[The Week] Across Asia, defense budgets are rising at an alarming rate. The figures are in large part a response to China's aggressive territorial claims in the South China Sea. They're a window into how China's neighbors to view the world -- and the view isn't good.
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Although alarming, China's hike in defense spending is understandable. China is a physically large country in a dangerous neighborhood, with neighbors including Russia, North Korea, Pakistan, and even Afghanistan. China has also accumulated a great deal of wealth and raised the standard of living for hundreds of millions. All of that progress quite reasonably needs to be defended.
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What frightens China's neighbors isn't the size of its defense budget, but the Chinese government's foreign policy.
China has territorial disputes with a dozen other countries. Some have been resolved peacefully. Others have not -- at least not to the satisfaction of China's neighbors. Beijing recently claimed a portion of the South China Sea defined by the so-called "Nine Dash Line." China's portion is 90 percent of the South China Sea, including territorial waters claimed by other countries.
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Whether it believes its neighbors have a legitimate grievance or not, China has given its neighbors plenty to be worried about. But that's precisely the problem -- so far, China has shown that it doesn't believe there are legitimate points of view other than its own.
China expects smaller countries to stay out of the way and "not make trouble." International arbitration -- as in the case with The Philippines -- is refused. Any other points of view are incorrect -- or worse, directed by Washington, D.C.
China will continue to push its territorial claims with ships and planes, and other countries will continue to push back. The possibility exists that one of these confrontations could get out of hand, and a shooting incident could occur.
The presence of more weapons or better trained troops on either side does not necessarily make war more likely. China's defense budget won't start a war, but how it treats other countries just might.
#1
I blame Bush, Clinton, Bush and Obama just as much as the Chinese. They all seemed to believe the Chinese communists would somehow mellow out and start behaving themselves if we'd just make nice with them. So much for wishful thinking as foreign policy.
#2
They all seemed to believe the Chinese communists would somehow mellow out
China might eventually, but first there are some old grudges to settle. The America's current feckless international behavior only makes conflict more likely and perhaps unavoidable.
#3
Just not the leadership. Add in academia who promoted 'integration' into the world economy as though that would erase a two thousand year history of Chinese chauvinism.
#4
Not a good week for Rising China'a "Manifest Destiny" - first an Internationally-respected PLA Scholar says China may not be able to break or get through the "First Island Chain" due to on-going US entrenchments, then ex-Goldman-Sachs partner Roy Smith says China is seemingly on the path toward toward being an ex-Superpower wannabe.
THESE DOTH NOTTETH A OWG CO-SUPERPOWER MAKETH.
This will not end well, as IMO China ultimately will choose to go fighting than give up its ambitions.
Ditto as for "WE'RE-SUPPOSED-TO-BE-THE-WORLD'S FIRST-MUSLIM-NUCLEAR-SUPERPOWER-NOT-IRAN PAKISTAN.
* FYI CNN GUEST PERT = argued that ME Sunnis as a class are running scared due to their belief that POTUS Obama's on-going rapprochement wid Shia Iran is existentially "tipping the balance" from a historically Sunni-dominated ME + Muslim World to one that is Shia-n-Iran dominated, + FEAR SHIA-LED REVENGE.
* DEFENCE.PK/FORUMS > [Sputnik International]CHINA ACTIVITIES ON DISPUTED ISLANDS FUELS FEAR OF MILITARY BUILDUP: PSAKI, i.e. Regional fears that Beijing = China intends to establish PLA-centric Milbases all across the SCS.
* LUCIANNE > DEFECTOR: NORTH KOREA TROOPS [including Elite Forces] STARVING.
NOT good news for Pudgy.
NOKOR once again targets the wily dastardly USS GEORGE WASHINGTON CVN, this time wid feeling.
* BIGNEWSNETWORK > [GlobalNation.PH] OPINION: DESTROY ALL CHINESE MILITARY BASES IN PHILIPPINES [West Sea, EEZ] NOW.
Author reiterates warning after learning of China's construction of artificial islands in SCS = PH-claimed areas.
* FYI WASHINGTON POST > PAKISTAN TEST MISSLE THAT CAN CARRY NUCLEAR WARHEAD TO EVERY PART OF INDIA.
Good news perhaps for Pak BFFS NOKOR + Iran, ISIS + AQ, but not for India + China relations ]peace].
[PJMedia] Even some Democrats in Congress have come to the conclusion that after the brouhaha over Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu's speech before Congress, President Obama wants to radically downgrade the long American special relationship with democratic Jewish Israel -- and perhaps has a dislike of the idea of Israel. Add up the administration's initial disparagement on the matter of Israeli settlements, untoward administration remarks during the Gaza War, its assumptions that a future autonomous West Bank had a right to insist on becoming Judenfrei, its downplaying the Iranian nuclear threat, John Kerry's various editorializing about Israeli supposed overreactions, the constant hectoring of Israel, and rumors of a slowdown in military aid to Israel during the Gaza war, and so on and so on.
