Acharya wrote:You think soshyamd wrote:
Greater Israel? I still remember Ariel Sharon begging on live television for more jews to migrate. There is no chance for a greater israel, that is just a conspiracy theory.
Israel barely survives as a state surrounded by hostile enemies. At best you can say they want influence from that region. Even then US backed coup in Egypt put rest to that.Acharya wrote:You think soshyamd wrote:
Greater Israel? I still remember Ariel Sharon begging on live television for more jews to migrate. There is no chance for a greater israel, that is just a conspiracy theory.
Acharya wrote:You think soshyamd wrote:
Greater Israel? I still remember Ariel Sharon begging on live television for more jews to migrate. There is no chance for a greater israel, that is just a conspiracy theory.
Restructuring is going on so we can't bury our head in the sand and say conspiracy. Oil, Islamism, Zionism, fertile crescent, and Western interests all are connected. You need to go beyond some layers of understanding before understanding what is going on around.shyamd wrote:I am talking about oil security and safe passage of oil. You know there are other issues besides islamism in the world .
oh! so when the issue of Islamic imperialism comes up, we conveniently side step it with cute sarcastic comments. when we are talking about GCC, Islam is the elephant in the room. contrary to what many believe, Islam is always on the table for the GCC elites, b/c Islam has proven itself effective in acting as a profit extraction mechanism. therefore, Islam is a very realistic interest for the Islamic countries. they derive economic and geopolitical power from Islam. Indians might be deluded into placing Islam in a niche "religion" category, and say that "economic" and "religious" are "different" matters. for the Islamic countries, the "religious" is part of the "economic" b/c the former helps in accumulating the later.shyamd wrote:I am talking about oil security and safe passage of oil. You know there are other issues besides islamism in the world .
Two ways US is being screwed is firstly export all it's jobs to China, esp manufacturing saying that it is cheaper. What happens on the ground is that people lose jobs, atmosphere is cleaner and healthier but US gets weaker with so many of it's citizens out of jobs.shyamd wrote: Dont forget the world is interdependent - why do you think China manufacture so much for the US? Its cheaper. The US cares about oil there because it needs oil for its allies and also believe it or not for PRC and others so that it can keep the world economy going.
The Failure of Reset
The reset button Hillary Clinton gave to the Russians symbolized Obama's strategy. Obama wanted to reset U.S. foreign policy to the period before 9/11, a period when U.S. interventions, although frequent, were minor and could be justified as humanitarian. Economic issues dominated the period, and the primary issue was managing prosperity. It also was a period in which U.S.-European and U.S.-Chinese relations fell into alignment, and when U.S.-Russian relations were stable. Obama thus sought a return to a period when the international system was stable, pro-American and prosperous. While understandable from an American point of view, Russia, for example, considers the 1990s an unmitigated disaster to which it must never return.
The problem in this strategy was that it was impossible to reset the international system. The prosperity of the 1990s had turned into the difficulties of the post-2008 financial crisis. This obviously created preoccupations with managing the domestic economy, but as we saw in our first installment, the financial crisis redefined the way the rest of the world operated. The Europe, China and Russia of the 1990s no longer existed, and the Middle East had been transformed as well.
During the 1990s, it was possible to speak of Europe as a single entity with the expectation that European unity would intensify. That was no longer the case by 2010. The European financial crisis had torn apart the unity that had existed in the 1990s, putting European institutions under intense pressure along with trans-Atlantic institutions such as NATO. In many ways, the United States was irrelevant to the issues the European Union faced. The Europeans might have wanted money from the Americans, but they did not want 1990s-style leadership.
China had also changed. Unease about the state of its economy had replaced the self-confidence of the elite that had dominated during the 1990s in China. Its exports were under heavy pressure, and concerns about social stability had increased. China also had become increasingly repressive and hostile, at least rhetorically, in its foreign policy.
In the Middle East, there was little receptivity to Obama's public diplomacy. In practical terms, the expansion of Iranian power was substantial. Given Israeli fears over Iranian nuclear weapons, Obama found himself walking a fine line between possible conflict with Iran and allowing events to take their own course.
Limiting Intervention
This emerged as the foundation of U.S. foreign policy. Where previously the United States saw itself as having an imperative to try to manage events, Obama clearly saw that as a problem. As seen in this strategy, the United States has limited resources that have been overly strained during the wars. Rather than attempting to manage foreign events, Obama is shifting U.S. strategy toward limiting intervention and allowing events to proceed on their own.
