The Coming War on China

Moderators: Elvis, DrVolin, Jeff

The Coming War on China

Postby seemslikeadream » Mon Dec 05, 2016 12:57 pm

DECEMBER 2, 2016
The Coming War on China
by JOHN PILGER

Image
When I first went to Hiroshima in 1967, the shadow on the steps was still there. It was an almost perfect impression of a human being at ease: legs splayed, back bent, one hand by her side as she sat waiting for a bank to open. At a quarter past eight on the morning of 6 August, 1945, she and her silhouette were burned into the granite. I stared at the shadow for an hour or more, unforgettably. When I returned many years later, it was gone: taken away, “disappeared”, a political embarrassment.

I have spent two years making a documentary film, The Coming War on China, in which the evidence and witnesses warn that nuclear war is no longer a shadow, but a contingency. The greatest build-up of American-led military forces since the Second World War is well under way. They are in the northern hemisphere, on the western borders of Russia, and in Asia and the Pacific, confronting China.

The great danger this beckons is not news, or it is buried and distorted: a drumbeat of mainstream fake news that echoes the psychopathic fear embedded in public consciousness during much of the 20th century.

Like the renewal of post-Soviet Russia, the rise of China as an economic power is declared an “existential threat” to the divine right of the United States to rule and dominate human affairs.

To counter this, in 2011 President Obama announced a “pivot to Asia”, which meant that almost two-thirds of US naval forces would be transferred to Asia and the Pacific by 2020. Today, more than 400 American military bases encircle China with missiles, bombers, warships and, above all, nuclear weapons. From Australia north through the Pacific to Japan, Korea and across Eurasia to Afghanistan and India, the bases form, says one US strategist, “the perfect noose”.

A study by the RAND Corporation – which, since Vietnam, has planned America’s wars – is entitled, War with China: Thinking Through the Unthinkable. Commissioned by the US Army, the authors evoke the cold war when RAND made notorious the catch cry of its chief strategist, Herman Kahn — “thinking the unthinkable”. Kahn’s book, On Thermonuclear War, elaborated a plan for a “winnable” nuclear war against the Soviet Union.

Today, his apocalyptic view is shared by those holding real power in the United States: the militarists and neo-conservatives in the executive, the Pentagon, the intelligence and “national security” establishment and Congress.

The current Secretary of Defense, Ashley Carter, a verbose provocateur, says US policy is to confront those “who see America’s dominance and want to take that away from us”.

For all the attempts to detect a departure in foreign policy, this is almost certainly the view of Donald Trump, whose abuse of China during the election campaign included that of “rapist” of the American economy. On 2 December, in a direct provocation of China, President-elect Trump spoke to the President of Taiwan, which China considers a renegade province of the mainland. Armed with American missiles, Taiwan is an enduring flashpoint between Washington and Beijing.

“The United States,” wrote Amitai Etzioni, professor of international Affairs at George Washington University, “is preparing for a war with China, a momentous decision that so far has failed to receive a thorough review from elected officials, namely the White House and Congress.” This war would begin with a “blinding attack against Chinese anti-access facilities, including land and sea-based missile launchers … satellite and anti-satellite weapons”.

The incalculable risk is that “deep inland strikes could be mistakenly perceived by the Chinese as pre-emptive attempts to take out its nuclear weapons, thus cornering them into ‘a terrible use-it-or-lose-it dilemma’ [that would] lead to nuclear war.”

In 2015, the Pentagon released its Law of War Manual. “The United States,” it says, “has not accepted a treaty rule that prohibits the use of nuclear weapons per se, and thus nuclear weapons are lawful weapons for the United States.”

In China, a strategist told me, “We are not your enemy, but if you [in the West] decide we are, we must prepare without delay.” China’s military and arsenal are small compared to America’s. However, “for the first time,” wrote Gregory Kulacki of the Union of Concerned Scientists, “China is discussing putting its nuclear missiles on high alert so that they can be launched quickly on warning of an attack … This would be a significant and dangerous change in Chinese policy … Indeed, the nuclear weapon policies of the United States are the most prominent external factor influencing Chinese advocates for raising the alert level of China’s nuclear forces.”

