Aiming For China, the USA Sows Chaos Across Asia
Brian Berletic on Washington's destabilization of Southeast Asia
Brian Berletic: In late May 2025 US Secretary of Defense (now called the “Secretary of War”) Pete Hegseth warned the world the US was in the process of implementing a division of labor in both Europe and the Middle East while pivoting its attention and all of the interference, instability, conflict, and even war that comes with it toward Asia.
More specifically, Secretary Hegseth stated, “we are reorienting toward deterring aggression by Communist China.”
By “deterring aggression by Communist China,” Secretary Hegseth meant preventing China from defending itself and the stability of the region it is located in from Washington’s attempt to maintain primacy over Asia from the other side of the planet.
Among the manufactured threats Secretary Hegseth cited as justification for US meddling in the Asia-Pacific (referred to as the “Indo-Pacific” by the US government) was China “invading Taiwan.”
Taiwan is recognized both under international law and by the US State Department itself as part of “One China.”
On the US State Department’s official website under, “U.S. Relations With Taiwan,” it states explicitly that, “the United States approach to Taiwan has remained consistent across decades and administrations. The United States has a longstanding one China policy,” and that, “we do not support Taiwan independence.”
In practice, however, the US maintains the political capture of Taiwan’s local administration, arms and politically supports it, while encouraging it to pursue separatism from the rest of China.
This, not “Chinese aggression,” is at the root of US-Chinese tensions, a modern-day continuation of Western colonialism over the Asia-Pacific region spanning generations. China’s growing economic and military power threatens to overturn centuries of Western hegemony.
This is the true “threat” Washington is reacting to - not unwarranted Chinese influence over its own region of the world, but the irreversible end of America’s unwarranted influence over the opposite side of the planet.
Turning Asia Upside Down
Despite hallucinations of a US “retreating” from Asia under the current Trump administration, the US is in the middle of region-wide destabilization carried out by the various tools of US political coercion and capture, namely the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), USAID programs now continuing more quietly under the US State Department itself, and adjacent Western foundations like George Soros’ Open Society Foundations.
Much in the same way the US targeted North Africa and the Middle East during the “Arab Spring” in 2011, it is now targeting first Indonesia with deadly riots disrupting the new BRICS member’s participation in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization meeting which took place in early September, then toppling the government of Nepal right on India and China’s borders with equally deadly violence, and more recently targeting both the Philippines and border regions of India with the same “Gen Z” branded unrest.
By doing so, the US is shaping the region as part of a continued effort to encircle, contain, and undermine China itself.
Those married to the illusion of an America “retreating” from Asia have attempted to sell this recent unrest across Asia as “organic” and “spontaneous,” despite extensive evidence of US NED-funded organizations both leading and promoting the protests and an interim government now taking shape in Nepal in which half of the 8 ministers appointed by mid-September being drawn from US NED-funded fronts - many of which these interim ministers actually founded or directed.
These ministers include Om Prakash Aryal appointed Minister of Home Affairs, who served as a member advocate of the USAID, NED, and Open Society-funded Justice and Rights Institute - Nepal, Jagadish Kharel appointed Minister of Communications and IT who founded the USAID-funded Media Help Line organization, Mahabir Pun appointed Minister of Education, Science, and Technology who directed the USAID-funded National Innovation Centre, and Prasad Pariyar appointed Minister of Agriculture who directed the USAID, NED, CIA-proprietary The Asia Foundation, and Open Society-funded Samata Foundation.
Dr. Sangita Mishra who has been appointed Minister of Health previously served as director of the Paropakar Maternity and Women’s Hospital which regularly took USAID funding with US Embassy statements mentioning her by name during “hand-over ceremonies.” While this funding could be considered on its own potentially “innocent,” together with overtly US-backed figures being appointed alongside her indicates an overwhelmingly pro-US (and US-dependent) interim government taking shape in addition to the US-funded organizations that promoted and led the protests themselves.
In the Philippines, protests were led by Tindig Pilipinas, a member of the US NED-funded International Center for Innovation, Transformation and Excellence in Governance (INCITEGov) and promoted by US NED-funded media outlet Rappler, founded and directed by Maria Ressa who literally has her own webpage on the NED’s official website.
While the current government in the Philippines has been extensively servile to Washington at the expense of the Philippines itself, the unrest could serve as either a means to root out any independent political forces not yet subordinated by the US, or as a means of coercing the current government because it has hesitated to fulfill Washington’s increasingly dangerous demands in regards to confronting China.
US interference and the networks it uses to implement it span the entirety of Asia with additional unrest in other nations across the region all but inevitable.
Continuity of Agenda
Washington’s goal is to surround China with either hostile US-captured client regimes, or instability denying China political, economic, and even potentially military partners.
