As Asia becomes more prosperous it spends proportionally more of its new wealth on defense. All regional actors get increasingly concerned about the ability to protect their economic interests to ensure sustainable growth. The disputed…
Category: China-India-Russia Specials
US Provoking China Militarily in Both Rhetoric and Policy: The US accused China of militarizing the region, when Washington is the one doing the militarizing Recent US statements criticizing China for militarizing the South China Sea area have been bitterly rejected by Chinese authorities, who view Washington as doing the militarizing and trying to provoke China. Tensions between various Asian countries have been on the rise over territorial disputes and Washington keeps sticking its nose in where it doesn’t belong in an attempt to undercut its global competitor, China. “Judging from the outrage coming from China at being singled out, after Vietnam and the Philippines had taken steps, without being criticized, to secure resources in the contested sea before China’s own actions, the US statement seems to be backfiring,” Douglas H. Paal of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
KCNA Commentary Terms U.S. ‘Talk about Threat from North Korea’ Theory for Dominating Asia-Pacific Pyongyang, August 18 (KCNA) — The U.S. is getting evermore vociferous about “threat from north Korea”. The supra-partisan diplomacy and security experts group of the U.S. said in its “3rd Armitage Report” on Aug. 15 that the U.S. and Japan are facing the threat from north Korea armed with nukes. Earlier, Samuel, commander-in-chief of the U.S. forces in the Pacific, cried out for getting ready to protect security from north Korea’s provocations. Walter M. Golden, deputy commander of the U.S. 8th Army, said that the mission to deter the threat from Pyongyang is becoming more important than ever under the present situation where the center of the U.S. forces is being shifted to the Pacific region.
Contention between China and the United States is extending far beyond the current hot spot of the South China Sea. As China’s economy continues its rapid expansion, a truly global realignment of power is taking place. Regions that were dominated by the West for centuries are now coming into China’s orbit, challenging America’s position at the top on a once-unipolar world. This trend is particularly evident in Africa. The United States is now seeking to counter China’s economic and political inroads in the African continent. The Africa policies of both the US and China are important not only in their own right, but also because these policies serve to indicate the significant differences in these two powers’ general foreign strategies and world views. US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has been quick to question China’s relationship with Africa, and highlight the purported difference in Africa policy between the US and China. During her visit to Senegal (the first stop of her African tour), she promoted “a model of sustainable partnership that adds value, rather than extracts it”. She went on to promise: “America will stand up for democracy and universal human rights even when it might be easier to look the other way and keep the resources flowing.” [1]
The Election of a “Puppet President”: High Stake Outcomes Based on Non-issues The election of the next puppet president of the “world’s only superpower” is about two and one-half months off, and what are the campaign issues? There aren’t any worthy of the name. Romney won’t release his tax returns, despite the fact that release is a customary and expected act. Either the non-release is a strategy to suck in Democrats to make the election issue allegations that Romney is another mega-rich guy who doesn’t pay taxes, only to have the issue collapse with a late release that shows enormous taxes paid, or Romney’s tax returns, as a candidate who advocates lower taxes for the rich, don’t bear scrutiny.
What are Romney’s issues? The candidate says that his first act will be to repeal Obamacare, a program that Romney himself first enacted as governor of Massachusetts. This will cost Romney political contributions from the insurance industry, which is thankful for the 50 million new private insurance policies that Obamacare, written not by Obama but by the private insurance companies, provides at public expense. It is not to the insurance industry’s benefit to have a single payer system like other western countries.
South East China Sea; A Perfect Crisis for the International Crisis Group. A geo-political analysis of the background for the developments in the South-China Sea, the region, and suggested developments towards regional security and stability. Coauthored by Christopher Black., James Henry Fetzer, Alex Mezyaev, and Christof Lehmann Subsequent to the dissolution of the USSR, the peaceful transition of Hong Kong from British to Chinese sovereignty and the subsequent opening of the Chinese market for Western investors, a superficial analysis may lead to the conclusion that the international community has missed the chance to establish a geo-political climate that could have facilitated the peaceful coexistence of sovereign nations.
However, on closer inspection, it is evident that it is a fallacy to speak in terms of a missed chance. The chance for peaceful coexistence between China, the USA, and to a lesser degree the E.U., has in fact never been given a real chance. It is also a fallacy to conclude that this chance depended on a left/right paradigm in US and Western politics.
Iran has recently hosted 30 nations including Russia, China, India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Ecuador, Afghanistan, Algeria, Iraq, Oman, Turkmenistan, Venezuela, Cuba, Jordan, Tunisia, Palestine, and many others in Tehran this week in efforts to…
THE US government might like to deny it, but Barack Obama’s former intelligence chief has confirmed China is a principal target of a major US war plan. The American plan, known in Washington as Air-Sea…
What “The Situation in Syria” Really Means: The 133 prostitutes who voted with the Empire On August 3rd of this year, something truly remarkable happened at the United Nations: the UNGA passed a resolution formally condemning…
“Scare the hell out of the American people.” ~ Senator Arthur Vandenburg, 1947. “It is part of the general pattern of misguided policy that our country is now geared to an arms economy which was bred in an artificially induced psychosis of war hysteria and nurtured upon an incessant propaganda of fear. While such an economy may produce a sense of seeming prosperity for the moment, it rests on an illusionary foundation of complete unreliability and renders among our political leaders almost a greater fear of peace than is their fear of war. ~ General Douglas MacArthur, May 15, 1952.” At one point in my youth it became clear that the U.S. was a violent force in the world, probably as I watched the Vietnam war news on the local TV news. Later, it also became clear that its whole history is one of violence, at home and abroad. More recently I had naively hoped that as the U.S. Empire goes through its death throes, that it would quit the world peacefully.