(via aljazeera)
News to Me: U.S. Foreign Strategy To Create New Global Order
Editor’s Note: The pillars of major power are dominated by a handful of big institutions and alliances.
Hillary Clinton: International Order | New World Order
Source: RBTH
Every American president since Harry Truman has announced a doctrine reflecting the priorities of each White House occupant. In his State of the Union address to Congress in February 2013, Barack Obama set out his priorities. Globally, Obama intends to put the United States at the head of two giant economic blocks – the Transatlantic and Trans-Pacific Partnerships. This should ensure Washington’s leadership in a polycentric system of international relations.
Simultaneously, Obama – who is trying to put an end to a “decade of wars” unleashed by his predecessor George Bush Jr. – faces the task of beating an orderly retreat from the international arena without letting it turn into a panicked flight. This scheme has become a key component of the “Obama doctrine”. It is based on the concept of a “smart force”, which emphasizes non-military means for securing U.S. influence in a multi-polar world.
China’s “steamroller”
The U.S. share of global GDP has shrunk from 23 to 18 percent over the past decade, while the share of mainland China has risen from 10 to 15 percent. Unless the Chinese economic development model hits an impasse, China will catch up with the U.S. in terms of GDP as soon as this decade, and will become twice as big on an exchange-rate basis by the middle of this century.
The U.S. president’s National Security Advisor Tom Donilon has admitted that the White House had decided that a Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) could help the U.S. to remedy the situation. It’s on this basis that Washington is planning to set up a free trade zone in the Asia-Pacific region.
If the TTP becomes a reality, the U.S. will account for three-fourths of the partnership’s combined GDP. This will ensure American dominance within the new economic alliance.
At the same time, the TTP is an alternative to the ASEAN+3 arrangement promoted by Beijing (a regional economic coalition of China, Japan, and South Korea plus the ASEAN members). After the accession of India, Australia, and New Zealand, the group has been expanded to ASEAN+6.
China, accounting for half of the combined $17 billion GDP of the alliance’s 16 members and with a population of more than three billion, should play the dominating role in it.
It was this situation that led Obama to declaring the TTP a top priority for his administration. Washington cannot allow Asia to integrate economically under Beijing’s tutelage. The two different projects in this huge region are incompatible.
Beijing’s reaction to Washington’s plan has been extremely negative.
“The United States has been strengthening its old military alliances, undermining the fundamentals of peace in South East Asia, fanning territorial disputes between China and its neighbors, establishing a united front against China, forcing the creation of a TTP, and derailing the independent regional process of cooperation and integration,” The People’s Daily said.
An acute geoeconomic and geopolitical rivalry between the U.S. and China is thus emerging in the Asia-Pacific region, and it’s apparently bound to last for years if not decades.
News to Me: Top Globalists Meet In Berlin To Plot Strategy
• Interesting information emerges from AFP’s source inside the Trilateral Commission meeting
By James P. Tucker Jr.
The Trilateral Commission (TC), meeting near Berlin, March 15-17, devised a plan that would allow the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to reach into your wallet and grab your money. You can be sure the IMF, or “world treasury department,” will gladly take your cash.
United States Secretary of State John Forbes Kerry secretly attended the meeting under cover of “peace talks” in Baghdad. Kerry is a longtime Bilderberger. The Bilderberg group is an elitist set of corporate heads,major politicians, media moguls and financial kingpins who meet each year in guarded, closed-door policy meetings, to determine how the world should go.
The standard cover was a meeting in Brussels whereby TC boys and girls could duck into the meeting without explaining their absence back home. U.S. Representative Michele M. Bachmann (R-Minn.) also attended, which means TC considers her a potential president or vice president, despite charges in Congress that she misused campaign funds.
Trilateralists thought the potential dip into your pockets was amusing.
Antonio Borges of Washington, former director of the European Department of the IMF, was overheard by a source laughing and saying that people will not even notice the new levy.
