With the disaster unfolding in Afghanistan, America must do everything it can to guard against the weakness that the Biden administration has been projecting bringing us to this point.
Iran's regime is smiling. North Korea is encouraged.
Russia feels strengthened. China—the greatest threat to freedom—is also emboldened.
In one of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) newspapers, they signaled that Taiwan is in trouble because Biden’s America will not help or stand by it.
The totalitarian regime’s take: "Once a war breaks out in the Straits, the island’s defense will collapse in hours and the U.S. military won’t come to help."
The CCP newspaper concluded that Taiwan should voluntarily acquiesce to the communist regime because their defeat is inevitable. The totalitarian communist regime in China is not happy simply dominating its own people or threatening the people of Hong Kong and Taiwan.
They seek entire global donminance.
The CCP has a comprehensive plan to make itself the world’s most dominant and ruthless power. What the CCP does to its own people, and the people of Hong Kong, it intends to do also all over the world; this won’t simply be with military actions.
They are using every means at their disposal to create a stranglehold on the entire world — and on the United States specifically.
If successful, the CCP will force compliance with its world view, its goals, and its preferences. That means ruthless domination like you see within its own borders.
Whether COVID-19 was a chemical weapon or a lab safety screw-up is not known at this time. Either way, it isn’t as if the CCP’s goals of ruthless domination haven’t been made very clear to anyone who bothers to look.
One of the CCP’s chief tools in executing its plan is to dominate global shipping.
They understand that this isn’t just economic power, this provides military power as well.
It allows them to control the flow of needed goods and supplies.
They did so during the pandemic.
When America was in desperate need of medical personal protective equipment in the early days of coronavirus, China refused shipments of such equipment made by American companies with plants located in China.
China is buying up major ports in key shipping locations worldwide.
They once even owned a major port in the U.S. in Long Beach, California.
Fortunately, the Trump administration forced them to divest themselves of the port for national security reasons. But internationally, the CCP’s grip is becoming stronger, growing dramatically annually.
The global shipping fleet is about 41,000 ships. China builds almost 1,300 ships a year. The US builds only 8.
China has become the dominant player in shipbuilding.
When this is combined with its growing role in owning and operating ports around the globe, there is trouble ahead if we don’t wake up.
The good news is that China does not currently dominate shipping within the borders of the U.S.
That is thanks to a law: the Jones Act. It requires that ships used to transport goods between two American ports must be American built and owned ships and have American crews.
Notably, the Jones Act does not prohibit foreign ships from making stops in American ports. But to travel between U.S. ports, the Act does require American ships and crews.
Some argue that the Jones Act is a bad idea and increases shipping costs. But these voices seem to ignore the barrier the Jones Act creates for China’s goals of world domination.
The Jones Act was crafted almost 100 years ago, and it was done so to ensure that the U.S. had the shipping capacity, trained mariners, and the ship building, and ship repairing capability required, to meet our national security demands.
But the Jones Act also turns out to be a huge help in protecting the American homeland from China’s expansionist plans as well.
If we were to abolish the Jones Act, Chinese commercial ships could sail up and down the Mississippi River loaded with spies and high-tech surveillance equipment. This could allow them to gather intelligence and intercept communications, weakening America in the process.
Allowing China to have a constant presence in America’s heartland on the more than 25,000 miles of inland waterways would clearly make America less secure. And it would make us more and more dependent upon, and vulnerable to, the CCP.
Just as China is emboldened by the spectacle of Americans trapped in Kabul and a presidential administration pleading with the Taliban for help in evacuating our citizens, China is rooting for those who seek to repeal the Jones Act.
Thus, we should not give aid and comfort to the CCP and its goals of global domination.
We must maintain the Jones Act.
George Landrith is the President and CEO of Frontiers of Freedom, a public policy think tank devoted to promoting a strong national defense, free markets, individual liberty and constitutionally limited government. To learn more about Frontiers of Freedom, visit www.ff.org. Read George Landrith's Reports — More Here.