"We're going to ring China with missile defense. We're going to put more of our fleet in the area. So China, come on. You either control them or we're going to have to defend against them," Hillary Clinton said in a 2013 speech referring to North Korea.
In its follow up to the revelation Russia's online newspaper Vzglyad has called it a threat of a direct military and geopolitical containment of China.
"The North Korean possession of any ballistic missiles or nuclear bomb is only a pretext for a build-up of US military might and Beijing understands it perfectly well," says the website's analytical article on the issue.
"Similarly Moscow always understood that the deployment of the US missile defense system in Europe is aimed not against Iranian missiles but against Russia," it further says.
The outlet notes that China, as well as Russia has been against the already voiced plans of Washington and Seoul to deploy the advanced anti-missile defense system in South Korea.
China has no ability to dictate anything to Pyongyang, it says, and no one in the world is able to force North Korea to give up the deterrent weapon.
"For the North Koreans, the existence of nuclear weapon and ballistic missiles is the only guarantee that neither the US nor South Korea will attack their country," the website says.
"Neither Moscow nor Beijing will ever convince it otherwise (and they will never seriously try to), that the US does not want to eliminate the Kim dynasty," it adds.
North Korea has been fighting against the US, it adds, and throughout the sixty years that have passed since that war Washington has not provided it with any reason to doubt its hostility towards Pyongyang.
Hence, the North Korean card is being played by the US against Beijing with the same very purpose as the Iranian card is being played against Russia, the outlet suggests. And Clinton's position on the issue comes as no surprise.
The US has already been deterring China from the east and south-east, the website says. The chain of US military bases comes from South Korea and Japan to Taiwan and the Philippines with the US fleet patrolling the sea along China's shores.
The newspaper also notes that the Americans are currently trying to turn the South China Sea into a hotspot of tension between China and the ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations).
The US has recently staked its place in the Pacific region. Everyone understands that the China-US standoff will define the situation in the region for decades to come.
It the answer to that is "no", then Washington simply wants to play with Beijing keeping it blind without revealing its cards.
The US has not yet acknowledged in full all the consequences of its blockade policy towards Russia.
"The horror of understanding that the main result of their attempt to isolate Moscow is the speed-up of strategic rapprochement of Russia and China will come later," the outlet predicts.
However, it says, the unwillingness of a direct confrontation with China does not mean that Beijing won't be the first to sharpen its rhetoric towards the US.
As soon as China understands that the US has nothing left but a direct geopolitical stand-off with Beijing, it will act preventively.
In case Clinton tries to "ring China" it will have to face not only Beijing, the newspaper suggests. In this stand-off Russia will stand alongside Beijing, it predicts.