Lord John Kerr, a member of Britain’s House of Lords and former deputy chairman of Royal Dutch Shell, agreed, with a giggle, added this reporter’s source.
It is interesting to note that the banking crisis in Cyprus also started on March 16 as European Union bankers were demanding cash be taken directly out of depositors’ accounts in Cyprus.
Though unreported in the world’s major media, which is controlled by the TC and its brother group, Bilderberg, three bills calling for a direct United Nations tax on the people of the world has been pending before the global body for more than 20 years. Contents of the TC meeting were provided by an insider who has been reliable for 30 years.
News to Me: US, North Korea Officials Met Secretly: Report
North Korean soldiers look to the South as they patrol at the truce village of Panmunjom in the demilitarized zone separating North Korea from South Korea, March 19, 2013.
A report says a US official ‘secretly’ met with the North Korean deputy ambassador to the UN in the United States in mid-March amid tension on the Korean Peninsula.
The CNN reported on Wednesday that Clifford Hart, who is the US envoy for six-party talks aimed at denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula, met with Han Song-ryol in New York in mid-March.
In the meeting the US official called for North Korea to refrain from taking ‘provocative actions,’ the report said, adding that Washington had also urged Pyongyang to return to diplomacy. However, nothing came of the meeting and US officials made no new offers.
The meeting was described as part of the so-called New York channel that is a method of direct communication between the US and North Korea.
White House spokesman Jay Carney has said that Washington has a “channel of communications with the North Koreans, and we utilize that channel.”
In March, the US and South Korea began joint military exercises that saw the controversial participation of the US nuclear-capable B-52 and B-2 stealth bombers.
On April 3, the Pentagon announced a decision to deploy an advanced anti-missile system to the Pacific island of Guam to protect the US military bases and the 6,000 American military personnel there.
The moves promoted Pyongyang to step up its war rhetoric and move two medium-range Musudan missiles to its eastern coast.
The North Korean army on April 4 said it had received permission to launch preemptive ‘nuclear’ strikes on the US.
MR/HSN
News to Me: Warning: Don't Forget About The "Other" Currency War
Monday, April 01, 2013
From DollarCollapse:
Most of the recent “currency war” talk refers to countries trying to lower the value of their currencies to gain a trade advantage and/or make their debts more manageable. But this war has another theater, where a weaker currency is not the main goal.
Start with the premise that when a country conducts most of its trade in another currency, it cedes power to the “reserve currency” issuer. Right now, that’s the U.S. Because oil and most other things are traded in dollars, the world’s central banks have to hold a lot of dollars as reserves.
The resulting nearly-infinite global demand for dollars allows Washington to borrow as much as it wants, and to govern without having to make hard spending and tax choices that other countries have to live with. It also allows the U.S. to fund a military that dwarfs everyone else’s and to throw its weight around in ways far out of proportion to its population or moral authority.
If you’re a would-be superpower like China, Russia, India or Brazil, “dollar hegemony” is in your way. So there’s an advantage to be gained by cutting the dollar out of bi-lateral trade in favor of one’s own currency.
Here’s how China and Brazil are playing it…
We Are On The Brink Of Civil War
News to Me: Facing Sanctions, N. Korea Threatens To Nuke US
Pyongyang vows to nuke US ahead of UN vote on new sanctions; ‘Don’t make another blunder,’ warns N. Korean statement; expected sanctions some of strongest ever issued by UN
Associated Press03.07.13, 15:09
North Korea on Thursday vowed to launch a pre-emptive nuclear strike against the United States, amplifying its threatening rhetoric hours ahead of a vote by UN diplomats on whether to level new sanctions against Pyongyang for its recent nuclear test.
An unidentified spokesman for Pyongyang’s Foreign Ministry said the North will exercise its right for “a preemptive nuclear attack to destroy the strongholds of the aggressors” because Washington is pushing to start a nuclear war against the North.
