Tuesday, July 8, 2014
125 Years Ago... Or Today?
Ripped from the pages of the Wall Street Journal in July 1889...or today?
Jacksonville Police State Going to 18,000 Homes Looking for Drugs and Guns without warrants
This week, the Jacksonville Sheriff’s office announced that they would be installing new security cameras around the city and knocking on more than 18,000 doors, without warrants, as a part of an initiative called “operation ceasefire”.
Sheriff John Rutherford, Mayor Alvin Brown and Councilwoman Denise Lee made the announcement this Tuesday at a press conference outside of the local Sheriff’s office. The sheriff admitted that many aspects of the program, including the security cameras, would be paid for with money that was taken from victims of the drug war.
“We’re going to use the drug money we pull out of this neighborhood to protect this neighborhood,” Rutherford said.
In addition to the aspects of the project which are being funded through asset forfeiture, the department is also asking for tax funding of over 3 million dollars for new officers. The stated goal of this program is to decrease violent crime, most of which is related to the drug trade. However, the violence of the drug war is a direct result of prohibition, and the best way to stop that violence is to end prohibition.
Mayor Brown said at the press conference that “We must also be tough on the causes of crime. One of the best ways to stop crime is to prevent it.”
Unfortunately, he does not seem to realize that prohibition is actually one of the main things causing violent crime.
As explained in this article, 8 reasons to end prohibition of all drugs immediately:
The steady increase in violent crime over the past few decades is directly correlated with the escalation of the drug war. As we saw during the times of alcohol prohibition, when you ban any inanimate object, you create an incentive for people to get involved in the black market distribution of that object. Since there is no accountability, or means of peaceful dispute resolution within the black market, buyers and sellers are forced to resort to violence as their sole means of handling disagreements.
Eventually, this violence spills over into the everyday world and effects everyone’s lives. No one could imagine Budweiser and Miller Lite in a back alley gunfight, but less than a century ago during alcohol prohibition, distributors of the drug were involved in shootouts on a regular basis, just as drug gangs are today. Of course, all of this violence came to an immediate end when alcohol was legalized, however, it was not long before the establishment found a new crusade in the drug war, which allowed them to continue the same policy just with different substances.
At the press conference, there were also many complaints about budget cuts, which may be the true reason behind this seemingly desperate call for action from the police department.
Credit to The Free Thought Project
Read more at http://thefreethoughtproject.com/jacksonville-police-18000-doors/#zfTXl7CxzGKzjSmW.99
WHO REALLY KILLED AMBASSADOR STEVENS AND WHAT IT HAS TO DO WITH THE UN TAKEOVER OF THE U.S.
The Benghazi scandal will eventually find the light of day. It is the story that will not die because some very powerful people are determined that the truth be brought out in order to promote regime change related to the Obama administration.
Cries for Help Ignored
Three times Ambassador Chris Stevens begged for more military protection and three times, then Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, denied Stevens cries for help. Clinton did not respond to requests for help by saying no, she responded by not responding to the pleas through official channels.
Stevens had long been a CIA asset who had run guns to al-Qaeda for the purposes of gaining assistance for the CIA inspired led regime changes in Libya and then in Syria. This is nothing new and has been widely reported.
It is not a secret that the CIA’s propensity to use rogue forces to accomplish a foreign policy objective (i.e., regime change) is not new. The fact that the CIA engages in drug trafficking to fund such an operation is also not new as the American public was introduced to the existence of Air America, Iran-Contra and the nefarious actions of Lt. Colonel Oliver North in televised congressional hearings during the Reagan administration.
What was not known at the time of Iran-Contra, was that the CIA was convicted, through its paramilitary assets and civilian contractor liaisons (e.g. Blackwater, DynCorp, Wachovia Wells Fargo and Halliburton), not only with drug trafficking but sex trafficking to raise the money to arm al-Qaeda in the attack upon Libya and then Syria. Part Three reveal that every major bank is involved all the way up to the Federal Reserve.
On May 1, 2014, Tosh Plumlee told Alex Jones and his audience that he has firsthand knowledge of US gun running and ancillary drug running to support Black Ops operations in the Middle East. This is the same exact pattern which was utilized to fuel the Iran-Contra Affair in which the Russian backed Sandinistas would be opposed by the Contra using funds derived from CIA basked drug operations which led to the rise of drug-related street gangs in South Central LA in which cocaine became the main commodity. The implication is that the same thing was going on at the time of Ambassador Stevens death in that Stevens was running guns to al-Qaeda. However, there was one more key element of CIA funding which would be used to fund the of proxy forces for the purpose or regime change and that would child sex trafficking.
Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney Was the First Notable to Expose These Crimes of the Century
Former Representative Cynthia McKinney was told in 2006 by then Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, that it was not President Bush’s policy of the Bush administration to award companies, with a track record of human trafficking with government contracts. Yet, the practice continues, government contracts are still awarded even as innocent children sex trafficked. are sold into a life of slavery at the behest of Halliburton, Dyncorp, Wachovia Wells Fargo and other multinational corporations with close ties to the political and corporate elite.
In 2006, McKinney grilled the Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, with the following question: “Well how do you explain the fact that DynCorp and its successor companies have received and continue to receive government contracts?” This question was posed to Rumsfeld AFTER McKinney had pointed out that several multinational corporations, with close ties to the elite, had already been busted for selling innocent children into a life of child sex slavery. The heated exchange takes place here.
Drug running and child sex trafficking are big business. As the reader will discover, later in this article, the money is skimmed, laundered and used to promote regime change through the use of proxy forces such as al-Qaeda. If one can be made to understand this process, then one can understand the power of the shadow government and how it effectively operates as the supreme fourth branch of government.
US Military Leadership Is In Survival Mode
As Ambassador Chris Stevens was begging for help after the attack had begun, AFRICOM commander, General Hamm, had activated a special forces team within minutes of learning that the embassy, which was really a CIA safe house, in charge of facilitating an arms transfer between the CIA and its proxy representatives (e.g. Chris Stevens) was under attack.
The military does not give a damn about drug running and child sex trafficking. However, they do care about their careers and the preservation of the military as an independent and viable entity. The firing of 260+ senior command officers by Obama, serves to threaten this viability. The presence of UN vehicles and troops also threaten the viability of the US military.
From the perspective of the military, the Obama administration is the mortal enemy of the viability and independence of the American military.
According to the same sources who accurately told me that Admiral Gayoutte and General Hamm were launching a rescue mission designed to save Chris Stevens when they were arrested by CIA personnel serving in their ranks, these men wanted to save Stevens to expose Obama’s betrayal of this country and it ideals, namely, to bring to light drug running, child sex trafficking in order to fund the purchase of arms to be used by proxy forces in promoting regime change.. This was an old-fashioned coup attempt. By saving Stevens, Hamm could have leveraged this information to obtain an American regime change based on these explosive revelations. We know that much of the former military leadership in this country favors a regime change which would remove Obama from power.
If one cares to do the research, I was reporting on these facts that Obama had survived a coup attempt at this time. A few months later, people like Glenn Beck decided they would publish similar information after criticizing me a few months earlier for printing what they would eventually publish. These same insider sources are telling me that child sex trafficking was helping to support the arming of the rebels in Libya and Syria. Yes, I am saying that General Hamm was part of plot which would have brought down Obama and Clinton in one fell swoop. This was an attempted military coup just as I had previously reported.
When General Ham received his “stand down” orders from Obama, he made plans to commit mutiny and go ahead with the rescue of Stevens, as he did, he was arrested within minutes of contravening he order by his second in command, General Rodriquez. Admiral Gayouette, the commander of Carrier Strike Group Three, was preparing to provide intelligence and air cover for General Hamm’s rescue team in violation of his standing orders and he was promptly relieved of command for allegations of inappropriate leadership judgment.”
The positions held by Hamm and Gayouette are so powerful and so sensitive, their replacements required approval from the Senate. Also, at that time, the Middle East was considered to be a war zone in which it was believed that the US was trying to provoke Syria and/or Iran into attacking the US so we could have the pretext for invasion.
Key questions about the mutiny on Benghazi:
1. Did Hamm and Gayouette commit mutiny in a war zone?
Answer: Without question!
2. Where did Hamm and Gayouette fit into the power structure of the military?
Answer: In a war zone, these two men represented two of the top four commanders in the region. Hamm would have overseen any military incursion into Syria or Iran. When Obama fired the two leaders, he effectively gutted his military command structure in the region.
3.. Did Hamm and Gayouette’s conspiracy to commit mutiny in the face standing presidential orders occur in isolation?
Answer: Only a person with absolutely no knowledge of military command structure would be so naive to believe this assertion. The military builds in redundant chains of command which overlap. There is no way that Hamm and Gayouette’s mutiny was occurring without the knowledge of their superiors as well as the NSA, which explains how the Obama administration learned of this betrayal and moved to arrest both men before any rescue effort could have been launched.
