Obama’s Retreat Emboldens China
Chinese fighter jets buzz US spy planes, twice in less than 3 weeks
As U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry was in Beijing this week, preaching the virtues of “peaceful resolution” of disputes between the neighbours in the South China Sea, fighter jets belonging to Chinese ‘People’s Liberation Army’ carried out aggressive manoeuvres against a US plane.
According to the U.S. Pacific Command, the reconnaissance plane was on a routine mission over the East China Sea when two Chinese J-10 fighters attempted an “unsafe intercept”, making it the second incident of this kind to take place in less than three weeks. Earlier in May, two Chinese fighter jets flew within 15 meters of a US reconnaissance plane flying over the South China Sea.
As President Obama set about to reduce the U.S. footprint in the world and divert country’s military preparedness to chase the spectre of Climate Change — seven years ago, Communist China has been investing in a massive project to build and militarise artificial islands beyond its recognised maritime borders. China now contests 80 percent of the South China Sea, staking its control over one of the busiest maritime route in the world.
But don’t expect Kerry to give the “lion’s roar” in Beijing, warning the Chinese leadership of consequences for their aggressive actions. Well, he did warn the Chinese; urging them to reduce their emissions, or (in Kerry’s own words) their “cities are going to be in the eye of the climate change storm”. In Kerry’s world these climate warnings would really get Beijing bosses shaking in their boots.
The fact that China is investing billions of dollars in artificial islands built just above the sea level, tells you all you need to know about what Beijing thinks of Obama-Kerry’s Climate Change Scare.
Russia too has been flexing mussels after sensing America’s weakened resolve. In April, a US Navy destroyer was “buzzed” no less than 15 times by Russian fighter jets over the Baltic Sea. The News Corp Australia reports yesterday’s incident:
The latest incident took place on Tuesday in international airspace when, according to the US Pacific Command, two Chinese J-10 fighter planes carried out an “unsafe” intercept of a US spy plane on a routine patrol.
“One of the intercepting Chinese jets had an unsafe excessive rate of closure on the (American) aircraft,” Pacific Command said in a statement.
“Initial assessment is that this seems to be a case of improper airmanship, as no other provocative or unsafe manoeuvres occurred.” (…) In May, the Pentagon said two Chinese fighter jets flew within 15m of a US EP-3 aircraft over the South China Sea.
The Pentagon said that incident was a violation of an agreement the two governments signed in 2015 after another close encounter.
China’s militarisation of international waters and its encroachment over maritime routes is a huge cause of concern for Asian countries like Japan, Indian and Taiwan. Addressing the U.S. Congress on Wednesday, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi made an explicit reference to China as he talked about the “freedom of navigation on seas,” alluding to the China’s encroachment on maritime routes running through the South China Sea.
Since the beginning of the 20th century, a strong America has been the greatest deterrent against the tyrants and the best guarantor of peace across the world. With President Obama now engaged in quixotic wars against Climate Change and Islamophobia, bullies of the world are free to carve up their neighbourhoods as they see fit.
Russian invasion of Crimea; the establishment of Islamic Caliphate in Syria and Iraq; Iran’s military adventures across the Middle East; and Chinese encroachments — are all ignominious sounds of geopolitical vacuums being filled by tyrants, as U.S. abdicates the leadership of the Free World.
VIDEO: Chinese jets buzz US plane
[Cover image h/t CCTV, YouTube] [Author is Indian analyst based in Europe]
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
Russia has been going clamming?
Russia too has been flexing mussels after sensing America’s weakened resolve. In April, a US Navy destroyer was “buzzed” no less than 15 times by Russian fighter jets over the Baltic Sea. The News Corp Australia reports yesterday’s incident:
China would view the death of one of their pilots and loss of the fighter as well worth the price if they are able to replicate the Hainan Island Incident of April, 2001, when a Chinese J-8 fighter rammed (or if you are going to be generous, ‘clipped’) a US EP-3 surveillance aircraft operating in international airspace, causing the death of the fighter pilot and the EP-3 to make an emergency landing on a Chinese fighter base, after which the US aircraft was stripped and the crew detained.