Although North Korea boasts of nuclear bombs and pre-emptive strikes, it is not thought to have mastered the ability to produce a warhead small enough to put on a missile capable of reaching the US. It is believed to have enough nuclear fuel, however, for several crude nuclear devices.
Such inflammatory rhetoric is common from North Korea, and especially so in recent days. North Korea is angry over the possible sanctions and over upcoming US-South Korean military drills. At a mass rally in Pyongyang on Thursday, tens of thousands of North Koreans protested the US-South Korean war drills and sanctions.
NKorean Kim Jong-un (Photo: AFP, NORTH KOREAN TV)
The UN Security Council is set to impose a fourth round of sanctions against Pyongyang in a fresh attempt to rein in its nuclear and ballistic missile programs.
Russia’s UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin, the current council president, said the council will vote on the draft sanctions resolution Thursday morning.
The resolution was drafted by the United States and China, North Korea’s closest ally. The council’s agreement to put the resolution to a vote just 48 hours later signaled that it would almost certainly have the support of all 15 council members.
The statement by the North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman was carried by the North’s official Korean Central News Agency.
It accused the US of leading efforts to slap sanctions on North Korea. The statement said the new sanctions would only advance the timing for North Korea to fulfill previous vows to take “powerful second and third countermeasures” against its enemies. It hasn’t elaborated on those measures.
The statement said North Korea “strongly warns the UN Security Council not to make another big blunder like the one in the past when it earned the inveterate grudge of the Korean nation by acting as a war servant for the US in 1950.”
North Korea demanded the UN Security Council immediately dismantle the American-led UN Command that’s based in Seoul and move to end the state of war that exists on the Korean Peninsula, which continues six decades after fighting stopped because an armistice, not a peace treaty, ended the war.
In anticipation of the resolution’s adoption, North Korea earlier in the week threatened to cancel the 1953 cease-fire that ended the Korean War.
North Korean threats have become more common as tensions have escalated following a rocket launch by Pyongyang in December and its third nuclear test on February 12. Both acts defied three Security Council resolutions that bar North Korea from testing or using nuclear or ballistic missile technology and from importing or exporting material for these programs.
Strong sanctions
US UN Ambassador Susan Rice said the proposed resolution, to be voted on at 10 am EST (1500 GMT), would impose some of the strongest sanctions ever ordered by the United Nations.
The final version of the draft resolution, released Wednesday, identified three individuals, one corporation and one organization that would be added to the UN sanctions list if the measure is approved.
The targets include top officials at a company that is the country’s primary arms dealer and main exporter of ballistic missile-related equipment, and a national organization responsible for research and development of missiles and probably nuclear weapons.
The success of a new round of sanctions could depend on enforcement by China, where most of the companies and banks that North Korea is believed to work with are based.
The United States and other nations worry that North Korea’s third nuclear test pushed it closer to its goal of gaining nuclear missiles that can reach the US. The international community has condemned the regime’s nuclear and missile efforts as threats to regional security and a drain on the resources that could go to North Korea’s largely destitute people.
The draft resolution condemns the latest nuclear test “in the strongest terms” for violating and flagrantly disregarding council resolutions, bans further ballistic missile launches, nuclear tests “or any other provocation,” and demands that North Korea return to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. It also condemns all of North Korea’s ongoing nuclear activities, including its uranium enrichment.
But the proposed resolution stresses the council’s commitment “to a peaceful, diplomatic and political solution” and urged a resumption of six-party talks with the aim of denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula “in a peaceful manner.”
The proposed resolution would make it significantly harder for North Korea to move around the funds it needs to carry out its illicit programs and strengthen existing sanctions and the inspection of suspect cargo bound to and from the country. It would also ban countries from exporting specific luxury goods to the North, including yachts, luxury automobiles, racing cars, and jewelry with semi-precious and precious stones and precious metals.
According to the draft, all countries would now be required to freeze financial transactions or services that could contribute to North Korea’s nuclear or missile programs.
