣的做法極其危險、挑釁，而且是故意為之。
第四，亞太地區最需要的是亞太國家之間的區域對話。
第五，亞太地區應該以 RCEP [區域全麵經濟夥伴關係協定] 為基礎。 RCEP 是該地區將中國、韓國、日本、東盟十國、澳大利亞和新西蘭聚集在一個連貫的框架中的正確概念，特別是在氣候挑戰、能源政策、貿易政策以及基礎設施和投資政策方麵。一個運作良好的 RCEP 將造福世界，不僅對 RCEP 的 15 個國家，而且對整個世界。
很抱歉說了這麽久，但 SHAPE 所做的事情非常重要。你完全正確，跟蹤並祝願您的努力一切順利。
An Asia-Pacific NATO: Fanning the Flames of War
https://www.jeffsachs.org/recorded-lectures/shape-nato-flames-of-war
July 10, 2023
“My country, the U.S., is unrecognizable. I’m not sure who runs the country. I do not believe it is the president.”, says Jeffrey Sachs in a speech at a Saving Humanity and Planet Earth (SHAPE) seminar, Melbourne, Australia. “U.S. actions are putting us on a path to war with China in the same way that U.S. actions did in Ukraine.”
Youtube video for the SHAPE webinar: An Asia Pacific NATO: Fanning the Flames of War
TRANSCRIPT OF SPEECH TO SHAPE (SAVING HUMANITY AND PLANET EARTH)
Good afternoon to everybody. I want to thank you for inviting me and to thank SHAPE for its leadership. I just had the privilege to listen to Alison Broinowski and Chung-in Moon. We have been treated to brilliant and insightful statements. I absolutely agree with all that has been said. The world has gone mad but especially the Anglo-Saxon world, I’m afraid. I don’t know whether there is any sense in our little English-speaking corner of the world. I’m of course speaking of the United States, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
There’s something profoundly disheartening about the politics of our countries right now. The deep madness, I’m afraid, is British Imperial thinking that has been taken over by the United States. My country, the U.S., is unrecognizable now compared even to 20 or 30 years ago. I’m not sure, to tell you the truth, who runs the country. I do not believe it is the president of the United States right now. We are run by generals, by our security establishment. The public is privy to nothing. The lies that are told about foreign policy are daily and pervasive by a mainstream media that I can barely listen to or read anymore. The New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and the main television outlets are 100 per cent repeating government propaganda by the day, and it’s almost impossible to break through.
What is this about? Well, as you’ve heard, it’s about a madness of the United States to keep U.S. hegemony, a militarized foreign policy dominated by the thinking of generals who are mediocre intellects, personally greedy, and without any sense because their only modus operandi is to make war.
And they are cheer-led by Britain, which is unfortunately, in my adult life, increasingly pathetic in being a cheerleader for the United States for U.S. hegemony and for war. Whatever the U.S. says, Britain will say it ten times more enthusiastically. The U.K. leadership could not love the war in Ukraine more. It is the great Second Crimean War for the British media and for the British political leadership.
Now, how Australia and New Zealand fall for this idiocy is really a deep question for me and for you. People should know better. But I’m afraid that it is the Five Eyes and the security establishment that told the politicians, to the extent that the politicians are involved in this, ‘well this is how we have to do it’. This is our Security State and I don’t think our politicians necessarily have much role in this. By the way, the public has no role in U.S. foreign policy at all. We have no debate, no discussion, no deliberation, no debates over voting the hundred, now $113 billion, but in fact much more money spent on the Ukraine War.
So far there’s not been an hour of organized debate even in the Congress on this, much less in the public, but my guess is that your security establishment is really the driver of this in Australia, and they explain to the Prime Minister and others: ‘you know this is the utmost National Security, and this is what America has told us. Let us, your security apparatus, explain what we’re seeing. Of course, you cannot divulge this to the broader public, but this is, at the essence, a struggle for survival in the world’.
Everything I see myself, and I’m now 43 years in this activity as an economic advisor all over the world, suggests that this message is nonsense. One thing that would be interesting for people to look at, in order to understand these developments, is a very telling article by a former colleague of mine at Harvard, Ambassador Robert Blackwell and Ashley Tellis, written for the Council on Foreign Relations in March 2015. I want to read a couple excerpts from it because it laid out the plan of what’s happening right now pretty directly. This is how things work in the U.S., in which future plans are laid to out the establishment in such reports.
