Filed under: China / SE Asia | Tags: china, dalai lama, jiaboa, obama, prc, taiwan, yuan
In a few short months Barack Obama has bungled and bumbled any strategic advantage the U.S may have possessed in international diplomacy and has seriously jeopardized long-term relationships with all 4 major powers of the East. Departures with India on Copenhagen, missile shields threatening Russia and China and loss of support in Japan among the new government are just a sample of the diplomatic missteps which have occurred. Even if the Obama administration’s disposition wasn’t militaristic and threatening, which it certainly is, their arrogant diplomatic behavior is enough alone to drive support away from the U.S on the international level. In this arena, the Chinese are clear in their assertion that the U.S has “grossly violated the norms governing international relations.”
Reuters: China foreign minister says U.S. ties “disrupted”
Business Week: China Says U.S. ‘Entirely’ to Blame for Strained Ties
Roman Tomberg: Stalemate in China-US Relations
This winter has been a cold one for China-US relations. So many serious disagreements between the two countries have not surfaced simultaneously for decades: the US is exerting unprecedented pressure on China to revalue the Yuan, a cyber war erupted between Google and the Chinese administration, Washington intends to sell weapons worth $6.4 bn to Taiwan, China dumped US bonds worth $34.2 bn, both sides threaten to introduce punitive import tariffs, and US President B. Obama received 14th Dalai Lama Tenzin Gyatso in the White House. In the past China and the US avoided taking harsh measures against each other serially, but evidently things have changed beyond recognition over the past several months.
Notably, the round of tensions came as a surprise – just recently US analysts used to churn out totally different predictions concerning the relations with China. US economist and the director of Peterson Institute for International Economics Fred Bergsten coined the term G-2 as the new global economy formula in his The United States and the World Economy (2005). In the early 2009, the concept was upheld by such US foreign politics gurus as former Secretary of State H. Kissinger and former White House National Security Adviser Z. Brzezinski. Their idea was that China should shoulder the burden of global hegemony jointly with the US, which implied that Obama’s Administration would be steering a course generally benign to the country. Continue reading
Filed under: China / SE Asia, War | Tags: india, nuclear, obama, pakistan, terror, us
This short article seems to be revealing the parameters of the U.S-Indian relationship; using the “Pakistan issue”, the Mumbai bombing and other recent terrorist events as the fulcrum of the growing relationship which includes intelligence sharing, cooperative military drills, nuclear exchange and more.
Asia Times: US boosts India’s anti-terror efforts
…India has also increased its sharing of information and operational details with US intelligence agencies, such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Officials say this cooperation has gone a long way towards boosting domestic expertise. CIA director Leon E Panetta is due to visit India in November.
The close relationship of the US with Pakistan gives the Americans access to classified information that is valuable to India. Activities such as phone calls, meetings, travel, and e-mails by dozens of Pakistan-based LeT operatives are monitored by US agencies, information that that is now accessible to India.
One recent example highlights the benefits of India and the US sharing information…. Continue reading
Filed under: China / SE Asia, The Pacific, War | Tags: asia, dpj, hatoyama, japan, ldp, obama, okinawa, War
The question of U.S/Japan relations becomes an interesting consideration for U.S war designs and power projection in Asia. Will the new Japanese regime reverse it trend towards a U.S “client state” or will this inequitable relationship which forces Japanese to finance U.S operations continue?
Gavan McCormack: Obama vs Hatoyama: The making of an unequal, unconstitutional, illegal, colonial and deceitful US-Japan agreement.
Elections at the end of August gave Japan a new government, headed by Hatoyama Yukio. In electing him and his Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), the Japanese people, like the American people less than a year earlier, were opting for change – a new relationship with both Asia and the US, including a much more equal one with the latter. Remarkably, however, what followed on the part of the Obama administration has been a campaign of unrelenting pressure to block any such change.
The Obama administration has targeted in particular the Hatoyama desire to re-negotiate the relationship with the United States so as to make it equal instead of dependent. Go back, it seems to be saying, to the golden days of “Sergeant-Major Koizumi” (as George W. Bush reportedly referred to the Japanese Prime Minister) when compliance was assured and annual US policy prescriptions (“yobosho”) were received in Tokyo as holy writ; forget absurd pretensions of independent policies.
The core issue has been the disposition of American military presence in Okinawa and the US insistence that Hatoyama honour an agreement known as the Guam Treaty.
The Guam Treaty
The “Guam International Agreement” is the US-Japan agreement signed by Secretary Hillary Clinton and Japanese Foreign Minister Nakasone Hirofumi in February and adopted as a treaty under special legislation in May 2009, in the first days of the Obama administration. Support for the Aso government in Japan was collapsing and the incoming Obama administration moved urgently to extract formal consent to its plans in such a way as to ensure that any such agreement would bind any subsequent Japanese government.
