pjmedia.com By Stephen Green
Last year, Chinese Communist Party boss Xi Jinping played the rare earths card, forcing President Donald Trump to slow his roll on decoupling from the Middle Kingdom. This year, Trump played the oil card against China — first in Venezuela, then in Iran — and he just slapped it on the table again in Indonesia.
Their summit in Beijing next month already promised to be interesting, with the U.S. enjoying significant leverage over Venezuela, Iran in tatters, and the U.S. Navy taking charge of the Strait of Hormuz. Until very recently, both countries served as Beijing’s reliable sources of discounted oil.
Today, Xi might ask, “Et tu, Indonesia?” If he spoke Latin, that is.
It might have seemed like one of those dry, bureaucratic, almost meaningless announcements on Monday, when War Secretary Pete Hegseth posted on X that the U.S. and Indonesia “are elevating our relationship to a Major Defense Cooperation Partnership.”
According to a joint statement, the partnership covers “military modernization and capacity building,” “training and professional military education,” “exercises and operational cooperation,” and I can hear you snoring already…
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