If Hillary Clinton had won the 2016 election, the Establishment would have continued on its path to contain China, but sooner, and would have started the ruckus in Ukraine, but sooner. This little exercise in “What if” throws some interesting light on the neocons’ future plans and maybe on the whys and wherefores of the Covid attack on China. What if is a great tool to understanding What is.

Let’s make the basic assumption that the Clinton’s neocons had the same worldview and the same plans as Biden’s. They saw the rise of China as the main problem and decided, adhering to their tradition of foreign-policy myopia, that America must remain the world’s only superpower. This policy has had various names over the past two decades, the most famous being the “Project for a New American Century” and “the international rules-based order.”

They see the main trouble with this plan as Russia’s growing coziness with China. The two together, whether they call it an alliance, a friendship or a weekend romance, make a virtually unbeatable combination, controlling almost all of the Eurasian landmass. The neocons decided that Russia was to be taken on first; hence the American-”midwifed” coup d’etat in Kiev in 2014. The Kremlin’s counter-move was the annexation of the Crimea, which must have surprised and angered the neocons, but at least it made the rest of the plan easy: sanctions by the thousand, the marshaling of Europe to the cause, an anti-Putin PR campaign for the edification of the hoi polloi, the robbery of that juicy 300 billion bucks in Russian foreign reserves unwisely held in American banks — and, of course, the war in Ukraine.

In a first Clinton Administration, Ukrainian troops would need more time to beef up. Even with a sped-up program of training and arms, it would have taken a Clinton Administration longer to maneuver Russia into war. With greater attacks on the Donbass stirring up Russian public opinion, probably the bear could have been goaded into attacking by the third year of a Clinton Administration, in 2019.

Plan A was — is — to use Ukraine to inflict humiliating battle defeats on the Russian army, its generals, and Russian territory and infrastructure, thus leading to either Putin’s resignation or overthrow. The neocons want a more pliable, Yeltsin-like leader to take his place. This means that Plan B, the only logical alternative, is violent conflict with Russia, perhaps even a nuclear showdown: either Putin’s resigns and our man is put in power, or else.

If that sounds extreme, consider the neocons’ point of view: either Russia is subdued, or they must accept China as a peer superpower. There’s nothing in between. If Russia and China continue together, the American foreign-policy elite is condemned to accept a new balance of power, accept loathsome multi-polarity, accept that the new American century is no longer a project but a pipe dream. Probably Clinton’s first administration would have been dedicated to clearing Russia from the table so that they could concentrate on China and on customizing a new world order in the second one.

The surprise election of Donald Trump upset the Establishment timetable.

Trump and his motley crew drove the plan underground; even the sublime Victoria Nuland, who had kept her footing on the slippery decks of State through Republican and Democratic administrations, was out. The best the Clinton crowd could do was to press the Steele-dossier issue, keeping Trump on the back foot with regard to Russia. He could not improve relations with Russia, as he had hoped, without incurring the criticism that Putin was his sugar daddy. In the mainstream media, Russia’s aid to beleaguered Donbass towns was widely ballyhooed. This, at least, provided a broader context for harassing Russia once Biden was elected.

In the meantime, however, China continued to sprint ahead. Riding the wave of its economic juggernaut, including two Olympic Games, it won ever-greater acceptance as a new world power. And what if Trump won re-election? Neocon worries must have risen to the panic level. By now, in a Clinton Administration, the plan should have been moving forward. Instead, it was nearly at a standstill. What to do?

This is the context in which we understand Ron Unz’s theory that the Covid crisis was really an American bio-attack on China (and Iran, but let’s confine ourselves to China). It’s not worth reviewing; readers of this page know all about it. The theory’s major drawback, as Unz himself recognizes, is that the alleged American planners understood that the attack would have repercussions outside China. For it would take some weeks before the virus was noticed and dealt with by authorities. And this was indeed the case. The virus was probably released in November 2019, but China didn’t begin to take measures against it until January. So there was a window of several weeks in which infected Chinese traveled abroad and infected foreigners returned to their countries. As Unz has also noted, the week-long lag time between infection and symptoms, especially in China’s crowded cities, made it the perfect attack virus.

So it is not hard to imagine that somewhere in the darker corridors of American power, amidst rising panic about China, a plan was quickly hatched to throw a monkey wrench into the churning gears of its economy and its political outreach. Yes, the plan would also affect the rest of the world, but something had to be done; time had to be gained until Trump could be ousted. Trump’s people were left well out of the loop: any fool could see the likelihood of the pandemic coming to America, and the last thing Trump needed was a major health crisis, especially going into re-election; the timing of the outbreak is interesting in that sense as well.

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Anyway, it’s doubtful that the plotters gave a hoot about his opinion one way or the other: Trump and his people would be toast in the next election. A nationwide health crisis — hospitals overflowing, medicine running short, alternate media sowing discord and mistrust — would be a big help in giving him the heave-ho. Besides, even if his people discovered the plotters, what could they do about it? Tell the Wall Street Journal that the worldwide Covid crisis actually started as a CIA plot against China?

These are the two lessons of our What If. One, that war with Russia, and probably a nuclear showdown, is in the offing: Plan A against Putin is going poorly, and for the neocons the sine qua non of a second American century is the elimination of Russia as an important power. Two, that the conveniently-timed Covid pandemic was an attempt to slow down China and hurt Trump at a moment when, to those creepy masters of the universe, all seemed lost. And to give credit where due, it worked, both in China and against Trump.