8,000 Marines and their 9,000 family members were to be relocated from Okinawa to Guam, and the US marine base at Futenma would be transferred to Henoko in Nago City in Northern Okinawa, to a new base to be built by Japan. The Japanese government would also pay $6.09 billion towards the Guam transfer cost ($2.8 billion of it in cash in the current financial year). [1] The effect in Okinawa would be that the US military would vacate some of its larger bases in the densely populated south but concentrate and expand those in the north of the island.
These matters (save for the detailed financial clauses) had all been resolved by a previous agreement, nearly four years earlier under Koizumi – the October 2005 agreement on “US-Japan Alliance: Transformation and Realignment for the Future” reconfirmed by the May 2006 “United States-Japan Roadmap for realignment Implementation.” [2] Now, to compel compliance, Article 3 of the new Agreement declared that “The Government of Japan intends to complete the Futenma replacement facility as stipulated in the Roadmap [i.e. by 2014]” even though the parties had virtually given up hope that that was possible in the face of entrenched Okinawan opposition. [3]
The Agreement was one of the first acts of a popular, “reforming” US administration and one of the last of a Japanese regime in fatal decline after half a century of LDP rule. It set in unusually clear relief the relationship between the world’s No 1 and No 2 economic powers. The Agreement is worthy of close attention because, as analysed below, it was unequal, unconstitutional, illegal, colonial and deceitful
Asia Times: Space is suddenly on the agenda
United States President Barack Obama is preparing to make his first official trip to Asia this week, and a growing list of important economic and defense-related issues are on his agenda. From the time he touches down in Tokyo on Thursday until the time he flies home from Seoul – stops in Singapore, Shanghai and Beijing are also planned – Obama is going to be watched closely back home.
Obama’s visit to China is going through some last-minute changes due to recent remarks about China’s plans for space by General Xu Qiliang, commander of the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) Air Force. On November 1, in advance of activities marking the 60th anniversary of the founding of the PLA Air Force, Xu was interviewed by China’s PLA Daily.
“Only power could protect peace. Superiority in space and in air would mean, to a certain extent, superiority over the land and the oceans,” he said. “As the air force of a peace-loving country, we must forge our swords and shields in order to protect peace.”
According to Xu, “a country without adequate power would have no say when faced with challenges posed by the militarization in the space and air.” [1]
Xu also said that, “military competition has shifted towards space. Such a shift is a major trend now, and such expansion is a historical inevitability.” [2]
A few days later, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) made clear that Xu’s comments were incomplete and had to be taken in context.
“I want to point out China has all along upheld the peaceful use of outer space. We oppose the weaponization of outer space or a space arms race,” said MFA spokesman Ma Zhaoxu. “China has never and will not participate in an outer space arms race in any form. The position of China on this point remains unchanged.” [3]
Filed under: China / SE Asia, War | Tags: afghanistan, india, iran, obama, us
Indo-U.S cooperation in the form of military drills is increasing, and judging by the importance placed on them by U.S commanders, the military/intelligence community is perhaps envisioning a situation in which India could be used as a Asian hedge against the potential of a hostile Chinese regime.
Looks like Hawaii has been moved without my knowledge, but the map remains accurate despite this geographical anomaly.
Telegraph (Calcutta): Trained in India, to fight in Iraq
Filed under: Central Asia, China / SE Asia, Resource Wars, Russia / Caucacus, War | Tags: china, iran, russia, sco
Press TV: Iran Offers SCO Alternative To U.S. Control Of World Resources
VOA News: Shanghai Cooperation Organization Summit Concludes in Beijing
Shanghai Cooperation Organization member states agreed to work together to combat the global economic crisis and find ways to increase cooperation on financial issues.
The Shanghai Cooperation Organization, meeting in Beijing Wednesday, brought together the leaders of China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. The SCO is a regional security grouping. However, this time, economic difficulties took center stage.
Continue reading
Filed under: Central Asia, China / SE Asia, Russia / Caucacus, War | Tags: china, india, iran, NATO, nuclear, obama, russia, us, venezuela, War
The force of NATO’s operational doctrine of continual expansion and disruption of opposing forces is now extending their presence into Asia. The battles for the favor of India and the so-called “string of pearls” around the eastern coast of China have set the stage for potential future conflicts. Now, with deepening ties to Western power, India represents another potential wedge for the U.S/NATO, bent on establishing strategic positions on the periphery of their two main economic and political rivals–China and Russia. Historical and geographical considerations also compel the Indians in their current position, to adopt a policy of “superalignment” with the West as opposed to “counteralignment”; represented by the Russia, China, Iran and the Bolivarian alignment based around Venezuela.
Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya: Geo-Strategic Chessboard: War Between India and China?
Here is another great article from Rick Rozoff at ‘Stop NATO’. This also discusses U.S/NATO presence in Asia being used as a bulwark against Russia and China in a variety of arenas.
Rick Rozoff: Dangerous Crossroads: U.S. Expands Asian NATO Against China, Russia
Here is an article from Foreign Affairs in 2006 which suggests that the U.S could use preemptive first strikes against the arsenals of Russia and China.
“For four decades, relations among the major nuclear powers have been shaped by their common vulnerability, a condition known as mutual assured destruction. But with the U.S. arsenal growing rapidly while Russia’s decays and China’s stays small, the era of MAD is ending – and the era of U.S. nuclear primacy has begun.”
“It will probably soon be possible for the United States to destroy the long-range nuclear arsenals of Russia or China with a first strike.”
Filed under: China / SE Asia, Russia / Caucacus, War | Tags: afghanistan, fraud, mcchrystal, NATO, nobel, obama, peace, War
Wall Street Journal: Afghanistan: Top Troop Request Exceeds 60,000
Yahoo: Obama approved 13,000 more troops to Afghanistan
Global Research: October Surprise: Peace Prize to a War Criminal
Check out this article–it’s an excellent summary of the dizzying hypocrisy involved in Obama receiving what amounts to an modern oligarchical title of nobility. Remember that the nomination deadline for the Nobel Prize was only 1 month into Obama’s administration, when even less had done towards the advancement of the peace issue (if that’s possible).
Obama and the Nobel Prize: When War becomes Peace, When the Lie becomes the Truth
by Michel Chossudovsky
When war becomes peace,
When concepts and realities are turned upside down,
When fiction becomes truth and truth becomes fiction.
When a global military agenda is heralded as a humanitarian endeavor,
When the killing of civilians is upheld as “collateral damage”,
When those who resist the US-NATO led invasion of their homeland are categorized as “insurgents” or “terrorists”.
When preemptive nuclear war is upheld as self defense.
When advanced torture and “interrogation” techniques are routinely used to “protect peacekeeping operations”,
When tactical nuclear weapons are heralded by the Pentagon as “harmless to the surrounding civilian population”
When three quarters of US personal federal income tax revenues are allocated to financing what is euphemistically referred to as “national defense”
When the Commander in Chief of the largest military force on planet earth is presented as a global peace-maker,
When the Lie becomes the Truth
Filed under: Arctic, Central Asia, China / SE Asia, Empire, Latin America, Middle East, Resource Wars, Russia / Caucacus, War | Tags: afghanistan, Arctic, china, iran, NATO, obama, russia, War
The United States is continually expanding the presence of their forces to several points throughout the globe. The locations of these engagements form a “belt of conflict” which stretches the length of the globe. Now, the conflict in these areas is escalating to a point at which, some time in the future, the possibility of an international conflict with nuclear overtones can be seen. From military bases in Colombia, destabilization of Bolivia and Venezuela, funding and arming separatist groups in Africa, manufacturing humanitarian precepts for Sudanese involvement, the continuing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, NATO expansion in Eastern Europe, strategic maneuvering in the Caspian basin, attempts to gain control of the “string of pearls” and the escalating competition over Arctic resources– the U.S is pursuing a policy of confrontation for the sole purpose of gaining access to natural resources, subverting potential international coalitions and securing freedom of international military deployment.
RIA Novosti: U.S. could deploy missile shield in Arctic – Russia’s NATO envoy
Ice News: US could launch missiles from the Baltic Sea
GeoPoliticalMonitor.com: U.S weapons end up in al-Qaeda hands
Telegraph: NATO commander warns of conflict with Russia in the Arctic Circle
Rick Rozoff: U.S., NATO Poised For Most Massive War In Afghanistan’s History
Filed under: China / SE Asia, War | Tags: china, gates, naval, obama, us
China’s increasingly advanced weaponry could undermine US military power in the Pacific, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on Wednesday.
Echoing US intelligence guidelines released on Tuesday that warned of Beijing’s military modernization, Gates said US naval carriers and air bases in the Pacific faced new threats from China.
“In fact, when considering the military-modernization programs of countries like China, we should be concerned less with their potential ability to challenge the US symmetrically — fighter to fighter or ship to ship — and more with their ability to disrupt our freedom of movement and narrow our strategic options.”….Full article here
Duty Now For The Future 