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05 August 2020

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Diana Croissant

Well, this is certainly a depressing and frightening post. I can't say, however, that I have been thinking along the same lines. However, since I am basically a nobody, I have tried to assure myself that I am being paranoid. So, it's not helping that some people who are much more knowledgeable have expressed in print some of the fears I have been feeling over these months dealing with the pandemic.

All I can do is pray and hold fast to my faith in God. Perhaps He will lift up the people who can deter us from the predictions of this post. (But are we worthy of being saved?)

Jack

J

I don’t believe there will be any direct military conflict. However, we can expect some saber rattling from both sides.

Sec.Azhar is leading a US delegation to Taiwan. On another note Taiwan ain’t HK. They have an independent government. While they will eventually be overwhelmed in any military conflict with China if no other country intervenes on Taiwan’s side, they definitely have the capability to inflict a black eye.

The CCP has been emboldened precisely because the US government has actively abetted their rapaciousness for many decades under both parties. From Clinton’s MFN designation to Bush & Obama administrations actively supporting the shuttering of US manufacturing.

Trump is making the first course correction albeit in a limited manner with tariffs. He has however changed the tone in an important manner by no longer just kowtowing to whatever the CCP wants.

This story of ARM China exemplifies CCP long-term policy of requiring JVs to access the Chinese market and once technology and know-how have been successfully transferred, then expropriating it. The west in general and the US in particular have turned a blind eye. Huawei got going by stealing cisco source code and design.
https://www.businessinsider.com/arm-conflict-china-complicates-acquisition-prospects-2020-8

It is high time for the US to make the totalitarian Chinese communists pay a price and directly take the fight to them economically and financially. The CCP must be doing their best to insure a Biden win to return to the status quo or wait another Trump term and hope an establishment Democrat or Republican wins after. They have bought and paid the establishment politicians, entire think-tanks, many in academia and the media.

Bjorn Holmgaard

Yan Li-Meng's statement makes perfect sense. Spread a bio-weapon among your own population knowing your opponent are total idiots and will therefore make a clusterfuck of their response to the pandemic.

Uhh.. those Chinese are evil geniuses....

Or...

This is just total nonsense aka CIA talking-points.

Horatio

More sinophobic drivel and propaganda. Is it coming from Bannon, Navarro,Fox News, and the other similar warmongering outfits ? This type of propaganda is irrational but certainly purposeful to whip declining exceptionals into war frenzy. They are correct in one aspect - China is outpacing the US and will eventually in 10-20 years surpass it as #1 in Economic power (already the case) and Technology.

There are few viable military options for warmongering chickenhawks advising Trump. Certainly, US Naval Intel and PACCOM (now INDOPACCOM) brass who would love a grand Coral Sea 2.0 battle to destroy PLAN vessel on the seas. However, no one, except few Marine 4 stars want any land war. The Marines think they can defeat the PLA on some islands. That kind of warfare is for hollywood movies. China is a missile-based military deploying hypersonics. This means the US Navy has to standoff 1000 km from the Chinese naval forces or missiles from mainland will decimate the carrier task forces within that range.

There won’t be any war in SE Asia or East Asia. This area now has a circuit breaker, Russia. Russia is building a naval presence, expanding it's aerospace arm, has basing rights in the zone in Vietnam and has long range radars that cover a lot of the zones, and submarines the US is having issues tracking.

The signals from China and Russia to the US military is very clear. You can walk and talk like the Hegemon but the days of regional hegemony are over. ASEAN nations will not accepting accept a return to gunboat diplomacy and colonization. All these nations want prosperity and progress, not western hegemony and military destruction.

This is why the hybrid war of sanctions, trade war, Infowars, cyberwar, proxies in Central Asia (ISIS and AQ), color revolution attempts in Hong Kong, hysterics about Tibet and Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia (Bannon front) are on the front burner. Military action is a losing proposition for the US. They simply cannot win anything anywhere in the Asia Pacific, western Asia or even against near peer powers proxies like Venezuela.

China simply has to do what Russia does and tell the US to pound sand.

turcopolier

Bjorn H

We do not publish CIA talking points. If you think that don't come here. BTW, "J" is a farmer in Oklahoma who served a long time in USAF.

