US War-Hawks ESCALATE: Neocons Make Pacific War Inevitable | Dr. Warwick Powell

## A strategic fever: why a clash with China is being normalized The steady drumbeat for confrontation with China has shifted from opportunistic rhetoric to a coherent mode of statecraft within parts of the United States political and military establishment. The conversation with Dr. Warwick Powell makes this plainly visible: Washington’s present posture is less a defensive contingency plan and more a strategy that seeks to perpetuate tensions so that permanent political, economic, and military advantages accrue to the United States and its client partners. That is the worrying premise: escalation is not accidental; it is institutionalized. Recognizing that intentionality reframes the stakes. This is not simply a dispute over policy details. It is a contest between rival visions of how global order should be maintained — and it places Taiwan, regional allies, and the future of nuclear stability at the center of a dangerous bargaining game. ## The language of inevitability: drums of war and manufactured deadlines One of the most revealing patterns in the discussion is how language is being weaponized to create inevitability. Military and political commentators in the United States routinely deploy stark timelines and worst‑case scenarios — the much‑cited “2027” benchmark being an emblematic example. As Dr. Warwick Powell emphasizes, that date originated not from Beijing but from Western military sources. Once floated, it becomes a magnet for resources, policy shifts, and alliance pressure. The rhetorical device does two things at once: it creates urgency at home (to justify defense spending and technological restrictions) and it pressures allies in the region to align with U.S. preparations. Whether or not the purported adversary ever articulated the timeline is less relevant than the momentum that accrues once the date is treated as a truth. This process is amplifying a feedback loop. Predictions of imminent Chinese aggression are treated as evidence of bad intent, which in turn justifies further containment measures. Those measures — arms deliveries to Taiwan, intensified military exercises, technology denial regimes, and public statements — then become the basis for renewed alarms about Chinese preparations. The loop benefits a particular policy constituency: those whose professional and institutional interests are served by perpetual preparedness. But it also risks producing the very crisis it claims to prevent, by normalizing scenarios in which escalation becomes the rational response. ## Exceptionalism, routinized intervention, and the U.S. war habit The conversation repeatedly returns to a broader theme: the United States has developed a cultural and institutional habit of intervention that is hard to break. Drawing on data discussed by Powell and referenced scholarship, the U.S. record shows a rising tempo of interventions in the post‑Cold War era. Whether framed as humanitarian rescue, defense of liberal norms, or containment of rivals, intervention has become both a policy tool and a central pillar of elite identity. The logic of “peace through strength” and the obligations of exceptionalism provide moral and strategic rationales for recurring external action. But intervention rarely delivers the stabilizing outcomes its advocates promise. Powell’s account underscores a pattern: interventions are often designed or carried out in ways that perpetuate conflict rather than resolve it, thereby providing continuing justification for a U.S. presence. Permanent bases, arms supplies to preferred partners, economic sanctions, and covert efforts to influence domestic politics create long‑term dependencies and cycles of instability. For allies and third‑party nations, the result can be the erosion of local capacity for independent conflict resolution and economic development. For the international system, the outcome is repeated fragmentation and recurring humanitarian catastrophe — high costs that are often minimized in domestic political discourse because the interventions also reinforce elite narratives of moral leadership and security provision. ## The artifice of provocation: straw men and the politics of deterrence The exchange makes clear that provocation is sometimes strategic. Invented narratives about imminent aggression perform a rhetorical function: if you can place a hostile script in your rival’s mouth, you obtain license to prepare, coerce, and, if needed, punish. Powell highlights how the West’s habit of misattributing claims or inventing timetables creates two escape routes for the provoker. If the rival refrains from acting, the provoker can claim successful deterrence; if the rival responds, the provoker can point to the rival’s “aggression” as proof of malign intent. That logic is seductive because it offers policymakers a win‑win framework for mobilizing domestic resources and international support. But the method is fundamentally brittle and escalatory. It relies on convincing multiple actors — domestic constituencies, industry, allied governments — that worst‑case scenarios are not merely possible but imminent. Once those narratives take root, policy becomes oriented to managing the feared contingency rather than addressing the underlying sources of friction. In practice, that translates into a policy mix heavy on containment measures: supply‑chain decoupling, technology embargoes, intensified military partnerships, and arms transfers to island and littoral states. Those measures create both the material capacity and the political momentum for confrontation, even if the original narrative was a fiction. ## Restraint, miscalculation, and the dangers of proxy escalation Powell and the discussion recognize another important dynamic: other major powers have shown considerable restraint in the face of U.S. pressure. The People’s Republic of China, Russia, and many regional states have often refrained from matching U.S. escalatory rhetoric with reciprocal overreactions. That restraint has prevented several flashpoints from cascading into direct conflict. But it is not a reliable safety valve. Restraint can be exhausted, particularly if strategic misperceptions take hold or if secondary actors (non‑nuclear regional states) are encouraged to act as proxies for a nuclear patron. Washington’s approach of prompting non‑nuclear allies to “step up” is in part an attempt to avoid direct great‑power combat while maintaining pressure. But that strategy is inherently risky. Proxy escalation can produce localized confrontations that, once underway, are hard to contain. It also creates