U.S. on alert for China moves

Chinese soldiers and children holding U.S. and Chinese flags line up on the tarmac to greet President Donald Trump as he arrives at Beijing Airport, Wednesday, Nov. 8, 2017, in Beijing, China. Trump is on a five country trip through Asia traveling to Japan, South Korea, China, Vietnam and the Philippines. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

 

China’s government is known for using high-level foreign visits to conduct tests of new military equipment such as missiles and stealth aircraft, and the White House is hoping Beijing does not conduct provocative tests while President Trump is visiting the country this week.

The most notable example was the January 2010 visit to China by then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates, when the Chinese military sought to sabotage the trip by flight-testing the first J-20 stealth fighter. Mr. Gates wrote in his memoir that the People’s Liberation Army nearly “wrecked” the visit. Two hours before he met with then-Chinese President Hu Jintao, China released photos of the new J-20 in what Mr. Gates called “about as big a ‘f– you’ as you can get.”

Trump Adviser’s Ties Raise Security Questions

Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images

 

“An intelligence classification vetting nightmare scenario.”

With Donald Trump on the brink of receiving classified security briefings from the Central Intelligence Agency, U.S. foreign policy figures of both parties are raising concerns about a close Trump aide’s ties to allies of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Trump’s top adviser, Paul Manafort, has spent much of his recent career working for pro-Russian forces in Ukraine, and doing complex deals for an oligarch with close ties to Putin. And while a Democratic senator has already charged Trump is not responsible enough to receive secret information, Manafort’s deep relationships with top pro-Russian figures raise special concerns.

Gates: Russia Sought to Abandon Nuclear Missile Treaty in 2007

Moscow opposition to INF Treaty kept secret during 2010 New START ratification debate

The Russian government told the United States more than eight years ago that it wanted to abandon the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, former Defense Secretary Robert Gates said at a Senate hearing last week.

“The Russian defense minister as early as 2007 approached me about doing away with the INF Treaty,” Gates said in Senate Armed Services Committee testimony Wednesday.

Gates said he was told by the Russian defense minister that the irony of the INF Treaty is that “the United States and Russia are the only countries that cannot have intermediate range missiles.”

In the absence of a U.S. ‘strategy’, Middle East braces for ‘the big war’

The most dangerous U.S. President in history has changed the world forever, and the worst is yet to come. Furthermore, the politicians of any respective country are a direct reflection of the hearts and minds of the people. Voters made a large mistake in 2008 by voting their first modern Egyptian pharaoh who will continue to rule like an unchecked tyrant. You cannot undo the last six years in America. Switching from Democrats to Republicans will not fix the solution as both parties are on the same side, as in Russia today.

If you were to ask when America will collapse, the smart answer would be 2008. And rightly so, all the blame also does not fall squarely on Obama. Since then, America has been in free-fall and 95% of the public will never notice until it hits bottom, mistaking that for the actual crash.

As you cannot legislate morality in hopes of bringing America back, the only hope for the once great nation is a return to God by its people. If the nation as a whole fully repents, there will be peace. Until then, His judgement is in full motion as we speak and will only continue to accelerate.

 

U.S. President Barack Obama referred early last year to Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL) as a JV team.

ISIL’s subsequent rampage through Iraq and Syria proved Obama wrong, but analysts cited by a McClatchyDC report think the worst has yet to come.

“The conditions are very much like 1914,” said Michael Stephens of the Royal United Service Institute in London. “All it will take is one little spark, and Iran and Saudi Arabia will go at each other, believing they are fighting a defensive war.”

Iraqi Kurdish commentator Hiwa Osman believes “the whole region is braced for the big war, the war that has not yet happened, the Shiite-Sunni war.”

It’s Hard to Watch Your Country Die

An older article from 2011 that couldn’t be more relevant today.

 

The talk in global political circles is that the U.S. is washed up. America’s defense secretary, traveling to China in January, addressed the gossip. “I’ve watched this sort of cyclical view of American decline come around two or three times, perhaps most dramatically in the latter half of the 1970s,” Robert Gates said. “And my general line for those both at home and around the world who think the U.S. is in decline is that history’s dustbins are filled with countries that underestimated the resilience of the United States.”

Maybe. But it seems hard to underestimate the U.S. these days.

The secretary’s words ring especially hollow when you look at where he was heading. China has plenty cause for a low estimation of the United States. America owes it probably a trillion dollars. And China looks poised to single-handedly neutralize America’s robust, decades-long influence in the Asia Pacific thanks to a military spending binge that will yield aircraft carriers, stealth planes and aircraft-carrier-killing missiles.

China’s Military Threatens America: ‘We Will Hurt You’

As a reminder and an answer to the previous post about where China is heading with its military modernization and war preparations. Anyone with two braincells remaining in their head can see where this is going and can’t whitewash it away.

 

“Every nation has a right to defend itself and to spend as it sees fit for that purpose, but a gap as wide as what seems to be forming between China’s stated intent and its military programs leaves me more than curious about the end result,” said Admiral Mike Mullen this Wednesday. “Indeed, I have moved from being curious to being genuinely concerned.”

It’s about time the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in public, expressed disquiet about the Chinese military buildup. For decades, American flag officers, many of them from the Navy, have remained optimistic about America’s military relations with China. And after every Chinese hostile act — even those constituting direct attacks on the United States, such as the March 2009 attempt to interfere with the Impeccable in the South China Sea — American admirals have either remained silent or said they were “perplexed” or “befuddled” by Beijing’s intentions.

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Senior Chinese officers, on the other hand, have no trouble telling us how they really feel.

In February, Colonel Meng Xianging promised a “hand-to-hand fight with the U.S.” sometime within the next 10 years “when we’re strong enough.” “We must make them hurt,” said Major-General Yang Yi this year, referring to the United States.

Top Iranian Official: Obama is ‘The Weakest of U.S. Presidents’

Adviser to Iranian president mocks Obama’s ‘humiliating’ presidency

The Iranian president’s senior advisor has called President Barack Obama “the weakest of U.S. presidents” and described the U.S. leader’s tenure in office as “humiliating,” according to a translation of the highly candid comments provided to the Free Beacon.

The comments by Ali Younesi, senior advisor to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, come as Iran continues to buck U.S. attempts to woo it into the international coalition currently battling the Islamic State (IS, ISIL, or ISIS).

Iranian navy chief: We aim to destroy the US Navy

American warships are easy target, brags Ali Fadavi, claiming his forces could sink a US aircraft carrier in less than a minute

The naval commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Rear Admiral Ali Fadavi, said Monday that the destruction of the US Navy is a major operational goal of his forces, an Iranian news agency reported. In an unusually aggressive interview, he was said to have declared that Iran’s navy had been conducting drills on how to sink US vessels in any potential combat, that Iran “naturally” wants to sink these vessels, and that it could sink a US aircraft carrier in less than a minute.

End of American Military Dominance

Intentional national suicide just shifted into fourth gear.

President Barack Obama will sharply cut ships, aircraft, and troops as part of a major reduction of U.S. military forces that will face even steeper downsizing in 2016, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel announced on Monday.

The defense cuts, to be announced formally in the president’s budget proposal next month, would reduce U.S. ground forces to their lowest level since World War II at a time when world threats are increasing.

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