It would not shock me a bit to find out the Chinese have a propaganda plan all prepared in the event one of their aircraft ‘accidentally’ repeats the same process, or that the Chinese fighter pilots are rewarded by how close they can get to a collision.
“As President Obama set about to reduce the U.S. footprint in the world and divert country’s military preparedness to chase the spectre of Climate Change — seven years ago, Communist China has been investing in a massive project to build and militarise artificial islands beyond its recognised maritime borders. China now contests 80 percent of the South China Sea, staking its control over one of the busiest maritime route in the world.”
Remember a few years ago when Obama was talking about a “pivot” to Asia? Good times, good times.
Except if you had much experience in the Pacific, or could just read and were willing to think and ask good questions, you knew that the pivot to Asia is in the running for Lie of the Century along with if you like your doctor you can keep your doctor. It was obvious years ago that the Obama administration was pivoting toward domestic spending and sabotaging the military so it can’t sustain combat. We have a President after all who sent what was a stable Iraq when he “inherited” it in 2009 into a death spiral by abruptly pulling out the troops because he is ideologically committed to the principle that America must always lose wars.
http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/43468-NavyShipbuilding_screen.pdf
“…Inventory Goals
…The Navy’s shipbuilding plan would fall short of meeting the service’s inventory goal for
some types of ships. For example, the plan would fail to meet the goal of about 90 large surface combatants (destroyers and cruisers) starting in 2029. The Navy
assumes that most of its destroyers will serve for 40 years. In the past, the Navy’s large
surface combatants have typically served for 30
years or less. If the destroyers serve for
only 35 or 30 years, the shortfall in large surface combatants could be more than twice
as large as projected under the Navy’s plan, unless more ships were purchased.”
I love the part where the CBO notes that if reality rears its ugly head the inventory shortfall will actually be twice what the FY2013 plan rosily projects. In exactly the type of ship you’d need in the SCS.
“Purchasing Plan
Under the 2013 plan, the Navy would buy a
total of 268 ships over the 2013–2042
period: 222 combat ships and 46 logistics and support ships (see
Summary Table 1).
Given the rate at which the Navy plans to retire ships from the fleet, that construction
plan would be insufficient to achieve a fleet of 310 to 316 ships but would produce a
fleet of about 300 ships for most of the next 30 years.
In comparison, in the 2012 shipbuilding
plan, the Navy envisioned buying 205 (or
17 fewer) combat ships and 70 (or 24 more) logistics and support ships between 2012
and 2041, for a total of 275. That plan was insufficient to achieve a fleet of 328 ships,
the goal in the 2012 plan.
…Costs of the Plan Compared
with Historical Funding
If the Navy receives the same amount of funding for new-ship construction in each of
the next 30 years as it has on average
over the past three decades—$14.3 billion
annually—it will not be able to afford all of the purchases in the 2013 plan.4 …”
Sorry about the formatting, it’s a pdf file.
YOu can pretty much sum up the Navy’s 30 year shipbuilding plans under Obama with the words insufficient and unrealistic. And it’s even worse than it appears in these short excerpts in that the plan assumes any shortfalls will be short term. The Navy’s procurement budget will increase in FY2018 and beyond. In other words after Obama leaves office.
Insufficient and unrealistic would not describe a naval shipbuilding plan if the President was serious about pivoting to a maritime theater of operations that a “pivot to Asia” would necessarily entail.
It was clear it was a lie all along. Note that they just quietly dropped it. They never announced any sort of shift in policy; they just used the “pivot to Asia” lie as long as it was useful in helping Obama abandon other theaters of operation. Then when he’d extricated himself from those, he stopped using the lie and now we’re going to throw money down the global warming toilet so Obama can guarantee we can’t undo the damage he’s done to the military.
Basically Obama invited the Chinese to militarize the entire SCS. I suppose like Iran he thinks China could potentially be a “very successful regional power.” We’ll find out, won’t we, thanks to our historic first post-American anti-American asshole-American President.
Kerry: China’s “cities are going to be in the eye of the climate change storm”.
Secret Service should have tackled Kerry at that point, and informed him that his metaphor is flawed; the eye is the calmest part of a storm.
