....Hubris, utter corruption of the power behind all powers in the USA/UK alliance of evils....
http://defensetech.org/2010/08/31/iiss-says-china-now-has-more-warships-than-u-s/
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/08/25/60minutes/main6804386.shtml
....http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=60621
The US has given its AirSea Battle concept much fanfare. But is it really the best response to China’s military build-up?
The apparent sea change in the Pacific balance of power seemed to come all at once earlier this month. And it has seen the US military scrambling to find a new tack to allow it to preserve its dominance.
Read more ....
http://www.economist.com/node/16886851?story_id=16886851
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/2010/08/army_intelligence_buys_intelli.html
With laissez faire capitalism being the rule .... not the exception .... China has found itself in the enviable position of having an economy and industrial base that is the envy of the world. This industrial base is the lynch-pin in its stated strategic goal of being the dominant economic/political player on the Asian scene .... if not the world.
We in the West seem to be pursuing a completely opposite direction .... a direction that has not only de-industrialized America, but it has also produced huge and unmanageable deficits, a moribund and divided political class, and a military that is becoming more of a social welfare program with salaries, health care, and pension benefits being more important that maintaining a viable and effective military force.
So .... is the U.S. plan for China pointless?
...http://www.youtube.com/show?p=lwRWg1czcnk&s=1
I have to say yes. We can discuss AirSea Battle and AirLand Battle strategies till we are blue in the face. But the Chinese are also aware of these military strategies, and I can presume that they have their own ideas on how to confront it.....
http://en.rian.ru/mlitary_news/20100829/160381641.html
But the key fact that underlines our perceived (and growing) weakness with China is that everyone now believes that China can outspend us by using their financial reserves to buy the materials and technology that they need to grow their military .... while we go 'cap in hand' to them to get the monies that we need to continue financing our huge and growing debts. As long as this perception remains a reality .... the U.S. role in Asia will become a minor one .... subordinated to a role that will be pre-World War 2 with most of our bases in the Hawaiian island chain and a few places like Guam, Wake, and who knows where else.....
An example of pointless American military posturing.....
As a general rule, when serving military officers decide to place their opinions on the public record, they write in hyper-cautious military-speak that appears designed to conceal any sort of original insight. So thank you, Col. Lawrence Sellin, for being an exception to the rule. Sellin, a staff officer in ISAF Joint Command in Kabul, sounds like he had a Very Bad Day at the office, and then returned home to pen a screed against the work being done at headquarters.
For headquarters staff, war consists largely of the endless tinkering with PowerPoint slides to conform with the idiosyncrasies of cognitively challenged generals in order to spoon-feed them information. Even one tiny flaw in a slide can halt a general's thought processes as abruptly as a computer system's blue screen of death.
Read more ....
Update: Colonel Kicked Out of Afghanistan for Anti-PowerPoint Rant -- Danger Room
Hubris, utter corruption of the power behind all powers in the USA/UK alliance of evils....
The primal reality of the United States’ foreign relations and the moribund Pentagon/CIA, despite the Trillions spent or being spent..., is the epochal attempt to establish American domination/hegemony across Islamic Asia, the Middle East and the Arc of Crisis, from Latin America to Africa and beyond.... The havoc and ruin that it has produced are obvious.... More insidious, is what this ill-conceived project by the Siamese twins, CIA/MOSSAD and the white House assassinations/Murder INC,.... has done to the United States and to the US ability to be a constructive force in the world. Two books grasp the significance of this tragic story – probing analyses of the ‘whys’ and of the catastrophic consequences....
One is David Bacevich’s The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism. Its virtues are freedom from cant and an incisively rigorous critique of how we as a nation – not just one troop of policy-makers – have gone wrong....with utter corruption beyond repair....from Wall Street to Banks, to the Federal Reserve, to the power elites....etc., The other is Paul Starobin’s After America: Narratives for the Next Global Age . Paul, too, goes to the root of troubled state. He is exceptional in devoting most of the book to a sophisticated depiction of five ‘futures for the global system and our place in them. These are detailed, realistic portrayals.
The tragedy of the past decade is classic. Hubris, utter corruption of the power behind all powers in USA/UK alliance of evils.... and mythologizing have brought us low. Our more imperial officials strut even when sitting. We made the fatal error of taking myth for reality so that it became a liability rather a source of confident strength. The intertwined myths of America the agent of Providence, America the invincible, and America the heroic detached us from reality. We felt our country to be transcendent. Now, what has been noble in us is largely long depleted.... Less edifying, our tragedy has comic overtones. Today, David Petraeus – ready to be immortalized in bronze by the True Believers..... – announced as his next grand strategic innovation: a media blitz. In a pinch, go to your strength. An apropos coda to our virtual exercise in post-modern empire building of utter disgusting corruption to the core, no values, no morals, no religion and no scruples...., just arrogant barbaric Hubris.....
The bombast, the posturing, the prattling – together they generate a mighty sound, Still, listen closely and you hear….
The little bells are tinkling. Kneel down
They are bringing the sacrament to a dying god.....
Heinrich Heine
Meanwhile in BEIJING..... |
The Chinese navy will hold a live-ammunition exercise in the Yellow Sea, where Washington and Seoul announced their own plan for a military exercise that has riled Beijing, China’s Ministry of Defense said on Sunday.
The Ministry said a naval fleet will stage the drill this week from Wednesday to Saturday in the sea between China and the Korean peninsula, the official Xinhua news agency reported.
“This is an annual routine training exercise, mainly involving the firing of shipboard artillery,” the Ministry said, according to Xinhua.
The announcement, nonetheless, follows a pattern of China publicizing its own military exercises in parallel to those held by Washington and Seoul, which Beijing has criticized as destabilizing at a time of tensions over North Korea.
China said its naval exercise will be held off its coastal city of Qingdao, meaning they will be well away from the U.S.-South Korea exercises in waters closer to the Korean coast.
The North’s secretive leader Kim Jong-il appears to be now visiting China, his country’s only major ally, Chinese and South Korean sources have said.
Friction between Beijing and Washington over Chinese maritime claims and U.S. naval activities has added to irritants between the two countries, which have also sparred this year over Taiwan, Tibet, the Internet and Chinese exchange rate policy.
The United States has criticized Chinese claims to swathes of the South China Sea, where Taiwan and several Southeast Asian states also assert sovereignty.
The United States has said it will conduct an anti-submarine warfare exercise with South Korea in the Yellow Sea in early September. That is intended to send a warning to North Korea that Washington is committed to defending its ally, South Korea, the Pentagon said this month.
Last month, the United States and South Korea held a naval drill in the Sea of Japan off the Korean peninsula, prompting condemnation from China, which answered with its own heavily publicized military exercises.
The July drill was initially scheduled to take place in the Yellow Sea, but was moved to the other side of the Korean peninsula after objections from Beijing.
The United States and South Korea accuse North Korea of torpedoing a South Korean naval ship in March, killing 46 sailors.
Chinese military newspapers have said the U.S.-led military exercises in the Yellow Sea would be unduly provocative at a time of volatile tensions over North Korea.
Chinese Rear Admiral Yang Yi also said that those exercises would be provocatively close to north China’s political and economic heartland.
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