On Monday night, President Donald Trump had dinner with war weasels Senator Lindsey Graham and John McCain to talk about North Korea. McCain and Graham came away from the affair enthused, meaning the rest of us should be wary of things to come.
Both McCain and Graham championed Trump’s decision to bomb a Syrian airbase earlier this month despite the president’s previous insistence that he had no intention of further involving the U.S. in that country’s ongoing civil war.
The hawkish duo continues to urge Trump to intensify U.S. action against the Assad regime—and, no doubt, it’ll happen.
But on the table Monday were discussions of another world belligerent: North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.
Here’s what the Associated Press reported about the affair:

Graham said it’s uncertain whether North Korea may actually launch a weapon of mass destruction at the U.S. But, he said, Trump “is not going to allow this problem to get any worse than it is today.” The key, Graham added, is to make North Korea realize there’s a “new sheriff in town.”
McCain, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, declined to discuss the specifics of the meeting with the president. But he said the Trump administration’s tough talk of defusing North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs is justified.
“Obviously you have to follow words with action, but I think their expressed concern is very legitimate. And I don’t think it’s inflammatory rhetoric,” McCain said. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un “is intent on having the capability to strike the United States of America. That is the threat.”
McCain said Trump is “exploring all options” on North Korea. But a pre-emptive strike, he said, “would be the last one.”

Let’s hope so.
What the Trump administration is proactively doing at the moment is attempting to pressure China into convincing its North Korean ally to cool it with the constant saber rattling.
At the moment, it isn’t exactly working.
So McCain on Tuesday told members gathered before the Armed Services Committee that he’d like to see a massive U.S. military buildup in the Asia-Pacific region.
He said: “For years, the United States has looked to China—North Korea’s long-time patron and sole strategic ally—to bring the regime to the negotiating table and achieve progress toward a de-nuclearized Korean Peninsula. We have done so for the simple reason that China is the only country with the influence to truly curb North Korea’s destabilizing behavior. But China has repeatedly refused to exercise that influence.”
Saying that China has “aided abetted” North Korea, which isn’t exactly an exaggeration, McCain is advocating the beginning of what would essentially be an ongoing U.S. Asia-Pacific occupation.
The lawmaker said: “The new administration has an important opportunity to chart a different and better course. For example, I believe there is strong merit for an ‘Asia-Pacific Stability Initiative’ similar to the European Deterrence Initiative pursued over the last few years. This initiative would enhance Pacific Command’s credible combat power through targeted funding to realign U.S. military force posture in the region, improve operationally-relevant infrastructure, fund additional exercises, preposition equipment and munitions, and build capacity with our allies and partners. These are important steps that should be taken as part of a new, comprehensive strategy in the Asia-Pacific that incorporates all elements of national power.”
Pay close attention to that last bit: “incorporates all elements of national power.”
Sounds a lot like total war. Doesn’t it?
While the military-industrial complex certainly likes everything it sees in recent headlines, Trump’s administration is being advised to make insane foreign policy maneuvers that puts the U.S. at great risk of driving Russia and China into an unnatural alliance against American hegemony.
You see, the U.S. and Russia— as Trump rightly noted during the election campaign— have a natural interest in working together to defeat ISIS throughout the Middle East. There’s just one problem with that as far as the hawks are concerned. It would mean that the U.S. would have to be willing to accept the prospect of more Russian influence in the region. It’s become quite obvious that protecting the world from ISIS barbarians is less important to the foreign policy manipulators than reigniting Cold War tensions with Russia.
Meanwhile, the current situation with North Korea is the exact same situation the U.S. has been kicking down the road since the end of the Korean War. It’s a belligerent hermit state—but beyond its bloviating, there’s no indication that North Korea poses a military threat to the U.S.
A U.S. military buildup in the region, therefore, serves no purpose beyond letting China know that American officials feel they’re more capable of handling the affairs of Chinese allies.
The thought of a China-Russia alliance would once have been unthinkable, but the U.S.’s apparent willingness to engage in proxy war with both countries simultaneously is changing that,
As National Interest points out:

[T]his is a new world and evidence is everywhere apparent that Moscow and Beijing are growing closer by the day. Some of the latest examples of their geostrategic coalescing are, for example, the large Chinese delegation at Russia’s recent Arctic conference in Archangelsk, China’s increasingly vocal support for Russia’s intervention in Syria, as well as the common refrain in both Russia and China that both powers are strongly opposed to U.S. deployment of the THAAD system into South Korea.

If things continue in the direction they’re going, get ready for the big one.