We’re basically told in 2015 what’s going to happen in US-China relations. The deterioration of relations was planned -- it’s not ad hoc. So, here’s what Blackwell and Tellis wrote in 2015. First, “Since its founding, the United States has consistently pursued a grand strategy focused on acquiring and maintaining preeminent power over various rivals. First on the North American continent, then in the Western Hemisphere, and finally, globally.” And then they argue that “preserving U.S. primacy in the global system ought to remain the central objective of U.S. grand strategy in the 21st century.”
So, what’s the U.S. goal? The goal is very straightforward, it is primacy of the United States globally. Blackwell and Tellis lay out the game plan for China. They tell us what to do.
Here’s the list, though I’m only excerpting: “Creating new preferential trading arrangements among U.S. friends and allies to increase their mutual gains through instruments that consciously exclude China.” This is the game that Obama already started with TPP, though he couldn’t get it through domestic political opposition. Second, “create, in partnership with U.S. allies, a technology control regime vis-à-vis Beijing,” to block China’s strategic capabilities. Third, build up “power-political capacities of U.S. friends and allies on China’s periphery,” and “improving the capability of U.S. military forces to effectively project power along the Asian rimlands despite any Chinese opposition.”
What I find especially remarkable about this list is that it was made in 2015. It’s the step-by-step plan of action actually being carried out. This foreshadowing of US policies by way of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is well-known in recent history. In 1997 in the CFR’s journal Foreign Affairs, Zbigniew Brzezinski laid out with precision the intended timeline for NATO enlargement and specifically the intention to include Ukraine in that NATO enlargement. Of course, that NATO enlargement plan has led us directly to the Ukraine War, which is indeed a proxy Russia-US war over NATO enlargement.
Now the friends and geniuses that brought you the Ukraine War are on their way to bringing you a new war in your neighbourhood. As Professor Moon noted, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is starting to open its offices in East Asia, which is not exactly the North Atlantic.
So, this is where we are. It’s not absolutely simple to see through for one main reason, at least in the U.S. I’m not sure what it’s like in Australia but I expect that it’s pretty much the same as in the U.S., where we have no honesty or public deliberation about any of this. The policies are owned entirely by the security establishment, the military-industrial complex, the network of “think tanks” which are in fact non-think tanks in Washington, with almost all funded by the military-industrial complex.
The military industrial complex and its corporate lobby have taken over the East Coast universities where I teach. I taught at Harvard for more than 20 years, and now I teach at Columbia University. The influence of the intelligence agencies on the campuses is unprecedented, in my experience. All of this has happened without much public notice, almost a silent coup. There is no debate, no public politics, no honesty, no documents revealed. Everything is secret, confidential and a bit mysterious. Since I happen to be an economist who engages with the heads of state and ministers around the world, I hear a lot of things and see a lot of things that help me to pierce through the official “narratives” and pervasive lies.
You will not find any of this in our public discourse. And just a word, if I may, about the Ukraine War. The war was completely predictable, and resulted from a U.S. plan for hegemony based on NATO enlargement that dates back to the early 1990’s. The U.S. strategy was to bring Ukraine into the U.S. military orbit. Brzezinski, again in 1997 in his book The Global Chess Board, laid out the strategy. Russia without Ukraine is nothing, he argued. Ukraine, he wrote, is the geographical pivot for Eurasia. Interestingly, Brzezinski warned American policy-makers to ensure that they don’t push Russia and China into an alliance. In fact, that would be so antithetical to U.S. interests that Brzezinski clearly believed that it would never happen. But it has, because U.S. foreign policy is incompetent as well as profoundly dangerous and misconceived.
During 1990-91, I happen to have been an advisor to Gorbachev, and during 1991-94, to Boris Yeltsin and Leonid Kuchma, spanning the late days of perestroika and the early days of Russian and Ukrainian independence after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. I watched very closely what was happening. I saw that the United States was absolutely uninterested in any way in helping Russia to stabilize.
The idea of the U.S. security establishment from the early 1990s was U.S.-led unipolarity, or U.S. hegemony. In the early 1990s, the U.S. rejected measures to help stabilize the Soviet economy and then the Russian economy, while it also began planning NATO enlargement, in direct contradiction to what the U.S. and Germany had promised Gorbachev and Yeltsin. So, the issue of NATO enlargement, including to Ukraine, is part of a U.S. game plan that started in the early 1990s, and eventually led to the Ukraine war.
