September 15, 2018
Good work Mr. President! You have now managed to lay the groundwork for a grand Chinese-Russian alliance. The objective of intelligent diplomacy is to divide one’s foes, not to unite them.
This epic blunder comes at a time when the US appears to be getting ready for overt military action in Syria against Russian and Syrian forces operating there. The excuse, as before, will be false-flag attacks with chlorine gas, a chemical widely used in the region for water purification. It appears that the fake attacks have already been filmed.
Meanwhile, some 303,000 Russian, Chinese and Mongolian soldiers are engaged in massive maneuvers in eastern Siberia and naval exercises in the Sea of Japan and Sea of Okhotsk. The latter, an isolated region of Arctic water, is the bastion of Russia’s Pacific Fleet of nuclear-armed missile submarines.
Interestingly, President Vladimir Putin, who has attended the war games with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, just offered to end the state of war between Russia and Japan that has continued since 1945. He also offered some sort of deal to resolve the very complex problem of the Russian-occupied Kuril Islands (Northern Territories to Japan) that has bedeviled Moscow–Tokyo relations since the war. The barren Kurils control the exits and entry to the Sea of Okhotsk where Russia’s nuclear missiles shelter.
In the current war games, Russia has deployed 30,000 military vehicles and 1,000 combat aircraft. China contributed 3,200 troops, 30 warplanes and naval units. Most of the equipment deployed in Vostok-18 was state of the art. Russia’s and China’s infantry, artillery and armor appeared impressive and combat ready – or as we in the US Army used to say, ‘STRAC.’
Why were these huge exercises being held in remotest eastern Siberia? First, so China could contribute forces close to its territory. Second, as a possible warning to the United States not to invade North Korea, which is just to the south and abuts on both China and Russia. Third, as a demonstration of the improved effectiveness of Russia and China’s military and as a warning to the US and its NATO satraps not to pick a fight with Russia over Ukraine, Syria or the Black Sea.
On a grander scale, Beijing and Moscow were signaling their new ‘entente cordiale’ designed to counter-balance the reckless military ambitions of the Trump administration, which has been rumbling about a wider war in Syria and intervention in, of all places, Venezuela. The feeling in Russia and China is that the Trump White House is drunk with power and unable to understand the consequences of its military actions, a fact underlined by recent alarming exposés about it.
Russia and China appear – at least for now – to have overcome their historic mutual suspicion and animosity. In the over-heated imagination of many Russians, China often appears to be the modern incarnation of the Mongol hordes of the past that held ancient Rus in feudal thrall. Russians still call China ‘Kitai’, or Cathay.
For the Chinese, Russia is the menacing power that stole large parts of eastern Siberia in the 19th century. Today, Russia frets that China’s 1.4 billion people will one day swamp the Russian Far East which has only 6.2 million inhabitants spread over a vast, largely empty region which is one of the world’s least inhabited.
In the 1960’s, after the Soviet Union and China became ideological antagonists, the two sides frequently clashed along their border rivers, Amur and Ussuri. They almost stumbled into a full-scale war on their 4,000 km border– at a time when the US had invaded Vietnam supposedly to ‘halt Chinese-Soviet aggression.’ The CIA was as ill-informed back then as it is today.
Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping attended the grand display, along with their senior military staffs. This week-long martial event, Russia’s largest war games in almost four decades, overshadowed the smaller military exercise being staged by NATO in Ukraine.
The message from eastern Siberia was clear: Washington’s reckless hostility and bellicosity is causing its foes to band together. A full third of the Russian Army just moved from Europe to the Far East for the war games. The Chinese dragon of which Napoleon warned is awakening.
Copyright Eric S. Margolis 2018
Why is China and Russia the foes of the United States?
Our enemy is domestic. The people that lied us into a war in Iraq is our enemy. The people who destroyed Libya and left it in civil war with slavery markets, who did this presumably to “prevent a humanitarian crisis” is our enemy. The people who are bombing Syria after arming terrorists with chemical weapons to frame Assad, that’s our enemies. The people that have increased opium production in Afghanistan from 5% of the world’s supply to 85% of the world’s supply under US OCCUPATION – that is our enemy.
Neither Russia nor China threat us. The criminals that run this nation, they threaten us, and they threaten the entire world. They’ve murdered enough of them.
I can’t stop these criminals. Voting doesn’t matter, protesting doesn’t matter, education doesn’t matter. Our own media is part of this criminal cabal. What can we do? You want to live in the 4th Reich, or you want a collapse of it? That’s pretty much our choice, because voting doesn’t matter, nothing matters, they will never listen to us, they’ll spend trillions of dollars of future tax obligations, enslave our children, and kill our servicemen, and there’s no discussion, no reasoning, no pleading that will stop them.
As long as the status quo is maintained, this will continue. It surprises me that Trump has 30% support… I didn’t think there were that many stupid people in the world, let alone the US. Doug Ford in Canada, is our up and coming Donald… it’s contagious.
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Dik
What is the option ? Trump or Hillary ? People voted NO Hillary, not so much for Trump… Same with Ford in Ontario… Both the Libs and the NDP there made themselves so unappealing that left only Ford. The poor quality of leaders of parties at all levels in both the US and Canada make any vote a joke… if only none of the above was a option…. the only winners are the special interests and money behind the fools who win.
The American Bully has done it again; so much for the Rule of Law:
WASHINGTON: The United States threatened Monday to arrest and sanction judges and other officials of the International Criminal Court if it moves to charge any American who served in Afghanistan with war crimes.
US National Security Advisor John Bolton, pictured in Jerusalem in August 2018, described the International Criminal Court as ‘outright dangerous’
White House National Security Advisor John Bolton called the Hague-based rights body “unaccountable” and “outright dangerous” to the United States, Israel and other allies, and said any probe of US service members would be “an utterly unfounded, unjustifiable investigation.”
Dik
I am not so certain that the reckless hostility is Trumps doing… as any time Trump has attempted to engage Russia in any meaningful way he is immediately attacked by the media, the democrats, his own party, and the know it all deep state type advisors that have shaped the world we have today. What would a President Hillary have done in his place? Would the war have started already ? The politics of the US seem so shaped by fear… of Russians, or Muslims, or really anyone the public are told hate them… for their freedoms or other such nonsense. I think perhaps part might be an underlining guilt as some realize they wouldn’t stand to be treated the way their country treats others.