"Nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, pestilences and earthquakes in divers places. All these are the beginning of sorrows. Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you: and ye shall be hated of all nations for my name's sake." (Matthew 24:8-9).
"Verily I say unto you, that this generation shall not pass, till all these things be done" (Mark 13:30).
Isolated North Korea stepped up its war of words against the United States on Tuesday, vowing to boost its nuclear deterrent after Washington warned Pyongyang of further sanctions if it did not abandon its atomic program.
The North's foreign ministry spokesman said via the official KCNA news agency that it would "bolster its nuclear deterrent as long as the United States was continuing with its hostile policies" and that it planned "countermeasures" following pressure from Washington.
Last week, world leaders meeting in the United States said the isolated North needed to adhere to international norms on nuclear issues and said it would face more isolation if it "continues down the path of provocation".
Under new leader Kim Jong-un, North Korea launched a long range rocket in April, breaking an agreement with the United States that would have traded food aid for access to its nuclear facilities, among other things.
Many experts now believe the reclusive North is preparing for a third nuclear test, and could even use highly enriched uranium for the first time. Experts say the North already has enough fissile material from plutonium for at least six nuclear bombs.
U.S. Special Representative for North Korea Policy Glyn Davies told reporters in Seoul on Monday that North Korea could expect "a swift and sure" reaction by the international community if it undertook further hostile actions.
Davies was holding talks with his Chinese counterpart in Beijing on Tuesday.
China is North Korea's sole major economic and diplomatic backer and even it has put pressure on Pyongyang to back down on plans for a nuclear test.
Yang Moo-jin, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul, was skeptical that the latest rhetoric from Pyongyang signaled a nuclear test was imminent.
"North Korea is simply saying: Don't agitate or provoke us," he said.
Recent satellite imagery published by IHS Jane's Defense Weekly, a specialist defense publication, showed there had been more work at the site of previous nuclear tests that could indicate the North was preparing for its third nuclear test.
The Janes analysis showed mining carts and excavation equipment as well more debris from inside a tunnel that could be used for a third nuclear test.
"A third nuclear test by North Korea would be the latest move in restarting its nuclear weapons program, which it agreed to mothball in a 29 February deal with the U.S.," said Janes analyst James Hardy.
Since the death of Kim Jong-il in December, Kim Jong-un, believed to be in his late 20s, has shown he will continue with his father's hardline "military first" policy.
May 2, 2012
Washington Pressures the Philippines into Conducting Joint Military Exercises in the South China Sea
By Paul Craig Roberts, Infowars.com Tuesday, May 1, 2012
Washington has pressured the Philippines, whose government it owns, into conducting joint military exercises in the South China Sea. Washington’s excuse is that China has territorial disputes with the Philippines, Indonesia, and other countries concerning island and sea rights in the South China Sea. Washington asserts that China’s territorial disputes with the like of Indonesia and the Philippines are a matter of United States’ national interests.
Washington has not made it clear what Washington’s stake is in the disputes. The reason Washington cannot identify why China’s disputes with the Philippines and Indonesia are threats to the United States is that there is no reason. Nevertheless, the undefined “threat” has become the reason Washington needs more naval bases in the Philippines and South Korea.
What this is all about is provoking a long-term cold war conflict with China that will keep profits and power flowing into Washington’s military-security complex. Large profits flow to armaments companies. A portion of the profits reflow into campaign contributions to “the people’s representatives” in DC and to presidential candidates who openly sell out their country to private interests.
Washington is going to construct new naval bases in the Philippines and on the environmentally protected Jeju Island belonging to South Korea. Washington will waste tax revenues, or print more money, in order to build the unnecessary fleets to occupy these bases. Washington is acquiring bases in Australia for US Marines to protect Australia from China, despite the lack of Chinese threats against Australia. Bush and Obama are the leading models of the “people’s president” who sell out the people, at home and abroad, to private interests.
Why is Washington ramping up a new cold war?
The answer begins with President Eisenhower’s warning to the American people in his last public address about the military/industrial complex in 1961. I won’t quote the warning as it is available online. Eisenhower pointed out to Americans that unlike previous wars after which the US demilitarized, after World War II the cold war with the Soviet Union kept the power and profits flowing into the military/industrial complex, now known as the military/security complex. President Eisenhower said that the flow of power and profit into the military/industrial complex was a threat to the economic wellbeing and liberty of the American people.
No one paid any attention, and the military/security complex was glad to be rid of the five-star general war hero president when his second term expired. Thanks to the hype about the “Soviet threat,” the military/security complex faced an unlimited horizon of mounting profits and power as Americans sacrificed their future to the interests of those who protected Americans from the Soviet threat.
The good times rolled for the armaments companies and security agencies for almost three decades until Reagan and Gorbachev reached agreement and ended the cold war. When the Soviet Union subsequently collapsed, the future outlook for the power and profit of the US military/security complex was bleak. The one percent was about to lose its fortunes and the secret government was about to lose its power.
The military/security complex went to work to revive the need for a massive “defense” and “security” budget. Among their willing tools were the neoconservatives, with their French Jacobin ideology and Israeli loyalties. The neocons defined America as the “indispensable people.” Such extraordinary people as Americans must establish hegemony over the world as the sole remaining superpower. As most neoconservatives are allied with Israel, the Muslim Middle East became the target of opportunity.
Muslims are sufficiently different from Westerners that Muslims are easy to demonize. The demonization began in the neoconservative publications. Once Dick Cheney had the George W. Bush regime staffed with neoconservatives, the next step was to create “threats” to Americans out of verbiage about the Taliban’s responsibility for 9/11 and about “Iraqi weapons of mass destruction,” including verbal images from Bush’s National Security Advisor of “mushroom clouds” over US cities.
No one in the US government or the “free” US media or the media of the US puppet states in England, Europe, Japan, Taiwan, Canada, Australia and South Korea was struck by Washington’s proposition that “the world’s sole superpower” was threatened by the likes of Iraq and Iran, neither of which had any offensive military capability or any modern weapons, according to the unequivocal reports of the weapons inspectors.
What kind of “superpower” is threatened by Iraq and Iran? Certainly, not a real one.
No one seemed to notice that the alleged 9/11 hijackers were Saudi Arabians, not Afghans or Iraqis, yet it was Afghanistan and Iraq that were labeled “terrorist threats.” Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, which do terrorize their subjects, are safe from having America bring them democracy, because they are Washington’s puppets, not independent countries.
As fear of nonentities swept over the population of “the world’s sole superpower,” the demands for war against “America’s enemies”–”you are with us or against us”–swept through the country. “Support the troops” plastic ribbons appeared on American cars. Americans went into a frenzy. The “towel heads” were after us, and we had to fight for our lives or be murdered in our beds, shopping centers, and airliner seats.
It was all a hoax to replace the Soviet threat with the Muslim threat.
The problem that developed with the “Muslim threat” is that in order to keep the profits and power flowing into the military/security complex, the promised six-week war in Iraq had to be extended into 8 years. The war in Afghanistan against a few thousand lightly armed Taliban has persisted for more than a decade, longer than the attempted Red Army occupation of Afghanistan.
In other words, the problem with hot wars is that the need not to win them in order to keep them going (Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan are all long-term wars never won) in order that the profits and power continue to flow to the military/security complex demoralizes the US military and creates the world-wide impression that the “world’s sole superpower” cannot even defeat a few thousand insurgents armed with AK-47s, much less a real army.
In Iraq and Afghanistan more US soldiers have died from demoralization and suicides than from combat. In Iraq, the US was humiliated by having to end the war by putting the Sunni insurgents on the US military payroll and paying them to stop killing US troops. In Korea the US was stopped by an army of a backward third world country that lived on rice. What would happen today if the US “superpower’s” militarily confronted China, a country with an economy on which the US is dependent, about equal in size to the US economy, operating on its home territory? The only chance the evil in Washington would have would be nuclear war, which would mean the destruction of the entire world by Washington’s hubris.
Fortunately, profits are more important to Washington than ending life on earth. Therefore, war with China will be avoided, just as it was avoided with the Soviet Union. However, China will be presented by Washington and its prostitute media, especially the New York Times, Washington Post, and Murdoch’s collection of whores, as the rising threat to America. The media story will shift the importance of America’s allies from Europe to countries bordering the South China Sea. American taxpayers’ money, or newly printed money, will flow into the “new alliance against China.”