Strategy in Europe clearly reflects this. Washington has avoided any attempt to lead the Europeans to a solution even though the United States has provided massive assistance via the Federal Reserve. This strategy is designed to stabilize rather than to manage. With the Russians, who clearly have reached a point of self-confidence, the failure of an attempt to reset relations resulted in a withdrawal of U.S. focus and attention in the Russian periphery and a willingness by Washington to stand by and allow the Russians to evolve as they will. Similarly, whatever the rhetoric of China and U.S. discussions of redeployment to deal with the Chinese threat, U.S. policy remains passive and accepting.
It is in Iran that we see this most clearly. Apart from nuclear weapons, Iran is becoming a major regional power with a substantial sphere of influence. Rather than attempt to block the Iranians directly, the United States has chosen to stand by and allow the game to play out, making it clear to the Israelis that it prefers diplomacy over military action, which in practical terms means allowing events to take their own course.
This is not necessarily a foolish policy. The entire notion of the balance of power is built on the assumption that regional challengers confront regional opponents who will counterbalance them. Balance-of-power theory assumes the leading power intervenes only when an imbalance occurs. Since no intervention is practical in China, Europe or Russia, a degree of passivity makes sense. In the case of Iran, where military action against its conventional forces is difficult and against its nuclear facilities risky, the same logic applies.
In this strategy, Obama has not returned to the 1990s. Rather, he is attempting to stake out new ground. It is not isolationism in its classic sense, as the United States is now the only global power. He appears to be engineering a new strategy, acknowledging that many outcomes in most of the world are acceptable to the United States and that no one outcome is inherently superior or possible to achieve. The U.S. interest lies in resuming its own prosperity; the arrangements the rest of the world makes are, within very broad limits, acceptable.
Put differently, unable to return U.S. foreign policy to the 1990s and unwilling and unable to continue the post-9/11 strategy, Obama is pursuing a policy of acquiescence. He is decreasing the use of military force and, having limited economic leverage, allowing the system to evolve on its own.
Implicit in this strategy is the existence of overwhelming military force, particularly naval power.
Europe is not manageable through military force, and it poses the most serious long-term threat. As Europe frays, Germany's interests may be better served in a relationship with Russia. Germany needs Russian energy, and Russia needs German technology. Neither is happy with American power, and together they may limit it. Indeed, an entente between Germany and Russia was a founding fear of U.S. foreign policy from World War I until the Cold War. This is the only combination that could conceivably threaten the United States. The American counter here is to support Poland, which physically divides the two, along with other key allies in Europe, and the United States is doing this with a high degree of caution.
China is highly vulnerable to naval force because of the configuration of its coastal waters, which provides choke points for access to its shores. The ultimate Chinese fear is an American blockade, which the weak Chinese navy would be unable to counter, but this is a distant fear. Still, it is the ultimate American advantage.
Russia's vulnerability lies in the ability of its former fellow members of the Soviet Union, which it is trying to organize into a Eurasian Union, to undermine its post-Soviet agenda. The United States has not interfered in this process significantly, but it has economic incentives and covert influence it could use to undermine or at least challenge Russia. Russia is aware of these capabilities and that the United States has not yet used them.
The same strategy is in place with Iran. Sanctions on Iran are unlikely to work because they are too porous and China and Russia will not honor them. Still, the United States pursues them not for what they will achieve but for what they will avoid -- namely, direct action. Rhetoric aside, the assumption underlying U.S. quiescence is that regional forces, the Turks in particular, will be forced to deal with the Iranians themselves, and that patience will allow a balance of power to emerge.
Read more: The State of the World: Explaining U.S. Strategy | Stratfor
So about 20-25 years after the fall of Berlin wall, the world's super power rests only on Naval strength. Its army and air-force are no where as capable as they once were. We are seeing the slow drop-by-drop decline in front of our eyes. But since this a long and slow process, its significance is lost to many.Acharya wrote:http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/state-wo ... s-strategy
The Failure of Reset
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Implicit in this strategy is the existence of overwhelming military force, particularly naval power.
