US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan has recently claimed the US is not “looking for a crisis.” This is said, of course, with an important caveat – no crisis is sought as long as China subordinates itself to the United States.

The US openly declares that it seeks to maintain a monopoly over shaping the “international order” following the Cold War and America’s emergence from it as the sole superpower.

As China rises, Asia rises with it. The Southeast Asian state of the Philippines stood to rise alongside the rest of the region until relatively recently as the United States successfully convinces the Philippines to do otherwise.

In the lead up to the Ukrainian military’s incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, even Western headlines were dominated by reports of Ukraine’s gradual demise. Ukraine is admittedly suffering arms and ammunition shortages, as well as facing an unsolvable manpower crisis. Russia has been destroying Ukrainian military power faster than Ukraine and its Western sponsors can reconstitute it.

Violent regime change in the South Asian country of Bangladesh unfolded rapidly and mostly by stealth as the rest of the world focused on the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, growing tensions in the Middle East and a simmering confrontation between the US and China in the Asia-Pacific region. The implications of the successful putsch, carried out by US-backed opposition groups, stands to impact South and Southeast Asia, as well as create instability along the peripheries of the two most populous nations on Earth, China and India.

From the ongoing US involvement in Ukraine, to an enduring US military presence in the Middle East, and growing US-Chinese tensions in the Asia-Pacific region, regardless of who controls the US Congress and regardless of who sits in the White House, these conflicts continue forward – often with a Democratic president setting the stage for his Republican successor, and vice versa.

The United States has taken yet another step toward shaping the Southeast Asian archipelago nation of the Philippines into an Ukraine-style proxy with which to encircle and contain China, this time in the form of a $500 million military assistance package for Manila.

A recent article appearing in the US-based Business Insider titled, “Russia’s showing NATO its hand in the air war over Ukraine,” would provide a showcase of the deep deficit in military expertise driving increasingly unsustainable, unachievable foreign policy objectives. The article summarizes a number of interviews conducted with Western “airpower experts,” exhibiting a profound misunderstanding of modern military aviation, air defenses, and their role on and above the battlefield.

The United States had throughout the Cold War and within the first decade of the 21st century established dominance in terms of space-based military capabilities, including satellite navigation through its Global Positioning System (GPS) and a wide array of reconnaissance and communications satellites. These enabled US forces to access targeting data and coordinate their forces anywhere on Earth.

While the ongoing conflict in Ukraine continues to dominate headlines, occasionally news stories surface regarding growing tensions in the Asia-Pacific region as well. Driven primarily by the US, these headlines also include the proxies Washington is using to stir up an Ukraine-style conflict in the region.

In the last week of June 2024, Ukraine carried out what appeared to be another unsuccessful ATACMS strike on Crimea. Of the several missiles launched, all but one were intercepted. The last missile was initially reported to have been defected where it detonated over a beach, killing several civilians, including children, and injuring many more.

The Washington Post in an opinion piece by Josh Rogin titled, “The U.S. military plans a ‘Hellscape’ to deter China from attacking Taiwan,”  lays out a fundamentally flawed assessment of a US Department of Defense strategy relying on unmanned systems to fight off the Chinese military for up to a “month” before the US and its allies can mobilize their armed forces.