China’s rise is a great boon to the US military/security complex, which governs america in which there is a pretense of “freedom and democracy.” China is the profitable replacement for the “Soviet threat.” As the days go by, the presstitute media will create in the feeble minds of Americans “The CHINA Threat.”
Soon whatever little remains of the US living standard will be sacrificed to Washington’s confrontation with China, along with the seizure of our pensions and personal savings in order to deter “the China threat.”
If only Americans were an intelligent people. Then they might have some prospect of holding on to their incomes, remaining wealth, and liberty. Unfortunately, Americans are so thoroughly plugged into the Matrix that they present as a doomed people, incapable of thought, reason, or ability to comprehend the facts that the rest of the world sees clearly.
Can reality be brought to the American people? Perhaps a miracle will occur. Stay tuned.
This article first appeared at Paul Craig Roberts’ new website Institute For Political Economy. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His Internet columns have attracted a worldwide following.
April 28, 2012
Panetta Says the 'U.S. Must Remain a Global Power, But ... More and More Nations are Making and Must Make an Important Contribution to Global Security'
In these days of shrinking U.S. defense budgets, the Obama administration is looking to South America to help monitor and protect the Asia-Pacific region in the years ahead.
During visits to Colombia, Brazil and Chile this past week, Pentagon chief Leon Panetta underscored their importance as military partners in the Pacific,where China is challenging U.S. influence in a number of countries. As those defense relationships grow, officials say it can only help U.S. economic and political ties across South America.
Panetta's talks also focused on how the United States can support their military efforts, including those directed at the expanding threat of cyberattacks, according to several senior defense officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because the meetings were private.
U.S. officials left the region thinking that at some point there may be opportunities to talk with South American nations about helping to train Afghan forces after NATO combat troops leave at the end of 2014. Officials would provide no details on which countries might eventually be willing to take on some of the training mission, which will need advisers as other NATO nations withdraw their troops.
With the U.S. turning its focus from Iraq and Afghanistan, the Pentagon's new military strategy puts more importance on the Asia-Pacific region.North Korea is a growing threat while China is building its military and working to expand its political and economic influence.
The Pentagon is poised to move more forces to the Pacific, including rotating units in and out of Australia. The U.S. has long provided training, equipment, assistance and a security umbrella for many of the region. With looming budget cuts that will reduce the size of the military, the U.S. is looking to South American countries to be more active global partners.
"The United States, just like other countries, are facing budget constrictions, which are going to affect the future," Panetta told reporters at a news conference in Brazil. "And what we believe is that the best way to approach the future is to develop partnerships, alliances, to develop relationships with other countries, share information, share assistance, share capabilities, and in that way we can provide greater security for the future."
Panetta would like to see South American countries use their greater military capability to train some Central American nations that are not as advanced.
Defense chiefs Juan Camillo Pinzon of Colombia, Celso Amorim of Brazil and Andres Allamand of Chile brought up cyberthreats as a major concern, including incidents of hacker attacks and data thefts, U.S. defense officials said.
The three countries, said one official said, want help from the U.S. in hardening their computer networks against breaches and increasing their technological skills. The official said there is a recognition of how vulnerable they are, and they want to learn more about the nature of the threat and how to combat it.
That threat is likely to involve China, which is steadily gaining as a top trading partner and economic developer in South America. It's surpassing the U.S. in trade with Brazil, Chile and Peru, and is a close second in Argentina and Colombia.
For the first time, U.S. intelligence officials publicly called out China late last year as a significant cyberthreat. While they did not directly tie attacks to the Beijing government, they said the Chinese are systematically stealing American high-tech data for their own economic gain. The unusually forceful public report seemed to signal a new, more vocal U.S. government campaign against the cyberattacks.
The Pentagon's clandestine National Security Agency is an acknowledged world leader in cybertechnologies. U.S. officials have struggled to work out ways for the government to help other nations as well as the private sector in the United States shore up critical networks.
To date, however, countries around the world have not come up with any detailed agreements on how best to work together. These issues present legal and political challenges, including conflicting laws and the lack of broadly accepted international guidelines for Internet oversight.
Panetta made it clear that cybersecurity was "a whole new arena" that all the nations are concerned about. He also encouraged South American nations to expand their security efforts to other regions, including Africa.
"The United States must remain a global power," Panetta said during a speech in Brazil. "But ... more and more nations are making and must make an important contribution to global security.We welcome and encourage this new reality because frankly it makes the world safer and all of our nations stronger."
January 15, 2012
China Criticizes the U.S. for Imposing Sanctions for Its Export of Petroleum Products to Iran
China has criticised the United States for imposing sanctions on a state-run oil firm for exporting petroleum products to Iran, saying the move was "without reason".
Washington on Thursday slapped sanctions on China's Zhuhai Zhenrong Co., barring it from doing business in the United States, saying it brokered delivery of more than $500 million worth of gasoline to Iran from July 2010-January 2011.
"We express strong dissatisfaction and firm opposition to this," foreign ministry spokesman Liu Weimin said in a statement carried by the official Xinhua news agency late Saturday.
The sanctions, also placed on companies from Singapore and the United Arab Emirates, bar the three firms from receiving US export licenses, trade support from the US Export Import Bank, and loans over $10 million from US financial institutions.
Liu said China's cooperation with Iran was similar to other countries.
"Like many other countries, China maintains normal cooperation with Iran in energy, economic and trade fields," he said, adding that the US had acted unilaterally to impose the sanctions.
"This is without reason, and against the content and spirit of resolutions by the United Nations Security Council on the Iran nuclear issue."
Chinese state media Saturday quoted the company as dismissing the US claims as "fiction", with an official saying the firm doesn't export refined oil to Iran.
The US sanctions came shortly after US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner met Chinese leaders in Beijing to ask for help in squeezing Iran's key oil revenues and pushing Tehran to halt its nuclear ambitions.
But China, long an important buyer of Iranian oil, has resisted adding its weight to the US and European campaign.
Chinese officials have warned against making links between China's trade relations with Iran and the issue of Tehran's nuclear program.
January 5, 2012
Obama's Defense Strategy Expands the U.S. Military Presence in Asia
The Dragon Family, which is a group of several wealthy and secretive Asian families, has executed an elaborate sting operation where a vast international alliance of 117 countries now has a legal way to end the financial tyranny of the Old World Order. A lawsuit was filed on November 23, 2011, in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York that could end the secret government that has ruled Western civilization for at least the past 300 years. The lawsuit was filed by Neil Keenan, acting as representative of the Dragon family. This particular lawsuit was triggered by the illegal detainment of two Japanese citizens, Akihiko Yamaguchi and Mitsuyoshi Watanabe, as well as the seizure of $134.5 billion in bonds they were holding in Italy on June 3, 2009. The roots of this case go back to between 1927 and 1938, when, under arrangements made between T.V. Soong (Finance Minister of China) and Henry Morgethau, Secretary of the Treasury, the United States Government purchased some 50 million ounces of silver and leased vast amounts of gold from the Nationalist Chinese Government, known as Kuomintang. For all the treasure handed in, certificates were given to those who surrendered their precious metals. Many of the bonds seized are backed with the Chinese gold taken by the Federal Reserve Board during those years and never returned to its legal owners. [Source]
President Barack Obama unveiled a defense strategy on Thursday that would expand the U.S. military presence in Asia but shrink the overall size of the force as the Pentagon seeks to reduce spending by nearly half a trillion dollars after a decade of war.
The strategy, if carried out, would significantly reshape the world's largest military from the one that executed President George W. Bush's "war on terrorism" in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Cyberwarfare and unmanned drones would continue to grow in priority, as would countering attempts by China and Iran to block U.S. power projection capabilities in areas like the South China Sea and the Strait of Hormuz.
But the size of the U.S. Army and Marines Corps would shrink. So too might the U.S. nuclear arsenal and the U.S. military footprint in Europe.
Troop- and time-intensive counter-insurgency operations, a staple of U.S. military strategy since the 2007 "surge" of extra troops to Iraq, would be far more limited, with the force no longer sized for large-scale, long-term missions.