4. Why were key leaders in the military willing to risk their careers in this mutiny?
Answer: Because every senior command military officer was being faced with the continual acquisition and control of our military by outside forces, this threatened the upward mobility of the more aggressive commanders and it threatened the very viability of the military itself.
Hillary Clinton
When Hillary “What does it matter?” Clinton was unable to contain the fall out, and subsequent cover up from Ambassador Stevens death, she was out as Secretary of State and John “Ketchup” Kerry was in. The appointment of Kerry was a brilliant move by an otherwise bumbling set of attempts to cover up the murder of Stevens. During the Reagan administration, Kerry led a congressional investigation which ultimately led to the conviction and exposure of Air America and the nefarious Iran-Contra Affair which was led by the CIA in violation against the laws of this nation. Kerry’s appointment to the Secretary of State position would ease the fears of a cover up because he had previously blown the lid off of a similar Benghazi operation over 25 years ago. On the surface, Kerry was the perfect choice if the administration wanted to avoid allegations of any further allegations of a Benghazi cover up. Unfortunately, for the Obama administration, the seemingly brilliant appointment of Kerry did not throw the investigative dogs off of the Benghazi trail and it is the scandal, along with the IRS scandal, that will just not go away. This undying attention on this story happened thanks to tips provided to journalists such as myself by disenfranchised and former US military,
If there is ever a revolution in this country involving elements of the US military vs. the blue helmeted foreign (i.e. Russian, Chinese, et al.) assets, these disenfranchised elements of the military, will need the popular support of the people to win.
Conclusion
There are two more important questions to ask:
1. Why did Stevens have to die?
Answer: The administration discovered that the military was providing back-channel information to journalists in order to expose that this administration was doing business with al-Qaeda for the purposes of regime change. Steven was killed less than two months before the election of Obama to a second term. Can one only imagine what the public backlash would have been if Stevens had been rescued, stayed angry and told all in retaliation?
2. Ultimately, why would the military want to save a CIA drug runner and sex trafficker?
Answer: Stevens could have been leveraged to bring down the present administration which poses such a dire threat to the careers of the military’s leadership. FOR THE MILITARY, THE LAST STRAW CONSISTS OF THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION RELEASING MILLIONS OF ILLEGAL ALIENS AS PRETEXT TO THE UN GAINING POLICE POWERS WITHIN THE US UNDER THE GUISE OF PROVIDING HUMANITARIAN ASSISTANCE.
In Part Three, I will expose the irrefutable and publicly available proof that Stevens was sex-trafficking for the CIA in order to promote regime change.
The sources supporting the allegations of drug-running and child sex trafficking in order to raise and launder the money associated with promoting regime change in continue to be former representative, Cynthia McKinney, a quiet but damning Senate Subcommittee Report, a senior banking official from one of the major banks and your common sense.
If you want one more reason as to why there are so many dead banksters, you may get your wish in Part Three.
Credit to Common Sense
Ayatollah Khamenei calls for Iran to raise uranium enrichment
Iran and world powers have less than two weeks to reach an agreement on the future scope of Iran's uranium enrichment program.
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Photo: REUTERS
DUBAI - Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said his country needs to significantly increase its number of centrifuges, underlining a gap in positions between Tehran and world powers as they hold talks aimed at clinching a nuclear accord.
Iran and world powers have less than two weeks to reach an agreement on the future scope of Iran's uranium enrichment program and other issues if they are to meet a self-imposed July 20 deadline for a deal.
Related:
US declines to meet Iran ‘half way’ in final diplomatic push over nuclear crisis
Iran's enrichment capacity lies at the center of the nuclear stalemate and is seen as the hardest issue to resolve. Iran insists it needs to expand its capacity to refine uranium to fuel a planned network of atomic energy plants. The powers say Tehran must sharply reduce the capacity to prevent it being able to quickly produce a nuclear bomb.
"Their aim is that we accept a capacity of 10,000 separative work units (SWUs), which is equivalent to 10,000 centrifuges of the older type that we already have. Our officials say we need 190,000 centrifuges. Perhaps this is not a need this year or in two years or five years, but this is the country's absolute need," Khamenei said in a statement published on his website late on Monday.
"The P5+1 started bargaining with 500 SWUs, then 1,000 SWUs enrichment capacity. Now they want to convince us to (accept) 10,000 SWUs," he added.
Tehran says its program is solely for civilian purposes such as electricity generation and denies any plan to build an atomic bomb.
Iran now has more than 19,000 installed enrichment centrifuges, mostly old-generation IR-1 machines, with about 10,000 of them operating to increase the concentration of uranium's fissile isotope U-235.