misaligned incentives: non‑nuclear states, encouraged to act aggressively, may not fully internalize the nuclear threshold considerations that restrain major powers. Miscommunication, operational accidents, or deliberate brinkmanship by subordinate actors could thus trigger crises that the principals did not intend. The presence of multiple nuclear armed states on the same strategic chessboard complicates traditional models of deterrence. The Ukraine war has illustrated how great‑power competition can be conducted by proxy with catastrophic human costs while stopping short of a direct nuclear exchange — but that very compartmentalization cannot be assumed to hold in East Asia if missteps occur in a theater with different geography, alliance configurations, and economic interdependencies. ## Pathways that avoid catastrophe: restraint, multilateral problem‑solving, and recalibrated alliances If escalation stems from institutionalized behavior and manufactured narratives, preventing war requires rewiring incentives and narratives. The conversation suggests several interlocking measures that, while neither easy nor immediate, offer plausible alternatives to the current trajectory. First, reduce rhetorical and operational incentives for provocation. This means more cautious public discourse from political leaders and defense establishments, coupled with

US War-Hawks ESCALATE What the hell is up with the US political establishment, thinking EXCLUSIVELY in terms of war with China? This is not just a „warning“ anymore, it’s a clear indication of intent. Can we stop a war that the US has already decided it absolutely wants to fight? Today I’m talking again to Dr. Warwick Powell, an Adjunct Professor at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia, and a Senior Fellow at the Beijing-based Taihe Institute. Links: Warwick Powell's Substack: https://warwickpowell.substack.com/ Neutrality Studies Goods Shop: https://neutralitystudies-shop. fourthwall.com #M3 The United States' interventions are not actually designed to help parties come together to resolve conflicts. They're actually designed to ensure conflicts persist so that the United States has a perpetual rationale to have a presence in a particular area. And then it, of course, deploys permanent military forces, provides arms to particular sides of the equation, threatens economic sanctions on those it doesn't like, and instigates, helps organize, and funds domestic destabilization initiatives whenever it doesn't find the current regime to its liking, et cetera, et cetera. So these patterns of behavior seem to be deeply ingrained, and they're deeply ingrained and rationalized by virtue of a belief in not only the rights that come with being exceptional, but also the obligations. #M2 Hello, everybody. This is Pascal from Literality Studies. And today I'm talking again to Dr. Warwick Powell, an adjunct professor at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia, and a senior fellow at the Beijing-based Taihe Institute. Warwick, welcome back. Great to be back with you, Pascal. Great to have you here again, because recently you released an article on your Substack in which you were talking about this relentless drive of the United States to conjure up, to talk about, a war with China. And I think this is really one of the most important issues of our time, because the more time goes by, the more emails I actually get from people telling me that they are now afraid. Emails from Taiwan, including from former ambassadors, including from office staff, who tell me, "Look, we can feel that it's being drummed up and we are ready to be the next, present-day Ukraine, for a proxy war." Warwick, what is your assessment of the situation? #M3 Yeah, look, the inspiration, if you will, or the catalyst for that piece that I published on Substack was the speech that US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin gave at the Singapore Shangri-La Security Forum, where he really did talk in ways that would be very hard to disguise as anything but beating the drums of war. He talked about China as a realistic and potentially imminent threat, and the -- 1 of 16 -- pressure was being applied to American allies across the Western Pacific or the East Asia region to step up, increase their defense spending, and to play a more active role in America's particular approach to, I guess, what they would call deterrence. The American obsession with warfare, with this idea of peace through strength, and with the pursuit of deterrence by being the biggest guy on the block, has dominated thinking for at least the better part of the last 70 years in the post-World War II era. And despite the lessons of history—or what you'd think are the lessons of history—whether they are the lessons of Korea, the lessons of Vietnam, the tragedies of Indochina, let alone what's happening in Europe and other parts of the world in which the United States has instigated military interventions, the lessons don't seem to be learned: that these approaches bring nothing but death and destruction. They actually don't, firstly, resolve tensions that may exist; rather, they exacerbate tensions. They don't create the conditions for economic development that can improve the livelihoods of people. On the reverse, they destroy economic potential and create other problems such as mass migration, which ultimately feeds into the social dislocations that we're now starting to see and the political fallout from that in the so-called developed world. So my general sense is that the United States is hell-bent on the idea that it needs to contain China as a peer threat. Why it views China as a peer threat, perhaps, is something that we could touch on later, but it is hell-bent on that idea. It sees the need to hold China back as a full-frontal, multidimensional effort—on a technology front, on a PR front (propaganda war), on an economic front, particularly in relation to technologies. But you hear all the incessant talk, of course, of choke points to starve China of energy through the Straits of Malacca, etc. And of course, we have the hottest of hot-button issues, which is the resolution of the Chinese Civil War. And that, of course, is what we generally describe as the Taiwan question. The United States, it seems to me, wants to have its cake and eat it too. It talks officially about maintaining this thing called the One China policy, but at the same time is constantly chipping away at it in practical terms—salami slicing what that policy actually means in practice and pursuing initiatives that will sustain tensions across the Taiwan Strait rather than contribute