To get around financial sanctions, North Koreans have been carrying around large suitcases filled with cash to move illicit funds. The draft resolution expresses concern that these bulk cash transfers may be used to evade sanctions. It clarifies that the freeze on financial transactions and services that could
violate sanctions applies to all cash transfers as well as the cash couriers.
The proposed resolution also bans all countries from providing public financial support for trade deals, such as granting export credits, guarantees or insurance, if the assistance could contribute to the North’s nuclear or missile programs.
It includes what a senior diplomat called unprecedented new travel sanctions that would require countries
to expel agents working for sanctioned North Korean companies.
The draft also requires states to inspect suspect cargo on their territory and prevent any vessel that refuses an inspection from entering their ports. And a new aviation measure calls on states to deny aircraft permission to take off, land or fly over their territory if illicit cargo is suspected to be aboard.
News to Me: China Loves The US Dollar Again As America Roars Back
February 20, 2013
Source: Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, The Telegraph
China’s central bank has radically revised its view of US economic and strategic power, predicting that the dollar will remain the world’s paramount reserve currency for decades to come.Jin Zhongxia, head of the central bank’s research institute, said America’s energy revolution and export revival had shaken up the global landscape and would lead to a stronger dollar over time. “The dollar’s global dominance will continue,” he said.
Dr Jin said the world was moving to a “1+4” system, with the greenback serving as the anchor of global payments, supplemented by “four smaller reserve currencies” – the euro, sterling, yen and yuan.
“Compared with the euro area, the dollar zone has much greater resilience to shocks. The debt crisis in the euro area has demonstrated the structural weakness of this currency,” he wrote in a paper for the February bulletin of the Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum.
BREAKING: Russia threatens US with Nuclear attack
Russia Warning in St Petersburg against interference in third-party global conflicts, Medvedev said: “At some moment such actions, which undermine sovereignty Syria, Iran, North Korea, can end with a full-fledged regional war, or even, and I don’t want to scare anybody, the use of nuclear weapons
NATO Missile Defense Forcing Russia To Take Countermeasures
February 2013 The lack of agreement on missile defense may negatively affect Russia-NATO cooperation in other areas, too, because Russian relations to the Western alliance rely on strategic stability, Russian Ambassador to NATO Alexander Grushko said in Brussels yesterday. As reported on Voice of Russia radio this morning, Grushko warned that if the nuclear balance is upset by the realization of NATO-supported U.S. plans for a stage-by-stage deployment of a missile defense system, this would strongly affect the entire range of cooperation in the framework of the Russia-NATO Council.Russia”s probable retaliation measures to the missile defense system also were on the agenda of talks which Speaker of the State Duma Sergey Naryshkin had with French members of parliament in Paris Naryshkin stressed that Russia needs “guarantees backed by objective technical parameters that this system will not be targeted against Russia…. When someone tells us in words that this system is not targeted against Russia but refuses to sign a legally binding agreement in deeds, this certainly raises doubts in us,” he said, insisting that security should be equal for all countries and indivisible. Naryshkin warned that Moscow “cannot twiddle its thumbs while its U.S. partners make decisions on deploying missile defense elements in Europe and putting them into practice…. But this is surely not our choice.” Naryshkin said Russia will have to take measures in response to the missile defense system’s deployment.
News to Me: America’s New Cold War Against Russia And China
February 21, 2013
by Zhao Jinglun
If NATO further expands to Georgia and Ukraine, crossing the Kremlin’ s “Red Line,” hostility would be further heightened. The missile-defense installations are supposedly aimed at Iran, but do pose a direct threat to Russia in the event of a nuclear first strike.
Former president Bill Clinton started his illegal air war over Kosovo ostensibly to save Kosovo Albanians from being massacred by the Serbs. The real purpose, however, has been rumored to be Moscow’s deprivation of its last European ally, Serbia.
Moscow has steadfastly opposed Western efforts to block Iran’s nuclear program as those efforts could be designed to support a regime change that would pave the way for Western penetration into Central Asia.
