Making all the wrong moves with China, the White House continue to provoke the Chinese Communist Party with a joint statement with South Korea over Beijing’s aggressive policy in the South China Sea. South Korea’s President Yoon Suk Yeol met with 80-year-old President Joe Biden and Congressional officials in Washington over the last six days. Yeol made a joint statement with U.S. officials calling for peace in the Taiwan Strait, stating in no uncertain terms that “any unilateral attempts to change the status quo in the Indo-Pacific, including through unlawful maritime claims, the militarization of reclaimed features and coercive activities.” U.S. officials have pulled South Korean into the U.S. old beef with Beijing over China’s actions in the South China Sea. South Korea knows that the U.S. won a July 12, 2016 judgment in the Hague’s International Court of Arbitration.
U.S. filed suit at the Hague in 2015 when China began building military installation in shallow shoals in the Spratly Islands. China claimed sovereignty in the South China Sea when they were grabbing land in international waters. So when the joint South Korean-U.S. statement says China should refrain from “unlawful maritime claims,” they refer directly to the 2016 case when the Hague’s International Court of Arbitration ruled against China. China rejected the Hague’s ruling and kept building out military installations in the South China Sea. Stepping into the U.S. conflict with China, South Korea made life in the Indo-Pacific more difficult because they must get along with their more powerful neighbor. Biden has turned the Indo-Pacific into a new region of conflict with China. Recruiting allies like the Philippines and Japan, Biden has ratcheted up tensions in the region.
South Korean officials have much to lose getting embroiled in a U.S.-generated conflict with Beijing. Already of shaky ground with their aggressive North Korean neighbor, Seoul can ill-afford to make enemies with China. Whatever Biden’s agenda, Yeol must think twice about joining Biden’s latest madness with China. When you consider the deadly Ukraine War, potentially sucking the European Continent into WW III, Seoul must politely refrain from entering into Biden’s war hawk mentality. South Korea has tried, since the July 27, 1953 armistice with North Korea, to keep the Korean Peninsula peaceful. Mao Zedong’s China helped furnish the troops-and-weapons to defeat U.S. forces in the Korea War, considered a standoff. Now Biden wants to turn South Korea into enemies with Beijing. If war breaks out in the Taiwan Strait, Seoul will want to maintain its neutrality.
Biden’s belligerent foreign policy mirrors the U.S. gunboat diplomacy of the 20th Century, not current realities in Asia and Europe. Biden has already gotten the U.S. into a proxy war with the Russian Federation, leaving the Brussels-based European Union in quandary. EU officials, especially 44-year-old French President Emmanuel Macron, are not inclined to join the Ukraine War, knowing they want no part of a wider conflict with the Kremlin on the European Continent. South Korea President Yeol should politely refrain to entering into any conflict emerging with the U.S. and China. If Biden wins another four years, the U.S. could very easily be fighting a two-front war, one in Ukraine ante other in Taiwan, with the world once again engulfed in flames. One of the most prosperous countries in Asia, certainly the world, does South Korea really want to join Biden’s war hawk madness?
China’s Director-General of Asian Affair Liu Jinsong met with South Korean Embassy Minister Kan San-wook to emphasize China’s position on Taiwan. Jinsong wanted South Korea to accept its “One China” policy, rejecting Biden’s attempt to deviate from the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act. Biden said Sept. 23, 2022 that he would send U.S. troops to defend Taipei, something that infuriated Beijing. While the U.S. once had a Mutual Defense Treaty with Taiwan, that all ended when former President Jimmy Carter signed the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act. Before South Korea joins Biden’s madness, Yeol need to understand the history and avoid making enemies with Beijing. Billionaire Hedge Fund manager Ray Dalio said yesterday that Biden is marching to war with China over Taiwan. Whatever close relationship Seoul has with Washington, do they want to join a war with China?
Biden has managed to get war drum-beating hawks in Congress to join his proxy war in Ukraine. Now Biden tries to get South Korea to join his madness in threatening a new front against China in the Taiwan Strait. Prospects of a two-front war have grown with Biden continuing to antagonize Beijing, challenging the PRC to back down on Taiwan. Whatever dispute Biden has with China over Taiwan, he should keep the rest of the Indo-Pacific out of his conflict. No country in the Pacific Rim, including Japan, wants any part of a war with China. EU officials are starting to question Biden’s strategy with the Kremlin, backing Ukraine’s War against the Russian Federation. EU officials should heap maximum pressure on Biden to settle the Ukraine War in a neutral peace setting before it erupts into WW III. Biden’s warmongering in Europe and Asia must be stopped.
About the Author
John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news. He’s editor of OnlineColumnist.com and author of Dodging The Bullet and Operation Charisma.
