Earlier this month Moscow and Beijing wrapped up joint patrols in the western and northern Pacific, off the coast of Alaska. The exercises, comprising 11 warships, took place in neutral waters without violating generally accepted norms.
Nonetheless, US Sens. Dan Sullivan and Lisa Murkowski blew a gasket last Saturday, describing the drills as nothing short of an "incursion", something that was denied by the US Northern Command: "The patrol remained in international waters and was not considered a threat," the command's spokesperson stated on August 6.
Meanwhile, the US mainstream press poured some more gasoline on the fire. On the very same day when the Pentagon said that the Russo-Chinese patrols posed zero challenge to the US, a mainstream American broadcaster told this story in its own way, hyping up the non-existent threat to gargantuan proportions.
Per the broadcaster, the passage of the warships somewhere off Alaskan shores was "just the latest close call" between Russia and China and the US. The media claimed that the exercises were an "aggressive maneuver" and even "called an incursion". Remarkably, at the end of the segment it was said that Alaska senators – apparently those who raised the red flag about a non-existent "incursion" – renewed calls for increased investment in military power in Alaska in the wake of the Russo-Chinese drills.
The mainstream media narrative attracted the attention of the DC-based Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, which concluded that the news segment "exemplifies the fourth estate's complicity in a march to a new Cold war with Beijing" driven by US neocons and hawks.
As per DC scholars, politicians in Washington, the US military-industrial complex and "other financially or politically interested parties" are seeking to create an atmosphere of fear and confrontation around China and its actions and use the media as a convenient tool to shape the public mood.
"[The news] segment completely ignored the wider context and the complexities of US-China and US-Russia relations, which could have helped to explain Russian and Chinese motives for conducting these drills so close to American territory, including the possibility that they were responding to similar US military activity close to their own respective countries," the think tank's report said.
The think tank also pointed out that the news story clearly contradicted the Pentagon's assessment of the event, making the situation even more controversial.
As the US is trying to navigate a changing geopolitical order with China emerging as its primary competitor, Washington hawks are embracing a militarist approach instead of healthy competition and cooperation and the US press is eagerly playing into their hands, the think tank concluded.