![]() A reactionary response to a sharp decline in public trust in governance is the rise of a more authoritarian and secretive state engaged in a war against China and Russia. It cannot be resolved without the US close collaboration with China.Īustralia’s mounting danger and cost of the ecological crisis is exacerbated by increasing levels of social discontent and disorder caused by inequality, inflation, the toxicity of the national health and housing system, and pollution. The US now confronts an existential and sovereign territorial crisis caused by the degradation of the biosphere, and human-induced climate change and global warming. The US ruling elite is threatened by the rise of China, pushing a strategy of regime change and territorial balkanisation, replicating the destruction of the Soviet Union. The expanding global crisis has exposed US internal civil war and failure in global governance. US imperial ambition to dominate the world is unlikely to succeed. On its course to global domination, the US waged war on many countries, including Korea, Cuba, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Iraq and Afghanistan, killing millions of people. ![]() The rise of US power as the world’s economic and military hegemon gained traction during World War Two and in the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991. He believed that Americans were indoctrinated to view the Japanese as a sub-human race and that the nuclear destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was the result of the dehumanisation of the Japanese in the American psyche. Japan’s challenge to Western hegemony during the Pacific War was eventually crushed with the firebombing of Japan’s cities and the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.īert Röling, a Dutch judge at the 1946-48 Tokyo trial, viewed racism as a major factor in World War Two. Western racism and economic restrictions to trade with European colonies powered the rise of Japan militarism in the 1930‘s. The 1941-1945 Pacific war was a race war fought by the US and Australia to protect white supremacy in the region against Asian interests. The destruction of Japan began in economic warfare and sanctions imposed on Japan by the West, severing access to markets for food and material resources. Western technology and the pressure of industrialisation pushed Japan to expand and replicate the history of the British Empire and US territorial expansion, invading other countries, killing millions.Īmerican historian John Dower argued that Japan’s rise as a dominant power in Asia, ‘challenged not just the Western presence but the entire mystique of white supremacism on which centuries of European expansion had rested’. US and British capital, trade, and arms brought about the rapid industrialisation and militarisation of Japan. These attacks signalled to Japan that its sovereignty was at risk lest it became powerful and joined the West’s imperial game. Another clear warning of a new order for Asia came soon after with the 1863 bombardment of Kagoshima and that of Shimonoseki in 1864 by Western ships. Japan’s moment came when Commodore Matthew Perry American warships came to Japan in 1853 with an ultimatum to the Tokugawa shogunate to open the country to trade and foreigners. ![]() The history of Japan imperialism must be contextualised in the Western expansion of European people in the conquest of the world beginning in the 16 th century. What is needed is telling the truth about human cruelty and mobilise Australia’s foreign policy to work for peace and advance reconciliation in East Asia. Japan bashing, depicting atrocities committed by the Japanese empire, serves to further shift public opinion to support Australia’s military alliance with the US, preparing for war against China. Jimmy Carter called the US ‘the most warlike nation in the history of the world,’ and said that ‘peaceful’ China is ‘ahead of us in almost every way’.
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