"The tide of war is receding but the question that this strategy answers is what kind of military will we need long after the wars of the last decade are over," Obama told a Pentagon news conference alongside Defense Secretary Leon Panetta.
SMALLER, LEANER
Panetta said the new strategy would mean the Pentagon would field a "smaller and leaner" military force but said the exact number of personnel would not be determined until the Defense Department finishes its proposed 2013 budget in the coming weeks.
Administration officials have said they expect Army and Marine Corp personnel levels to be reduced by 10 percent to 15 percent over the next decade as part of the reductions.
The Army's current strength is about 565,000 soldiers and there are 201,000 Marines, meaning an eventual loss of between 76,000 and 114,000 troops.
Critics already are charging that the cuts are being driven by budget woes rather than U.S. defense needs but Obama and Panetta emphasized that the reverse is true. They did not divulge details of spending and cuts, which will be detailed in Obama's upcoming federal budget for fiscal year 2013.
"Some will no doubt say the spending reductions are too big; others will say they're too small," Obama said.
He emphasized that even after enactment of the $487 billion in reductions agreed with Congress in August, the defense budget would still be larger than it was toward the end of Bush's administration.
"Over the past 10 years, since 9/11, our defense budget grew at an extraordinary pace," Obama said. "Over the next 10 years, the growth in the defense budget will slow but the fact of the matter is this - it will still grow because we have global responsibilities that demand our leadership."
The shift in focus to Asia comes amid increasing concern at the Pentagon over China's strategic goals as it begins to field a new generation of weapons that American officials fear are designed to prevent U.S. naval and air forces from projecting power into the Far East.
"We will be strengthening our presence in the Asia-Pacific," Obama said, "and budget reductions will not come at the expense of that critical region."
The new strategy calls for the U.S. military to "rebalance toward the Asia-Pacific region" even as it continues to actively counter the threat of violent extremism.
It also calls for increased investment in cyber capabilities and suggests the United States may be able to shrink its nuclear arsenal further without jeopardizing security.
The strategy says the United States should maintain a force that can win one major war while still being able to deter an aggressor in a second conflict. In the past the Pentagon has tried to field a force that could fight and win two major wars at once.
Panetta played down the differences, saying the earlier strategy dealt with large conflicts of the past while the current strategy was considering the conflicts the United States is likely to face in the 21st century.
"Make no mistake - we will have the capability to confront and defeat more than one adversary at a time," he said.
NEW PLAN AFTER DECADE OF GROWTH
Obama initiated the strategic review last summer after asking the Pentagon to begin planning for major cuts to the U.S. defense budget after a decade of growth.
The strategy document released on Thursday addressed U.S. interests in broad brush-strokes but did not get into specifics about how many troops would be reduced or deal with specific budgetary issues.
Panetta acknowledged that the cuts would require difficult choices.
"There is no question that we have to make some tradeoffs and that we will be taking on ... some level of additional but acceptable risk in the budget plan we release next month," he said. "These were not easy choices."
The strategy underscores the United States' "enduring interests" in Europe and the importance of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization but says the force posture in Europe must "evolve" with the changing times, opening the door for troop reductions.
Administration officials have said the United States is likely to further reduce the number of ground forces in Europe by another combat brigade, a unit of 3,000 to 4,000 people depending on its composition.
The strategy document underscores a U.S. interest in maintaining stability in the Middle East while responding to the aspirations of the people as expressed in the Arab Awakening last year. It also says the United States will continue working to halt nuclear programs in Iran and North Korea.
"U.S. policy will emphasize Gulf security, in collaboration with the Gulf Cooperation Council countries when appropriate, to prevent Iran's development of a nuclear weapon capability and counter its destabilizing policies," it says.
The document expresses concern about new weapons being developed by China and Iran that could make it difficult for the U.S. Navy and Air Force to project power abroad.
"The United States must maintain its ability to project power in areas where our access and freedom to operate are challenged," it says.
December 8, 2011
China Prepares Navy for Combat to Safeguard National Security
The real showdown between China and the West may end up being in the Middle East if and when the Muslim world enlists China's assistance in the anti-American, anti-Israeli confrontation. The record shows that China has already been engaged in illicit sales of nuclear armaments to Muslim nations. Many of the Muslim nations in the Middle East are client states of China. The de facto alliance already exists. Both China and the Muslim nations have a similar interest in maintaining control of the oilfields of the Middle East. It may be that China joins with the Muslim nations in a cataclysmic confrontation with both Israel and the West in the near future, probably over the oil wealth of that region. - Ken Raggio, The Sixth Trumpet War of Revelation 9
Chinese President Hu Jintao Tuesday urged the navy to prepare for military combat amid growing regional tensions over maritime disputes and a US campaign to assert itself as a Pacific power.
The navy should "accelerate its transformation and modernisation in a sturdy way, and make extended preparations for military combat in order to make greater contributions to safeguard national security," he said.
Addressing the powerful Central Military Commission, Hu said:
"Our work must closely encircle the main theme of national defence and military building."
His remarks, which were posted on a statement on a government website, come amid growing US and regional concerns over China's naval ambitions, particularly in the South China Sea.
China claims all of the maritime area, as does Taiwan, while four Southeast Asian countries declare ownership of parts of it, with Vietnam and the Philippines accusing Chinese forces of increasing aggression there.
In a translation of Hu's comments, the official Xinhua news agency quoted the president as saying China's navy should "make extended preparations for warfare."
But the Pentagon on Tuesday downplayed Hu's speech, saying that Beijing had the right to develop its military, although it should do so transparently.
"They have a right to develop military capabilities and to plan, just as we do," said Pentagon spokesman George Little, but he added "we have repeatedly called for transparency from the Chinese and that's part of the relationship we're continuing to build with the Chinese military."
"Nobody's looking for a scrap here," insisted another spokesman Admiral John Kirby. "Certainly we wouldn't begrudge any other nation the opportunity, the right to develop naval forces to be ready.
"Our naval forces are ready and they'll stay ready."
US undersecretary of defence Michelle Flournoy is due to meet in Beijing with her Chinese counterparts on Wednesday for military-to-military talks.
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao last month warned against interference by "external forces" in regional territorial disputes including in the South China Sea, a strategic and resource-rich area where several nations have overlapping claims.
And China said late last month it would conduct naval exercises in the Pacific Ocean, after Obama, who has dubbed himself America's first Pacific president, said the US would deploy up to 2,500 Marines to Australia.
China's People's Liberation Army, the largest military in the world, is primarily a land force, but its navy is playing an increasingly important role as Beijing grows more assertive about its territorial claims.
Earlier this year, the Pentagon warned that Beijing was increasingly focused on its naval power and had invested in high-tech weaponry that would extend its reach in the Pacific and beyond.
China's first aircraft carrier began its second sea trial last week after undergoing refurbishments and testing, the government said. The 300-metre (990-foot) ship, a refitted former Soviet carrier, underwent five days of trials in August that sparked international concern about China's widening naval reach.
Beijing only confirmed this year that it was revamping the old Soviet ship and has repeatedly insisted that the carrier poses no threat to its neighbours and will be used mainly for training and research purposes. But the August sea trials were met with concern from regional powers including Japan and the United States, which called on Beijing to explain why it needs an aircraft carrier.
China, which publicly announced around 50 separate naval exercises in the seas off its coast over the past two years -- usually after the event -- says its military is only focused on defending the country's territory.
On a visit to the U.S. this week, China's top military commander Chen Bingde suggested that the international coalition patrolling the Gulf of Aden and the waters off the coast of Somalia ought to take decisive action against pirate dens on land. So far, the counter-piracy strategy has focused on the pirate "mother-ships," usually retrofitted trawlers that tow little skiffs out into the deep sea. Yet the pirate problem emanating from lawless Somalia cost the global economy over $8.3 billion in 2010. And China has a huge stake in securing its ever-increasing economic interests in the region.
Chen, the chief of the general staff of the People's Liberation Army, told reporters:
For counter-piracy campaigns to be effective, we should probably move beyond the ocean and crash their bases on the land... It is important that we target not only the operators, those on the small ships or crafts conducting the hijacking activities, but also the figureheads.