Ghost of Munich?? And even if Germany manages to get all the resources and energy from Russia, where will the market for Germany's finished goods lie, in Russia?Europe is not manageable through military force, and it poses the most serious long-term threat. As Europe frays, Germany's interests may be better served in a relationship with Russia. Germany needs Russian energy, and Russia needs German technology. Neither is happy with American power, and together they may limit it. Indeed, an entente between Germany and Russia was a founding fear of U.S. foreign policy from World War I until the Cold War. This is the only combination that could conceivably threaten the United States. The American counter here is to support Poland, which physically divides the two, along with other key allies in Europe, and the United States is doing this with a high degree of caution.
How long? By the end of this decade, by all calculations, america will not construct any SSBN, having long forfeited the experience of building world-class diesel submarines. By the end of this decade China will be able to field a formidable Submarine fleet. And it is on this fleet, and not ASBM or J-20 that China will depend on breaking any naval blockade against it. China knows its ASBM and J-20 are expendable toys. Once ASBM is fired, it cant be reused. And ASBM is vulnerable to the hyper-sonic missile that US is building, including the counter-measures already available in American CBG. The J-20 in spite of having a big bomb load carrying capacity or range, will be dependent on its avionics suite.China is highly vulnerable to naval force because of the configuration of its coastal waters, which provides choke points for access to its shores. The ultimate Chinese fear is an American blockade, which the weak Chinese navy would be unable to counter, but this is a distant fear. Still, it is the ultimate American advantage.
In Democracy in America, published in 1835, Tocqueville wrote of the New World and its burgeoning democratic order. Observing from the perspective of a detached social scientist, Tocqueville wrote of his travels through America in the early 19th century when the market revolution, Western expansion, and Jacksonian democracy were radically transforming the fabric of American life. One purpose of writing Democracy in America, according to Joshua Kaplan, was to help the people of France get a better understanding of their position between a fading aristocratic order and an emerging democratic order, and to help them sort out the confusion.[2] Tocqueville saw democracy as an equation that balanced liberty and equality, concern for the individual as well as the community. Tocqueville's impressions of American religion and its relationship to the broader national culture are likewise notable:
"Moreover, almost all the sects of the United States are comprised within the great unity of Christianity, and Christian morality is everywhere the same. In the United States the sovereign authority is religious, and consequently hypocrisy must be common; but there is no country in the whole world in which the Christian religion retains a greater influence over the souls of men than in America, and there can be no greater proof of its utility, and of its conformity to human nature, than that its influence is most powerfully felt over the most enlightened and free nation of the earth.
The Americans combine the notions of Christianity and of liberty so intimately in their minds, that it is impossible to make them conceive the one without the other; and with them this conviction does not spring from that barren traditionary faith which seems to vegetate in the soul rather than to live.
There are certain populations in Europe whose unbelief is only equaled by their ignorance and their debasement, while in America one of the freest and most enlightened nations in the world fulfills all the outward duties of religion with fervor.
Upon my arrival in the United States, the religious aspect of the country was the first thing that struck my attention; and the longer I stayed there, the more did I perceive the great political consequences resulting from this state of things, to which I was unaccustomed. In France I had almost always seen the spirit of religion and the spirit of freedom pursuing courses diametrically opposed to each other; but in America I found that they were intimately united, and that they reigned in common over the same country."
Source: Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, (New York: A. S. Barnes & Co., 1851), pp. 331, 332, 335, 336-7, 337, respectively.
Tocqueville saw equality as an emerging and unstoppable force in modern life.[2] He wrote of "Political Consequences of the Social State of the Anglo-Americans" by saying "But one also finds in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to want to bring the strong down to their level, and which reduces men to preferring equality in servitude to inequality in freedom".[17] He further comments on equality by saying "Furthermore, when citizens are all almost equal, it becomes difficult for them to defend their independence against the aggressions of power. As none of them is strong enough to fight alone with advantage, the only guarantee of liberty is for everyone to combine forces. But such a combination is not always in evidence."[18] The above is often misquoted as a slavery quote due to previous translations of the French text. The most recent translation from Arthur Goldhammer in 2004 translates the meaning to be as stated above. Examples of misquoted sources are numerous on the internet;[19] the actual text does not contain the words "Americans were so enamored by equality" anywhere in the text.
But it will remain the chairman of a larger board.