“…seven years ago, Communist China has been investing in a massive project to build and militarise artificial islands beyond its recognised maritime borders.”
I may have made a mistake; earlier I said that “basically” Obama invited the Chinese to embark on this project. But note that they began this project seven years ago. In 2009, the year Obama entered office, when they shouldn’t have been sure yet they could get away with it.
Unless Obama literally invited them to do so by communicating with them prior to becoming President. That’s what he did in the case of Iran.
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2015/03/how-barack-obama-undercut-bush-administrations-nuclear-negotiations-with-iran.php
“…Iran responded with a written document that failed to address the main issue: international demands that it stop enriching uranium. And Iranian diplomats reiterated before the talks that they considered the issue nonnegotiable.”
All of a sudden in July of 2008 the Iranians dug in their heels and refused to negotiate with the Bush administration over nuclear enrichment. They insisted they had a right to enrich. Why?
…During his first presidential campaign in 2008, Mr. Obama used a secret back channel to Tehran to assure the mullahs that he was a friend of the Islamic Republic, and that they would be very happy with his policies. The secret channel was Ambassador William G. Miller, who served in Iran during the shah’s rule, as chief of staff for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and as ambassador to Ukraine. Ambassador Miller has confirmed to me his conversations with Iranian leaders during the 2008 campaign.
…So Obama secretly told the mullahs not to make a deal until he assumed the presidency, when they would be able to make a better agreement. Which is exactly what happened: Obama abandoned the requirement that Iran stop enriching uranium, so that Iran’s nuclear program has sped ahead over the months and years that negotiations have dragged on. When an interim agreement in the form of a “Joint Plan of Action” was announced in late 2013, Iran’s leaders exulted in the fact that the West had acknowledged its right to continue its uranium enrichment program…”
I have no reason to doubt that Obama did in fact begin backchannel communications and undercut the Bush administration while he was still Senator Obama. In fact it explains a lot; there were several small things that he did upon taking office that struck me as odd. I won’t say what they were because I’ve been searching for these events of 2009 and I can’t find the evidence of the exact events I recall. But as I said they didn’t quite rate their own news stories, they were included in round-up type reports. Still, they struck me odd.
But in retrospect everything makes perfect sense if Obama had an agreement with Iran, those were confidence building measures to prove Obama intended to make good, but Obama didn’t want Americans to catch on to his secret Iran deals so the confidence building measures were so insignificant at the time they’d pass almost unnoticed.
Since we now know that in fact Obama has sold his Iran deal with a pack of lies there’s no reason to rely on my faulty memory and inexact search skills. They’ve admitted to the lies. In the case of Ben Rhodes, bragged about the lies. They’ve admitted they edited tapes of conversations between DoS spox and reporters. The latter in particular exposed the lie that they only began secret negotiations with Iran with the election of the “moderate” Rouhani as president in 2013. They’ve admitted that, yes, they actually were in secret negotiations with Iran in 2011.
They’ve admitted to lie upon lie. Clearly they’ve got a lot more lies to admit to, as if anyone in the MSM would press them on the issue, and they’re not done lying.
Since they’ keep admitting they were secretly negotiating with Iran earlier then they admitted in each of their previous lies, is it really farfetched to believe Obama was secretly negotiating with Iran while he was still candidate Obama?
And if Obama was telling the Iranians not to negotiate with Bush because he would let them get away with a lot more belligerent crap when he became President, why not the Chinese?
When Obama got into office, Putin immediately says ” I am not afraid”. He is the most disgraceful and weakest president to date that this nation has had. If Killary wins, we may soon be hoping for an invasion force from hopefully Russia to save us from her tyranny! God save this nation!
Obama’s M.E. “strategy” if you can call it that was to pass the buck to someone else and cut and run. That was mostly Iran, but it also included Russia. Hence the stupid “reset.”
If Obama was secretly communicating his plans to Iran during his campaign, why not to Russia as well, Xenomethean?
Why would Putin be the least bit worried let alone afraid if Obama had already signaled his intention to bend over and take anything to execute his surrender and retreat?
We didn’t just manage to embolden Russia and China, we drive these two demographically doomed nations into each other’s arms. Our strategy should be to play them against each other and wait them out.