Professor Ted Postol was scientific adviser to the head of US naval operations. An authority on nuclear weapons, he told me, “Everybody here wants to look like they’re tough. See I got to be tough … I’m not afraid of doing anything military, I’m not afraid of threatening; I’m a hairy-chested gorilla. And we have gotten into a state, the United States has gotten into a situation where there’s a lot of sabre-rattling, and it’s really being orchestrated from the top.”

I said, “This seems incredibly dangerous.”

“That’s an understatement.”

In 2015, in considerable secrecy, the US staged its biggest single military exercise since the Cold War. This was Talisman Sabre; an armada of ships and long-range bombers rehearsed an “Air-Sea Battle Concept for China” – ASB — blocking sea lanes in the Straits of Malacca and cutting off China’s access to oil, gas and other raw materials from the Middle East and Africa.

It is such a provocation, and the fear of a US Navy blockade, that has seen China feverishly building strategic airstrips on disputed reefs and islets in the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea. Last July, the UN Permanent Court of Arbitration ruled against China’s claim of sovereignty over these islands. Although the action was brought by the Philippines, it was presented by leading American and British lawyers and could be traced to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

In 2010, Clinton flew to Manila. She demanded that America’s former colony reopen the US military bases closed down in the 1990s following a popular campaign against the violence they generated, especially against Filipino women. She declared China’s claim on the Spratly Islands – which lie more than 7,500 miles from the United States – a threat to US “national security” and to “freedom of navigation”.

Handed millions of dollars in arms and military equipment, the then government of President Benigno Aquino broke off bilateral talks with China and signed a secretive Enhanced Defense Co-operation Agreement with the US. This established five rotating US bases and restored a hated colonial provision that American forces and contractors were immune from Philippine law.

The election of Rodrigo Duterte in April has unnerved Washington. Calling himself a socialist, he declared, “In our relations with the world, the Philippines will pursue an independent foreign policy” and noted that the United States had not apologized for its colonial atrocities. “I will break up with America,” he said, and promised to expel US troops. But the US remains in the Philippines; and joint military exercises continue.

In 2014, under the rubric of “information dominance” – the jargon for media manipulation, or fake news, on which the Pentagon spends more than $4 billion – the Obama administration launched a propaganda campaign that cast China, the world’s greatest trading nation, as a threat to “freedom of navigation”.

CNN led the way, its “national security reporter” reporting excitedly from on board a US Navy surveillance flight over the Spratlys. The BBC persuaded frightened Filipino pilots to fly a single-engine Cessna over the disputed islands “to see how the Chinese would react”. None of these reporters questioned why the Chinese were building airstrips off their own coastline, or why American military forces were massing on China’s doorstep.

The designated chief propagandist is Admiral Harry Harris, the US military commander in Asia and the Pacific. “My responsibilities,” he told the New York Times, “cover Bollywood to Hollywood, from polar bears to penguins.” Never was imperial domination described as pithily.

Harris is one of a brace of Pentagon admirals and generals briefing selected, malleable journalists and broadcasters, with the aim of justifying a threat as specious as that with which George W Bush and Tony Blair justified the destruction of Iraq and much of the Middle East.

In Los Angeles in September, Harris declared he was “ready to confront a revanchist Russia and an assertive China …If we have to fight tonight, I don’t want it to be a fair fight. If it’s a knife fight, I want to bring a gun. If it’s a gun fight, I want to bring in the artillery … and all our partners with their artillery.”

These “partners” include South Korea, the launch pad for the Pentagon’s Terminal High Altitude Air Defense system, known as THAAD, ostensibly aimed at North Korea. As Professor Postol points out, it targets China.

In Sydney, Australia, Harris called on China to “tear down its Great Wall in the South China Sea”. The imagery was front page news. Australia is America’s most obsequious “partner”; its political elite, military, intelligence agencies and the media are integrated into what is known as the “alliance”. Closing the Sydney Harbour Bridge for the motorcade of a visiting American government “dignitary” is not uncommon. The war criminal Dick Cheney was afforded this honour.

Although China is Australia’s biggest trader, on which much of the national economy relies, “confronting China” is the diktat from Washington. The few political dissenters in Canberra risk McCarthyite smears in the Murdoch press. “You in Australia are with us come what may,” said one of the architects of the Vietnam war, McGeorge Bundy. One of the most important US bases is Pine Gap near Alice Springs. Founded by the CIA, it spies on China and all of Asia, and is a vital contributor to Washington’s murderous war by drone in the Middle East.