Russia has just published its new foreign policy concept in which President Vladimir Putin indicates that the most important aspect of Moscow’s foreign strategy is to strengthen its ties with China. The two countries hold the same principle on core issues in international politics and that can constitute a basic element in maintaining regional and global stability. Russia will engage in full spectrum foreign policy cooperation with China when dealing with new challenges or menaces, as well as in solving regional and global problems.
This may not exactly be what the Obama administration wants to hear. It has succeeded in stirring up conflict between China and Japan; but has been unable to sow any dissension between China and Russia. Its efforts to “reset” the relations with the Kremlin ended in slight disappointment.
Indeed, U.S.-Russia relations are now seemingly at their nadir. The publication of Moscow’s new foreign policy concept was delayed as Putin wanted to emphasize the principle of non-intervention in Russia’s internal affairs. He especially resents the humiliating Magnitsky Act, which was overwhelmingly passed by the U.S. Congress and signed by President Barack Obama. Moscow retaliated by banning the American adoption of Russian orphans.
Stephen F. Cohen, Russian expert and professor emeritus at NYU and Princeton, is even talking about a potential new Cold War. As one Chinese saying goes, “It takes more than one cold day for the river to freeze three-feet-deep. ” Cohen points to four components of U.S. policy resented by Moscow:
* NATO expansion to Russia’s borders which now includes European missile-defense installations. This poses the most serious threat to Russian security. If NATO further expands to Georgia and Ukraine, crossing the Kremlin’ s “Red Line,” hostility would be further heightened. The missile-defense installations are supposedly aimed at Iran, but do pose a direct threat to Russia in the event of a nuclear first strike. Moscow has demanded participation in the European system, failing that, a written guarantee that it will never be directed against Russia. It was rebuffed on both counts.
* “Selective cooperation, ” or the obtaining of concessions from the Kremlin without any meaningful White House reciprocity. Putin has never forgotten his vital role in the 2001 U.S. war in Afghanistan and was later rewarded by George W. Bush’s further NATO expansion and tearing up of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
* “Democracy promotion” in Russia’s domestic politics, viewed by Russian leaders as an intolerable interference with their internal affairs. The National Endowment for Democracy openly funded Russian NGOs.
* Last but not least, high-level Moscow circles have repeatedly complained that “the Americans do not care about our national security.”
It is unlikely that Washington will make any meaningful concessions on these four issues. So the chill in relations will probably continue.
In fact, the clash of strategic interests has a long history. Former president Bill Clinton started his illegal air war over Kosovo ostensibly to save Kosovo Albanians from being massacred by the Serbs. The real purpose, however, has been rumored to be Moscow’s deprivation of its last European ally, Serbia.
Moscow has steadfastly opposed Western efforts to block Iran’s nuclear program as those efforts could be designed to support a regime change that would pave the way for Western penetration into Central Asia.
Russia has also blocked Western efforts to intervene in Syria, its ally in the Middle East, where it has a naval base at Tartus.
The Kremlin also pursues a hard line refusing to return the Northern Territories (four islands), which Moscow calls the Southern Kurils, to Japan. It is not just a conflict with Japan. It is also a response to the United States’ pivot towards Asia and the (Asia) Pacific region – Russia also considers itself a Pacific power. The latest incident occurred on February 12, the day President Obama delivered his State of the Union Address.
The U.S. military reported that two Russian “Bear” (TU-95) strategic bombers, capable of carrying nuclear cruise missiles, visited the U.S. strategic island Guam (Moscow denied this). U.S. Air Force F-15 jets were scrambled from Andersen Air Force Base to intercept the intruders. Nevertheless, both sides “stayed professional. ”
U.S. military officials hold that ever since Putin reclaimed the Russian presidency, the number of such flights in the vicinity of the Aleutian Islands and Alaska has increased, but encounters with U.S. aircrafts have generally remained “very professional. ”
Neither side is looking for a fight; but they’re not on the best of terms either.
The author is a columnist with China.org.cn.
