By Global Times
Apr 14, 2023
Illustration: Liu Rui/GT
https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202304/1289163.shtml
Editor’s Note:
At the two ends of Eurasia, the US has been provoking Russia through Ukraine and provoking China through the island of Taiwan. What lessons can the world draw from the Russia-Ukraine conflict? Does the US want to provoke a war in the Taiwan Strait to contain China? Sara Flounders (Flounders), a political writer and activist for 50 years in the US, shared her thoughts in an interview with Global Times (GT) reporter Wang Wenwen. Flounders is a contributing editor of Workers World Newspaper and helps coordinate the International Action Center and the United National Antiwar Coalition.
The US way of operating, from its very founding, has been ruthless competition. The US is built on the African slave trade, the genocide of indigenous people, the exploitation of workers and constant expansion. It must, as an economic system and thoroughly capitalist system, expand or die. That is how they see it.
Corporate CEOs see now they’re not expanding. That to them is death and dangerous because they can more easily literally envision the end of the world than the end of their own power, and they will risk a great deal. These are very ruthless people.
The US and China have two systems. In China, the Communist Party of China is operating in the interests of the working people of China. It’s why China was able to solve its own problems and develop its economy.
The political parties in the US operate on the interests of the top corporations and banks. And the top corporations are military industries who pay the lobbyists and run the politicians. That’s where the loyalty is. You can’t even have anti-war politicians. They’re elected into office and they will vote again and again for the military budget and go along with the wars, even if they’ve promised that they wouldn’t when they were running.