In October, Richard Marles, the defence spokesman of the main Australian opposition party, the Labor Party, demanded that “operational decisions” in provocative acts against China be left to military commanders in the South China Sea. In other words, a decision that could mean war with a nuclear power should not be taken by an elected leader or a parliament but by an admiral or a general.

This is the Pentagon line, a historic departure for any state calling itself a democracy. The ascendancy of the Pentagon in Washington – which Daniel Ellsberg has called a silent coup — is reflected in the record $5 trillion America has spent on aggressive wars since 9/11, according to a study by Brown University. The million dead in Iraq and the flight of 12 million refugees from at least four countries are the consequence.

The Japanese island of Okinawa has 32 military installations, from which Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Afghanistan and Iraq have been attacked by the United States. Today, the principal target is China, with whom Okinawans have close cultural and trade ties.

There are military aircraft constantly in the sky over Okinawa; they sometimes crash into homes and schools. People cannot sleep, teachers cannot teach. Wherever they go in their own country, they are fenced in and told to keep out.

A popular Okinawan anti-base movement has been growing since a 12-year-old girl was gang-raped by US troops in 1995. It was one of hundreds of such crimes, many of them never prosecuted. Barely acknowledged in the wider world, the resistance has seen the election of Japan’s first anti-base governor, Takeshi Onaga, and presented an unfamiliar hurdle to the Tokyo government and the ultra-nationalist prime minister Shinzo Abe’s plans to repeal Japan’s “peace constitution”.

The resistance includes Fumiko Shimabukuro, aged 87, a survivor of the Second World War when a quarter of Okinawans died in the American invasion. Fumiko and hundreds of others took refuge in beautiful Henoko Bay, which she is now fighting to save. The US wants to destroy the bay in order to extend runways for its bombers. “We have a choice,” she said, “silence or life.” As we gathered peacefully outside the US base, Camp Schwab, giant Sea Stallion helicopters hovered over us for no reason other than to intimidate.

Across the East China Sea lies the Korean island of Jeju, a semi- tropical sanctuary and World Heritage Site declared “an island of world peace”. On this island of world peace has been built one of the most provocative military bases in the world, less than 400 miles from Shanghai. The fishing village of Gangjeong is dominated by a South Korean naval base purpose-built for US aircraft carriers, nuclear submarines and destroyers equipped with the Aegis missile system, aimed at China.

A people’s resistance to these war preparations has been a presence on Jeju for almost a decade. Every day, often twice a day, villagers, Catholic priests and supporters from all over the world stage a religious mass that blocks the gates of the base. In a country where political demonstrations are often banned, unlike powerful religions, the tactic has produced an inspiring spectacle.

One of the leaders, Father Mun Jeong-hyeon, told me, “I sing four songs every day at the base, regardless of the weather. I sing in typhoons — no exception. To build this base, they destroyed the environment, and the life of the villagers, and we should be a witness to that. They want to rule the Pacific. They want to make China isolated in the world. They want to be emperor of the world.”

I flew from Jeju to Shanghai for the first time in more than a generation. When I was last in China, the loudest noise I remember was the tinkling of bicycle bells; Mao Zedong had recently died, and the cities seemed dark places, in which foreboding and expectation competed. Within a few years, Deng Xiopeng, the “man who changed China”, was the “paramount leader”. Nothing prepared me for the astonishing changes today.

China presents exquisite ironies, not least the house in Shanghai where Mao and his comrades secretly founded the Communist Party of China in 1921. Today, it stands in the heart of a very capitalist shipping district; you walk out of this communist shrine with your Little Red Book and your plastic bust of Mao into the embrace of Starbucks, Apple, Cartier, Prada.

Would Mao be shocked? I doubt it. Five years before his great revolution in 1949, he sent this secret message to Washington. “China must industrialise.” he wrote, “This can only be done by free enterprise. Chinese and American interests fit together, economically and politically. America need not fear that we will not be co-operative. We cannot risk any conflict.”

Mao offered to meet Franklin Roosevelt in the White House, and his successor Harry Truman, and his successor Dwight Eisenhower. He was rebuffed, or willfully ignored. The opportunity that might have changed contemporary history, prevented wars in Asia and saved countless lives was lost because the truth of these overtures was denied in 1950s Washington “when the catatonic Cold War trance,” wrote the critic James Naremore, “held our country in its rigid grip”.

