https://www.politico.com/news/2023/09/10/biden-china-g20-00114892
Three days into high-profile visits to the capitals of India and Vietnam, President Joe Biden said that his presence and moves to strengthen ties with China’s neighbors weren’t designed to “contain” Beijing.
And he repeated that phrase — again and again.
“I don’t want to contain China,” he said during a news conference in Hanoi shortly after elevating the U.S.-Vietnam relationship and palling around with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Good Grief folks! Talk about history repeating itself. Have any of you heard of a guy named Neville Chamberlain? I’m sure some of you have. If you will recall, he was that British Prime Minister guy who met with Hitler right before the outbreak of WWII. Chamberlain claimed he and Hitler had met and that was nothing to worry about. We all know how well that worked out. to ask myself, is it about to happen again?
Biden’s team has said previously it doesn’t aim to curb China’s rise, even when it imposes strict export controls on technologies crucial for its military development and takes steps to move closer to other countries in Asia. But the remarks, and the setting of the message, is the strongest signal the administration has sent to Beijing that it doesn’t want to foment a new Cold War.
Biden arrived in India on Friday for a summit of the G20 before traveling Sunday morning to Vietnam for an official upgrade in the bilateral relationship.
While U.S. officials openly stressed the Asia sojourn was about rallying allies to work together on climate change, development and a shifting global economy, they privately hinted that better ties with New Delhi and Hanoi would boost America’s regional position.
But Biden denied that his presence halfway around the world from Washington was intended to boost America’s regional standing at China’s expense. “It’s not about containing China,” he repeated. “It’s about having a stable base, a stable base in the Indo-Pacific.”
“We think too much in Cold War terms,” Biden told reporters who peppered him with questions about the state of U.S.-China ties. “I am sincere about getting the relationship right.”
The way the U.S. can do that, the president insisted, is by ensuring China plays by “the rules of the game” — that is, the tenets of the rules-based international order the United States helped create from the embers of World War II.
“I just want to make sure we have a relationship with China that is on the up and up, squared away. Everybody knows what it’s all about,” Biden said.
It’s not clear Beijing knows. Last week, China’s top security agency said that any future meeting between Biden and Chinese paramount leader Xi Jinping would hinge on U.S. “sincerity” for meaningful dialogue. The president hopes to meet his Chinese counterpart face-to-face at a gathering of Pacific nations later this year in San Francisco, especially since Xi didn’t attend the G20.
Folks, that is almost exactly what was agreed on between Hitler and Chamberlain. Again, Hitler and Chamberlain signed an agreement that they were on good terms.
Hitler needed time to build up his was machine. He also knew one of his greatest threats was the military might of England. The British had a huge navy and a top-notch air force.
Biden suggested that he hasn’t met with Xi in 10 months because the Chinese leader “has his hands full” with a sputtering economy.
“He has overwhelming unemployment with his youth. One of the major economic tenets of his plan isn’t working at all right now,” he said, adding that Beijing’s woes are “less likely to cause that kind of conflict” between the U.S. and China. “It’s not like there’s a crisis if I don’t personally speak to him.”
Again. Similarities? Hitler took control of Germany after WWI when the country was struggling to recover from $Trillion dollar/German Mark inflation. That’s right folk. I said trillion. Think about that. At the end of WWI if you lived in Germany, it took 4 Marks to equal one dollar. So 4 quarters to make one dollar. Germany was simply printing money to pay its war debts to England and France after WWI.
The money had nothing to back it (sound familiar?).
So, it now took $1 Trillion quarters to make a dollar! Hitler cam in and told the people what they wanted to hear. He would give them all jobs, put food on the table, and make Germany the powerful nation it was once again.
I don’t think that China is anywhere near that shape and Biden is fooling himself if he thinks it is.
Xi, however, was not likely to be pleased with the U.S. boosting its partnership with Vietnam. Both countries are now locked in a “comprehensive strategic partnership,” the highest such distinction for a relationship the Communist country can have with another nation.
That doesn’t mean Hanoi is a Washington ally now — a no-longer-secret arms deal with Russia is case in point — but it does indicate that Vietnam fears Beijing’s aggression in the South China Sea while it’s grateful for its economic windfall from the U.S.-China trade war.
Tensions over human rights arose during Biden’s mostly cordial visit, though. Nguyen Phu Trong, the general secretary of Vietnam’s Communist Party, emphasized the importance of “non-interference in domestic affairs,” a clear signal that he expects no reprimands for politically motivated killings and other atrocities.
Biden, who is facing criticism for the G20 communiqué that weakened language in support of Ukraine to secure Russia’s buy-in, said he brought up Hanoi’s humanitarian violations with Nguyen. But it was clear the president had his eyes on the larger strategic picture.
