The United States is preparing for a possible war against China and Russia aimed at preventing the collapse of the Western banking system, an American political commentator and activist says. Michael Billington, Asia editor for the Executive Intelligence Review and author of Reflections of an American Political Prisoner: the Repression and Promise of the LaRouche Movement, made the remarks in a phone interview with Press TV on Thursday. On Wednesday, US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter warned China to stop developing man-made islands in the South China Sea, vowing that the United States would not stop patrolling international waters and airspace in the Asia-Pacific region. “There should be no mistake, the United States will fly, sail, and operate wherever international law allows, as we do all around the world,” Carter said at the US military’s joint base at Pearl Harbor. Billington said China’s attempt to build islands in the South China Sea is “not that unusual” since the Philippines and Vietnam are also doing the same. US President Barack Obama is trying to keep his focus on a widely advertised shift to Asia, which he has pursued since 2011. The White House argues that no region is more important to America’s long-term interests than Asia. “The point that has to be made is that the Chinese, like the Russians, are very, very clear that the United States and their NATO allies are in a war mobilization, preparing for war on Russia, preparing for war on China,” Billington stated. “There’s a general recognition growing that the driving force for this war is the utter collapse of the entire Western banking system,” he added. “Greece is now ready to default. It has made this very clear. The euro will not survive. Obama here at home has failed… to reverse the decline in employment, in production, in infrastructure in the United States and we are now facing a collapse far greater than the 2008 collapse,” the analyst said. “And the view from London and Washington and New York is we have to go to war, we cannot allow this BRICS alliance between Russia, China, India, South Africa and most of Latin America creating new financial institutions to take away our ability to loot the resources in the developing sector,” Billington noted. “So they are going for war,” he stressed. Washington accuses Beijing of undergoing a massive “land reclamation” program in the Spratly archipelago of the South China Sea, and says China’s territorial claims of the man-made islands could further militarize the region. “China knows that every military offensive against them since the time of the British opium war came through the South China Sea,” Billington said. “So they are concerned.” He said the Chinese have repeatedly offered to “the South-East Asian nations to work jointly on the development of the resources, which have been soundly rejected by the Filipinos, who are functioning as absolute puppets of Obama’s war plans, and in fact, turning their islands into a massive US military base.” He went on to say that there is "no reason for this confrontation" between the United States and China “other than the fact that Obama wants a war, rather his controllers in London and in Wall Street want a war, and Obama will do it if he is not removed from office.” “The US is already using the Philippines as a military base for war. This can be stopped, it must be stopped, but it’s going to have to be stopped here in the United States,” Billington emphasized. Live @ www.presstv.ir/live.html Twitter @ twitter.com/PressTV LiveLeak @ www.liveleak.com/c/PressTV Facebook @ www.facebook.com/PRESSTV Google+ @ plus.google.com/+VideosPTV Instagram @ instagram.com/presstvchannel