The fake mainstream news that once again presents China as a threat is of the same mentality.

The world is inexorably shifting east; but the astonishing vision of Eurasia from China is barely understood in the West. The “New Silk Road” is a ribbon of trade, ports, pipelines and high-speed trains all the way to Europe. The world’s leader in rail technology, China is negotiating with 28 countries for routes on which trains will reach up to 400 kms an hour. This opening to the world has the approval of much of humanity and, along the way, is uniting China and Russia.

“I believe in American exceptionalism with every fibre of my being,” said Barack Obama, evoking the fetishism of the 1930s. This modern cult of superiority is Americanism, the world’s dominant predator. Under the liberal Obama, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, nuclear warhead spending has risen higher than under any president since the end of the Cold War. A mini nuclear weapon is planned. Known as the B61 Model 12, it will mean, says General James Cartwright, former vice-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that “going smaller [makes its use] more thinkable”.

In September, the Atlantic Council, a mainstream US geopolitical thinktank, published a report that predicted a Hobbesian world “marked by the breakdown of order, violent extremism [and] an era of perpetual war”. The new enemies were a “resurgent” Russia and an “increasingly aggressive” China. Only heroic America can save us.

There is a demented quality about this war mongering. It is as if the “American Century” — proclaimed in 1941 by the American imperialist Henry Luce, owner of Time magazine — has ended without notice and no one has had the courage to tell the emperor to take his guns and go home.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/12/02/ ... -on-china/



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsFfkDLRqd8&t=4s


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vRhle8eHMU


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ti5Szv8xDlc
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
User avatar
seemslikeadream
 
Posts: 32090
Joined: Wed Apr 27, 2005 11:28 pm
Location: into the black
Blog: View Blog (83)

Re: The Coming War on China

Postby brekin » Mon Dec 05, 2016 4:25 pm

Seems a little one sided.
China comes across as Tibet, and the US, well like China.
The following doc goes in the opposite direction.
Truth is probably some where in the middle.
But Trump's not going to go to war with China.
That was what Clinton was going to do.
Oh wait, that was Russia.
Mmh, maybe the choice was what country to fight?

If I knew all mysteries and all knowledge, and have not charity, I am nothing. St. Paul
I hang onto my prejudices, they are the testicles of my mind. Eric Hoffer
User avatar
brekin
 
Posts: 3229
Joined: Tue Oct 09, 2007 5:21 pm
Blog: View Blog (1)

Re: The Coming War on China

Postby Morty » Mon Dec 05, 2016 7:23 pm

The U.S. Can Play a ‘Taiwan Card’
If China won’t back down in East Asia, Washington has options that would compel Beijing’s attention.
By John Bolton
Jan. 17, 2016

Taiwan’s elections have returned the Democratic Progressive Party to power. Rolling over the incumbent Kuomintang (KMT) nationalists, the DPP won both the presidency and a legislative majority, giving it controls of both elective branches for the first time.

President-elect Tsai Ing-wen didn’t center her campaign on attacking the KMT policy of closer relations with China, focusing instead on Taiwan’s lagging economy, but neither did she reject the bedrock DPP platform of independence from China. Her rhetoric, including her victory statement on Saturday, has been cautious. But her party’s base knows what it wants. Inevitably, therefore, East Asia warning flags are up.

Of course, the U.S. will also have presidential elections in 2016, and most of the Republican candidates are determined to replace the vacuum that exists where America’s China policy should be. This may involve modifying or even jettisoning the ambiguous “one China” mantra, along with even more far-reaching initiatives to counter Beijing’s rapidly accelerating political and military aggressiveness in the South and East China seas.

Repeatedly met with passivity from Washington and impotence from the region, Beijing has declared much of the South China Sea a Chinese province, designated a provincial capital, and is creating not merely “facts on the ground” but the ground itself, in the form of artificial islands on which it is constructing air and naval bases.

Predictably, China’s partisans in the West contend that Beijing’s current economic troubles mean Xi Jinping won’t move first to provoke trouble with Ms. Tsai’s administration in Taipei. But Beijing’s ongoing reckoning with economic reality doesn’t necessarily mean it will be less assertive internationally. Authoritarian governments confronted with domestic problems have historically sought to distract their citizens by rallying nationalistic support against foreign adversaries. Who better to blame for China’s economic crash than the U.S. and pesky Taiwan?

