The Confucius Institute is an appealing brand for extending our culture abroad. It has made an important contribution toward improving our soft power. The “Confucius” brand has a natural attractiveness. Using the excuse of teaching Chinese language, everything looks reasonable and logical.

The inception of the U.S.-led nuclear alliance system

From the world's first atomic test on 16 July 1945, uranium, nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons have played a key role in the US-led alliance system. As the former axis powers of Japan, West Germany and Italy as well as other strategically important territories such as South Korea, the Philippines and Taiwan, were incorporated in a US foreign policy designed to confront and contain the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China, nuclear weapons were deployed with the justification of being necessary to deter large Communist conventional forces. In the New Look doctrine of ‘massive retaliation’ introduced under Eisenhower, Truman's policy of targeting roughly seventy Soviet cities with 133 atomic bombs over thirty days (Operation Fleetwood) was magnified to the use of nuclear weapons like normal munitions and therefore increasing their stockpiles and yield capacity. While the PRC was repeatedly threatened with nuclear strikes from air and missile delivery platforms during the Korean War, as was North Korea, and during the crisis in the Taiwan Strait in the 1950s, by late 1960, a single integrated operational plan (SIOP-62) targeted Soviet, Chinese and satellite cities with the simultaneous launch of all nuclear forces without restraint.