It's probably one of the first instances a high-ranking Beijing official publicly advocated what is tantamount to a ground war in a foreign country.
China, of course, is notoriously prickly about principles of sovereignty and "non-interference" and has invoked them for decades at the U.N. and in other forums of the international community, sometimes when seeking to thwart tough action on dictatorships and murderous regimes that happen to be close to Beijing. In the imagination of the developing world, military interventions like the U.S.-European swoop into Libya are still coded with the memory of an earlier, unjust imperial moment.
But, as China's military grows leaps and bounds and Chinese enterprises take root across the globe, it's getting more and more difficult to play the anti-imperialist card. China is the new empire on the block. And so the Chinese have increasingly tried to sugar coat their rise in positive, peaceful terms — a p.r. gambit that hasn't always worked, especially given the opacity of the PLA and a steady drumbeat of aggressive Chinese maneuvers that have furrowed brows in a host of neighboring countries.
Which is why Chen's remarks at the Pentagon are worthy of note: not only do they signal a willingness to engage in the sort of military adventures once shunned and derided by members of the old Non-Aligned Movement, but they were communicated in a larger discussion of improving trust between the U.S. and Chinese military, especially in situations like that off the Horn of Africa where both countries have a shared interest. Still, a more confident, assertive China, ready to throw its muscle around when it needs to, is only going to add to the wariness of many other capitals in Asia and stoke the coals of an intensifying regional arms race.
Last we met our intrepid Somali legislators, they were trying to tame Somalia's anarchic wireless telecom market. The story was a little odd considering that the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) only controls a few blocks of territory with the al-Shabaab insurgency closing in fast, but yesterday we learned from TheNew York Times why they're so confident: Blackwater's coming to town!
Well, not quite Blackwater—Erik Prince, the infamous mercenary firm's founder, has cobbled together a sinister-sounding coalition of apartheid-era South African mercenaries and two-bit Ugandan potentates under the name Saracen International, and they're gunning for contracts with Africa's most hapless governing body. Previously the firm had been involved with anti-piracy efforts funded by the United Arab Emirates and the unrecognized Somali state of Puntland, but they are now poised to make landfall in Mogadishu. The mercenaries will apparently be paid by the TFG, but the deal was brokered by former U.S. officials:
The officials, Pierre-Richard Prosper, a former United States ambassador at large for war crimes [Ed.—you can't make this shit up], and Michael Shanklin, a former Central Intelligence Agency station chief in Mogadishu, are both serving as advisers to the Somali government, according to people involved in the project. Both Mr. Prosper and Mr. Shanklin are apparently being paid by the United Arab Emirates.
Despite the backlash that the TFG has faced since their contracts with Saracen came to light, the mercenary firm is wasting no time. They've already begun renovating a military hospital, and given the TFG's sudden ambitions, it looks like they're gearing up for yet another battle of Mogadishu (you know what they say—tenth time's a charm!).
Learning from the disastrous direct intervention in the early '90s and the American-funded Ethiopian invasion in 2006, the U.S. has perfected the art of meddling-by-proxy: Even TheNew York Times didn't note that the mercenaries' Krugerrands, despite being routed through the nominally-independent TFG, are coming mostly courtesy of the American taxpayer. At least Bill Clinton had the balls to own up to his invasion—President George W. Bush and Barack Obama's interventions have been more circuitous, but no less harmful.
Press TV December 19, 2010 As tension in Somalia continues to escalate, the US banking institutions and corporations seem to reap the benefits by destroying any stability and sovereignty through creating conflicts.
Press TV interviews Thomas Mountain regarding the US support of conflicts in Africa and how the US is funding the Ethiopian President to invade Somalia. (Full Length Video of Interview)
Press TV: Welcome to On the Edge coming from sunny downtown Tehran, Iran. Let's talk with Thomas C. Mountain. Thomas is an independent journalist living in Eretria and writes often on the Horn of Africa. Thomas, welcome to the Edge.
Mountain: Thanks Max, it's nice to be back.
Keiser: Thomas C. Mountain, you are an expert on the Horn of Africa. So what are your thoughts on the recent WikiLeaks cable gate revelations that the US essentially hired Ethiopian President Meles Zenawi to invade Somalia in 2006.
Mountain: Well, I haven't really had a chance to review all 1300 some documents. But it's pretty much common knowledge that Meles was sent in. And I don't think he was too happy about it because in history no Ethiopian regime has ever picked a fight with the Somalis. There was a war between Somalia and Ethiopia in 1977, but that was started by the Somalis so I don't think any Ethiopian President in his right mind would volunteer to start a war with Somalia. I think he was pretty much pressured by his masters who pay his salary and military budget in the United States.
Press TV: Right, well this is what we are seeing with these WikiLeaks revelations is the US just basically interfering all over the world extra legally with no due process, no consideration for the law, and no consideration for human rights or civil rights, and they are just making a mess wherever they go. The cables also show Black Water pitching in to get involved in Somalia. What's the empire's interest in Somalia? Do they have any oil?
Mountain: Well, yes there is suppose to be a lot of oil and gas. But I think it's more of a… just in general Americans' foreign policy particularly in regards to Africa, is what we call “crisis management.” They want to instigate a crisis and then manage the crisis. Thus they can basically prevent in strong nationalist government from coming to power that would protect the people's interest and force the Western governments to pay a fair share in their natural resources. Basically they just want to be able to come in and pay off some war lords and rape and loot the resources of a country whenever possible. I think that is pretty much US policy in Somalia. They know that if a genuine nationalist government comes to power in Somalia, they are going to be pretty hostile to Western interests and especially the United States, because the US has committed a long list of very nasty crimes in Somalia. So they just want to see the war lords in power and when the Union of Islamic Courts came to power, it brought peace to Mogadishu for the first time and in 2006 Americans sent the Ethiopian gendarmes in to destroy that peace. So I don't think the US has any good intentions toward Somalia at all.
Press TV: Tell me something about Somalia. You can help me pick through this whether it's non-sense or not. I heard in Somalia Coca-Cola has these huge tankers parked outside that are filled with coke syrup. It's the largest distribution point for coke syrup and effectively coke syrup is the currency of Somalia. Is that crazy or somewhere near accurate?
Mountain: That's the first time I've heard of that. The Somali pirates have of coursed collected about 500 million dollars or more hijacking ships. There has been a lot of talk about them trying to defend their fishing rights and other things. But the bottom line is you have a lot of ships presently hijacked in Somalia, and the pirates there are basically working for the war lords. When the pirates capture a ship they have to pay off the local war lord, and they have to pay off the district war lord. They have to pay off the presidential war lord. They have to pay off the Ethiopian military and of course they have to pay off Meles Zenawi in Addis Ababa. In exchange for that they get protection. The Ethiopian regime is the US policeman. They pretty much told the United States and all the Western countries to lay off the Somalia pirates because they are paying protection money and that explains why there hasn't been a single cruise missile come whistling to the doors of any of these pirates' lairs after they have collected their loot. That is something nobody in the Western media wants to talk about. How come there has been zero retaliation against these pirates. The Americans have bombed…
Press TV: How much did you say? 500mn you say?
Mountain: Over 500mn yes.
Press TV: So essentially the American pirates, the Wall Street Banks are somehow involved in taking a cut of that and it's easy money for them. And of course you would never go in and disrupt easy money. There is stock exchange that has sprung up around the piracy that's going on. Real estate prices are exploding. So it's like the Hamptons. You've got the crooks and the pirates on Wall Street and the real estate market in the Hamptons goes up. Here in Somalia you have pirates out there 500mn or so looting and the real estate market around that area goes up. You've got the same crooks, the same financial terrorists, the overlords: J.P Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Warren Buffett etc.. in their taking a cut. Now what is the mechanism for them to take the cut? I mean it's not the IMF. They are not the intermediary disruptive terrorist force. It's not the World Bank. What is the intermediary force that holds the bag; the bag man for the Wall Street Banks in Somalia?
Mountain: Well, the American foreign policy is based on using a local policeman. Most of the money ends up in Meles Zenawi's pocket. He has his warlords in Puntland where most of the pirates come from. Puntland is located right on the very tip of the horn of Africa. So there is a payoff that starts out with some desperados going off in small boats by snatching these ships and collecting cash. They land on the beach and often they head right for the nearest Ethiopian military base. They make their payoff and make sure that no one comes in and bombs them in their homes. So in any case Meles Zenawi is the bag man.