The world balance of power is changing. Countries like China, India, Turkey and Brazil are heard from more frequently and on a wider range of subjects. The European Union's most ambitious global project—creating a universal treaty to reduce carbon emissions—has collapsed, and EU expansion has slowed to a crawl as Europe turns inward to deal with its debt crisis. Japan has ceded its place as the largest economy in Asia to China and appears increasingly on the defensive in the region as China's hard and soft power grow.
The international chattering class has a label for these changes: American decline. The dots look so connectable: The financial crisis, say the pundits, comprehensively demonstrated the failure of "Anglo-Saxon" capitalism. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have sapped American strength and, allegedly, destroyed America's ability to act in the Middle East. China-style "state capitalism" is all the rage. Throw in the assertive new powers and there you have it—the portrait of America in decline. Actually, what's been happening is just as fateful but much more complex. The United States isn't in decline, but it is in the midst of a major rebalancing. The alliances and coalitions America built in the Cold War no longer suffice for the tasks ahead. As a result, under both the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations, American foreign policy has been moving toward the creation of new, sometimes difficult partnerships as it retools for the tasks ahead.
From the 1970s to the start of this decade, the world was in what future historians may call the Trilateral Era. In the early '70s, Americans responded to the defeat in Vietnam and the end of the Bretton Woods era by inviting key European allies and Japan to join in the creation of a trilateral system. Western Europe, Japan and the U.S. accounted for an overwhelming proportion of the international economy in the noncommunist world. With overlapping interests on a range of issues, the trilateral powers were able to set the global agenda on some key questions. Currency policy, the promotion of free trade, integrating the developing world into the global financial system, assisting the transition of Warsaw Pact economies into the Western World—the trilateralists had a lot to show for their efforts.
Despite all the talk of American decline, the countries that face the most painful changes are the old trilateral partners. Japan must live with a disturbing rival presence, China, in a region that, with American support, it once regarded as its backyard. In Europe, countries that were once global imperial powers must accept another step in their long retreat from empire. For American foreign policy, the key now is to enter deep strategic conversations with our new partners—without forgetting or neglecting the old. The U.S. needs to build a similar network of relationships and institutional linkages that we built in postwar Europe and Japan and deepened in the trilateral years. Think tanks, scholars, students, artists, bankers, diplomats and military officers need to engage their counterparts in each of these countries as we work out a vision for shared prosperity in the new century. The American world vision isn't powerful because it is American; it is powerful because it is, for all its limits and faults, the best way forward. This is why the original trilateral partners joined the U.S. in promoting it a generation ago, and why the world's rising powers will rally to the cause today.
American exceptionalism is being put to the test. During the medieval period in India also, large sections of the Hindu and Moslem cognoscenti had the idea of Indian exceptionalism. Akbar even tried to conjure up a vision of Din e Elahi and Sulh i Kull with Fetehpur Sikri as GHQ. The seal of such a vision in the form of the advent of a person was also expected by some, and augured by personages such as Guru Gobind Singh ji. But the Rabbani characters won out by assassination of liberals, ideological and political mobilization and restarting campaigns of conquest and erasure of the other.devesh wrote:just as Roman universalism failed in Europe, are we seeing the "American" universalism beginning to "fail" in North America?
The war on terror is corrupting all it touches
Simon Jenkins
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 12 April 2012
Prime Minister Tony Blair meets Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi in 2007. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA
Every student agitator is a terrorist, every internet hacker, cafeteria dissident, freedom fighter and insurgent leader.
On Monday the Modern Spies programme substantiated an extraordinary allegation that suggested how far the war on terror has descended into legal abyss. The claim was that MI6 rolled the pitch for Tony Blair's bizarre 2004 hug-in with Libya's Colonel Gaddafi by apparently arranging for the CIA to kidnap Gaddafi's opponent in exile, Abdel Hakim Belhaj. He was seized in Bangkok, where he and his wife were en route to Britain. It's been suggested they were "rendered" via the British colony of Diego Garcia to Tajoura jail in Tripoli. Belhaj spent six years, and his wife four and a half months, at the tender mercies of Gaddafi's security boss, Moussa Koussa. Belhaj's pregnant wife was taped like a mummy on a stretcher, and he was systematically tortured. Koussa himself denies any involvement in torture.