to their peaceful resolution. And we are now reaching a point where, given all the broader anxieties that the United States has in terms of changes in the world and the ordering of things, it now sees an imminent need to push China hard on this particular hot-button issue. It is committing to deliver more arms to the forces or the political regime on Taiwan Island. And it is talking up the threat of war as a way of pressuring China and its regional allies—whether it's the Philippines, Japan, or Australia—to boost their military defense spending and to join in with the United States on this so-called containment strategy. This means that the situation is, in a certain sense, incredibly unstable. The upside so far is that mainland China has been incredibly reticent to respond in any substantial material sense, other than through, of course, strong rhetorical responses at a diplomatic level and the continuing modernization and development of its own defense capabilities in light of 70 years of American military primacy in the region. So the United -- 2 of 16 -- States does have an obsession, and that is seeing others in the region—unsurprisingly, being prodded by the United States—pick up the cudgels and fight what seems to be America's fights. #M2 Can you tell me—there is this common talking point in any kind of journal article you read, online or on paper, that when it discusses China and the threat of war with China, it always brings up the date 2027. This is another really weird obsession because it's being ascribed to Xi Jinping as having put that date forward. But this is actually an invention by an American general or admiral, and it's now almost carved in stone, as if this is the date we should prepare for. Can you speak to that? #M3 Yeah, look, this 2027 question actually did come up from an American admiral—Davidson, I think it is, from memory. And interestingly, there seems to be a pattern in which these sorts of rhetorical devices, these ideas that get floated from the American system, end up being ascribed to the other party. So another recent example was this idea that when Russia invaded Ukraine on, what, the 24th of February 2022, it was going to take Kiev in three days. And because it didn't take Kiev in three days, that was seen as tantamount to chronic failure on the part of the Russian army. But of course, that three-day timetable was something created or made up by Western observers and commentators. So the pattern is that there are people in the West who seem to imagine things, create their own benchmarks against which they judge others' behavior, and then, of course, use that as the rationalization for how they themselves need to respond. So this 2027 thing has been floating around now for a number of years. It has never been a date that has passed the lips of any Chinese leader. There has been no insistence that the People's Liberation Army be ready for any particular date at all. And yet, of course, it now becomes the cornerstone, if you will, of Western military build- up. It's a way of giving a focal point to people in the region that the United States believes it can cajole, encourage, or bully into joining with the United States in its campaign of continual encirclement and continual pressure on the People's Republic of China. #M2 In a sense, it's like the military propagandistic version of a straw man argument, isn't it? It's like you build up—you put something that's obviously bad or stupid or whatever into the mouth of the other party, and then by talking about it, you have what you need in order to basically attack that opponent. And if something happens, you tell everybody, "Look, I told you it was always the case." And if nothing happens, you declare victory: "We won a fight that the other one never wanted to fight." It's kind of lunacy, but it does have its very own rationale within the system, doesn't it? #M3 -- 3 of 16 -- Absolutely. It definitely has its own logic, right? If you can put words into other people's mouths and then respond accordingly, when the other side doesn't behave as you said it would, it's because of what you did in response and preparation—you successfully deterred the other side. But of course, if the other side does react, you can immediately say, "See, I told you so. They are always aggressive." You see all of this rhetoric all the time around things like how China's military modernization and expansion have been described. It's often described as the largest peacetime military buildup that we've seen since the end of the Second World War. But of course, what that doesn't tell you is that, in fact, the United States is actually responsible for the largest so-called peacetime, post-war military buildup the world has ever seen. #M2 Except for the fact that the United States has not been at peace for most of the last 80 years—I think not a single year. #M3 Well, correct. And in fact, you know, the United States, according to some American scholars—right? So this is Monica Duffy Toft and Sidita Kushi. They published a book a couple of years ago called *Dying by the Sword*. And it is a review of American foreign policy, or what they call the militarization of American foreign policy, which draws on a large data set of American military interventions going all the way back to the founding of the United States. And they conclude that the United States is a country that has become, quote, "addicted to military intervention," unquote. And the data is actually very interesting because it shows that between the end of the Second World War and the end of the Cold War—so, 1945–46 through to 1990–91—the United States initiated 2.4 military interventions per year on average. That increased significantly in the unipolar period, 1991 through to 2019, to 3.7 military interventions per year on average. This is a nation that has, coursing through its cultural veins, if you will, a need to instigate military actions against others. And it is a defining part, I think, certainly of elite establishment identity, and perhaps through that also a defining part of what is actually an American identity: that the United States is a country that formulates its own sense of self and its sense of exceptionalism through the pursuit of war against others. #M2 You know, I had Sidita Kushi on this channel about one and a half years ago or so. If I think about it, I'll link it in the description. But the other part that's so fascinating is that I think they went in their data set all the way back to 1779, or maybe the 1780s. And they also took into account the wars between the United States and all the Indigenous tribes. And even if you take all