Press TV: Who is the banking facility here? Is it the Swiss Banks? I heard that have a huge money laundering operation in Tel Aviv now picking up the slack from Switzerland. Where is the main money laundering going on for this particular global scam?
Mountain: You know Ethiopia is in the center of a major aid-to-arms diversion scandal. It's something like 6 billion dollars a year according to the latest reports I've seen is funneled to the Meles Zenawi regime to keep him in power there and enforce the interest of the IMF and the World Bank in that part of the world. So I think it's pretty much they pay off Meles Zenawi, and then he does what they want him to like invade Somalia. Right now Meles Zenawi is carrying out genocide in the Ogaden and its escalating into a full blown genocide where he is rounding up tens of thousands of ethnic Somalis in Ethiopian Ogaden and putting them into basically starvation camps. The expression is if you can't catch the fish (meaning the Ogaden rebels) you drain the lake. That is what he's doing. He is accelerating the Ogaden genocide and the purpose of all that is to just basically keep Meles Zenawi in power. So he can protect imperial American interests in the Horn of Africa, which is one of the most strategic areas in the world. All the trade between Asia and Europe passes through the Horn of Africa every day. So the Americans have gotten Meles Zenawi there protecting the banks' interests, and protecting the financial terrorists, and he's the guy that has the huge bank accounts in London with hundreds of millions of dollars. This has been going on for decades now.
Press TV: So, Meles Zenawi is going through London not Switzerland and Tel Aviv. Six billion dollars a year in arms deals, as off course arms dealing are America's huge money laundering operation globally. That is a trillion dollars of tax money collected from those poor smocks in America every year that goes to the IRS and ends up in the Pentagon, and goes for buying guns for terrorists around the world like this fellow Meles Zenawi who is using billions of dollars in arms deals to launder the money he is stealing via the Somali pirates. I tell you he should just go public on the New York Stock Exchange and would get a better evaluation. He could be like the Google of piracy. He could be worth 200bn than just 20bn dollars. Anyway let's move on. Black Water now known as Z, let's talk about their involvement a little bit more. Are they visible? Do they wear big branded uniforms like Black Water Z mercenaries for hire or are they more underground?
Mountain: Well, I don't think even Black Water wants to go into Somalia. They have been using Ugandan proxies and other proxies in Mogadishu to try and pop up this puppet regime that they claim is the government of Somalia. What they have been doing, these that got the blessing of the United Nations under the African Union, is every time the gorilla fighters attack them successfully in frustration they fire artillery rounds into the surrounding civilian neighborhoods. Most people don't realize when you hear of death reports in Mogadishu almost all of that is caused by mortar and artillery rounds fired by the United Nation blessed African Union troops. So there's probably been tens of thousands of Somalia's killed by the United Nations and African Union troops in Somalia who they have the gall to call peace keepers.
Press TV: Alright, Thomas Mountain you live in Africa where missionaries and charities have operated for centuries as the unarmed wing of the empire. Tell us about the Human Rights mob. Who are they? What do they call themselves a mob?
Mountain: Well, I have labeled them the Human Rights mob because George Soros is the financial hit man. He has just given 1bn dollars over the next ten years in a matching grant to Human Rights Watch. Now this is a matching grant meaning through other foundations and trusts, which George Soros has laundered donations through the likes of human rights watch and Amnesty International for years now. He will give them another billion dollars. So Human Rights Watch is about to collect 2bn dollars in the next ten years from George the hit man Soros. Now what's Human Rights Watch going to do with this? George Soros got on national public radio in the United States and said we are going to expand Human Rights watch into the developing world. We are going to have offices of Human Rights Watch basically gathering intelligence and influencing American government policy in the developing world as much as possible towards policies that favor George Soros. Now why do we call George Soros the hit man?
Well, a good example was the Rose Revolution in Georgia when George Soros put over 42mn dollars in through his NGO funds into supporting the Saakashvili regime. Now 42mn dollars is almost ten dollars per person in Georgia. That would be like if in the United States George Soros spent 3bn dollars on the American election putting Barack Obama into power. And what did he do? As soon as Saakashvili came to power, he started arresting the opposition, starting torturing opposition members, and opposition members starting disappearing and on top of that Saakashvili had his military attack the South Ossetians who he claims are his own people opening artillery fire on civilian communities. What can of massacre would have happened if the Russians hadn't counter attacked and driven him out? All this was paid for by George Soros putting Saakashvili in power. This is blood money now. These NGOS that put Saakashvili into power with 42mn dollars have got blood stains on their hands. The Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International kept their mouths shut when all this happened. They are quick to jump out and condemn Eretria for alleged human rights abuses, which are pretty much non-existent. Yet they are very quiet when it comes to a program that George Soros is funding.
So I call them the Human Rights Mob. They are taken the hit man's money, and they are attacking countries like Eretria which are doing a lot of things to promote human rights like provide clean drinking water for the people, make sure everybody is fed and they have a roof over their head, and people have decent medical care. These are really the basic human rights. Not freedom of assembly, freedom of speech and freedom of elections, which is what Human Rights Watch and Amnesty claim so loudly about. You know the fact is the Human Rights movement has been bought off by a financial terrorist like George Soros to the tune of 2bn dollars. It's an incredible amount of money in ten years. What are they going to do with it? We know what they are going to do with it. They are going to go and be a front for Soros in the 3rd world and developing world.
Press TV: Thomas Mountain, did you read the alchemy of finance, George Soros' masterpiece where he explains reflexivity, which basically says if you manipulate the price of a market enough it will become the new normal, and then you can cash in on your manipulation, and so oh it was the market and not me.
Mountain: I'll have to read that Max. Thanks for the tip.
Press TV: Yes, it's a how to guide on how to manipulate markets. Just to be clear, the Human Rights Mob is a label you have given these groups. You are saying they are basically taking the money from Soros who has vested interest in manipulating these markets, and claiming to be somehow a man interested in furthering human rights when in fact he is only interested in furthering his network. He is not really doing well on either side as a hedge fund manager or as a human rights philanthropist….
Anyway, let's move on to another one of these global, globe-trotting good-doers that seems to do bad more than good such as Bill Gates, multi-billionaire, founder of Microsoft. You write, “Bill Gates, 10bn dollar vaccine scam.” I take it you don't find his charitable work in Africa very charitable Thomas Mountain.
Mountain: I'll give you an example. I live in Eritrea, which has reduced malaria mortality in the last eight years by almost 85%. Malaria is the number one killer in Africa and this has been the biggest breakthrough in history in fighting malaria mortality. And it's not a medicine-based program, it's a public health-based program providing insect treated mosquito nets and making sure they get retreated, making sure that their clinics are within a couple of hours walk from all the villages in the malaria belt, and through this basic public health Eritrea has made the biggest breakthrough in malaria treatment in history.
Now, Bill Gates has turned around and donated, well it's actually a tax-write off; my sources say over a billion dollars to develop a “vaccine for malaria.” People that know malaria know that it's a very resistant, very quickly developed resistance to drugs and that in five years after the latest vaccine comes out it won't work anymore, but by then its patent will have expired and Africa will have to buy a new vaccine. And every five years, a new vaccine and tens of billions of dollars of African blood money will get sucked out of Africa to pay for these latest vaccines and the fact is that Bill gates has got tens of billions of dollars invested in the major pharmaceutical companies. So this donation, which is actually a tax-write off, is going to end up bring back tens of billions of dollars, if Bill Gates has his way, back into the pockets of the major international pharmaceutical companies and it will pay off ten times or more on what Bill Gates has donated to this fight.
Now, the World Health Organization (WHO), which recently has been exposed for being a front for the major pharmaceuticals when it raised a big hysteria about the swine flu. For example, France had to destroy 350 million Euros of vaccine, which the WHO said they had to buy and what they've done basically is come in and suppress news about this big breakthrough in malaria mortality in Eritrea because it's public health based, not pharmaceutical-based.
