CNN’s Brad Lendon Is Delusional: China Isn’t "Isolated" In The Pacific

The tightening of the US’ “containment noose” around China via its latest military moves in Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines doesn’t equate to the People’s Republic being “isolated” from the Pacific since facts about its political and trade ties in the region debunk CNN’s dramatic declaration.

CNN’s Senior Global Military Affairs Writer Brad Lendon published a piece on Monday delusionally declaring that “Ukraine war has made it easier for US to isolate China in the Pacific”. He’s flat-out wrong to declare that China is “isolated” in the Pacific, though, since trade with its largest partner ASEAN grew by 15% last year to $970 billion. Furthermore, only a few tiny Pacific Island States buck international law by “recognizing” Taiwan as “independent” of China while the rest of the region refuses to do so.

These objectively existing and easily verifiable facts expose Lendon as a liar. That said, there’s some truth to his claim that while the US would have consolidated its regional military alliances even in the absence of Russia’s special operation in Ukraine, that development and China’s refusal to condemn it “helped grease the skids”. Japan’s remilitarization, South Korea’s expansion of its military-industrial complex, and a new US-Philippine basing pact were all accelerated by last year’s events.

The origins of each interconnected trend that collectively contribute to the US’ more muscular “containment” of China in the Pacific predate the latest phase of the Ukrainian Conflict but were all exploited by it as the public pretext for taking them to their next level as soon as possible. This served to tighten the US’ “containment noose” around China, but instead of successfully coercing it into a series of unilateral concessions, the unintended outcome was to push it into an entente with Russia.

The New Cold War between the US-led West’s Golden Billion, which includes its Asia-Pacific vassals like Japan and the Philippines, and the Sino-Russo Entente over the direction of the global systemic transition was initiated by the first-mentioned as part of its years-long plot for worldwide domination. This explains the prior assessment about those previously mentioned military-strategic trends in the Asia-Pacific predating the last year’s dramatic events.

NATO’s clandestine crossing of Russia’s national security red lines in Ukraine provoked that Eurasian Great Power into commencing its ongoing special operation, which in turn prompted the US to pressure the EU into sanctioning it, thus forcing those two strategic partners’ rapid “decoupling”. Upon successfully dividing-and-ruling Russia and the EU, the US now hopes to replicate this modus operandi against the Chinese-EU Strategic Partnership.

To that end, it’s already convinced Germany to join it in sanctioning China in the event that the People’s Republic feels compelled by NATO-shaped circumstances in Eastern Europe into arming Russia with a view towards preemptively averting that country’s “Balkanization” in the worst-case scenario. Should that sequence of events unfold, then it’s foreseeable that the US will simultaneously pressure its Asia-Pacific vassals on the other side of Eurasia to follow suit too, thus catalyzing two forced “decouplings”.

The end result would be the “Great Trifurcation” of International Relations between the US-led West’s Golden Billion, the Sino-Russo Entente, and the de facto Indian-led Global South, the details of which were explained more at length in this recent analysis here. The point in raising the reader’s awareness of these grand strategic trends is to inform them that any forthcoming “isolation” of China in the Pacific would be US-initiated and part of its “containment” policy against the People’s Republic.

It has nothing to with the region’s supposedly piqued “threat perception” of China nor even with the latest phase of the Ukrainian Conflict that the US provoked Russia into unleashing last year, but is entirely linked to Washington’s preplanned years-long plot for worldwide domination. Everything was already moving in this direction, though recent events did indeed serve to accelerate these trends by serving as the public pretexts to that end.

As it presently stands, however, the tightening of the US’ “containment noose” around China via its latest military moves in Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines doesn’t equate to the People’s Republic being “isolated” from the Pacific. CNN’s Brad Lendon therefore lied in his headline, likely for clickbait purposes, and then proceeded to spin the last year’s events in an attempt to justify his manipulation of the targeted reader’s perceptions as part of the US’ information warfare campaign against China.