Best to remain non-aligned in US-China power play

RECENT Chinese activities (the so-called spy balloons) in the Americas have got some commentators pushing the United States to revisit the Monroe Doctrine (1823), whereby any intervention in the Americas (“backyard” of the United States) by foreign powers is considered a potential hostile act against the US.

Post Second World War, it has been invoked by the “democratic and liberal” US for military and covert interventions in Latin America. Interventions such as the CIA-backed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba (1961); Cuban missile crisis (1962); Iran-Contra affair (1981-1986) where the Reagan administration covertly sold arms to Iran (in breach of a US-led arms embargo) to fund right-wing Contras in Nicaragua; and the US invasion of Grenada (1983) and Panama (1990).

In Operation Condor (1968-1989), the US backed eight right-wing South American military dictatorships (Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay) in a campaign of political repression and state terror involving intelligence operations, CIA-backed coups and assassination of tens of thousands of left-wing leaders and opponents.

In more recent times, the Trump Administration invoked it as policy in the Americas and for a possible military intervention in Venezuela.

Perhaps Americans should well remember the words of US Marine Major General Smedley Butler (the only Marine awarded the Brevet Medal and two Medals of Honour) who said (1935): “I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927, I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested.”

Therefore, it is quite incongruous and hypocritical of the US to deplore China’s aim to treat the South China Sea as its own backyard when the US has for years militarily invaded and covertly destabilised Latin American countries in its own backyard – a case of “the pot calling the kettle black” and “do as I say, not as I do”.

I truly hope that Asean and Malaysia will remain non-aligned in this new “Cold War” between the US and China.

Last month, the prominent US Centre for Strategic and International Studies war-gamed a Chinese amphibious invasion of Taiwan in 2026, running it 24 times in a variety of scenarios.

Although Taiwan survived as an autonomous entity in most scenarios, losses to the US, Taiwan, and Japan were heavy, resulting in thousands of casualties and the degradation of the military power of the US, China, Japan and Taiwan.

Imagine what it would be like for us if we had to choose one side or the other in such a war. “Gajah sama gajah berjuang, pelanduk mati di tengah-tengah.”

CHEW KOK LIANG

Singapore