So tens of millions of lives could be saved if the rest of Africa and the rest of the world will emulate and copy and use Eritrea's role model to prevent malaria deaths, instead they're suppressing knowledge of this.
Press TV: Well, Bill Gates is a twice convicted predatory monopolist in the area of intellectual property so it makes sense that his solution to a problem would be to increase and expand more intellectual property that comes under the rubric of those laws that is a known economic fallacy and drainer of economies not a value added to economies.
Let's move on to 'land grab' that is going on in many nations such as Saudi Arabia and China and many hedge funds including George Soros is buying lands in Africa - I take it this is just more of the same?
Mountain: Well there is some international companies and governments coming into Ethiopia and buying up some of the prime agricultural land. Of course, tens of millions of people in Ethiopia are literally starving or on the verge of starvation and yet some of the prime agricultural land is being sold or leased for 99 years to countries like Saudi Arabia, which exported something like 10,000 tons of rice from Ethiopia last year while millions of Ethiopians are literally starving to death.
Of course, several million of dollars of everyone of these deals gets put into Mili Sonali's London bank accounts, but that's a pretty good example of how when you get a gangster like Mili Sonali in power, he doesn't care what happened to his own people.
Press TV: Let's talk about China, is it a positive or a negative, their influence going on there?
Mountain: I think China overall has been quite positive. I'll give you an example in Sudan - Sudan is the largest and potentially richest country in Africa and the west, the US in particular, wants to see Sudan divided because law in Sudan is under the leadership of Bashir (President Omar al-Bashir) who they claim is a genocidal killer when the facts on the ground is that Darfur relief effort is one of the largest best run relief efforts in history and that without the support and leadership of Bashir, it would not have been successful. So actually there never was genocide in Sudan.
Press TV: There was never genocide in Sudan? Explain that to me a little more, this could be news to George Clooney and some celebrities in LA - What do you mean by that?
Mountain: I was one of the first westerners to write about the problems in Sudan in 2003. The problems in Darfur were mainly a civil war that took place in 2004 and some part of 2005 and maybe 30,000 people died. Now that 's a big tragedy, but the relief effort started then and international forces along with Sudan security forces came in and pretty much stopped all the violence by 2006; so maybe 30,000 people died in Sudan - that was way back in 2004/2005. And since then, the people of Darfur, the victims of this violence have been the recipients of one of the largest best run relief efforts in history. The UN people, the Aid people on the ground in Sudan will tell you that this very successful relief effort would not have been possible without the cooperation and support of president Bashir and his government. So there hasn't been genocide in Sudan, instead the genocide, which you Max were the first international news program to cover is the genocide in the Ogaden, which by the way Max puts you on the edge because the real genocide is being funded by the west in the Ogaden in Ethiopia. It never happened in Sudan that was all a big scam to brainwash everybody and say hey, we need to send troops in to protect the genocide victims, so the west can come in and take over the largest and potentially wealthiest country in Africa.
Press TV: Following up on this note that we broke the story on The Edge - Is there one thing that the mainstream media is not covering right now that we can break for our global audience today?
Mountain: Well I was just talking about this breakthrough in malaria and malaria mortality prevention in Eritrea - that's a big story, but the Ogaden genocide is starting to accelerate. When you broke the story earlier this year it was a low level genocide. Now it's accelerating with the development where they're starting to put together these starvation camps - rounding up the Ogaden people into these camps. They've kicked all the western aid agencies out of the Ogaden; Mili Sonali has, including Doctors without Borders and the Red Cross. And now they're rounding the people up and they're basically going to starve them to death in these camps and we're talking about 10, 12, 15 million potential victims and this is all being paid for by western tax dollars.
So I think this Ogden genocide is probably the biggest news story that's starting to accelerate and that the west is not talking about and it was first broken here on your program, Max.
Russia and China oppose outside interference in the unrest in the Arab world, the two presidents said on Thursday in a declaration, as the West seeks their support for increasing pressure on Syria.
"The sides believe that the search for settling the situation in the countries of the Middle East and North Africa should take place in the legal field and through political means," said the declaration signed by Presidents Dmitry Medvedev and Hu Jintao.
"Outside forces should not interfere in internal processes in the countries of the region."
Rather, the conflicts should be solved by "launching broad national dialogue about rebuilding stability and social order and the promotion of democratic and economic reforms," the statement said.
The two presidents also expressed concern over the situation in Libya, calling for an end to hostilities between the forces of Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi and the rebels.
Russia has said it opposes the UN Security Council adopting any resolution on Syria, risking a major dispute with the West over the response to the crackdown on Syrian protestors.
China has backed Russia's cautious stance although, as is customary, it has allowed its fellow permanent UN Security Council member to do most of the public talking on the issue.
Russian foreign ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich confirmed in Moscow that Russia "as before" was opposed to a UN Security Council resolution on Syria.
"This position, as you know, has been set by the president and it remains unchanged," the Interfax news agency quoted him as saying.
Once bitter foes during the Cold War, Moscow and Beijing have over the past years ramped up political cooperation as both are driven by a desire to counterbalance US global dominance.
Speaking through a translator, Hu said at the Kremlin that Russia and China should expand their "strategic cooperation" including within multilateral structures like the UN and the Group of Twenty developed and developing economies.
Joint work should also be ramped up within regional groupings like the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation in order to "support peace, security and stability on the planet and facilitate the formation of a multilateral world and the democratisation of international relations," Hu said.
In their joint declartion, the two countries also said they would also seek to intensify cooperation with major regional player India.
May 26, 2011
China-Pakistan Alliance Strengthened Post Bin Laden
Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani began a visit to China on Tuesday with his country's old ally looking more attractive after the U.S. killing of Osama bin Laden further strained Islamabad's ties with Washington.
The sentiment is mutual, with China now in the process of shoring up its relations with Islamabad, Afghanistan and several other Central Asia states in step with an expected diminished U.S. presence as it winds down military operations in Afghanistan.
For Pakistan, Beijing represents an uncritical friend ready to provide aid, investment and military assistance. To the leaders in Beijing, ties with Pakistan and other countries in its neighborhood offer a bigger diplomatic footprint, better access to resources and a larger stable of allies to challenge U.S. supremacy.
"Pakistan wants to give a show that it is an independent actor and has options, and China offers a model of a functioning non-democratic state," said Indiana University China scholar Elliot Sperling.
Gilani arrived in Shanghai on Tuesday evening, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.
Although Gilani's four-day visit was planned well in advance, it comes at a critical time for his country's relations with the U.S., which have been thrown into crisis over the American raid that killed bin Laden in the northern Pakistani city of Abbottabad on May 2. Pakistan has called it a violation of its sovereignty and threatened to retaliate if there are any similar operations in the future.
While American politicians served up withering criticisms of Pakistan's failure to find bin Laden's hide-out — or the possibility that officials were protecting him — China offered welcome reassurance, praising Pakistan as resolute in the fight against terrorism.
Gilani made Pakistan's appreciation clear, singling out China in a testy May 9 speech to parliament as Islamabad's "all-weather friend." China-Pakistan ties were forged shortly after the founding of the People's Republic in 1949 and have thrived in part on both countries' distrust of their mutual neighbor India.
Gilani's visit is formally pitched as part of celebrations of the 60th anniversary of diplomatic ties, and he is scheduled to meet with top Chinese leaders and oversee the signing of a series of agreements beginning Wednesday.
"Further consolidating and developing our friendship and cooperation is the common aspiration of the two peoples," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said at a regularly scheduled news briefing Tuesday.
Along with billions of dollars in investment — up to $30 billion over the next five years, according to agreements signed last year — China supports Pakistan's nuclear power industry and sells it military hardware including surface-to-air missiles, navy frigates and fighter jets.
China for its part receives strong diplomatic backing from Pakistan in the region and among Islamic nations who might otherwise be more critical of China's repressive policies toward its Muslim Uighur minority.
Among other benefits: Pakistani officials have suggested they might offer Chinese experts a chance to examine the wreckage of a sophisticated U.S. helicopter that crashed during the operation to take out bin Laden. Strong Pakistan ties also help anchor China's improving relations with other countries in the region.
A visit by Afghan Foreign Minister Zalmay Rasoul this month put a fresh sheen on bilateral relations at a time when the reduction in U.S. troop strength is expected to open up space for other countries to expand their influence there.