By the way the U.S. was deeply involved in the overthrow of Ukraine’s pro-Russian president in 2014. Yes, this was a coup, and to an important extent, a regime change operation of the United States. I happen to have seen a part of it, and I know that U.S. money poured into supporting the Maidan. Such U.S. meddling was disgusting and destabilizing, and all part of the game plan to enlarge NATO to Ukraine and Georgia.
When one looks at the map it’s indeed Brzezinski’s 1997 idea: surround Russia in the Black Sea region. Ukraine, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey and Georgia would all be members of NATO. That would be the end of Russian power projection in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East. So it went for these “security” geniuses.
Putin put forward diplomatic responses that were repeatedly rejected by the U.S. and its NATO allies, including the Minsk II Agreement endorsed by the U.N Security Council, but then ignored by Ukraine.
On December 17, 2021, Putin put on the table a perfectly reasonable document as the basis for negotiation, A Draft U.S.-Russia Security Agreement. At the core was Russia’s call for an end to NATO expansion. Tragically, the U.S. blew it off. I called the White House at the end of December 2021, spoke with one of our top security officials, and pleaded, “Negotiate. Stop the NATO enlargement. You have a chance to avoid war.” Of course, to no avail. The United States’ formal response to Putin was that NATO enlargement was non-negotiable with Russia, a matter in which Russia has absolutely no say.
This is a mind-boggling way to pursue foreign affairs because it is a direct road to war. I hope everybody understands this war in Ukraine was close to ending as early as March 2022 with a negotiated agreement just one month after Russia invaded on February 24th. The negotiated agreement was stopped by the U.S. because it was based on Ukraine’s neutrality. The U.S. told Ukraine to fight on, end negotiations, and reject neutrality.
And so we are in a war that continues to escalate towards possible nuclear war, which is what would happen if Russia were to suffer deep defeats on the battlefield. Russia is not losing on the battlefield just now, but if it did, it would likely escalate to nuclear war. Russia is not going to be pushed out of the Donbas and Crimea and meekly go home with apologies. Russia is going to escalate if it needs to escalate. So, we are right now in a spiral that is extremely dangerous.
Japan plays utterly into this spiral. And Australia does as well. It’s so sad to watch Australia accepting to be used in this reckless way. To pay a fortune for new military bases in a reckless, provocative, and costly way, that will feed the U.S. military-industrial complex while weighing heavily on Australia.
Such U.S. actions are putting us on a path to war with China in the same way that U.S. actions did in Ukraine. Only an Asia-Pacific war would be even more disastrous. The whole idea of the U.S. and its allies fighting China is mind-boggling in its implications, its stupidity and its recklessness. All of this is utterly divorced from Australia’s real security interests. China is not a threat to Australia. It is not a threat to the world.
I don’t know of a single Chinese overseas invasion in its history, by the way, except when the Mongols briefly ruled China and tried to invade Japan. Other than the Mongol invasion, defeated by a typhoon, China has not launched overseas wars. It’s just not part of China’s statecraft, nor would such wars be in China’s national interest.
What worries me about the world is a deeply neurotic United States (in)security leadership that aims to be number one, but that can’t be number one in the way that it believes. This is pathetic, yet is applauded each day in London, a place that still dreams of the glory of global empire from a long bygone era.
Permit me, in conclusion, to take one minute to say what should be done.
First, the war in Ukraine could end the day Biden steps up and says NATO will not enlarge to Ukraine. The basis for a negotiated security arrangement has been there for 30 years, but has been rejected so far by the U.S.
Second, the idea of opening NATO offices in Asia is mind-boggling in its foolishness. Please tell the Japanese to stop this reckless action.
Third, the U.S. approach to arming Taiwan is profoundly dangerous, provocative and deliberately so.
Fourth, what is needed most in the Asia-Pacific is regional dialogue amongst Asia-Pacific nations.
Fifth, the Asia-Pacific should build on RCEP [Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement]. RCEP is the correct concept for the region to bring together China, Korea, Japan, the ten ASEAN countries, Australia and New Zealand in a coherent framework, especially around the climate challenge, energy policy, trade policy, and infrastructure and investment policy. A well-functioning RCEP would do a world of good, not only for the 15 countries in RCEP but for the entire world.
Sorry to have run on so long but it’s so important what SHAPE is doing. You’re completely on the right track and all best wishes to your efforts.
Visit SHAPE website to learn more.
Translations and Global Publications
Other News, July 11:
Australia, Pearls and Irritations, July 8:
Brazil, Brasil 247, July 12 (in Portuguese):