In 2006, when the U.N. Security Council imposed its first sanctions resolution against the country, Iran had a few hundred centrifuges that it was testing. Iran has since expanded the number sharply until it stopped doing that under the November 24 interim nuclear deal agreed between Iran and the world powers.
Credit to Jerusalem Post
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Photo: REUTERS
DUBAI - Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said his country needs to significantly increase its number of centrifuges, underlining a gap in positions between Tehran and world powers as they hold talks aimed at clinching a nuclear accord.
Iran and world powers have less than two weeks to reach an agreement on the future scope of Iran's uranium enrichment program and other issues if they are to meet a self-imposed July 20 deadline for a deal.
Related:
US declines to meet Iran ‘half way’ in final diplomatic push over nuclear crisis
Iran's enrichment capacity lies at the center of the nuclear stalemate and is seen as the hardest issue to resolve. Iran insists it needs to expand its capacity to refine uranium to fuel a planned network of atomic energy plants. The powers say Tehran must sharply reduce the capacity to prevent it being able to quickly produce a nuclear bomb.
"Their aim is that we accept a capacity of 10,000 separative work units (SWUs), which is equivalent to 10,000 centrifuges of the older type that we already have. Our officials say we need 190,000 centrifuges. Perhaps this is not a need this year or in two years or five years, but this is the country's absolute need," Khamenei said in a statement published on his website late on Monday.
"The P5+1 started bargaining with 500 SWUs, then 1,000 SWUs enrichment capacity. Now they want to convince us to (accept) 10,000 SWUs," he added.
Tehran says its program is solely for civilian purposes such as electricity generation and denies any plan to build an atomic bomb.
Iran now has more than 19,000 installed enrichment centrifuges, mostly old-generation IR-1 machines, with about 10,000 of them operating to increase the concentration of uranium's fissile isotope U-235.
In 2006, when the U.N. Security Council imposed its first sanctions resolution against the country, Iran had a few hundred centrifuges that it was testing. Iran has since expanded the number sharply until it stopped doing that under the November 24 interim nuclear deal agreed between Iran and the world powers.
Credit to Jerusalem Post
China thinks it can defeat America in battle
The bad news first. The People's Republic of China now believes it can successfully prevent the United States from intervening in the event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan or some other military assault by Beijing.
Now the good news. China is wrong — and for one major reason. It apparently disregards the decisive power of America's nuclear-powered submarines.
Moreover, for economic and demographic reasons Beijing has a narrow historical window in which to use its military to alter the world's power structure. If China doesn't make a major military move in the next couple decades, it probably never will.
The U.S. Navy's submarines — the unsung main defenders of the current world order — must hold the line against China for another 20 years. After that, America can declare a sort of quiet victory in the increasingly chilly Cold War with China.
How China wins
The bad news came from Lee Fuell, from the U.S. Air Force's National Air and Space Intelligence Center, during Fuell's testimony before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 30.
For years, Chinese military planning assumed that any attack by the People's Liberation Army on Taiwan or a disputed island would have to begin with a Pearl Harbor-style preemptive missile strike by China against U.S. forces in Japan and Guam. The PLA was so afraid of overwhelming American intervention that it genuinely believed it could not win unless the Americans were removed from the battlefield before the main campaign even began.
A preemptive strike was, needless to say, a highly risky proposition. If it worked, the PLA just might secure enough space and time to defeat defending troops, seize territory, and position itself for a favorable post-war settlement.
But if China failed to disable American forces with a surprise attack, Beijing could find itself fighting a full-scale war on at least two fronts: against the country it was invading plus the full might of U.S. Pacific Command, fully mobilized and probably strongly backed by the rest of the world.
That was then. But after two decades of sustained military modernization, the Chinese military has fundamentally changed its strategy in just the last year or so. According to Fuell, recent writings by PLA officers indicate "a growing confidence within the PLA that they can more-readily withstand U.S. involvement."
The preemptive strike is off the table — and with it, the risk of a full-scale American counterattack. Instead, Beijing believes it can attack Taiwan or another neighbor while also bloodlessly deterring U.S. intervention. It would do so by deploying such overwhelmingly strong military forces — ballistic missiles, aircraft carriers, jet fighters, and the like — that Washington dare not get involved.
The knock-on effects of deterring America could be world-changing. "Backing away from our commitments to protect Taiwan, Japan, or the Philippines would be tantamount to ceding East Asia to China's domination," Roger Cliff, a fellow at the Atlantic Council, said at the same U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission hearing on Jan. 30.