How Ms. Tsai would react to Mr. Xi’s provocations remains unknown. Of course China would prefer for Taiwan to fall into its lap like a ripe fruit, with its economic infrastructure and productivity intact, rather than to risk hostilities over the island. But in the period to come Beijing must consider not merely a less pliant Taiwanese government, but also America’s next president.

Beijing knows that the weak, inattentive President Barack Obama will be in office for only one more year. Whereas even Bill Clinton ordered U.S. carrier battle groups to Taiwan’s aid in the 1996 cross-Strait crisis, few Americans today believe that Mr. Obama would do the same.

How could Beijing’s leadership not draw the same conclusion? Washington’s current unwillingness to stand firm against Chinese belligerence in Asian waters only encourages Beijing to act before Jan. 20, 2017, perhaps especially before Ms. Tsai is inaugurated in four months. For now observers can only monitor East Asia’s geopolitical space, involving not just Taiwan but also the South and East China seas, until America’s inauguration day, praying that the Asian situation is not hopeless by then.

For a new U.S. president willing to act boldly, there are opportunities to halt and then reverse China’s seemingly inexorable march toward hegemony in East Asia. Playing the “China card” in the Nixon Administration made sense at the time, but the reflexive, near-addictive adherence to pro-China policies since has become unwise and increasingly risky as Beijing’s isolation and backwardness have diminished.

An alternative now would be to play the “Taiwan card” against China.
America should insist that China reverse its territorial acquisitiveness, including abandoning its South China Sea bases and undoing the ecological damage its construction has caused. China is free to continue asserting its territorial claims diplomatically, but until they are peacefully resolved with its near neighbors, they and the U.S. are likewise free to ignore such claims in their entirety.

If Beijing isn’t willing to back down, America has a diplomatic ladder of escalation that would compel Beijing’s attention. The new U.S. administration could start with receiving Taiwanese diplomats officially at the State Department; upgrading the status of U.S. representation in Taipei from a private “institute” to an official diplomatic mission; inviting Taiwan’s president to travel officially to America; allowing the most senior U.S. officials to visit Taiwan to transact government business; and ultimately restoring full diplomatic recognition.

Beijing’s leaders would be appalled by this approach, as the U.S. is appalled by their maritime territorial aggression. China must understand that creating so-called provinces risks causing itself to lose control, perhaps forever, of another so-called province. Even were China to act more responsibly in nearby waters, of course, Taiwan’s fate would still be for its people to decide.

Too many foreigners continue echoing Beijing’s view that Taiwan is a problem only resolvable by uniting the island and the mainland as “one China.” But Taiwan’s freedom isn’t a problem. It is an inspiration. Let Beijing contemplate that fact on the ground.

Mr. Bolton, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, is the author of “Surrender Is Not an Option: Defending America at the United Nations and Abroad” (Simon & Schuster, 2007).
User avatar
Morty
 
Posts: 422
Joined: Sat Jan 04, 2014 10:53 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: The Coming War on China

Postby SonicG » Mon Dec 05, 2016 8:03 pm

I suppose that is the thinking behind Trump's call that I was looking for, but good ol abolish the UN walrus 'stache seems to think the Chinese will merely be "appalled"? As the US is merely appalled?
This was posted elsewhere, but I think the analysis is cogent and really captures the bigger picture...

China and Russia have very different cultural styles when it comes to exerting power. Russian culture celebrates the bold stroke; Chinese culture finds subtle pressure more admirable. Thus the Chinese have been advancing their country’s interests against those of the United States and its allies in a less dramatic but equally effective way. While distracting Washington’s attention with a precisely measured game of “chicken” in the South China Sea, the Chinese have established a line of naval bases along the northern shores of the Indian Ocean from Myanmar to Djibouti, and contracted alliances in East Africa and South Asia. Those of my readers who’ve read Alfred Thayer Mahan and thus know their way around classic maritime strategy will recognize exactly what’s going on here.

