The Wall Street Journal Calls for War on China and Russia

The Wall Street Journal flashed its neocon colors today, in an open call for war on Russia and China as soon as possible. Titled “Russia, Iran and China are advancing as the U.S. retreats,” the Editorial says that Vladimir Putin’s sale of S-300 anti-aircraft missiles to Iran is “the latest evidence of an emerging new threat to world order and U.S. security: the rise of authoritarian regional powers. China, Russia and Iran are taking advantage of American retreat to assert political and (perhaps eventually) military dominance over their corners of the globe. They share a goal of reducing U.S. influence, bending neighbors to their political will, and ultimately using that regional base of power to diminish the global sway of Western democracies, especially the U.S.”.

China, however, is the greatest threat, they argue. “Perhaps the greatest long-term regional threat is a rising China with its rapid economic growth and desire to restore the Middle Kingdom to what its leaders see as their rightful dominance in East Asia. New Supreme Leader Xi Jinping has jettisoned Deng Xiaoping’s strategy of foreign-policy caution in favor of a new muscular nationalism,” building up China’s military and building bases in the South China Sea.

These “anti-democratic” regimes go beyond asserting power in their own region, the Urinal writes. “They protect other despots and search for ways to undermine U.S. allies. They can also form alliances with one another [BRICS, perhaps? — ed.], as Russia has with Iran on Syria and by selling its anti-aircraft system to Tehran. Over time regional powers can also become global threats, as Japan and Germany did a century ago, especially if they form authoritarian alliances.”

Most interestingly, the editorial dredges up the completely discredited neocons, whose ideology was famously exposed in the book Children of Satan:

“Americans can’t say they weren’t warned,” writes the Journal. “Twenty-three years ago, in the waning days of the George H.W. Bush Administration, the Pentagon planning shop published a strategy document that set blocking the rise of regionally dominant powers as one of America’s most important security goals.”

This clearly refers to the the Defense Planning Guidance from 1992, known as the “Wolfowitz Doctrine,” after Paul Wolfowitz, who co-authored it with Scooter Libby, Zalmay Khalizad, Dick Cheney, Andrew Marshall, Richard Perle, and the father of the neocons Albert Wohlstetter. The doctrine argued that, since with the fall of the Soviet Union, the US was the “only superpower,” and must prevent any other nation, or group of nations, from achieving the power which could threaten the preeminence of the US — by military means if necessary.

The Journal claims that “For 20 years and through administrations of both parties, the U.S. managed to contain the emergence of such regional threats. But that containment has broken down in Europe, the Middle East and East Asia during President Obama’s second term.”

Therefore, prepare for war, they conclude:

“The next President will need an urgent strategy to contain and counter the rising threat.”