Fred

We've been in a war with China for a few dacades now, and losing. Of course having moved much of our manufacturing base into China and then allowing their students to take up most of the hard engingeering class space and lab assistantships while diverting our students to 'studies' programs has been a resounding success.

Horatio,

"There are few viable military options for warmongering chickenhawks advising..."
Bush, Obama, Biden, a Triumverate of peacemakers. Remind me who is ordering troops out of Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria.

Paco

The rattling. of sabres between the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the U.S.

That line as introduction gives away the article as plain and unsofisticated propaganda. Nobody refers to the USA as the Republican Party, the red scare is a momified bogey..

Yeah, Right

I don't know if war is inevitable, but the signs are not good. Those "Freedom of Navigation" exercises seem to me to be unnecessarily provocative, not to mention illogical (most traffic in the South China Sea is to/from China). But no less provocative is China's threats to invade Taiwan, which should be outrageous even to those who accept the claim that Taiwan is a rebel province of China.

But I do know that the claims of the (formerly) Hong Kong-based virologist Yan Li-Meng should not be regarded as credible, precisely because they are entirely evidence-free.

She had no first-hand knowledge of events in Wuhan, her claims are speculative, and even that is bolstered by nothing more than the contradictory argument that
(a) nobody took her seriously but nonetheless
(b) if she continued she could have been "disappeared".

As she said herself: "The China government refused to let overseas experts, including ones in Hong Kong, do research in China. So I turned to my friends to get more information."

Leaving aside the interesting reveal that she considers Hong Kong to be "overseas" (it is not), I would point out that there is an excellent word to describe her source of information: scuttlebutt.

She is no more authoritative on this issue as, say, Steve Bannon or Lindsay Graham. Though apparently she is rather more prone to paranoia.


Babak makkinejad

J

If the United States persists in her effort to destroy JCPOA via UNSC snap back sanctions, within 20 years there would be another World War since she would be destroying UNSC and thus signaling utter indifference to the interests of other great powers.

Babak makkinejad

Paco

Quite agree.

- Shocked, I am shocked to discover China is run by the Communist Party.

- Your winnings, sir.

Babak makkinejad

Fred

You have not been at war with China but with the United States.

Some of you fed and nurtured the Dragon and made a ton of money doing that, enjoying the private splendor which that money brought.

Some others, saw their livelihoods destroyed, condemned to public squalor.

"We have met the enemy and the enemy is Us."

Fred

Yeah Right,

"Those "Freedom of Navigation" exercises seem to me to be unnecessarily provocative, not to mention illogical"

We've done those for decades, and claimed free passage in internation waters since the earliest period of the Republic. However, maybe we are going about it the wrong way. Perhaps we should simply follow China's example and create artificial Islands out there and declare them our sovereign territory and then put an navigation exclusion zone around them.

Jack

To all the apologists of the Maoists running China, please read this.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/05/secret-footage-uighur-detention-merdan-ghappar-chinese-prison-xinjiang

Voatboy

Sir,
I believe that Taiwan can fight. I would prefer Taiwan to be better armed with antiship missiles and submersible mines. Do you have any suggestions on how the ROC government could obtain such weapons? Would it be better to build such weapons at home or to import them from other free republics?

blue peacock

"Those "Freedom of Navigation" exercises seem to me to be unnecessarily provocative.."

Yeah, right, until the Chinese communists do to East Asia and Australia what they did to Tibet, what they're attempting to do on the Indian border and how they treat dissidents in Xinjiang, Lhasa and even in Beijing.

The United States is the only object standing between complete domination of East Asia by the jackboot of Xi. Many get it and welcome the "Freedom of Navigation" exercises!

Mathias Alexander

" Yan has been in hiding in the U.S. after fleeing Hong Kong in April. "
You should believe nothing from such a source.

Yeah, Right

Fred, your post seems to me to be the perfect illustration of the illogic of the American position.

Freedom of Navigation is a policy of the USA that insists (correctly) that all warships have a right of innocent passage through the sovereign waters of foreign countries.

China does not dispute that. It has never disputed that. It has, however, insisted that the US Navy's constant coat-tailing in the South China Seas is a needlessly provocative exercise in rubbing their nose in it. Which, indeed, it is.