At the same time, the US continues transforming nations like South Korea, Japan, and the Philippines into militarized battering rams to both provoke China and potentially fight a proxy war against it in the same manner the US is currently using Ukraine and the rest of Europe to fight the Russian Federation.
All of this has taken place through a process spanning the entire 21st century regardless of who sits in the White House or who controls US Congress.
Under the current Trump administration, in the same late-May speech by Secretary Hegseth, he bragged about the development and deployment of US weapon systems specifically designed for conflict with China including the Navy/Marine Corps Expeditionary Ship Interdiction System (NMESIS) designed for targeting naval vessels, as well as the Typhon missile system which was previously prohibited under the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty President Donald Trump withdrew from during his first term in office.
The systematic unilateral withdrawal from arms control treaties and the subsequent development and deployment of previously prohibited weapons along both Russia and China’s periphery by both the Trump and Biden administrations demonstrate that the US - far from “retreating” - is engaged in a deliberate and methodical escalation toward containment and confrontation with both nations spanning multiple presidential administrations and continuing to this day.
Beyond developing and deploying weapons along China’s periphery, the US is coercing its client states in the region to divert public money away from social programs and infrastructure and toward arms manufacturing and maintenance facilities to sustain US conflict in the region otherwise inhibited by what US policymakers often refer to as the “tyranny of distance” - the reality of the US picking a fight with China on the other side of the planet from where the US and the source of its military industrial production is actually located in on a map.
Partnership for Indo-Pacific Industrial Resilience
Secretary Hegseth described the Partnership for Indo-Pacific Industrial Resilience, PIPR, as “a U.S.-initiated multilateral forum of 14 allies and partners working with industry, capital providers, and key non-governmental stakeholders, to strengthen industrial resilience, expand our capacity, and accelerate deliveries,” involving aircraft and naval vessel repair facilities, the standardization of drones and input components across the region, and the production of US weapons like the Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System (GMLRS) used by M270 and HIMARS launch platforms.
PIPIR is meant to exploit US client states in the region to compensate for America’s own military industrial shortcomings back home as exposed amid its proxy war with Russia in Ukraine as much as it is meant to provide logical support for large-scale conflict with China from within the region rather than far beyond it.
Despite some analysts cherry-picking episodes of diplomatic posturing by the Trump administration to portray it in “retreat” from Europe or Asia, the very existence of these ongoing programs demonstrates the US’ desire to continue encircling and encroaching upon China both with continuously expanding US military power and through US political interference and regime change targeting China’s allies and partners.
Secretary Hegseth closed his mid-May speech in Singapore by claiming: “The motto of my first platoon, first one I led, was: “Those who long for peace, must prepare for war.” And that’s exactly what we’re doing. We are preparing for war in order to deter war — to achieve peace through strength. And we look out in this room and we look to you — to our allies and to our partners — to join us in this important work.
In reality - the US has been in a continuous state of war throughout the 21st century and continues both waging war and proxy war around the globe today. Secretary Hegseth and the interests he serves are not attempting to “prepare for war in order to deter war,” but rather continuing to wage constant war to deter any sort of equitable peace.
Washington’s sustained campaign of political destabilization, military encroachment, and economic warfare across Asia demonstrates a refusal to accept the reality of a sovereign China and a broader rising Asia which seeks to define its own regional destiny free from Western interference. Washington’s true objective is demonstrably not peace, but the continuation of its historically unwarranted dominance, even at the cost of turning the Asia-Pacific region, or even the rest of the world into spiraling chaos, conflict, and catastrophe.
Brian Berletic is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer.
Excellent insights! I fully agree with the central insight of this excellent piece. China has seen these tactics many times before. But many Asian countries are still only beginning to understand how these networks operate.
But there is another side to this story. For all these years, East Asia, Central Asia, South Asia, and Southeast Asia have still avoided the kind of large-scale turmoil, war, and state collapse seen in parts of the Middle East, Latin America, and Africa. Why? One very important reason is the presence of China. The United States has been trying to create instability, but it has not been easy for Washington to succeed. Many Asian countries are also highly alert to these tactics. With a few exceptions, such as the Philippines and Japan, which have repeatedly chosen to stir up trouble, most countries in the region still prioritize development, stability, and peace. So yes, the United States will continue to create problems around China. But that does not mean it will be easy.
Of course, countries like Nepal, the Philippines, Indonesia, and India already have their own domestic problems: inequality, corruption, youth unemployment, ethnic tension, weak governance, and political fragmentation. The United States does not always need to create crises from scratch. More often, it waits for existing crises to appear, then uses NGOs, media networks, training programs, funding, diplomatic pressure, and international opinion to push those crises in a direction that serves American strategic interests.
Indeed!