“I think we have an enormous opportunity,” Biden said earlier Sunday inside Hanoi’s presidential palace as cameras whirred and flashed. “Vietnam and the United States are critical partners at what I would argue is a very critical time. I’m not saying that to be polite.”
So, let’s finish with a little history lesson.
https://www.history.com/news/chamberlain-declares-peace-for-our-time-75-years-ago
For days, dread had blanketed London like a fog. Only a generation removed from the horrors of World War I, which had claimed nearly one million of its people, Britain was once again on the brink of armed conflict with Germany. Hitler, who had annexed Austria earlier in the year, had vowed to invade Czechoslovakia on October 1, 1938, to occupy the German-speaking Sudetenland region, a move toward the creation of a “greater Germany” that could potentially ignite another conflagration among the great European powers.
Woah! Wait. So, Hitler is simply wanting to re-unite the German speaking people into one country? Isn’t that exactly what China is saying about Taiwan?
The clouds of war billowed in the British capital as the hours to the deadline dwindled. As Chamberlain mobilized the Royal Navy, Londoners, including the prime minister’s wife, prayed on bended knees inside Westminster Abbey.
Workers covered the windows of government offices with sandbags and installed sirens in police stations to warn of approaching enemy bombers. By torchlight, they scarred the city’s pristine parks by digging miles of trenches to be used as air-raid shelters. A knot of traffic snarled the city as Londoners began an exodus.
Hundreds of thousands who planned to stay in the city stood patiently in line for government-issued gas masks and air-raid handbooks. London Zoo officials even developed plans to station gun-toting men in front of cages to shoot the wild animals in case bombs broke open their cages and freed them.
Just two days before the deadline, Hitler agreed to meet in Munich with Chamberlain, Italian leader Benito Mussolini and French premier Edouard Daladier to discuss a diplomatic resolution to the crisis.
The four leaders, without any input from Czechoslovakia in the negotiation, agreed to cede the Sudetenland to Hitler. Chamberlain also separately drafted a non-aggression pact between Britain and Germany that Hitler signed.
When news of the diplomatic breakthrough reached the British capital, normally staid London responded like a death-row prisoner granted a last-minute reprieve. Jubilation and waves of relief washed over London in a celebration that had not been seen since the armistice that silenced the guns of World War I.
On a rainy autumn evening, thousands awaited the prime minister’s return at London’s Heston Aerodrome, and the thankful crowd cheered wildly as the door to his British Airways airplane opened. As raindrops fell on Chamberlain’s silver hair, he stepped onto the airport tarmac. He held aloft the nonaggression pact that had been inked by him and Hitler only hours before, and the flimsy piece of paper flapped in the breeze.
The prime minister read to the nation the brief agreement that reaffirmed “the desire of our two peoples never to go to war with one another again.”
Remember what Biden just said last week?
“We’re not trying to hurt China.” Under his watch, Biden said America’s goal is “getting the relationship right” between the world’s two foremost powers.
Summoned to Buckingham Palace to give a first-hand report to King George VI, Chamberlain was cheered on by thousands who lined the five-mile route from the airport. As the rain poured, thousands flooded the plaza in front of the royal residence. As if it were a coronation or a royal wedding, the frenzied cheers brought forth the king and queen along with Chamberlain and his wife onto the palace balcony.
In an unprecedented move, the smiling king motioned the prime minister to step forward and receive the crowd’s adulation as he receded into the background to leave the stage solely to a commoner.
After his royal audience, Chamberlain returned to his official residence at No. 10 Downing Street. There a jubilant crowd shouted “Good old Neville!” and sang “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow.”
From a second-floor window, Chamberlain addressed the crowd and invoked Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli’s famous statement upon returning home from the Berlin Congress of 1878, “My good friends, this is the second time in our history that there has come back from Germany to Downing Street peace with honor. I believe it is peace for our time.”
Then he added, “Now I recommend you to go home and sleep quietly in your beds.” As Britain slept, the German army marched into Czechoslovakia in “peaceful conquest” of the Sudetenland. The bombers did not roar over London that night, but they would come.
In March 1939, Hitler annexed the rest of Czechoslovakia, and two days after the Nazis crossed into Poland on September 1, 1939, the prime minister again spoke to the nation, but this time to solemnly call for a British declaration of war against Germany and the launch of World War II.
Eight months later, Chamberlain was forced to resign, and he was replaced by Winston Churchill.
Did Biden just give another Chamberlain speech? Should we put our faith and trust in agreements made between Biden and Xi Jinping?
What does history tell you?