China's 'Near-Peer' Status in US Strategy Hides Looming Hot War Threat - Analyst
© AP Photo / Jim Gomez
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The 2025 National Security Strategy (NSS) may look softer on paper, recasting China from a “threat” into a “near-peer competitor” with seeming potential to “reshape” US-China relations, Dr. John Gong, economics professor at the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing, tells Sputnik.
The wording in the new US NSS is just a thin veneer of peaceful “palliatives,” China expert Jeff J. Brown tells Sputnik.
In reality, US allies “Japan, Taiwan, Philippines and Australia, are being armed for confrontation, and a hot war is still likely in the next 2-3 years,” says Brown, who is also founder of Seek Truth From Facts Foundation.
Washington “still flogs the Asian Quad – “obviously structured to counter China militarily,” he notes, adding that the NSS:
insists on “arming Taiwan to the hilt, to counter China with ‘military overmatch’”
pushes to “maintain military foothold in the South China Sea under flimsy pretext against China”
Australia, Taiwan, Japan and South Korea urged to “spend more on arms to ‘deter adversaries’ “which are obviously China, DPRK and Russia”
US tariffs also remain in force.
🚨 New NSS signals US ready to ‘forget’ Ukraine, snubs ‘weak’ EU – analyst
— Sputnik (@SputnikInt) December 7, 2025
The updated National Security Strategy sketches a future in which the US is “ready to throw the current political leadership in Ukraine under the bus, much as several NATO countries and EU leadership… pic.twitter.com/XAzzcmEkg3
‘Behind-The-Scene Rogue Actors’
The CIA, US Departments of War and State, US Legislature, and Israel’s Mossad don’t want to relinquish the profits generated by forever wars, noted the expert.
“These Western deep state actors learned a long time ago to ignore or sabotage any directives that threaten their filthy lucre,” he says.
No Shift in West’s Power Pyramid
The US plans to keep its allies buying its weapons to “contain China,” believes Brown. US “fealty” to the West’s war machine has been bought by billionaire donors who “don’t get richer with peace.”
Since 1963 and the presidency of John F. Kennedy, “no US president has been free to be ‘presidential’ in their governance, like Putin and Xi are,” he remarks.
As far as China is concerned, it will likely “play to Trump’s megalomania,” while quietly prepping for a potential hot war,” concludes Brown.
19 December 2017, 03:30 GMT