[TheEconomicCollapse] Most Americans don't realize this, but an Israeli attack against Iranian nuclear facilities could be closer than almost any of us would dare to imagine.
In fact, just a few days ago there was a report that a planned strike in 2014 was aborted at the last minute after Barack Obama threatened to shoot down Israeli jets...
According to Al-Jarida, the Netanyahu government took the decision to strike Iran some time in 2014 soon after Israel had discovered the United States and Iran had been involved in secret talks over Iran's nuclear program and were about to sign an agreement in that regard behind Israel's back.
The report claimed that an unnamed Israeli minister who has good ties with the US administration revealed the attack plan to Secretary of State John Kerry, and that Obama then threatened to shoot down the Israeli jets before they could reach their targets in Iran.
But next time, it might be different. As I discussed in a previous article, there are reports coming out of the Middle East that indicate that Saudi Arabia plans to allow Israel to use their airspace to strike Iran.
In addition, new evidence of a secret nuclear facility near Tehran that Iran had not told anyone about has been revealed in recent days. If it turns out that Iran's nuclear program is actually far more advanced that they have been admitting, that will send the probability of an Israeli strike absolutely soaring.
For years, Iran and Israel have been on a collision course, and now time is running out.
#2
Best guess - Russia gets involved somehow and the ChiComs decide it's a great time to grab the Kurile Islands while the Great Satans are preoccupied with the Mid East flareup.
#3
Oops! Wrong set of islands - I thought the Kuriles were the ones the ChiComs were thumping their chests about the past few years, but you get the idea. Maybe Russia grabs the Kuriles at the same time, and there's your shitshow.
#7
The Arabs don't seem too thrilled with a shiite dominated Iraq getting marching instructions from a nuclear-armed Iran. I suspect that Jordan, Kuwait, Bahrain, Iraq, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are not thrilled with an Iran dominated Yemen, Iraq or Syria, Lebanon, or Palestinian occupied territory. Sisi talks.
#8
I've been sort of thinking that the way it will actually play out is that Saudi Arabia will do the bombing, with behind the scenes support from Israel as required, but of course with absolutely no public admission by the Israeli's of any involvement of any kind.
[Weekly Standard] And now Lanny Davis -- defender of dictators, Penn State, and all things Clintonian -- has come out with perhaps the funniest "defense" of Clinton's email trickery yet. 'Funny' to some possibly.
On an interview with Fox's Chris Wallace on Sunday morning, Davis said "a secretary of state traveling to 111 countries might be needing to have one email system versus people in the department who should use the official system." When pressed on the point, Davis continued, "as secretary of state she might feel the need, traveling all over, with a hand-held device . . ." (at this point, Wallace -- fortunately for Lanny Davis --
#6
The only thing good about this excuse is that it exposes how hollow the excuse is. I would love to know how this server is more accessible than any other server. How it is better supported by IT. How it is better secured. Why she doesn't know her .gov password for when she wasn't traveling. How she planned to do her job if some of her emails were on her private server. How often she did backups. The list goes on, but you get the idea.
[PJMedia] There is land of wonder where magic princes and princesses rescue humble folk from the malignant spells of wicked sorcerers. Call it the Kaganate of Nuland: I refer of course to Assistant Secretary of State for Europe Victoria Nuland and her spouse Robert Kagan, respectively the source of the silliest statement on record about U.S. foreign policy ("F-- the Europeans") and the worst book on foreign policy in a generally dismal decade.
I reviewed Kagan's awful tome when it appeared three years ago, with its fairy-tale thesis about the inevitable triumph of liberal democracy. "It is possible that in the Arab Spring we are seeing a continuation of the Third Wave, or perhaps even a fourth. The explosion of democracy is about to enter a fifth straight decade, the longest and broadest such expansion in history," Kagan wrote. Nuland got her 15 minutes of fame when someone, presumably Russian intelligence, leaked her expletive-adorned 2013 conversation with America's ambassador to Ukraine to YouTube.
Kagan and Nuland authentically believed that Ukraine's Maidan Square overthrow of the Yanukovich government would inspire a democracy movement in Russia that eventually would depose Vladimir Putin, just as they believed that the Arab Spring heralded a great wave of democracy in the Middle East. Instead, Putin rose to the highest popularity ranking (at 86%) of his long and checkered career, and Russian hostility to America surpassed the levels of the Soviet era. "More than 80 percent of Russians now hold negative views of the United States, according to the independent Levada Center, a number that has more than doubled over the past year and that is by far the highest negative rating since the center started tracking those views in 1988," the Washington Post reported March 9.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[The Week] Across Asia, defense budgets are rising at an alarming rate. The figures are in large part a response to China's aggressive territorial claims in the South China Sea. They're a window into how China's neighbors to view the world -- and the view isn't good.
