Tuesday, 07 July _The Unites States is escalating its “military brinkmanship in China's backyard” because Washington’s all other attempts to thwart China's rise have failed, says Dennis Etler, an American political analyst who has a decades-long interest in international affairs.
Beijing has slammed the United States for sending its aircraft carriers to the disputed waters of South China Sea, where the Chinese military was holding naval drills, saying the provocative move is aimed at driving a wedge between regional countries.
Addressing a press briefing on Monday, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said Washington had “deliberately” sent the USS Ronald Reagan and USS Nimitz aircraft carriers to the South China Sea to “flex its muscles.”
The two US carriers arrived in the region on Saturday for “military exercises” as China was wrapping up its own naval drills near the disputed Xisha islands, called Paracel islands by China’s rivals, who have overlapping sovereignty claims to the resource-rich sea.
Speaking to Reuters on Monday, the commander of the USS Nimitz, Rear Admiral James Kirk, said the two American aircraft carriers were conducting “exercises” in the contested sea within sight of Chinese naval vessels spotted near the US navy’s flotilla.
In an interview with Press TV on Monday, Etler, a former professor of Anthropology at Cabrillo College in Aptos, California, said, “America is faced with a plethora of deep-seated problems. Racial inequality, income disparity, and a healthcare system that does not meet the needs of the majority of its people have plagued the US for decades. These internal contradictions have been exacerbated and exposed to view by the crisis brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.”
“Trump's lack of leadership in preparing and preventing the spread of the pandemic unleashed the firestorm of protest now engulfing the country. The centuries-old burdens of oppression that fall upon the shoulders of people of color whenever there is a crisis reached a breaking point. With the economic and healthcare crises falling disproportionately on Blacks and Hispanics, the constant police violence directed against them has become too great to bear,” he added.
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