With this gift came a covering letter from MI6's Mark Allen, offering Koussa congratulations on the "safe arrival" of the "air cargo [Belhaj]. This was the least we could do for you and for Libya to demonstrate the remarkable relationship we have built over the years." Within two weeks Gaddafi was welcoming a fawning Blair in his famous desert tent, and announcing that he would abjure terrorism and set aside his "planned" weapons of mass destruction. The plans were spurious, but the deal allowed Blair to walk tall in Washington at a time when the Iraq invasion was turning sour.
Less spurious were other elements in the strange relationship. It was claimed Britain would not just deliver Belhaj but lift sanctions. Gaddafi would greet BP's Lord Browne, accompanied by Allen, who switched with full ministerial approval from being an MI6 officer to a £200,000 special adviser to BP. When, three years later, the £15bn deal with BP seemed to falter, it's claimed Allen pressed his old boss, Jack Straw, to release Libya's Lockerbie bomber, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi. Allen was a senior adviser to Monitor consultancy, which helped boost Gaddafi's world image, and assisted the London School of Economics, on whose advisory board Allen sat and where Gaddafi's son Saif was receiving a much-heralded PhD. The new chairman of BP was none other than Sir Peter Sutherland, also chairman of the LSE.
When, in 2011, Gaddafi's regime was visibly tottering, Britain coolly deserted him. Sanctions were reimposed, but no one thought to tell Nato special forces, present at the fall of Tripoli, to find and secure the building in which the incriminating documents lay. Presumably to the horror of MI6, Human Rights Watch got there first and found Allen's letter, which was handed to journalists. To make things worse, Belhaj was now out of jail and head of Tripoli's military council. Worse still, his old nemesis, Koussa, had shrewdly defected as Gaddafi crumbled and was able to confirm Belhaj's suspicions of British complicity in his fate.
Belhaj is not a man to hide a grievance and is now suing Allen and the British government for "complicity in torture" and "misfeasance in public office". He has reportedly been offered and refused £1m from the British government to shut up. As a tale of panic and cock-up it beats Smiley's People.
MI6 puts out the usual line that it only follows "ministerially authorised government policy". The relevant ministers at the time were Straw and Blair, who should have been fully briefed in 2004 on Gaddafi's apparent U-turn and the reasons behind it. Both men have denied knowledge of Belhaj's rendition and torture, or the suggestion that it and Megrahi's release were a quid pro quo for oil. Both have plaintively remarked that ministers may be responsible yet cannot know everything.
In Allen's defence, it can be said that he was doing exactly what his masters so badly wanted. Blair in 2004 was craven to Washington, desperate to win a spur in George Bush's crusade against militant Islamism. At the time, CIA rendition flights were criss-crossing the world with Muslims bolted to the floor. A couple more as a gift to a kindly dictator seemed small beer. As for whether Allen mentioned it to Straw, known to be supporting his bid to head MI6, neither he nor Straw is telling.
On Monday the foreign secretary, William Hague, grasped at the straw of Belhaj's law suit in declining to comment. He said, with a broad smile, that the whole matter was "sub judice". The implication, that his remarks might prejudice a trial, was that this would be held in public. But these are precisely the cases that the cabinet now wants to ensure are conducted in secret.
The morass now thickens. On 22 February, the court of appeal in London showed itself equally mesmerised by the "war on terror". It upheld the conviction of a London university student, Mohammed Gul, for disseminating "terrorism" over the internet. Not content with imprisoning the pathetic and repentant Gul for five years, their lordships felt an urge to political theory.
They declared that the war on terror embraced not just Gul but "acts by insurgents against the armed forces of a state anywhere in the world which sought to influence a government and were made for political purposes". Under legislation, terrorism included not just acts of violence but any threat made for "the purpose of advancing a political, religious, racial or ideological cause". These threats might include nothing more than a "serious risk to public health and safety" or "seriously to disrupt an electronic system".
From this catch-all lexicography, dissidents and insurgents under any regime were not excluded. Their lordships noted that it seemed there was nothing that would exempt those engaged in attacks on the military during the course of insurgency from the definition of terrorism. It was hard luck all Kurds, Kosovans, Benghazians, Tibetans and Iranian exiles – and today's Syrian rebels. They are all terrorists.
