Will the Trump Administration Fight the Coronavirus or China?

In reviewing the excruciating pressure imposed on U.S. President Donald Trump to drop his efforts to achieve a collaborative relationship with China’s President Xi Jinping, it is useful to review the strategy outlined by former United Kingdom Ambassador to Washington, Sir Kim Darroch, to manipulate him to adopt British policy initiatives. The {Daily Mail} published on July 6, 2019 leaked diplomatic cables sent by Darroch to Britain’s National Security Adviser Sir Mark Sedwill, discussing how to maintain what he described as “our single most important bilateral relationship”, with Trump as President, given the importance of “defense and intelligence cooperation.”

In his cables, Darroch gave credibility to the discredited report by former MI6 operative Christopher Steele, that Trump could be compromised by the “dodgy Russians…the worst cannot be ruled out”; that Trump and his administration are “inept” and “uniquely dysfunctional”; and that his presidency could “crash and burn”, in a “downward spiral…that leads to disgrace and downfall.”

To sustain the cooperation with — or subservience from — the U.S. that the U.K. requires, Darroch recommends that they employ “Trump whisperers” to “flood the zone” around him: “You want as many as possible of those who Trump consults to give him the same answer. So, we need to be creative in using all the channels available to us through our relationships with his Cabinet, the White House staff and our contacts among his outside friends.”

The goal of the “Trump whisperers” from the time he took office has been to break Trump from his stated desire to improve cooperative relations with Russia’s President Putin and China’s President Xi. The Russiagate narrative, which originated with British fabrications from the GCHQ and MI6, was designed to force Trump into a hostile relationship with Russia, in order to dispel rumors he was being blackmailed by Putin. Though it has been fully discredited, and he survived the subsequent effort to remove him, by a House vote for impeachment regarding his alleged effort to withhold aid from Ukraine for political purposes, the U.S. relationship with Russia has been badly damaged, though he continues to say he wants a positive relationship with Russia. In the weeks since the Coronavirus has taken an increasingly deadly toll in the U.S., and the lock-down measures to combat the pandemic have wreaked havoc with the already-collapsing U.S. economy, the Trump Whisperers have escalated their campaign against China, pushing Trump to blame China for the public health crisis, and the related crash of the economy. Among those who have been identified as Trump Whisperers who met with Darroch are former National Security Adviser John Bolton, former Chief of Staff John Kelly, and former adviser Steve Bannon.

But the ultimate target of this campaign is not Putin and Xi — it is Donald Trump, as his presidency is viewed by leading British/City of London officials, and their U.S. allies in the Bush-Obama intelligence community and both U.S. political parties, as an existential threat to the maintenance of their bankrupt system, which is dependent on the unbroken continuity of geopolitical confrontation, and neoliberal economic policies. A review of the British role in promoting the anti-China hysteria demonstrates how the U.K. establishment is focused on moving Trump to turn against China, especially after the successful conclusion by Trump and Xi of Phase I of the trade negotiations.

“Blame China”

At the heart of the British anti-China campaign is the Henry Jackson Society (HJS). Founded by neocons with ties to the lying campaign accusing Saddam Hussein of possessing weapons of mass destruction to justify the Iraq war — including Sir Richard Dearlove, who as MI6 head delivered the fake Iraq WMD dossier to the Bush administration — the HJS has conducted an ongoing campaign demanding concerted action by western nations against China. (Note that Dearlove was among the most aggressive defenders of Christopher Steele, when his fake dossier against Trump came under fire). Among other targets, they went after Chinese telecom innovator Huawei, insisting that any deal with Huawei opens western telecommunications to Chinese spying. Most recently, an April 5 report from HJS demanded that China must pay compensation for the spread of the Coronavirus, drafting a bill for $4 trillion to be paid to G7 nations.

This demand became a leading “talking point” of the anti-China crowd in the U.S., picked up by trade negotiator and anti-China hack Peter Navarro, who is pushing the slogan, “China lied, people died”, to claim that China owes the U.S. It is the subject of a raving article published by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) on April 28, titled “How to Make China Pay for COVID19”. The article was written by John Yoo and Richard Delahunty, who are notorious for authoring the infamous memo defending torture in Iraq for the Bush administration in 2002. The AEI is one of the leading promoters among U.S. think tanks of British neo-illiberal economic policies. After relentless questioning by anti-China media hawks, President Trump stated at recent press briefings that his administration is looking into getting China to pay!

One prominent “Trump whisperer”, Steve Bannon, a former adviser until he fell into disfavor, uses his “WarRoom” podcast to demand punitive actions against the Chinese government. Bannon accuses China of unleashing a “biological Chernobyl”, saying the “world must hold them [the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)] accountable,” adding provocatively that “All the dead [from the pandemic] are victims of the CCP.” Bannon’s co-host and collaborator in the WarRoom is Raheem Kassam, who previously worked for the HJS.

Another major British intervention, which has been repeated incessantly by those attacking China, was the article on April 5 in the {Sunday Times}, by Niall Ferguson, who is an outspoken apologist for the British Empire. Ferguson claims that “after it became clear that there was a full-blown epidemic spreading from Wuhan”, that the Chinese cut off all domestic travel from there, but allowed international travel to continue. This charge has morphed into the argument that China was spreading the disease deliberately to the rest of the world, and found its way into the April 30 Trump press briefing, when Trump responded to a question by saying that the U.S. is investigating whether this may have been a mistake, or deliberate!

