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Steve Bannon on Hong Kong, Covid-19, and the War with China Already Underway
Is it true that after you entered the White House in 2017, China was one of the first areas you worked on?
Well, Mike [former National Security Advisor Michael] Flynn was the very first person that was picked on Wednesday morning. In fact, we knew that President-elect Trump, Jared [Kushner] and Mike Flynn would go to Washington the next morning and start the transition with the national security advisors. And Mike and I sat down and we talked about three things that had to happen immediately. Number one, we want to de-operationalize the NSC [National Security Council] that they [the Obama administration] had. And he was going to go and do due diligence. But we wanted to go to our [former National Security Advisor Brent] Scowcroft model. Basically, Mike [Flynn] would be the one that would drive the policy out of the White House, but essentially we would help to curate the different agency or stakeholder alternatives to form a basis for decisions, and you would run the war because President Trump, you know, made a campaign pledge to destroy ISIS. We knew that was going to be a huge deal with whoever we selected to be Secretary of Defense, which turned out to be Jim Mattis. But that was number one.
Number two was to find out who all the Obama detailees were and basically get rid of them; and get our people in there. Mike was going to do that. Number three was to begin getting all the documentation on President Obama’s “Pivot to Asia.” It was pretty evident to me that President Obama got it; that we were too CENTCOM [United States Central Command] oriented. We were too tied into the Middle East. And although obviously that’s important, it pales in comparison [to China]. In fact, it’s just a theater of the great existential war with the Chinese Communist Party.
We had to see, why did he [President Obama] think that? And what was done? I think we had forward-deployed a marine brigade in Brisbane, Australia. And in fact, I think it was in September of 2014 or 2015, Xi [Jinping] came for a formal visit that [then Vice President] Biden had been the negotiator on, and they signed a document that was supposed to stop cyber intrusions into businesses and to stop the militarization in the South China Sea, both of which were key points. But the Chinese did it at an even more accelerated level afterwards. So we had to get all the documentation first for the “Pivot to Asia,” and to make sure that building the China team was his top priority. And General Flynn was 100 percent [in agreement] with that. He and I talked about it during the [2016 presidential] campaign. He fully agreed. And this is the beginning of the selection of superstars, like [now deputy National Security Advisor] Matt Pottinger, Michael Pillsbury [a former government official who President Trump has called an authority on China] and Peter Navarro. And others came into the administration, like General [Robert] Spalding. That all started with those early meetings with General Flynn.
https://www.thewirechina.com/2020/05/24/steve-bannon-on-hong-kong-covid-19-and-the-war-already-underway/
And so China is the key to the 2020 election, and what you said about Biden’s ties to China will matter?
It is going to matter. It’s gonna be weaponized and brought up. Is that the mainstream media? Look, let’s go across the board. The mainstream media today is taking the Chinese Communist Party side. You don’t see any investigative effort. You do see it out of [a few] individuals at The New York Times. You see that even at The Washington Post, I would argue. I asked someone at a competitor to The New York Times. I said, “I don’t understand why there’s not much focus on China.” They said, “Look it’s all Russia. We have a 25 person team. It’s all Russia. And, you know, we have a couple of people working on China and India.” Why is that? They said, “Well, Russia is everything. Institutionally, it’s in the DNA of this place.” It’s tough to get people to change. The Cold War was 40 or 50 years. Then you had the whole “End of History” period, right? Remember, that was American foreign policy. The Russians are the bad guys.
And part of it is that we don’t understand modern warfare. The Chinese do. [They believe in] Unrestricted Warfare. If you get into kinetic war, you haven’t done your job. That’s not the way America thinks of national security. We think of it as tanks and planes and missiles and troops. That’s war. They [the Chinese Communist Party] are more sophisticated and saying, “Hey, it’s information. It’s cyber. It’s economics. And then it’s kinetic. But you never want to fight the foreign devils in a kinetic war.” The mentality in this town [Washington] is very tough to get away from. And here’s the point: we haven’t had that much military involvement in Asia since Vietnam. We just haven’t had it. All got shifted to the Middle East. Everything in the ‘70s, really from the mid ‘80s, was the Middle East. Everything from the Gulf War, in 9/11 and terrorism, Iraq and Afghanistan and in Iran. All of it has been around Saudi Arabia; it’s all been around CENTCOM. It’s the CENTCOM mentality that Obama did try to break. Obama understood. And one of the reasons was that Obama had stood up against the war in Iraq. That shouldn’t be lost on anybody. But Obama was not as virulently against the war in Iraq as Donald Trump. Remember, Donald Trump bludgeons [George W.] Bush all the time about the mistake in Iraq, about the $7 trillion that was spent there and all the troops. I’m telling you, institutionally we don’t understand economic war. We don’t understand information war. They [the Chinese government] are masters of it. One of the things that’s going to come out about [former National Security Advisor] McMaster was his inability to understand what [deputy National Security Advisor Matt] Pottinger and Peter Navarro and others are saying: that we have to engage in this economic war and here’s the way you do it. He [McMaster] was very much just a standard stock, kinetic warfare guy.
The rhetoric sounds awfully heated, and even dangerous, don’t you think?
I disagree. It’s not heated enough. Give me a break. What are you talking about? President Trump is trying to be the statesman. Look at what they’re saying! They’re trying to smear us, like [the virus] came from an U.S. army lab. Hey they’re full bore. Did you look at what they said about me? I’m not complaining. I’m not whining. I give as good as I get. But I don’t believe [the rhetoric] is heated enough. And I don’t think the actions are heated enough. They’re at war with us. They’re in a full blown information or full blown cyber war, full blown economic war. And we have to engage in that. It’s not just the rhetoric that has to be heated, the action has to be heated. This is a fundamental difference.
https://www.thewirechina.com/2020/05/24/steve-bannon-on-hong-kong-covid-19-and-the-war-already-underway/
Athenai's statement on China's proposed National Security Law
https://twitter.com/athenaiinst/status/1264991195480182786