Pompeo to Portray China as a Threat in Major Arctic Policy Speech

Will reject China's claim of being a 'near-Arctic state'

One day after the Pentagon issued a new report dramatically hyping China as a grave threat to the United States, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is said to be planning a major anti-China speech during his visit to Finland on Monday.

Monday’s speech is expected to be a major US policy speech on the Arctic, and territorial claims therein. Pompeo is expected to spin China as threatening the entire Arctic, and will reject Chinese claims to be a “near-Arctic state” because of its interest in using the area as a shipping route.

The focus of Pompeo’s attack on China, however, is likely to be totally distinct from the Arctic, and just a continuation of the flurry of vague allegations that the Pentagon started with in its own report, part of a broader US policy to portray China as a major enemy and threat to American dominance worldwide.

To that end, the Pentagon is alleging that China might, at some point in the future, conceivably position nuclear submarines in the Arctic Ocean. To be clear, there is no evidence or even claim that China is doing this now, rather the Pentagon expressed concern that at some point in the future, for some reason, they might do so. The report also added that Denmark was concerned about that.

China’s military spending, while still only a fraction of America’s, is also being presented as “laying the groundwork” for a military invasion of Taiwan. Again, there is no allegation that such an invasion is planned or intended, only that China physically could do so if it decided it wanted to in the future.

All told, this is likely part of a US pivot away from portraying Russia as their main enemy and replacing them with China, because Russia has fallen out of the top five in military spending worldwide, while China is securely in second place, albeit far behind the US.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is news editor of Antiwar.com.