Most recently, China has scored two dramatic shifts in the balance of power in the western Pacific. My American readers may have heard of President Rodrigo Duterte of the Phillippines; he’s the one who got his fifteen minutes of fame in the mainstream media here when he called Barack Obama a son of a whore. The broader context, of course, got left out. Duterte, like the heads of state of many nominal US allies, resents US interference in his country’s affairs, and at this point he has other options. His outburst was followed in short order by a trip to Beijing, where he and China’s President Xi signed multibillion-dollar aid agreements and talked openly about the end of a US-dominated world order.
http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/ ... ntury.html


I suppose piling a trade war with China on top of the Taiwan policy will be a part of Trump's foreign policy also, so I am sure the Chinese will just sit back and be appalled...
"a poiminint tidal wave in a notion of dynamite"
User avatar
SonicG
 
Posts: 1279
Joined: Tue Jan 27, 2009 7:29 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: The Coming War on China

Postby Joe Hillshoist » Mon Dec 05, 2016 8:44 pm

Considering the Phillipines and China were about to go to war 12 months ago regarding the South China Sea and "who owns access to the resources there" the election of that psychotic cunt Laura Norder's latest personal champion Rodrigo Duterte is kind of weird and sus. Especially on the back of an anti ice (where does most Asian ice come from? Hint - China) election campaign.
Joe Hillshoist
 
Posts: 10594
Joined: Mon Jun 12, 2006 10:45 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: The Coming War on China

Postby dada » Mon Dec 05, 2016 9:35 pm

Sometimes I think about where to move to. I never understand why people in the US move to Canada. To stay local, I guess?

NZ sounds alright. My brother lived there for a while. But Zhengzhou looks interesting to me:

http://www.scmp.com/presented/news/china/topics/go-china-zhengzhou/article/1931476/one-belt-one-road-transforms

'One Belt, One Road' transforms Zhengzhou into a key logistics hub between China and Europe

Zhengzhou has risen to become a major logistics and manufacturing hub on the Silk Road Economic Belt under China's "One Belt, One Road" initiative, which seeks to increase political, economic and infrastructural connectivity among more than 60 countries from China to Western Europe.

...at least 14 cities across the mainland are now offering direct China-Europe cargo rail services. Zhengzhou was among the earliest adapters, starting a regular rail route in July 2013 which crosses the 10,000km expanse to Hamburg, Germany, in two weeks.

Since then, rail traffic between Zhengzhou and Europe has grown quickly. Last year, over 60,000 tonnes of cargo was shipped along the line, up from 36,000 tonnes the year previous. According to estimates by Zhengzhou Hub Development and Construction Company (ZIH), the Zhengzhou-Europe route amounts for 30 per cent of the total volume of the entire China-Europe rail empire. Typically, the cargo consists of high-value-added products such as electronics, automobile parts and industrial robotics.

While these transcontinental rail lines can't compete with ocean freight in terms of price, they do present a much-needed mid-range option between cheap but slow sea transport and fast but expensive air transport.

Another piece of Zhengzhou's "One Belt, One Road" infrastructure comes in the form of an airport economic zone. Dubbed an "aerotropolis," the Zhengzhou Airport Economy Zone is a complete urban economic area five times the size of Manhattan planned around Zhengzhou's Xinzheng International Airport, which is one of China's fastest-growing airports in terms of passenger and cargo figures.

The 415-square-kilometre zone is a hub for regional and international logistics and an epicentre for high-end, high-value-added manufacturing enterprises. It includes eight industrial parks, with businesses ranging from electronics and e-commerce to aviation and biomedicine.


Maybe I'll drive a truck on the W Europe-W China highway. Sounds like it would be fun to me, for a while, at least. Wonder what the speed limit will be.

The Western Europe-Western China highway also passes through Zhengzhou. When it is completed next year, this highway will stretch from the coast of China at Lianyungang through Kazakhstan to St Petersburg, Russia, making it possible to truck products between continents in just 10 days.
Both his words and manner of speech seemed at first totally unfamiliar to me, and yet somehow they stirred memories - as an actor might be stirred by the forgotten lines of some role he had played far away and long ago.
User avatar
dada
 
Posts: 2600
Joined: Mon Dec 24, 2007 12:08 am
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: The Coming War on China

Postby SonicG » Tue Dec 06, 2016 12:51 am

NZ apparently has a massive housing bubble so...now is probably a good time to start studying Chinese...
"a poiminint tidal wave in a notion of dynamite"
User avatar
SonicG
 
Posts: 1279
Joined: Tue Jan 27, 2009 7:29 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: The Coming War on China

Postby SonicG » Tue Dec 06, 2016 1:27 am

This op-ed builds on Walrus' ideas above...It is all about the arms...Provoke China via Taiwan...How could that fail? Two-front war with an attack on nuklar facilities in Iran...

