From Hybrid to Hot War: U.S. Militarization and the Pacific Under the New Cold War on China

This panel, hosted by the People’s Forum and Qiao Collective, focused on U.S. militarization of Asia and the Pacific under the auspices of the renewed U.S. “containment” doctrine and the new Cold War on China. Panelists analyzed how the U.S. deploys false claims of a “China threat” narrative to justify the further entrenchment of its own militarization of regions in Asia and the Pacific. We will highlight how renewed U.S. Cold War aggression on China is further expanding the U.S. militarization and occupation of regions in Asia in the Pacific such as Korea, Hawai’i, Guam, Okinawa, and beyond.

This panel will also unpack the false equivalence of posing the U.S. and China as “equal instigators” of the militarization of the Asia-Pacific region. Building connections between national anti-imperialist and anti-colonial struggles in Korea, Guam, China, and beyond, this panel centers an interregional approach to resist the impacts of a U.S.-led new Cold War. In order to disarm the U.S. empire’s framing of the “Asia-Pacific” as a strategic terra nullius for U.S. military and economic supremacy, we highlight people’s struggles under the rubrics of internationalism and anti-imperialism to pose an alternate vision for Asian and Pacific futures.

Panelists:

• Professor Christine Hong

• Mark Tseng-Putterman

• Professor Michael Lujan Bevacqua