Commentary
The latest poll from
Gallup finds that for Americans, China is still the top enemy. Russia and Iran come in second and third, respectively. This all makes perfect sense. The wisdom of crowds, which is the basis of democracy, is alive and well in America.
The three dictatorships, plus North Korea, constitute the “
Axis of Evil,” according to Adm. John Aquilino, the commander of U.S. forces in the Indo-Pacific. We ought to pay attention. On March 20, he said, “The security environment is the most dangerous I’ve seen in 40 years in uniform.” Americans may want peace and do their best to stay away from foreign entanglements, but sometimes, the snake finds us before we even know it is there.
The latest indicator that the Axis is active is that Iranian-backed Houthi terrorists are attacking international shipping in the Red Sea and, on March 21, agreed to let Chinese and Russian ships pass. In exchange, Beijing and Moscow are promising to back the terrorists in international fora, such as at the United Nations. If not countered in some manner, this will give Axis ships an advantage in international maritime transport over the United States and our allies, deepening the geopolitical rut in which we find ourselves.
Let’s recap why China, ruled as it is by the Chinese Communist Party, is the worst of the bunch according to Americans. The three main legacy reasons are that it originated
COVID-19, possibly through a
lab leak; threatens our best allies and partners in and near Asia such as Australia, Japan,
Taiwan, and the Philippines with invasion or
nuclear strikes; and steals up to $600 billion in U.S. intellectual property each year. Then there are the latest reasons: attempting to use TikTok as a malign influencer of the U.S. Congress, threatening U.S.
water supplies through hacking, and aggression toward our treaty ally, the Philippines, in the
South China Sea.
Europe has been slower to recognize the dangers of China, in part because of Germany’s extensive business in the country. However, Brussels increasingly looks upon Beijing warily. On March 19, the European Union unveiled a reinstallation of the “Pillar of Shame”
statue about the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989. The statue previously stood at a Hong Kong university, before the regime had it taken down in 2021.
Jens Galschiot, the Danish sculptor of the piece, along with seven members of the European Parliament who represent its biggest political coalitions, hosted the unveiling. Mr. Galschiot wrote that the new installation in front of the parliament, in a far more prominent location than the old, sends a “strong signal to China that its censorship does not apply in Europe.”
The
European Union is now working increasingly closely with the United States to counter the Axis of Evil. This includes pressure on Beijing to cease its support for Russia and its war against Ukraine. On March 21, Reuters reported that Washington and Brussels were threatening secondary sanctions on Chinese and Turkish financial institutions for facilitating trade with Russia through yuan currency transfers. The threat of secondary sanctions is apparently working, with some Chinese banks now refusing to do such business with Russian firms, according to the Kremlin.
Despite all the challenges from the Axis of Evil facing the United States and our allies, the buckling of several Chinese banks to threats of U.S. and EU sanctions indicates that we still have the economic clout to pressure China, even when it comes to its most powerful ally, Russia. Moscow and Beijing have been trying to avoid this for years by promoting their own currency and international interbank transfer network to compete with the SWIFT network that operates from Europe. They are attempting this through their partners in the BRICS group (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa). However, as long as these countries are at least somewhat dependent on exports to U.S. and allied markets, especially the biggest world economies of the Group of Seven countries, they will feel significant pressure from the threat of secondary sanctions.
The G7 countries—the United States, Canada, the UK, France, Italy, Germany, and Japan—have sufficient economic clout, equal to about 26.4 percent of global gross domestic product, to guide the world away from the wars that the Axis of Evil is starting. We can arrive at a more peaceful world if only we use our joint economic power proactively, strategically, and wisely.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