Worse, the world's liberal economic order — and indeed, the whole notion of democracy — could suffer irreparable harm. "The United States has both a moral and a material interest in a world in which democratic nations can survive and thrive," Cliff asserted.
Fortunately for that liberal order, America possesses by far the world's most powerful submarine force — one poised to quickly sink any Chinese invasion fleet. In announcing its readiness to hold off the U.S. military, the PLA seems to have ignored Washington's huge undersea advantage.
(Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Adam K. Thomas/U.S. Navy via Getty Images)
The Silent Service
It's not surprising that Beijing would overlook America's subs. Most Americans overlook their own undersea fleet — and that's not entirely their own fault. The U.S. sub force takes pains to avoid media coverage in order to maximize its secrecy and stealth. "The submarine cruises the world's oceans unseen," the Navy stated on its Website.
Unseen and unheard. That why the sub force calls itself the "Silent Service."
The Navy has 74 submarines, 60 of which are attack or missile submarines optimized for finding and sinking other ships or blasting land targets. The balance is ballistic-missile boats that carry nuclear missiles and would not routinely participate in military campaigns short of an atomic World War III.
Thirty-three of the attack and missile boats belong to the Pacific Fleet, with major bases in Washington State, California, Hawaii, and Guam. Deploying for six months or so roughly every year and a half, America's Pacific subs frequently stop over in Japan and South Korea and occasionally even venture under the Arctic ice.
According to Adm. Cecil Haney, the former commander of Pacific Fleet subs, on any given day 17 boats are underway and eight are "forward-deployed," meaning they are on station in a potential combat zone. To the Pacific Fleet, that pretty much means waters near China.
America has several submarine types. The numerous Los Angeles-class attack boats are Cold War stalwarts that are steadily being replaced by newer Virginia-class boats with improved stealth and sensors. The secretive Seawolfs, numbering just three — all of them in the Pacific — are big, fast, and more heavily armed than other subs. The Ohio-class missile submarines are former ballistic missile boats each packing 154 cruise missile.
U.S. subs are, on average, bigger, faster, quieter, and more powerful than the rest of the world's subs. And there are more of them. The U.K. is building just seven new Astute attack boats. Russia aims to maintain around 12 modern attack subs. China is struggling to deploy a handful of rudimentary nuclear boats.
Able to lurk silently under the waves and strike suddenly with torpedoes and missiles, submarines have tactical and strategic effect greatly disproportionate to their relatively small numbers. During the 1982 Falklands War, the British sub Conqueror torpedoed and sank the Argentine cruiser General Belgrano, killing 323 men. The sinking kept the rest of the Argentine fleet bottled up for the duration of the conflict.
America's eight-at-a-time submarine picket in or near Chinese waters could be equally destructive to Chinese military plans, especially considering the PLA's limited anti-submarine skills. "Although China might control the surface of the sea around Taiwan, its ability to find and sink U.S. submarines will be extremely limited for the foreseeable future," Cliff testified. "Those submarines would likely be able to intercept and sink Chinese amphibious transports as they transited toward Taiwan."
So it almost doesn't matter that a modernized PLA thinks it possesses the means to fight America above the waves, on land, and in the air. If it can't safely sail an invasion fleet as part of its territorial ambitions, it can't achieve its strategic goals — capturing Taiwan and or some island also claimed by a neighboring country — through overtly military means.
That reality should inform Washington's own strategy. As the United States has already largely achieved the world order it struggled for over the last century, it need only preserve and defend this order. In other words, America has the strategic high ground against China, as the latter must attackand alter the world in order to get what it wants.
In practical military terms, that means the Pentagon can more or less ignore most of China's military capabilities, including those that appear to threaten traditional U.S. advantages in nukes, air warfare, mechanized ground operations, and surface naval maneuvers.
"We won't invade China, so ground forces don't play," pointed out Wayne Hughes, a professor at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School. "We won't conduct a first nuclear strike. We should not adopt an air-sea strike plan against the mainland, because that is a sure way to start World War IV."
Rather, America must deny the Chinese free access to their near waters. "We need only enoughaccess to threaten a war at sea," Hughes said. In his view, a fleet optimized for countering China would have large numbers of small surface ships for enforcing a trade blockade. But the main combatants would be submarines, "to threaten destruction of all Chinese warships and commercial vessels in the China Seas."
Cliff estimated that in wartime, each American submarine would be able to get off "a few torpedo shots" before needing to "withdraw for self-preservation." But assuming eight subs each fire three torpedoes, and just half those torpedoes hit, the American attack boats could destroy all of China's major amphibious ships — and with them, Beijing's capacity for invading Taiwan or seizing a disputed island.
(Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Adam K. Thomas/U.S Navy via Getty Images)
Waiting out the Chinese decline
If American subs can hold the line for another 20 years, China might age right out of its current, aggressive posture without ever having attacked anyone. That's because economic and demographic trends in China point towards a rapidly aging population, flattening economic growth, and fewer resources available for military modernization.
To be fair, almost all developed countries are also experiencing this aging, slowing and increasing peacefulness. But China's trends are pronounced owing to a particularly steep drop in the birth rate traceable back to the Chinese Communist Party's one-child policy.
Another factor is the unusual speed with which the Chinese economy has expanded to its true potential, thanks to the focused investment made possible by an authoritarian government… and also thanks to that government's utter disregard for the natural environment and for the rights of everyday Chinese people.
"The economic model that propelled China through three decades of meteoric growth appears unsustainable," Andrew Erickson, a Naval War College analyst, told the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission.
What Erickson described as China's "pent-up national potential" could begin expiring as early as 2030, by which point "China will have world's highest proportion of people over 65," he predicted. "An aging society with rising expectations, burdened with rates of chronic diseases exacerbated by sedentary lifestyles, will probably divert spending from both military development and the economic growth that sustains it."
Wisely, American political and military leaders have made the investments necessary to sustain U.S. undersea power for at least that long. After a worrying dip in submarine production, starting in 2012 the Pentagon asked for — and Congress funded — the acquisition of two Virginia-class submarines per year for around $2.5 billion apiece, a purchase rate adequate to maintain the world's biggest nuclear submarine fleet indefinitely.
The Pentagon is also improving the Virginia design, adding undersea-launched drones, extra missile capacity, and potentially a new anti-ship missile.
Given China's place in the world, its underlying national trends and America's pointed advantage in just that aspect of military power that's especially damaging to Chinese plans, it seems optimistic for PLA officers to assume they can launch an attack on China's neighbors without first knocking out U.S. forces.
Not that a preemptive strike would make any difference, as the only American forces that truly matter for containing China are the very ones that China cannot reach.
For they are deep underwater.
Credit to The Week
Now the good news. China is wrong — and for one major reason. It apparently disregards the decisive power of America's nuclear-powered submarines.
Moreover, for economic and demographic reasons Beijing has a narrow historical window in which to use its military to alter the world's power structure. If China doesn't make a major military move in the next couple decades, it probably never will.
The U.S. Navy's submarines — the unsung main defenders of the current world order — must hold the line against China for another 20 years. After that, America can declare a sort of quiet victory in the increasingly chilly Cold War with China.
How China wins
The bad news came from Lee Fuell, from the U.S. Air Force's National Air and Space Intelligence Center, during Fuell's testimony before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 30.
For years, Chinese military planning assumed that any attack by the People's Liberation Army on Taiwan or a disputed island would have to begin with a Pearl Harbor-style preemptive missile strike by China against U.S. forces in Japan and Guam. The PLA was so afraid of overwhelming American intervention that it genuinely believed it could not win unless the Americans were removed from the battlefield before the main campaign even began.
A preemptive strike was, needless to say, a highly risky proposition. If it worked, the PLA just might secure enough space and time to defeat defending troops, seize territory, and position itself for a favorable post-war settlement.
But if China failed to disable American forces with a surprise attack, Beijing could find itself fighting a full-scale war on at least two fronts: against the country it was invading plus the full might of U.S. Pacific Command, fully mobilized and probably strongly backed by the rest of the world.
That was then. But after two decades of sustained military modernization, the Chinese military has fundamentally changed its strategy in just the last year or so. According to Fuell, recent writings by PLA officers indicate "a growing confidence within the PLA that they can more-readily withstand U.S. involvement."
The preemptive strike is off the table — and with it, the risk of a full-scale American counterattack. Instead, Beijing believes it can attack Taiwan or another neighbor while also bloodlessly deterring U.S. intervention. It would do so by deploying such overwhelmingly strong military forces — ballistic missiles, aircraft carriers, jet fighters, and the like — that Washington dare not get involved.
The knock-on effects of deterring America could be world-changing. "Backing away from our commitments to protect Taiwan, Japan, or the Philippines would be tantamount to ceding East Asia to China's domination," Roger Cliff, a fellow at the Atlantic Council, said at the same U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission hearing on Jan. 30.
Worse, the world's liberal economic order — and indeed, the whole notion of democracy — could suffer irreparable harm. "The United States has both a moral and a material interest in a world in which democratic nations can survive and thrive," Cliff asserted.