This is ridiculous. Gul's Bin Laden fantasies were not remotely in the same boat as Belhaj's opposition to Gaddafi. Yet both were seized as terrorists and imprisoned by agents of British government. They are joined in judicial calumny with millions round the world who are struggling against dictatorial regimes and willing harm to their "armed forces". Every student agitator is a terrorist, every internet hacker, cafeteria dissident, freedom fighter and insurgent leader. The war on terror is corrupting all it touches, while parliament meekly passes each twist of the ratchet of repression.
• This article was amended on 13 April 2012. It originally referred to Monday night's programme as a Panorama documentary. This has now been corrected
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+1.devesh wrote:India and US most certainly don't have the same interests in ME. US coddling of Islamists shows this. of course, as long as the present basic structure of Indian rashtra remains, there is this illusion of that "same interests" of US and India in ME. but once this structure collapses, Indian interests will aggressively turn against Islamism. so this supposed "same interests" is actually not true. it is a forced jacket that India is coerced into wearing.
In east asia, our interests are aligned, at this moment of time only. And that too because of our ongoing concerns with China.shyamd wrote:Even east asian sea routes and the security of the East Asian states, passage of oil through the straits of hormuz and security of crucial choke points, piracy, suez etc? Lets be realistic..
Unprecedented Latin American opposition to U.S. sanctions on communist Cuba left President Barack Obama isolated at the Summit of the Americas on Sunday and illustrated Washington's waning influence in the region. In contrast to the rock-star status he enjoyed at the 2009 summit in Trinidad and Tobago shortly after taking office, Obama has had a bruising time at the two-day meeting in Colombia of some 30 heads of state from across the Americas.
Thanks to the U.S. and Canadian line on Cuba, the heads of state were unable to produce a final declaration as the summit fizzled out on Sunday.
In an ironic twist, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton went dancing after midnight on Sunday at a Cartagena bar called "Cafe Havana" where Cuban music is played.
Havana was kicked out of the OAS a few years after Fidel Castro's 1959 revolution, and has been excluded from its summits due to opposition from the United States and Canada.
Ecuador's President Rafael Correa boycotted the meeting over Cuba, and fellow leftist Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua also stayed at home. The leftist ALBA bloc of nations - including Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Nicaragua and some Caribbean nations - said they will not attend future summits without Cuba's presence.
Note the Morales is stamping his foot on exactly ground that once executed Che with CIA help. Che must be laughing heartily.Gunjur wrote:Ecuador's President Rafael Correa boycotted the meeting over Cuba, and fellow leftist Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua also stayed at home. The leftist ALBA bloc of nations - including Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Nicaragua and some Caribbean nations - said they will not attend future summits without Cuba's presence.
It seems superman is being questioned in his own backyard. Pretty interesting.
US fought against leftists everywhere across the globe. But how is that after the cold war, more or less entire latin america is turning left? or is it that the US then didn't allow leftists to come up in it's backyard, now does not care as cold war is over??brihaspati wrote:Note the Morales is stamping his foot on exactly ground that once executed Che with CIA help. Che must be laughing heartily.Gunjur wrote: Ecuador's President Rafael Correa boycotted the meeting over Cuba, and fellow leftist Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua also stayed at home. The leftist ALBA bloc of nations - including Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Nicaragua and some Caribbean nations - said they will not attend future summits without Cuba's presence.
It seems superman is being questioned in his own backyard. Pretty interesting.
The summit of the informal network of rising centers of global power known by the acronym BRICS held in New Delhi from March 28-29 gave politicians and experts greater confidence in the organization’s long-term geopolitical viability. BRICS was based on the affinity the economies of its member states have for one another, and that gave rise to doubts about its future, particularly its ability to represent the positions of its five countries on a consolidated basis. In addition, BRICS’s foreign policy component lags far behind its economic activities, something that all of its members recognize. The informality of BRICS also shows up in the way it is organized.The BRICS summit in India highlighted Russia in terms of the organization’s ability to consolidate international positions in order to create a meaningful counterweight to the West, which has the United States at its forefront.BRICS is facing numerous objective and subjective difficulties en route to becoming a completed geopolitical project. The continuing strategic distrust between China and India is among the foremost obstacles. Beijing and New Delhi have not overcome their mutual suspicions. On the contrary, they grow more suspicious of one another with each passing year. The autumn of 1962 can be considered the point at which their antagonism began growing. That was when a territorial war broke out between the two giants of South and East Asia and ended with the Chinese winning a positional victory. This situation has changed little in the 60 years since the war.