On the military front, Trump could begin sending general officers to Taipei once again to coordinate with their Taiwanese counterparts and hold joint military exercises. On the diplomatic front, Bolton says the new administration could start “receiving Taiwanese diplomats officially at the State Department; upgrading the status of U.S. representation in Taipei from a private ‘institute’ to an official diplomatic mission; inviting Taiwan’s president to travel officially to America; allowing the most senior U.S. officials to visit Taiwan to transact government business; and ultimately restoring full diplomatic recognition.”

Beijing would be wise not to overreact to any overtures Trump makes to Taiwan. When China tested President George W. Bush in his first months in office by scrambling fighters and forcing a U.S. EP-3 aircraft to land on the Chinese island of Hainan, its actions backfired. After the incident, Bush approved a $30 billion arms package for Taiwan, announced that Taiwan would be treated as a major non-NATO ally and declared that the United States would do “whatever it took” to defend Taiwan. His actions not only strengthened U.S. ties with Taiwan but also set the stage for good relations with Beijing throughout his presidency.

China does not want to make the same mistake and overplay its hand with Trump. Trump’s call with Taiwan’s president was a smart, calculated move designed to send a clear message: The days of pushing the United States around are over.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... 4b27c3006e

I believe Taiwan is still the computer chip capital of the world, isn't it??
"a poiminint tidal wave in a notion of dynamite"
User avatar
SonicG
 
Posts: 1279
Joined: Tue Jan 27, 2009 7:29 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: The Coming War on China

Postby dada » Tue Dec 06, 2016 7:26 am

SonicG » Mon Dec 05, 2016 11:51 pm wrote:NZ apparently has a massive housing bubble so...now is probably a good time to start studying Chinese...


I think it would be pretty cool to live in a giant housing bubble. Like Atlantis, with the big transparent dome:)

But I like the idea of driving fast on the intercontinental highway. I had a recurring dream about it when I was a kid. In an eighteen wheeler on a wide highway through the middle of nowhere in Russia.

I used to think it was echoes from a past life, but maybe it was echoes of the future.
Both his words and manner of speech seemed at first totally unfamiliar to me, and yet somehow they stirred memories - as an actor might be stirred by the forgotten lines of some role he had played far away and long ago.
User avatar
dada
 
Posts: 2600
Joined: Mon Dec 24, 2007 12:08 am
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: The Coming War on China

Postby Searcher08 » Tue Dec 06, 2016 10:53 am

dada » Tue Dec 06, 2016 11:26 am wrote:
SonicG » Mon Dec 05, 2016 11:51 pm wrote:NZ apparently has a massive housing bubble so...now is probably a good time to start studying Chinese...


I think it would be pretty cool to live in a giant housing bubble. Like Atlantis, with the big transparent dome:)

But I like the idea of driving fast on the intercontinental highway. I had a recurring dream about it when I was a kid. In an eighteen wheeler on a wide highway through the middle of nowhere in Russia.

I used to think it was echoes from a past life, but maybe it was echoes of the future.


Quick thread swerve:
How BIZARRE! I had a very similar dream when I was a kid. My greatest ambition was to drive an 18-wheeler from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego and back. Damn the pesky Darien Gap!
User avatar
Searcher08
 
Posts: 5887
Joined: Thu Dec 20, 2007 10:21 am
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: The Coming War on China

Postby brekin » Tue Dec 06, 2016 1:24 pm

If there is a hot war with China without nukes, or limited nukes, New Zealand and Australia would probably not be the place you'd want to be at. China + Russia + South Korea + (Indonesia?) and that area of the world would be hard to hold I'm going to guess. New Zealand lamb and Australian beef would probably be feeding the Red Army not the Trump Army.