Fred: "We've done those for decades, and claimed free passage in internation waters since the earliest period of the Republic."

That is not the purpose of Freedom of Navigation.

E.V.E.R.Y.B.O.D.Y. accepts the notion that all vessels enjoy the right of innocent passage (not "free passage", which is a meaningless term) in international waters. Since, oh, forever.

Nobody would ever stop any warship from sailing however is damn-well pleases to wherever it cares to go while it is in international waters. Nobody. N.o.b.o.d.y.

The USA does, however, insist on demonstrating time and time again that all warships also enjoy the right of innocent passage in sovereign waters.

Which I agree: they do.

The Chinese also agree, which makes the entire exercise pointless.

Fred: "Perhaps we should simply follow China's example and create artificial Islands out there and declare them our sovereign territory"

Perhaps you should, but that is another issue i.e. regardless of whether (or not) the water around the Spratly Islands are Chinese territorial waters or the territorial waters of the USA the right of innocent passage still applies.

Fred: "and then put an navigation exclusion zone around them"

Establishing an Economic Exclusion Zone does not grant the establishing party the right to deny innocent passage through that zone. Not to foreign-flagged commercial vessels. Not to foreign warships.

Be honest, Fred, the phrase "navigation exclusion zone" is something you just made up out of thin air.

The nine-dash line is a messy and, frankly, stupid exercise in Chinese machismo. But even at its most bolshi the Chinese do not deny that all vessels - including warships - have a right of innocent passage through that area.

Or haven't you noticed that the USA Navy has never once been prevented from sailing through those waters?

turcopolier

Yeah, right

The South China Sea outside the 12 NM territorial littoral band is not Chinese "sovereign waters."

Fred

Yeah, Right,

Making fake islands is the only thing allowing China claim to sovereignty. Many of the actual islets are territory of either Indonesia or the Phillipines.

Jack

Another example of the rapaciousness of the Maoists running China.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/aug/06/chinese-fleet-fishing-galapagos-islands-environment

Patrick Armstrong

Fred. islands. US been there, done that
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guano_Islands_Act

Fred

Patrick,

How many of those were artificially created by dumping concrete on top of a submerged corral reef?

Patrick Armstrong

Fred. Build it and the birds will come.

Jimmy_W

Voatboy,
Taiwan has its own indigenous antiship missiles, including a Mach 2 missile. What America can do, is to buy HF3 from Taiwan, to subsidize Taiwan for the development, instead of selling more Harpoons to them. Taiwan is also capable of building mines.

Taiwan's biggest problem is that they are not willing to spend more money on their defense industry. That 30-year submarine drama is a prime example. More than 30 years, and Taiwan still cannot build a submarine, supposedly.

walrus

That the Chinese have pulled a fast one in the South China sea is not in doubt. There are well known international rules for determining marine economic zones (this is not about twelve mile limits).

I happen to think that these freedom of the seas exercises are a good idea, in moderation.

What is counterproductive in my opinion is this “on again, off again” economic warfare with China. It is infuriating. The Chinese love to do business. American elites are happy to accommodate them. However sabre rattling at the same time as expecting them to honor a trade deal is stupid because to China it sends mixed messages. If you do business with a Chinese you are expected to behave as a friend and it is reciprocated.

What America is risking is China deciding that they can’t make money out of a relationship with America. Then you will see real trouble.

Taiwan? It becomes part of China....one day.

Human rights concerns? Tell someone who cares.

IP theft? Cosi fan Tutti, starting with the U.S. and Israel.

Hua Wei and 5G? We want American spyware embedded in the global networks, not Chinese,!, how dare they?

China corrupting African and Pacific countries? We wrote the book.

Chinese digital dictatorship and social control? The democrats, Google, Amazon, Apple and Microsoft are envious.

Taking American jobs? Waiter, more champagne!

Bad Relationships with Korea and Japan? Where do you wish to start the discussion? 1000AD? 1000BC?

Draconian Chinese laws? Ask Gen. Flynn, then ask about Al Grhaib., then three strikes, then.........

We have no moral platform whatsoever to lecture the Chinese about anything......unfortunately.

Where, for example, is our support for Vietnam? They are worried about Chinese expansionism to the extent that they have garrisoned their own offshore islands as far South as the Da Nang region.


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