The opponency between the two countries has had both positive and negative aspects for other global actors that would like to have closer relations equally with both India and China. It is not difficult to see that Washington derives most of the benefit from the strategic Indo-Chinese confrontation. The United States is improving its relations with India and is putting China on the defensive, as a country under threat of a naval blockade of all of its vital lines of communication. The threat to China’s marine and land access to the Middle East through India is increasingly more vividly apparent in China’s recent vulnerability to the United States and its Asia-Pacific allies in the South China and East China seas..The situation between India and China is predominantly negative for Russia, but it appears that Moscow can also derive strategic benefits from the Indo-Chinese conflict. The Indians and the Chinese are almost equally in need of a so-called “third force” that would function, if not as an arbiter between them, at least as a global power which, by its very presence and smooth relations with both states, would contribute to regional balance and stability. A simple analysis shows that Russia is in fact the only actor that can claim to be that so-called “third force.”Statements by Russia’s president at the BRICS summit in India show that Moscow wants to pursue a consistent policy of improving relations between India and China. Medvedev said that “our strategic goal would be to gradually transform BRICS into a full-fledged mechanism for cooperation on the major issues of global economics and politics,” and “this modernization will be based on a concept that we arrive at together.” Those words effectively transferred the foreign policy baton to Russia’s new head of state.
Thus, all three of Eurasia’s major powers — which are members of BRICS and encompass 40% of the world’s population, 20% of the global economy and 15% of world trade — need a joint foreign policy concept, through which the association can become a geopolitically complete project. And Russia is the “third force” that can bring the Indo-Chinese strategic conflict into balance.
http://english.chosun.com/site/data/htm ... 00458.htmlThe nine-day-old naval standoff between China and the Philippines showed few signs of cooling on Thursday, with Beijing sending a powerful military vessel toward the disputed islands in the South China Sea.
According to Chinese media reports Thursday, officials say the country's most advanced fishing patrol vessel, the Yuzheng 310, has been sent to protect Chinese fishermen in the region.
The standoff began early last week when Chinese surveillance ships prevented a Philippines warship from arresting several Chinese fishermen near Scarborough Shoal, an area both sides claim as sovereign territory.
Manila has requested to refer the issue to an international court, arguing the shoal is well within its internationally recognized exclusive economic zone.
Wednesday, Beijing rejected that request and summoned the Philippines Charge d'Affaires, Alex Chua, over the issue.
Not bad strategic planThe US nor any of the Western nuclear powers, Britain and France, have a treaty with India to come to her side in case of a nuclear war between India and either of her potential adversaries, Pakistan and China. India is already fighting Pakistan in Kashmir and relations are degrading quickly. And there are numerous scenarios for a Indian-Chinese confrontation.
So the question is why is the West and in particular the sole superpower, the Us, who have declared themselves the "global police", allowing the obvious escalation of nuclear weapons and degradation of relationships between these three nuclear powers?
The threat of a nuclear war in Asia is the most dangerous and most imminent global threat today, or is it not? Could the US be calculating that any combination of a nuclear war in Asia would be in the US and Western interest, in general? Is the US miscalculating that this war would be a "limited" nuclear war and hence will not threaten global annihilation? The Soviet Union had already done analysis back in the 60's and came the conclusion that a "limited' nuclear war can be won. Their logic being that a successful first strike, sufficient to counter any or limited retaliation, will not create a nuclear winter and hence to the victor go the spoils. The point being the rest of the globe can survive a limited nuclear war in Asia and the West would benefit from the crippled Asian powers.
I hope President Obama has a strong backbone to quench any burning desires in the hierarchy because the Republican President Romney certainly won't.
We cannot risk our survival based on arrogant and emotional semantics in defining variants a nuclear war scenarios. There is only one scenario and that is total global annihilation, a nuclear winter. We all lose.
China and Russia began their first-ever joint naval exercises on Sunday, focusing on air defense, anti-submarine tactics, search and rescue, as well as joint efforts to rescue hijacked vessels. The large-scale war game is scheduled to run through Friday off the resort city of Qingdao in the Yellow Sea.
Isn't varyag the new aircraft carrier being built/modified by china after being bought from ukraine or is it?? Or both china&russia have their own varyag's??China has deployed 16 ships and two submarines, and Russia sent the guided-missile cruiser Varyag, three Udaloy class destroyers and three support ships.