State Department’s Ned Price Issues Wild Threats Against China’s Support for Russia

March 15, 2022 (EIRNS)—Following the March 14 meeting between National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and Chinese Communist Party Political Bureau member and former Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi, State Department spokesman Ned Price used his press briefing to make wild threats against China, portraying the United States as the world power whose orders to respect the “rules-based” global order cannot be ignored or defied. In contrast, a toned-down White House briefing by a “senior administration official”—unnamed as usual—was limited to saying that Sullivan had expressed U.S. “concerns” about Russian-Chinese “alignment.”

Price arrogantly proclaimed that Sullivan in his meeting with Yang Jiechi, had raised “directly and very clearly our concerns about the P.R.C.’s support to Russia in the wake of the invasion, and the implications that any such support would have for the P.R.C.’s relationship not only with us, but for its relationships around the world. That includes our allies and partners in Europe and in the Indo-Pacific.” The real purpose of the meeting, he said, was to deliver the message that “we are watching very closely the extent to which the P.R.C., or any other country for that matter, provides any form of support—whether that’s material support—whether that’s economic support, whether that’s financial support, to Russia.”

China should use its leverage with Russia, because of the nature of its relationship with Moscow, which is greater than “just about any other country on the planet has” to bring an end to what he insisted is “Putin’s premeditated war of choice.” He continued: “We have communicated very clearly to Beijing ... we will not allow any country to compensate Russia for its losses.” China talks a lot about sovereignty, but if sovereignty means “anything in practice to a country like the P.R.C.,” then it should speak out and make clear that a violation of state sovereignty is not acceptable.

Price concluded his rant that these two nations seem “to share a vision of the world that is in stark contrast to the vision that the United States and our allies and partners have not only built and promoted and defended, but the system that itself has advantaged countries like the P.R.C. and Russia. This is a free and open rules-based order.” Price insisted that Russia is destroyed, thanks to the U.S. “No form of economic or financial support will be able to extricate Russia from the strategic morass it has created for itself ... [and] any country that would seek to attempt to bail Russia out of this economic, financial morass will be met with consequences. We will ensure that no country is able to get away with such a thing.”