NYPD Looking to Deploy Naked Body Scanners on street Corners as Part of Gun Control Roll-out
J.D. Heyes
Natural News
January 29, 2013It’s not enough that the state of New York just doubled down on its trashing of the Second Amendment with the passage of new gun control laws. Now the city of New York, with its gun-grabbing mayor, is set to deploy revealing new x-ray scanners that will violate residents’ Fourth Amendment right to privacy to ensure they’re not taking advantage of their Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.
According to local media reports, New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said his force is currently testing the new technology, which is designed to hone in on guns without using the department’s well-established “stop-and-frisk” procedure. Now, not only will suspected criminals be targeted, but so will the vast majority of law-abiding New Yorkers who, once again, are going to be presumed guilty until proven innocent.
The New York Daily News said the department recently took delivery of a machine that reads terahertz, the “natural energy emitted by people and inanimate objects,” which “allows police to view conceal weapons from a distance.”
“If something is obstructing the flow of that radiation, for example a weapon, the device will highlight that object,” Kelly told reporters.
Fear of false positives
Civil libertarians have plenty to be upset about. So do ordinary New Yorkers.
A video image that was shown at a Police Foundation breakfast in early January showed a police officer, who was dressed in a New York Jets NFL jersey and blue jeans, with the shape of a gun outlined clearly beneath his clothing, when he was observed through the device.
Kelly says street testing of the device is underway. He said the device is small enough to be put in a police cruiser or set up on a street corner “where gunplay has occurred in the past,” the Daily News said.
Plans to use the revealing device were in play before the state’s latest round of radical new gun control legislation was passed, apparently. The police chief said his department has been working with London Metropolitan Police officials and a contractor “to develop a tool that meets our requirements.”
Apparently, a constitutional lawyer isn’t on the advisory team.
“We took delivery of it last week,” Kelly said Jan. 25 at the gathering at the Waldorf Astoria. “One of our requirements was that the technology must be portable.”
He added: “We still have a number of trials to run before we can determine how best to deploy this technology. We’re also talking to our legal staff about this. But we’re very pleased with the progress we’ve made over the past year.”
So far, the city and the department has blown off concerns about potential privacy violations made by the New York Civil Liberties Union, which has expressed diffidence over the “virtual pat downs” that will no doubt occur.
Others, including some security experts, say the device will unquestionably lead to false positives and, in turn, stop-and-frisks that are not justified.
All of this comes on top of new gun control measures that were passed and signed into law so quickly by the state legislature and Gov. Andrew Cuomo that the process was a violation of the state Constitution’s three-day waiting period before laws are voted on.
“When you rush a bill through, you can’t have committee hearings in which you learn from experts. You don’t allow for proper debate. You don’t allow for possible amendments that would refine and strengthen a bill,” Kieran Lalor wrote in an op-ed for the Daily News.
The columnist also decried other absurdities in the law, like the fact that it was passed so quickly power-mad supporters of the measure forgot to exempt police officers from the requirement that gun magazines be limited to seven bullets, and that criminals aren’t going to pay much attention to that requirement.
Voting with their feet
New York City is unique and there are many opportunities there that don’t exist elsewhere. But like so many megatropolises in the U.S., NYC is becoming a bastion of tyranny, whose residents elect leaders like Mayor Michael Bloomberg so they can regulate soft drinks and ban the sale of alcohol, trans fats, salt, guns and anything else he deems inappropriate (because all government agencies are run by like-minded zealots).
Despite the opportunities, residents are leaving over-taxed, over-regulated domains for islands of freedom. So far, that right still exists: If you don’t like your current political and socioeconomic environment, vote with your feet.
Perfect. PERFECT.
China, Russia, US Raise Mediterranean Naval Focus
Source: Pakistan Observer
Port Said—Egypt has seen no shortage of empires come and go, from its own ancient civilizations to those of Greece, Rome, Britain and France. Now, it is among the outposts of the latest Mediterranean power: China. Situated at the northern end of the Suez Canal, the Port Said Container Terminal is one of the busiest in the region, vital for shipments not only to Egypt but also much of Europe and the Middle East.
