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My Take
Opinion
Alex Lo
Alex Lo

My Take | US strategy to portray China as aggressor over Taiwan

  • Don’t believe the United States wants war over Taiwan? Just listen to Pentagon officials, past and present, and their brazen public statements and strategic plots

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Alex Lo
They say great minds think alike. Perhaps devious ones are like that, too. My column from last week, “The US is priming Asia-Pacific for war”, has provoked some angry responses from readers, and also ridicule. Unbeknown to me, my argument that the United States could try to trigger a war with China over Taiwan and risk a major conflagration in Asia-Pacific was actually advocated as a strategy by Elbridge Colby, who was a deputy assistant secretary of defence for strategy and force development at the US Department of Defence, during the presidency of Donald Trump. Really, you can’t make this stuff up, not me anyway.

I am, as always, amused by the hostile comments. Here are just a few samples: “I find your headline misleading and as one speaker said you seem to be employed by the GT (Global Times).”

“The US didn’t create a map and use that for its justification for imperialism. The US didn’t invest hundreds of trillions of dollars in China to go to war with China.”

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“Lets have a weekly ant-American (sic) opinion piece … oh it’s already the slanted view of Alex Lo … this is my last post on SCMP … removing the ap from my laptop … and I don’t even like America.”

“You’ve got to turn it down a notch. Even WSJ editors are not this belligerint (sic). Yes, the West wants to contain China. No, they are not out for war.”

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There are many more such comments but you get the idea. However, a friendly reader alerts me to Colby’s new book, The Strategy of Denial: American Defence in an Age of Great Power Conflict.

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