Clearly Trump had not been briefed on the devastating blow to Ferguson’s polemic from Dr. Daniel A. Bell, Dean of the School of Political Science and Public Administration at Shangdong University. Bell proved that Ferguson’s charge that international travel continued from Wuhan after January 23 was false, by examining the flight logs, which showed NO flights from Wuhan after that date. Neither the {Times}, nor Ferguson, nor whomever briefed Trump on Ferguson’s fabricated story, has come forward to acknowledge that it is a lie, and the story continues to be bandied about by anti-China politicians and the media. Among those repeating this claim is Navarro, who blustered that instead of containing the virus in Wuhan, “five million people went out from Wuhan and propagated the virus around the world.”

While there are many other instances of such lies shaping an anti-China environment, one of the more egregious ones was a report in the [Daily Telegraph] of Australia, which claims that a report was prepared by a joint intelligence team of the Five Eyes, accusing China of conducting “an assault on international transparency”, by hiding or destroying evidence of the Coronavirus. While the author of this article was subsequently featured on Fox News in the U.S., it has been noted by critics that no one from Five Eyes has taken credit for the report, nor has anyone else seen it! The same “report” also targets Trump, saying that he had been briefed in January that China had unleashed a potentially devastating pandemic, yet he did nothing to counter it. U.S. intelligence officials deny that Trump received such a briefing. The Five Eyes network, which includes the U.K., the U.S., and British Commonwealth countries Canada, Australia and New Zealand, was prominently involved in setting in motion the fake Russiagate story, with particular input from Australian official Alexander Downer.

One U.S. official, who is at the center of the War Hawk grouping in the Trump administration, who finds no British claim too extreme to repeat, is Secretary of State Pompeo, who often travels to London to coordinate this offensive. In May 2019, he spoke at a London think tank, the Center for Policy Studies, warning that China’s goal is to divide the western alliance — which in fact is what he has been doing, with his global tour attacking the Belt-and-Road Initiative, which has been gaining support among some EU countries — and attempting to cut-off cooperation with Huawei. Last January, during a stop in London, Pompeo said that “the Chinese Communist Party is the central threat of our times.” Recently, on Fox tv and in other venues, Pompeo said there is “huge evidence” that the CCP is “hiding and obfuscating” the truth about its role in spreading the Coronavirus, but that he cannot divulge that evidence! He went on to accuse the CCP of “using classic communist disinformation” in its coverup, insisting that the CCP “continues to pose a threat to the world,” and that it “now has a responsibility to tell the world how this pandemic got out of China and all across the world, causing such global economic devastation.”

As the 2020 election approaches, this line is one that Trump is being urged to employ to combat the charge that his administration was not prepared to take on the pandemic, a charge already being voiced by the campaign of Trump’s likely opponent, Joe Biden. While ignoring that the lack of preparation was due to a 40+ year dismantling of public health in the U.S., due to adherence to neoliberal austerity policy, a key campaign theme which is emerging is who is “softer” on China. A 57-page memo prepared for the National Republican Senatorial Committee advocates that, in response to Democratic attacks, the Republican response should be “Don’t Defend Trump…Attack China.” This report was prepared by a consultant, Brett O’Donnell, who has in the past worked for Fox News’ anti-China and anti-Russian loudmouth Sean Hannity, war hawk John McCain, and, in 2019, current British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson.

China Responds to War Hysteria, Calls for Cooperation

The leading media in China have countered this unhinged propaganda campaign sharply, warning that these allegations not only threaten a worsening of relations, but could lead to military confrontation. The British-Canadian news agency Reuters attempted to whip up war hysteria, reporting that a leaked document shows that the Chinese military is “preparing for military confrontation.” Apparently Reuters does not consider nearly non-stop naval maneuvers by the U.S. Navy in the South China Sea to be war preparation, nor that the constant demands that nations in the “Indo-Pacific” region engage in joint maneuvers with the U.S. to combat Chinese “aggression” could raise legitimate concerns in China.

The Chinese media point out that one aspect of the virulent anti-China response is to take away the focus on the failure of the U.S. to adequately prepare for the pandemic. A May 5 story in {China Daily} was headlined “Pompeo’s Clown Show Spotlights U.S. Administration’s Mistakes,” was followed by a story the next day which stated that rather than blaming China for a “coverup”, the problem is that the U.S. ignored the indicators of the coming problem. “Washington should face the reality of the situation…and work with Beijing”, the editorial states, “to defeat this pathogen.” On May 7, {China Daily} issued a call for collaboration under the headline “It’s Time U.S. Focused on the Struggle Against a Real Enemy — the Virus.”

What must be presented to American citizens is that the propaganda designed to create an “enemy image” of China is run by the same networks which targeted Trump for removal by Russiagate, and is just as fabricated as that narrative, as is being demonstrated by the latest evidence coming out from the Flynn case. National security requires that immunity to the “British virus” known as the “special relationship” must be developed, through an understanding of the real intent of British meddling in U.S. policy. This is an essential component to not only effectively fight the Coronavirus and prevent the spread of future pandemics, but also to consolidate mutually beneficial strategic relationships with Russia and China.

From our partner RIAC