Fortunately for that liberal order, America possesses by far the world's most powerful submarine force — one poised to quickly sink any Chinese invasion fleet. In announcing its readiness to hold off the U.S. military, the PLA seems to have ignored Washington's huge undersea advantage.
(Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Adam K. Thomas/U.S. Navy via Getty Images)The Silent Service
It's not surprising that Beijing would overlook America's subs. Most Americans overlook their own undersea fleet — and that's not entirely their own fault. The U.S. sub force takes pains to avoid media coverage in order to maximize its secrecy and stealth. "The submarine cruises the world's oceans unseen," the Navy stated on its Website.
Unseen and unheard. That why the sub force calls itself the "Silent Service."
The Navy has 74 submarines, 60 of which are attack or missile submarines optimized for finding and sinking other ships or blasting land targets. The balance is ballistic-missile boats that carry nuclear missiles and would not routinely participate in military campaigns short of an atomic World War III.
Thirty-three of the attack and missile boats belong to the Pacific Fleet, with major bases in Washington State, California, Hawaii, and Guam. Deploying for six months or so roughly every year and a half, America's Pacific subs frequently stop over in Japan and South Korea and occasionally even venture under the Arctic ice.
According to Adm. Cecil Haney, the former commander of Pacific Fleet subs, on any given day 17 boats are underway and eight are "forward-deployed," meaning they are on station in a potential combat zone. To the Pacific Fleet, that pretty much means waters near China.
America has several submarine types. The numerous Los Angeles-class attack boats are Cold War stalwarts that are steadily being replaced by newer Virginia-class boats with improved stealth and sensors. The secretive Seawolfs, numbering just three — all of them in the Pacific — are big, fast, and more heavily armed than other subs. The Ohio-class missile submarines are former ballistic missile boats each packing 154 cruise missile.
U.S. subs are, on average, bigger, faster, quieter, and more powerful than the rest of the world's subs. And there are more of them. The U.K. is building just seven new Astute attack boats. Russia aims to maintain around 12 modern attack subs. China is struggling to deploy a handful of rudimentary nuclear boats.
Able to lurk silently under the waves and strike suddenly with torpedoes and missiles, submarines have tactical and strategic effect greatly disproportionate to their relatively small numbers. During the 1982 Falklands War, the British sub Conqueror torpedoed and sank the Argentine cruiser General Belgrano, killing 323 men. The sinking kept the rest of the Argentine fleet bottled up for the duration of the conflict.
America's eight-at-a-time submarine picket in or near Chinese waters could be equally destructive to Chinese military plans, especially considering the PLA's limited anti-submarine skills. "Although China might control the surface of the sea around Taiwan, its ability to find and sink U.S. submarines will be extremely limited for the foreseeable future," Cliff testified. "Those submarines would likely be able to intercept and sink Chinese amphibious transports as they transited toward Taiwan."
So it almost doesn't matter that a modernized PLA thinks it possesses the means to fight America above the waves, on land, and in the air. If it can't safely sail an invasion fleet as part of its territorial ambitions, it can't achieve its strategic goals — capturing Taiwan and or some island also claimed by a neighboring country — through overtly military means.
That reality should inform Washington's own strategy. As the United States has already largely achieved the world order it struggled for over the last century, it need only preserve and defend this order. In other words, America has the strategic high ground against China, as the latter must attackand alter the world in order to get what it wants.
In practical military terms, that means the Pentagon can more or less ignore most of China's military capabilities, including those that appear to threaten traditional U.S. advantages in nukes, air warfare, mechanized ground operations, and surface naval maneuvers.
"We won't invade China, so ground forces don't play," pointed out Wayne Hughes, a professor at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School. "We won't conduct a first nuclear strike. We should not adopt an air-sea strike plan against the mainland, because that is a sure way to start World War IV."
Rather, America must deny the Chinese free access to their near waters. "We need only enoughaccess to threaten a war at sea," Hughes said. In his view, a fleet optimized for countering China would have large numbers of small surface ships for enforcing a trade blockade. But the main combatants would be submarines, "to threaten destruction of all Chinese warships and commercial vessels in the China Seas."
Cliff estimated that in wartime, each American submarine would be able to get off "a few torpedo shots" before needing to "withdraw for self-preservation." But assuming eight subs each fire three torpedoes, and just half those torpedoes hit, the American attack boats could destroy all of China's major amphibious ships — and with them, Beijing's capacity for invading Taiwan or seizing a disputed island.
(Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Adam K. Thomas/U.S Navy via Getty Images)Waiting out the Chinese decline
If American subs can hold the line for another 20 years, China might age right out of its current, aggressive posture without ever having attacked anyone. That's because economic and demographic trends in China point towards a rapidly aging population, flattening economic growth, and fewer resources available for military modernization.
To be fair, almost all developed countries are also experiencing this aging, slowing and increasing peacefulness. But China's trends are pronounced owing to a particularly steep drop in the birth rate traceable back to the Chinese Communist Party's one-child policy.
Another factor is the unusual speed with which the Chinese economy has expanded to its true potential, thanks to the focused investment made possible by an authoritarian government… and also thanks to that government's utter disregard for the natural environment and for the rights of everyday Chinese people.
"The economic model that propelled China through three decades of meteoric growth appears unsustainable," Andrew Erickson, a Naval War College analyst, told the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission.
What Erickson described as China's "pent-up national potential" could begin expiring as early as 2030, by which point "China will have world's highest proportion of people over 65," he predicted. "An aging society with rising expectations, burdened with rates of chronic diseases exacerbated by sedentary lifestyles, will probably divert spending from both military development and the economic growth that sustains it."
Wisely, American political and military leaders have made the investments necessary to sustain U.S. undersea power for at least that long. After a worrying dip in submarine production, starting in 2012 the Pentagon asked for — and Congress funded — the acquisition of two Virginia-class submarines per year for around $2.5 billion apiece, a purchase rate adequate to maintain the world's biggest nuclear submarine fleet indefinitely.
The Pentagon is also improving the Virginia design, adding undersea-launched drones, extra missile capacity, and potentially a new anti-ship missile.
Given China's place in the world, its underlying national trends and America's pointed advantage in just that aspect of military power that's especially damaging to Chinese plans, it seems optimistic for PLA officers to assume they can launch an attack on China's neighbors without first knocking out U.S. forces.
Not that a preemptive strike would make any difference, as the only American forces that truly matter for containing China are the very ones that China cannot reach.
For they are deep underwater.
Credit to The Week
ISIS' Latest And Most Ambitious Plan Yet: Invade Spain
While Spain may have been scrambling for the past several years to figure out how to spin its economy, boasting one of the highest unemployment rates in the Eurozone, as recovering, coming up with numerous changes to what it believes should constitute GDP, most recently including an estimate of the contribution hookers and blow add to the economy, a surprising place which has emerged as a potential source of huge economic upside for Spain's economy is none other than the recently established Islamic State created by the ISIS al-Qaeda spin off. Because, stunningly, in a story right out of a history book covering the Islamic Conquest and subsequent Reconquista (however not in the middle ages but in the 21st century), the hardest-core Islamists around, those which even al-Qaeda deemed too "extremist", appears to have sworn to invade Spain next!
Just think of the epic GDP boost a new Christian-Muslim war fought on European soil would generate...
As RT reported over the weekend, a group of jihadists claiming to be part of ISIS have vowed to invade Spain along with all other “occupied lands” in a video posted on the web. The men say Spain is the land of their forefathers and that they are prepared to die for their nascent Islamic State.
The men say Spain is the land of their forefathers and that they are prepared to die for their nascent Islamic State.The video of two men claiming to be militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) has taken the Spanish media by storm. The minute-long footage shows them speaking in Spanish, and saying that ISIS will take over Spain.
“I tell you, Spain is the land of our forefathers, and, Allah willing, we are going to liberate it, with the might of Allah,” says one of the men. He adds that the group won’t stop at Spain and intends to spread its Islamic Caliphate across the world.
“I say to the entire world as a warning: We are living under the Islamic banner, the Islamic Caliphate. We are going to die for it until we liberate all the occupied lands, from Jakarta to Andalusia,” he said.
The footage has not yet been independently verified, but it would not be the first video released by the group. Last month, ISIS released a propaganda video entitled: “There Is No Life Without Jihad” in which Australian and British members of the group appealed in English for Muslims across the world to join their cause.
“We have brothers from Bangladesh, from Iraq, from Cambodia, Australia and the UK,” says a militant called Abu Muthanna al-Yemeni, who himself comes from Britain, according to a video caption.
The full clip is below:
In other words, ISIS may or may not wage war on Spain next. The only question we have is whether Eurostat will add back the non-GAAP GDP benefits from such a war now, on a purely one-time, non-recurring pro forma basis, of course, or actually wait for war to break out. Judging by the circus European economic data has become, we would wager money on "now."
Credit to zero hedge
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)