Absurd US disinformation about China self-defeating
Nordic governments have rejected United States President Donald Trump's claims that Russian and Chinese ships are operating near Greenland. They said the statement is not supported by intelligence and fuels destabilizing rhetoric.
It is bizarre that the US has cooked up such an excuse for its imperialist ambition to grab Greenland. It is also surprising for some European countries to dismiss US disinformation about China. They usually don't do so if it does not seriously threaten their own interests.
The smear campaign waged by the US against China is nothing new. China is the bogeyman in every US presidential election. The situation has worsened dramatically in the past decade after the US reversed its decades-old China policy and instead indulged in a frenzy of zero-sum geopolitical rivalry to maintain its global hegemony.
Some US tactics are so absurd that they won't fool anyone with common sense. For example, Trump claims that "if we don't take Greenland, you're going to have Russia or China as your next-door neighbor. That's not going to happen."
But Russia is already a maritime neighbor of the US, separated by the narrow Bering Strait. China has no territorial ambitions in the Arctic region as elaborated in its Arctic policy white paper released in 2018. According to international law, countries outside the Arctic have the right to conduct scientific research, navigation, overflight, fishing and many other activities.
The US president has repeatedly claimed that there is no windmill in China. But as I traveled across Yunnan and Guangdong provinces over the past months, I saw many of them, including on top of the hills and in the sea.
The US has threatened multiple countries lately, often using China's presence as a pretext. These include the attack on Venezuela and the abduction of its president and first lady on Jan 3 and the threat to take military action against Iran, Mexico, Cuba and Colombia, in addition to the annexation of Greenland.
The US now wants the world to be governed by the law of the jungle, where might is right. Yet no other country wants to go back to that kind of world. That includes China and even the US allies in Europe, which are now facing the prospect of a potential US invasion.
It's ironic that Western pundits and columnists are busy writing articles for the world to de-risk from the US. This de-risking is precisely what the US has tried to force upon the rest of the world against China in the past years.
During his presidential campaign, Trump blasted previous US presidents for incessant foreign wars and interventions. However, he is making a U-turn now with a long list of wars and interventions in the pipeline. The renaming of the Department of Defense as the Department of War in September seems ominous.
Greenland Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen made it clear this week that Greenland does not want to be controlled or owned by the US. But Trump, who had not even heard of Nielsen, threatened that this assertion would be "a big problem" for him.
Nielsen's response has been among the strongest from European leaders so far. Other European leaders would rather tweet about Iran and Venezuela than muster the courage to condemn the US threat to annex Greenland. If you check the tweets by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, she clearly does not care much about Greenland.
The EU is still trying to appease the US. The Wednesday meeting at the White House among Greenland, Denmark and the US did not succeed in dissuading the US from ending its greed for the island. There is really no way to appease a side that wants to grab your land with its mighty military force.
The US government's threat of wars, interventions, regime change, coercion and land grab and its latest withdrawal from dozens of international treaties and organizations will create more chaos in the world. But that should also awaken more countries, including European nations that are heavily influenced by the US, to pursue strategic autonomy and be clear-eyed about the rampant US disinformation campaign against China.
The author is a China Daily columnist.
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