🚨 War with China now “imminent”

CHINA

🚨 War with China now “imminent”

The US is in self-destruct mode. Not only is it targeting its internal institutions and tearing apart the very values it says it stands for, but its flailing arms of late-stage capitalism are reaching across the Pacific and demanding countries bow down to US militarism and decouple themselves from China (spoiler alert: it’s not working).

At the 2025 Shangri-La Dialogue Summit, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth recited a belligerent, MAGA-imperialist speech about preparing for war with China by beefing up US military presence in the Asia Pacific and spending over $1 trillion to create the most “lethal fighting force in the world.” Hegseth, who wrote an entire book about a “holy war” with China, Islam, and the international left, prefers using the term “warfighter” over soldier, and declared that China is now an “imminent threat.”

But Hegseth is just a talking head—one that doesn’t even know what he’s talking about most of the time. The real architect of the Trump administration’s policy on China and likely writer of the speech (at least the parts Hegseth didn’t ad-lib) is warhawk Elbridge Colby.

Colby is currently serving as Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, and is known for his Kissinger-esque “strategy of denial” on China. He emphasizes the need to prepare for a limited nuclear war with China, which integrated nuclear war into US defense strategy for the first time ever. He claims Washington could win a war with China by attacking China’s infrastructure, its industrial base, and the Chinese government itself. Though it is possible and even likely that the conflict could escalate to nuclear war, he says they could theoretically keep it limited so as to avoid total nuclear annihilation.

👉Tell Elbridge Colby: Nuclear war is never an option! We need demilitarization and diplomacy!

We don’t need to take a nationwide survey to know the average American is completely against nuclear war—that’s just common sense. Unfortunately, the average American remains unaware of the true dangers of US military preparations in the Pacific and the potential for it to go nuclear, especially since they are too focused on battling the fascist tentacles infiltrating their everyday life.

Recently, the Trump administration launched a war on education, demanding universities comply with their completely unconstitutional demands by scrapping what they consider to be “anti-American” fields of study—which operate as the very tools that enable Americans to think outside the mind control of the imperial core—and replace them with “patriotic education” (imperialist propaganda).

When Harvard didn’t immediately capitulate to the demands, three congressional committees sent a letter accusing the university of working with paramilitary groups from China, collaborating with Iran, and even helping develop spy robots and transplant tech with illegal organ harvesters. The entire letter was an absurd, conspiratorial fever-dream, reflecting how empires in decline are often their own worst enemies.

The truth is, the greatest threat to the US, to the Asia Pacific, and the world, is the US itself. In its desperation to preserve unipolar dominance, it’s lashing out in dangerous, potentially world-altering ways, such as the actual consideration of nuclear war as a potential military strategy.

👉 Elbridge Colby: Denounce nuclear war and commit to diplomacy!

But there’s also some good news: just as universities are refusing to capitulate, many nations are rejecting Washington’s demands that they side with the US and decouple from China. In May, China, Japan, and South Korea joined the 28th ASEAN Summit, pledging to deepen economic cooperation. There was also the first-ever ASEAN-Gulf Cooperation Council-China summit in Malaysia, which signals a shift toward multipolar diplomacy and non-aligned foreign policy in the Pacfifc.

It is clear that many nations are unwilling to comply with US military demands and are choosing regional diplomacy, peace, and multilateralism, not war and coercion. So even though the US claims war with China is “imminent,” the shifting global order and decline of US hegemony provide a ray of hope for a peaceful future.

Peace and solidarity,

Megan, Jodie, and the CODEPINK Team

👉 Read Empires Eat Themselves: Trump's Absurd War on Education to learn more.

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