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Friday, Mar 10, 2023 - 21:57 SGT
Posted By: Gilbert

Tis All But A Struggle

"Struggle" has now made it into the Headlines with the U.S. House Red Scare panel on China now citing an "existential struggle", which has been echoed by a former top Chinese diplomat anticipating a "full-scale struggle" with Washington - which avoids possible infringement on "twilight", then. Our U2 Incident telling has also been further bolstered by the revelation that a U-2 plane had indeed engaged the stray Red balloon, with Team Blue news headlines also increasingly attributing the declaration of New Cold War to Xi (and Putin). Zelensky's warning that an official alliance of China with Russia would mean world war made some waves, which does remind that this Game was never much about Ukraine anyway.

The observation several weeks ago that the U.S./Team Blue slogan of "Democracies versus Autocracies" was merely an excuse for the preservation of (Team Blue) hegemony seems to have picked up steam, with Mahbubani sagely noting in the national news that this is but a battle of narratives, and that "...even though this is clearly a battle for primacy, the US will not gain support if its narrative is that it is fighting to retain its primacy", and that "ASEAN countries know the geopolitical contest between the US and China is not over ideology. It is over power". Oft-foil Kausikan has for his part just criticized our Foreign Minister for saying that the post-WW2 peace dividend is over (soon after the latter's China visit); one figures Balakrishnan being broadly accurate on this point.

Mahbubani's reading of the ASEAN perspective seems to be reflecting sentiment in the region, with most members looking likely to heed China's warning to just stay clear of The Greatest Game, given the uncertain benefits of commiting to an America weathering severe infighting - at least for now. I'm not sure exactly how Influential Singapore's stand will be, but our Law Minister raising the U.S. quarantine/blockade of Cuba, and pointedly warning of smaller countries getting exploited as pawns or becoming collateral damage, seems to be signalling an (understandable) unwillingness to commit.

And really, the U.S. ambassador to China now insisting that "Washington was not seeking confrontation with Beijing, but U.S. leadership in some areas needed to be recognized", unavoidably brings to mind the Game of Thrones wisdom that "any man who must say 'I am the king', is no true king" (cue China retorting that the U.S. needs an attitude adjustment). Well, if it is any consolation, the U.S. FAKE NEWS mainstream media barrage appears to be having an effect in creating a common enemy (as also recently suggested), with American opinion on China now at a record low of 15%, never previously reached since the Gallup poll started in 1979.

One area in which China likely has the upper hand in The Greatest Game, is in being able to more easily and freely access American sources, than the other way around - given that perhaps close to a hundred million Chinese have some knowledge of English, as opposed to perhaps a few million Americans understanding Mandarin, before entering into the more-closed nature of the Chinese system. That's the cost of owning the default world language, one supposes.


The Yacht Did It

Team Blue has certainly been taking their time to address Seymour Hersh's report on the CIA bombing the Nord Stream pipelines from early February, and the NYT has finally broken the U.S. version of the story: that a "pro-Ukrainian group" (notably possibly still qualifying the CIA, mind) that had been conveniently unaffiliated with the actual Ukrainian government, was responsible. To this, it might be realized that this just so happens to be perhaps the only category of actors on the Team Blue side that might be forgiven the act (with the Kyiv government already putting in a denial), and that even Team Blue is no longer accusing Russia of incongruous self-sabotage (the previous deny-it-and-you're-a-conspiracy-theorist line)

Well, the NYT tale of five private persons hiring a yacht and managing to explode three concrete-hardened undersea pipelines would not unexpectedly be derided as ludicrous all over the Internet, with observations that whilst Hersh's article had been criticized (and rejected by major news outlets) for relying on anonymous sources, the exact same applied for this story now being sold by the NYT and other Team Blue media. Hersh has for his part deferred to his readers while preparing an update. Apparently, a former CIA analyst has backed Hersh's telling, so maybe we might find a saboteur's waterproofed passport floating about the Baltic Sea soon, in the same manner as the 9/11 hijackers' were.

This New Cold War development has seen Taiwanese undersea Internet cables being freshly cut, which they have pinned on China for now. Of course, to some this might be recognized as merely "reciprocal undersea special operations" in the vein of the East Palestine Chernobyl 2.0, and the capability to pull off such Ops may become only more significant, with rising interest in undersea power cables (though the Singapore-Aussie Sun Cable project has fallen through for now)


Events & Rethinks

The long intermission since the last blog post had been partly down to a number of engagements, what with the ending of The Pandemic Game making travel and (larger-scale) in-person events now tenable, for the first time in about three years. My first post-pandemic conference would take me to Kuala Lumpur, not very far at all, but still very much welcome. There would be a lab visit to Huawei too, not all that long after a trip to the local Google office, which is something that might become increasingly rare in many countries, in the near future. For all of China supposedly catching up or surpassing the U.S. on critical technologies, however, the latter do still have the lead on the provision of free food in their tech giants.

There would also be a Crazy Rich Asians dinner and dance by (one of) my employers, which had the staff really get into the spirit of things. Now, I have already said my piece on medicine and money, and frankly it should be ideal for most everyone to get wealthy - or at least passably well-off - rather than have the guys with one bean envy those with two, physician or not. In any case, it remained somewhat odd realizing that one had probably made rather more than anyone else in the hall (estimating from official salaries, anyhow) over the past year despite being some no-name junior hire. Well, one can hardly fault a loyal Sinkie from from heeding his betters' teachings on obtaining some dignity, and if it continues going well, there should be some worthy cause to put it to...



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