Like several other key ports in the region – including Piraeus in Greece and Naples in Italy – it is now partially owned by China. The state-owned Cosco Pacific holds 20 percent the terminal, helping make it one of the dominant – if not the dominant – Mediterranean port operators. Cosco stresses that it is a purely commercial venture and many analysts agree. But few doubt that Beijing has made a wider geopolitical decision to become much more involved in the region.
For the last two years, the People’s Liberation Army Navy has sent one or more warships through the Suez Canal to visit southern European ports, the furthest its fleet has ever operated from home. But China is not the only great power now increasing its involvement in the area. With Russia sending warships to positions off Syria and the United States signaling it too intends to take the region more seriously, the Mediterranean is clearly no longer seen as the strategic backwater many believed it had become.“The assumption that the Mediterranean would become a purely Western sphere of influence appears to have been premature,” says Nikolas Gvosdev, professor of national security studies at the United States Naval War College in Rhode Island. “The Chinese are showing their flag in an area far from their traditional area of operations in part to show that they are a global power. The renewed Russian deployments are part intended as a sign that Moscow has not gone away.”
Other strategic shifts are also taking place in the region. The “Arab Spring” has unleashed a period of unrest and instability across North Africa and beyond while the euro zone crisis has left troubled southern European states struggling with debt and searching for ready investment.
Meanwhile, the gas platforms beginning to dot the disputed waters of the eastern Mediterranean have unleashed a scramble for resources that has further exacerbated pre-existing tensions between Cyprus, Turkey and Israel.
The U.S. had hoped it could pull back from the area, helping transfer military resources to the Pacific and South China Sea as part of a pivot to Asia aimed heavily at containing a rising China. But last year’s Libya conflict provided stark warning that European states had distinctly limited capacity, and as the financial crisis bites defense budgets have been further cut.
“I don’t see a conflict,” says Gvosdev at the Naval War College. “But… (it) does make it more difficult to do an Asia pivot on the cheap.” In 2011 Admiral Gary Roughead – at the time Chief of Naval Operations and the professional head of the U.S. Navy – told senior officers the U.S. needed to return to the Mediterranean.
In the years since the end of the Cold War and Balkan conflicts that followed, the U.S. had quietly stopped maintaining a permanent aircraft carrier there as it focused on Iraq and Afghanistan and confrontation with Iran. Limited resources mean putting a permanent carrier back in the region is all but impossible. But other ships now look set to take up a much more permanent presence.
Last year, the Pentagon announced it was deploying four state-of-the-art missile destroyers to the Spanish port of Rota, in part to counter any missile threat to Europe from Iran or elsewhere in the Middle East.—Reuters
Washington Post: Why the next four years might be more of the same
He/THE ENTIRE DEMOCRATIC PARTY can’t POSSIBLY be that stupid. Anyone with a brain could figure out that the GOP has a better shot in midterm elections and in the next elections if they can stymie any attempt at legislation that allows Obama to actually keep his campaign promises. The failure will make the GOP look more appealing in the next election.
Even if they can only force him to compromise, and move more to the right rather then the left, they’ll have evened their chances out for the next election, because voters will lose faith in the Democratic party for being too weak to do shit. And either they ARE too weak, or they don’t actually WANT to effect leftist policies. It’s probably both.
In any case, I would also point out that Obama portraying himself as a compromiser definitely garners him support from undecided voters during the election, although now it’s a moot point. Basically meaning that he might have been using it as a campaign strategy and didn’t really believe the GOP would eventually cooperate. Because, again, if he did, he’s an idiot.
This administration really is hopeless. We had a choice between a disaster and a dud…
Chinese State Media Demands US Citizens Be Disarmed
The official Chinese government news agency, Xinhua, has demanded the US immediately adopt stricter gun control measures to reduce the number of firearms the US populace is permitted to possess.