Days earlier, Beijing had underscored its regional heft by hosting forces from Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan for joint anti-terrorism drills in the western Chinese region of Xinjiang, part of its embrace of Central Asia through the Chinese and Russian-dominated Shanghai Cooperation Organization.
Still, there are questions as to how much further China is willing to go in building up relations with Islamabad. China also needs to keep its crucial but delicate relationship with Washington in balance, and wouldn't want to be seen as exacerbating tensions between the U.S. and Pakistan.
Sperling said he doesn't expect much of substance to result from the visit, although China is happy to accommodate Pakistan's desire to alter perceptions.
China is also deeply concerned about radical Islamic threats on its border and has little interest in backing Pakistan's support for the Taliban in Afghanistan to counter Indian influence. Greater turmoil in Afghanistan would be a "challenge instead of an opportunity for China," said Zhao Gancheng, director of South Asia studies at the Shanghai Institute for International Studies.
"China is willing to have cooperation with any Afghanistan government and provide help within its ability, but the role will be limited," he said.
Tensions between the US and Pakistan over the killing of Osama bin Laden and a speedier US withdrawal from Afghanistan are likely to reinforce China and Pakistan's already strong ties, analysts say.
When Chinese leaders welcome Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani to Beijing this week, they will likely praise Sino-Pakistani "friendship" over the past 60 years -- a stark contrast to recent Western criticism of Islamabad.
Analysts say Gilani's visit starting Tuesday will help Islamabad deflect mounting pressure from Washington and elsewhere, as Pakistan stands shoulder-to-shoulder with its long-time ally and neighbour.
"China is the only country that has taken a sympathetic stand for Pakistan after the bin Laden operation," Talat Masood, a political analyst and retired Pakistani general, told AFP.
"This visit is important in the sense that it could counter (US) pressure on Pakistan. It shows Pakistan wants to say we also have some cards to play."
China has shown unswerving support for Pakistan since US special forces killed bin Laden at a compound near the country's top military academy on May 2, sparking speculation that Islamabad may have known about his whereabouts.
Foreign ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu pointed out a few days after the Al-Qaeda chief's killing that Pakistan was nevertheless "at the forefront of the international counter-terrorism effort".
Beijing's goodwill has not gone unnoticed.
"At this crucial juncture of history, I cannot say anybody is standing with Pakistan except for China," Pakistan's popular opposition leader Nawaz Sharif told reporters.
Many in Pakistan, outraged by the unilateral US raid, are increasingly convinced that their nation's strategic alliance with the United States since 2001 has been less than positive and has only made the country less stable.
It could therefore be tempting for the nuclear-armed Islamic republic to move away from the United States and get closer to faithful ally Beijing, analysts say.
"If US and Indian pressure continues, Pakistan can say 'China is behind us. Don't think we are isolated, we have a potential superpower with us'," Masood said.
China is the main arms supplier to Pakistan, which sees Beijing as an important counter-balance to India -- which has recently tightened its ties with the United States.
Beijing has also agreed to build several nuclear reactors in Pakistan.
Kerry Dumbaugh, an analyst at the Center for Naval Analyses, said Pakistan's pro-China stance on issues such as Taiwan, which Beijing considers part of its own territory, is also a key factor in Beijing's support for Islamabad.
"Pakistan serves as an advocate or a conduit for China in the Islamic world," Dumbaugh said.
According to other experts, China is convinced that Pakistan will increase its influence in Afghanistan by 2015, taking advantage of the planned withdrawal of US troops.
China also needs Islamabad's cooperation in stemming potential terrorist threats in its mainly Muslim region of Xinjiang, which borders Pakistan.
Ultimately, China wants calm to reign, particularly in the Pakistani province of Baluchistan, through which it plans to transport oil from the Middle East in a pipeline linking Xinjiang to the Arabian Sea.
But experts warn that friendship between China and Pakistan has its limits.
"China is important for Pakistan and will remain so, but when it comes to hi-tech you have to go to the US and the West, also because of their clout in the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund," political analyst Hasan Askari said.
Andrew Small, an expert on China-Pakistan relations at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, agreed.
The Chinese "get what they want out of the relationship already -- having Pakistan to provide balance in the region to try to keep India tied down in South Asia rather than becoming a broader Asian or global power," Small said.
"They're not going to want to be in a position where they end up with Pakistan on their plate to deal with."
China signaled its intent to deepen strategic ties with Pakistan and back the country’s counter-terrorism efforts against international pressure, with the “all-weather” allies signing a number of defence agreements to mark the conclusion of Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani’s four-day visit. Pakistani officials confirmed on Friday that China agreed to speed up the delivery of 50 JF-17 fighter jets to the country, a deal analysts said.
The Siasat Daily May 21, 2011
China signalled its intent to deepen strategic ties with Pakistan and back the country’s counterterrorism efforts against international pressure, with the “all-weather” allies signing a number of defence agreements to mark the conclusion of Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani’s four-day visit.
Pakistani officials confirmed on Friday that China agreed to speed up the delivery of 50 JF-17 fighter jets to the country, a deal analysts said underscored the importance of Chinese assistance to Islamabad at a time when relations with Washington have come under strains, with some U.S. legislators calling for a scaling back support.
A joint statement issued on Friday said China believed that Pakistan’s “efforts for promoting peace and stability in South Asia should be recognised and supported.”
It also reiterated Chinese support to Pakistan in the wake of criticism following the May 2 killing of Osama bin Laden, repeating Beijing’s displeasure at the United States for violating Pakistan’s sovereignty by conducting the raid in Abbottabad.
China believed “Pakistan’s sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity should be respected,” the statement said, adding that China “recognised the tremendous efforts and the great sacrifice that Pakistan has made in fighting terrorism.”
On Friday, Chinese President Hu Jintao also voiced strong support for Pakistan’s counterterrorism strategy in talks with Mr. Gilani, pushing back against recent international criticism.
In talks earlier this week, Chinese officials told Mr. Gilani they had taken up the country’s concerns over the May 2 raid in meetings with U.S. officials, calling on them to respect Pakistan’s sovereignty.
Chinese officials said “there should be no harm to the Pakistani sovereignty and the US should understand and appreciate concerns of Pakistan,” Mr. Gilani told reporters.
While his visit has been seen as underscoring the deepening ties between the two countries, Chinese analysts downplayed its significance on the rest of the region, and particularly on the two countries’ relations with the U.S.
“The focus of this visit was the sixtieth anniversary of ties between the two countries, and to deepen economic and trade ties” and not defence or terrorism, Rong Ying, vice president of the China Institute for International Studies (CIIS), told The Hindu.
He, however, added that “China has made clear that Pakistan’s policy on counterterrorism is based on national conditions and interests.”
“This,” he said, “has to be respected by relevant countries.”
When China launched threatening war games off Taiwan 15 years ago on the eve of an election on the self-governing island, the U.S. deployed two aircraft carriers, and China quickly backed down.
Things don't seem so one-sided any more.
China's military has been on a spending spree at a time that the debt-ridden U.S. government is looking to cut defense costs. On Friday, China announced a 12.7 percent hike for this year, the latest in a string of double-digit increases.
That trend has triggered worries in Congress and among security analysts about whether the United States can maintain its decades-long military predominance in the economically crucial Asia-Pacific.
While the U.S. military has been drained by 10 years of costly conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, China has developed air, naval and missile capabilities that could undercut U.S. superiority in China's backyard.
China is still decades away from building a military as strong as the United States. It has not fought a major conflict since a border war with Vietnam in 1979 and is not a Soviet-style rival threatening American soil.
But the shift raises questions about whether the U.S. can meet its commitment to maintain a strong presence in the Asia-Pacific for decades — a matter not just of global prestige but also seen as critical for safeguarding shipping lanes vital for world trade and protecting allies.
China already has an innate geographical advantage in any conflict in the west Pacific. One expert posits that with its military buildup, China could conquer Taiwan by the end of the decade even if the U.S. military intervenes.
China regards Taiwan as part of its territory. Relations between the two, long seen as a potential flash point, have warmed in the past two years. But China's assertion of territorial claims in the South China Sea, which it has declared as a "core interest" — essentially something it could go to war over — has spooked its neighbors and fortified their support for a strong U.S. presence in the region. Even former enemy Vietnam is forging military ties with the U.S.