If you look at Australia and New Zealand active and reserve armed forces they are paltry for that neck of the woods.
And you have China, Russia, South Korea, in the top 5. (America 2nd).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_c ... _personnel

Here is a speculative line up of WW3 allies and enemies:

Image
https://www.quora.com/Who-would-be-the- ... ies-in-WW3
If I knew all mysteries and all knowledge, and have not charity, I am nothing. St. Paul
I hang onto my prejudices, they are the testicles of my mind. Eric Hoffer
User avatar
brekin
 
Posts: 3229
Joined: Tue Oct 09, 2007 5:21 pm
Blog: View Blog (1)

Re: The Coming War on China

Postby dada » Tue Dec 06, 2016 5:45 pm

Searcher08 » Tue Dec 06, 2016 9:53 am wrote:Quick thread swerve:
How BIZARRE! I had a very similar dream when I was a kid. My greatest ambition was to drive an 18-wheeler from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego and back. Damn the pesky Darien Gap!


hm. That is strange. I'm not ready to even speculate what it could possibly mean. Very cool, though. Here's to intercontinental trucker dreams.

--

WW3 isn't something I factor into my considerations of where to move. I just think NZ sounds nice. My brother made it sound appealing.

For some reason Iceland sounds appealing to me. I have no rationale for that one. Obviously I'm not worried about the cold. It's like WW3, just doesn't factor in.

But I like China. Lots of huge cities, tons of people. Be easy to get lost, melt into the crowd. Although I guess I might stand out a bit. Even so. Tons of fucking people.

--

I know all the China experts say, "Oh, Taiwan, that's the deal breaker for China. Don't mess with Taiwan, they get sooo pissed off in China."

But sometimes I get the feeling that's exactly what China wants everyone to think. Maybe it's just me, overthinking it.
Both his words and manner of speech seemed at first totally unfamiliar to me, and yet somehow they stirred memories - as an actor might be stirred by the forgotten lines of some role he had played far away and long ago.
User avatar
dada
 
Posts: 2600
Joined: Mon Dec 24, 2007 12:08 am
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: The Coming War on China

Postby brekin » Tue Dec 06, 2016 8:17 pm

dada » Tue Dec 06, 2016 4:45 pm wrote:
Searcher08 » Tue Dec 06, 2016 9:53 am wrote:Quick thread swerve:
How BIZARRE! I had a very similar dream when I was a kid. My greatest ambition was to drive an 18-wheeler from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego and back. Damn the pesky Darien Gap!

hm. That is strange. I'm not ready to even speculate what it could possibly mean. Very cool, though. Here's to intercontinental trucker dreams.
--
WW3 isn't something I factor into my considerations of where to move. I just think NZ sounds nice. My brother made it sound appealing.
For some reason Iceland sounds appealing to me. I have no rationale for that one. Obviously I'm not worried about the cold. It's like WW3, just doesn't factor in.
But I like China. Lots of huge cities, tons of people. Be easy to get lost, melt into the crowd. Although I guess I might stand out a bit. Even so. Tons of fucking people.
--
I know all the China experts say, "Oh, Taiwan, that's the deal breaker for China. Don't mess with Taiwan, they get sooo pissed off in China."
But sometimes I get the feeling that's exactly what China wants everyone to think. Maybe it's just me, overthinking it.


Maybe I misread the thread title. Is it The Coming War on China or dada's Upcoming Vacation to China? :jumping:
If I knew all mysteries and all knowledge, and have not charity, I am nothing. St. Paul
I hang onto my prejudices, they are the testicles of my mind. Eric Hoffer
User avatar
brekin
 
Posts: 3229
Joined: Tue Oct 09, 2007 5:21 pm
Blog: View Blog (1)

Re: The Coming War on China

Postby dada » Tue Dec 06, 2016 8:37 pm

brekin » Tue Dec 06, 2016 7:17 pm wrote:
Maybe I misread the thread title. Is it The Coming War on China or dada's Upcoming Vacation to China? :jumping:


No, have your war, don't let me stop you:)

Maybe I'm working for China. One of those Art of War spies.
Both his words and manner of speech seemed at first totally unfamiliar to me, and yet somehow they stirred memories - as an actor might be stirred by the forgotten lines of some role he had played far away and long ago.
User avatar
dada
 
Posts: 2600
Joined: Mon Dec 24, 2007 12:08 am
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: The Coming War on China

Postby norton ash » Tue Dec 06, 2016 8:40 pm

An hour after I read The Art of War I was just hungry for power again.
Zen horse
User avatar
norton ash
 
Posts: 4067
Joined: Wed Nov 08, 2006 5:46 pm
Location: Canada
Blog: View Blog (0)

Next

Return to General Discussion

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 49 guests