This proposal came across as measurably associated with the ill-tempered American, Wuhan-focused, inquisitorial demands, which were designed to further incite a blame-China narrative within US domestic politics.ДЄ respected, previous Australian Foreign Minister, Gareth Evans, recently observed that, 'he signs of strident Sinophobia are now everywhere to be seen the government's ill-thought rush to single out China for international blame over COVID-19 Foreign Minister Marise Payne's ever more unbalanced statements.'ДЇurther acute observations were offered by a former Australian Ambassador to China, Geoff Raby, in June. Most striking is the recent Australian decision to badger China on the need for an investigation - conducted independently of the WHO - into the COVID-19 virus origins. There are closer resonances here with the Spanish Inquisition than with Common Law presumption of innocence principles. In mid-April, meanwhile, Mr Pompeo stipulated that Beijing should grant the US access to a Wuhan laboratory: 'We are still asking the Chinese Communist Party to allow experts to get into the virology lab so we can determine precisely where this virus began.' The essence of this megaphone approach is to say: we presume you are guilty, unless you can prove otherwise and we decide if you have done so. The assumed right to interfere is unconcealed. Presumptuous sanctions of various sorts were threatened. Yet another audaciously meddling law was recently passed in the US Senate and House of Representatives, shortly after Secretary Pompeo declared that, 'No reasonable person can assert today that Hong Kong maintains a high degree of autonomy from China'. Very recently, US political power has been starkly deployed (domestically and internationally) in response to China's plan to enact a plainly required, new national security regime for the HKSAR.

In the case of China, the US is now firmly committed to a win-lose Sino-strategy: for the US to win, China needs to lose. In some cases, as with Iran, it can take the form of violent coercion. More recently, Dan Sanchez, argued, after reviewing the remarkable careers of the brothers, John Foster Dulles (US Secretary of State, 1953вЂ“59) and Allen Dulles (CIA Director, 1953вЂ“61), that together they created a legacy, for the US, of perpetual war.Д«uilding on this potent tradition, Washington has, under the current Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, developed a divergent, conspicuously muscular form of power-diplomacy. In 1985, a respected American analyst, George Scialabba, noted that certain regimes following policies considered unacceptable to the US were 'subjected to American hostility, subversion or even invasion', adding that, 'rhetoric aside, promoting democracy, self-determination and human rights has little to do with American foreign policy.' In fact, the US has deployed all three powers, soft, sharp and hard, for many decades. Soft power, a term coined by Joseph Nye in 1990, has been defined as 'he ability to affect others by attraction and persuasion rather than through the hard power of coercion and payment.' More recently, certain US commentators have critically analyzed what they call China's sharp power.

The clear dominance of American military, economic and political power after WW II provided the means for the US to oversee an era of extended peace вЂ“ and also to shape transnational outcomes in America's own interest to a remarkable extent. It is profitable to consider the US and Australia and, briefly, New Zealand. Western-based commentators have widely criticized what they see as a more assertive, some say, bullying stance taken by a number of Chinese foreign affairs specialists including diplomats based around the globe, who are actually often on the defense.ДЄs it happens, we can apply the same sort of assertiveness-metric to foreign affairs management in the West. Much has been written recently about so-called China's 'Wolf Warrior' diplomacy. Hong Kong residents raise a toast during a rally to celebrate the 23rd anniversary of the establishment of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and the approval of the national security law for the SAR on June 30.

Most warlike nation in history