Last week, the Philippines deployed two warplanes after a ship searching for oil complained it was harassed by two Chinese patrol boats in the South China Sea. Japan scrambled F-15 fighter jets after Chinese surveillance and anti-submarine aircraft flew near disputed islands in the East China Sea.
"As China's military has gotten more capable and China has behaved more aggressively, a number of countries are looking at the U.S. as a hedge to make sure they can maintain independence, security and stability," said Abraham Denmark, director of the Asia-Pacific Security Program at the Center for a New American Security.
But those allies question whether the U.S. can retain its freedom to operate in the region, and whether its economy — highly indebted to China and struggling to recover from a recession — can sustain its high level of military spending, said Bonnie Glaser, a China expert at the Center of Strategic and International Studies think tank.
The U.S. Pacific Command has 325,000 personnel, five aircraft carrier strike groups, 180 ships and nearly 2,000 aircraft. Tens of thousands of forces stay on China's doorstep at long-established bases in South Korea and Japan.
China's defense spending is still dwarfed by the United States. Even if China really invests twice as much in its military as its official $91.5 billion budget, which some analysts believe, that is still only about a quarter of U.S. spending. It has no aircraft carriers and lags the U.S. in defense technology. Some of its most vaunted recent military advances will take years to reach operation.
For example, China test flew its stealth fighter in January, months earlier than U.S. intelligence expected, but U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates says China will still only have a couple of hundred of these "fifth-generation" jets by 2025, when the United States should have 1,500.
But China's growing array of aircraft, naval and submarine vessels, ballistic and cruise missiles, anti-satellite and cyber war capabilities already enable it to project power beyond its shores. It plans new submarines, larger naval destroyers and transport aircraft that could expand that reach further.
Roger Cliff, a respected defense researcher who recently testified before a congressional hearing on China, says many of the missiles and strike aircraft have a range of about 900 miles, which put them within attacking distance of virtually all U.S. air and naval bases in the region. They include the DF-21D missile which is designed to target aircraft carriers. It employs technology that no other U.S. rival has mastered. It does not appear to have been tested yet against a maneuvering target at sea.
Cliff said if trends continue, China should have sufficient missiles and precision bombs by the end of the decade to render inoperable for a week or more all airfields on Taiwan and U.S. air bases in Okinawa, Japan, and possibly others farther away. He said there are between 40 and 50 Chinese air bases within 500 miles of Taiwan, each generally hosting a squadron of 24 aircraft, which could overwhelm superior U.S. aircraft through sheer numbers. If China acquired amphibious landing vehicles, he forecast it could conquer Taiwan.
If U.S. military planners are worried about that possibility, they aren't showing it. They say plans to cap defense spending within five years won't derail modernization plans. Pacific Command chief Adm. Robert Willard said last month that while the U.S. carefully watches China's growing military capabilities — and urges greater openness from China about them — the United States does not need to change its strategy.
China maintains it does not have offensive intentions, and analysts say that military action in the region would hurt its export-driven economy which could threaten what its government prizes above all else — domestic stability. The U.S. military presence may also benefit China as it restrains neighbors like South Korea and Japan from seeking nuclear weapons.
As U.S. and Chinese forces increasingly rub up against each other in the west Pacific, the U.S. says it wants to promote military ties with China to prevent a chance skirmish and for China to develop as a "responsible major power." To date, China has been reluctant to engage meaningfully after the recent restoration of military ties that were cut over U.S. arms sales to Taiwan.
"This is not the Cold War with two rival camps facing each other," said Michael Schiffer, U.S. deputy assistant secretary of defense for East Asia. "We are seeking a military-military relationship that is broad and deep enough to manage our differences while expanding on areas of common interest."
Chinese officials recently unveiled a new, high-tech stealth fighter that could pose a significant threat to American air superiority — and some of its technology, it turns out, may well have come from the U.S. itself.
Balkan military officials and other experts have told The Associated Press that in all probability the Chinese gleaned some of their technological know-how from an American F-117 Nighthawk that was shot down over Serbia in 1999.
Nighthawks were the world's first stealth fighters, planes that were very hard for radar to detect. But on March 27, 1999, during NATO's aerial bombing of Serbia in the Kosovo war, a Serbian anti-aircraft missile shot one of the Nighthawks down. The pilot ejected and was rescued.
It was the first time one of the much-touted "invisible" fighters had ever been hit. The Pentagon believed a combination of clever tactics and sheer luck had allowed a Soviet-built SA-3 missile to bring down the jet.
The wreckage was strewn over a wide area of flat farmlands, and civilians collected the parts — some the size of small cars — as souvenirs.
"At the time, our intelligence reports told of Chinese agents crisscrossing the region where the F-117 disintegrated, buying up parts of the plane from local farmers," says Adm. Davor Domazet-Loso, Croatia's military chief of staff during the Kosovo war.
"We believe the Chinese used those materials to gain an insight into secret stealth technologies ... and to reverse-engineer them," Domazet-Loso said in a telephone interview.
A senior Serbian military official confirmed that pieces of the wreckage were removed by souvenir collectors, and that some ended up "in the hands of foreign military attaches."
Efforts to get comment from China's defense ministry and the Pentagon were unsuccessful.
China's multi-role stealth fighter — known as the Chengdu J-20 — made its inaugural flight Jan. 11, revealing dramatic progress in the country's efforts to develop cutting-edge military technologies.
Although the twin-engine J-20 is at least eight or nine years from entering air force inventory, it could become a rival to America's top-of-the-line F-22 Raptor, the successor to the Nighthawk and the only stealth fighter currently in service.
China rolled out the J-20 just days before a visit to Beijing by U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, leading some analysts to speculate that the timing was intended to demonstrate the growing might of China's armed forces.
Despite Chinese President Hu Jintao's high-profile visit to the United States this week, many in Washington see China as an economic threat to the U.S. and worry as well about Beijing's military might.
Parts of the downed F-117 wreckage — such as the left wing with US Air Force insignia, the cockpit canopy, ejection seat, pilot's helmet and radio — are exhibited at Belgrade's aviation museum.
"I don't know what happened to the rest of the plane," said Zoran Milicevic, deputy director of the museum. "A lot of delegations visited us in the past, including the Chinese, Russians and Americans ... but no one showed any interest in taking any part of the jet."
Zoran Kusovac, a Rome-based military consultant, said the regime of former Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic routinely shared captured Western equipment with its Chinese and Russian allies.
"The destroyed F-117 topped that wish-list for both the Russians and Chinese," Kusovac said.
Russia's Sukhoi T-50 prototype stealth fighter made its maiden flight last year and is due to enter service in about four years. It is likely that the Russians also gleaned knowledge of stealth technology from the downed Nighthawk.
The F-117, developed in great secrecy in the 1970s, began service in 1983.
While not completely invisible to radar, its shape and radar-absorbent coating made detection extremely difficult. The radar cross-section was further reduced because the wings' leading and trailing edges were composed of nonmetallic honeycomb structures that do not reflect radar rays.
Kusovac said insight into this critical technology, and particularly the plane's secret radiation-absorbent exterior coating, would have significantly enhanced China's stealth know-how.
Alexander Huang of Taipei's Tamkang University said the J-20 represented a major step forward for China. He described Domazet-Loso's claim as "a logical assessment."
"There is no other stronger source for the origin of the J-20's stealthy technology," said Huang, an expert on China's air force. "The argument the Croatian chief-of-staff makes is legitimate and cannot be ruled out."
The Chinese are well-known perpetrators of industrial espionage in Western Europe and the United States, where the administration has also been increasingly aggressive in prosecuting cases of Chinese espionage.
Western diplomats have said China maintained an intelligence post in its Belgrade embassy during the Kosovo war. The building was mistakenly struck by U.S. bombers that May, killing three people inside.
"What that means is that the Serbs and Chinese would have been sharing their intelligence," said Alexander Neill, head of the Asia security program at the Royal United Services Institute, a defense think tank in London. "It's very likely that they shared the technology they recovered from the F-117, and it's very plausible that elements of the F-117 got to China."
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