Politics and harvest

[APeacefulWarrior]

Well it seems to be happening, this just in...

China holds massive naval drills to prepare for ‘sudden, cruel & short’ modern war

YinYang, if you read the news looking for confirmation that the world is doomed, you'll have no lack of sources to rely on.  You realize the media thrives on doom-n-gloom reporting, right?  

When it comes down to it, every country in the world with a functioning military holds "wargames" like that from time to time.  And yes, they have a bit of a propaganda function as well ("See how strong we are!") but still, they are totally routine and done in public view specifically to show off.  One could easily compare it to dominance displays among 2D creatures.  Their purpose is to prevent fights, not spark them. A creature which craves a fight doesn't attempt to scare its prey off.

But actually, the article is so heavily spun that it actually makes a pretty good object lesson in how easy it is for the media to instill a false sense of fear and unease in their viewers\readers without saying anything outright untrue.

Like, speaking of the word routine...  the article made sure to put "routine" in scare quotes within the text, to imply it's a lie or euphemistic, but without having to actually substantiate this in any way.  They rely on the readers to make that unstated assumption.    Then they go on to fill up more than half the article's length with information about the political situation surrounding the South China Sea, despite there being no demonstrable causal relationship between the wargames and the political situation. After all, given the huge scale of the games, they would have realistically been in planning for weeks or months.

(Not to mention, there was also a direct denial from the Chinese government that they're related, but it was buried in the text.)

However, they rely on the audience to simply fill in the segue for themselves and make up a causal relationship between the events in their minds.  That's another common trick - simply talking about two separate subjects and thereby creating a link in the readers' minds that may or may not exist in reality.  But as long as they don't SAY there's a link, it's not a lie to place two unrelated things side-by-side.

And then there's this gem of a juxtaposition in the article:

The drills, however, come at a time of increased tensions in East Asia after an international arbitration tribunal last month rejected Chinese territorial claims to the South China Sea. Beijing rejected the decision by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague calling the ruling “waste paper.”  Despite the court ruling, China continues to claim most of the South China Sea, through which more than $5 trillion in annual trade passes. Furthermore, China has repeatedly warned against US intervention in the region, which continues to show its force through the freedom of navigation principle.

Notice how they jumped almost straight from the ruling about the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, to talking about China warning about US intervention?  These are two utterly different subjects.  The only relationship between the US and the PCA is that the US is a signatory to the treaty establishing it, along with more than 100 other countries.  The comment about warning against US intervention is literally apropos of nothing, again, attempting to imply these military drills are somehow preparing for a US attack without the slightest direct evidence of it.

They then double-down on that line of thought with a highly inflammatory quote about 'giving them a bloody nose' from "one source with ties to the military," which they attributed to Reuters but didn't bother to link to.  Here's the link.  While it does describe some hawkishness in China's military, the vast bulk of the article is about all the reasons why China doesn't want a conflict, and it makes sure to point out there've been no actual overt military actions or threats of it from either side.  And for that matter, it's not even clear that the anonymous quote was referring specifically to the United States since, again, the matter under discussion was the PCA ruling from The Hague.  

But by taking that one quote out-of-context, they further create the perception of tensions that are much higher than any purely fact-based look at the situation would suggest.

And in the meantime, the real joke of it all is how utterly banal the original statement that inspired the article was:

The Chinese navy started a drill, which involved firing dozens of missiles and torpedoes, in the East China Sea Monday.  The drill is aimed at honing the assault "intensity, precision, stability and speed" of troops amid heavy electromagnetic influences, said a navy statement released Monday.   "An information technology-based war at sea is sudden, cruel and short, which requires fast transition to combat status, quick preparation and high assault efficiency," the statement said.  The drill involved naval aviation forces, including submarines, ships and coastguard troops.

Which really just establishes it as a totally standard wargame like everyone else does from time to time.  Plus, of course, we see that the RT article left out some crucial context when quoting "sudden, cruel, and short" in the headline.  Within the full context, it's clear he's simply stating this as a fact of 21st Century military reality, not a threat.  A technology-based sea war would be "sudden, cruel, and short" no matter who was involved.

And please understand, I'm not typing all this out to pick on you or anything like that.  I'm honestly hoping you (and anyone else who's interested) will see just how incredibly easy it is for media sources to create the illusion of heightened hostilities where, in reality, there's every reason to see it as just a bit of harmless chest-thumping.   This is how they get people to keep reading, by making mountains out of molehills and then running the story in soap opera-like fashion day after day.

But it takes is a few minutes typing queries into Google, with a little awareness of matters like missing context and false juxtapositions, and you can start looking through the illusions.