Tag: East Asia

A New NK Wrinkle

Keeping with the ‘nuke’ meme of the day.

We are always hearing about the the NK missiles and nuke tests and now there is a new wrinkle in the North Korean arsenal…..an underwater nuke drone……

North Korea claimed Friday to have tested a nuclear-capable underwater drone designed to generate a gigantic “radioactive tsunami” that would destroy naval strike groups and ports. Analysts were skeptical that the device presents a major new threat, but the test underlines the North’s commitment to raising nuclear threats, the AP reports. The testing of the purported “nuclear underwater attack drone” was part of a three-day exercise that simulated nuclear attacks on unspecified South Korean targets, which also included cruise missile launches on Wednesday. The tests came as the United States reportedly planned to deploy aircraft carrier strike groups and other advanced assets to waters off the Korean Peninsula.

Pyongyang’s official Korean Central News Agency said the new weapon, which can be deployed from the coast or towed by surface ships, is built to “stealthily infiltrate into operational waters and make a super-scale radioactive tsunami through an underwater explosion to destroy naval strike groups and major operational ports of the enemy.” The North Korean report came hours before South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol pledged to make North Korea pay for its “reckless provocations” as he attended a remembrance service honoring 55 South Korean troops killed during major clashes with the North near their western sea border in past years.

KCNA said that the drills were supervised by North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, who condemned US-South Korean drills that finished Thursday as invasion rehearsals and vowed to make his rivals “plunge into despair.” The drone is named “Haeil,” a Korean word meaning tidal waves or tsunami. KCNA said the North’s latest tests were aimed at alerting the United States and South Korea of a brewing “nuclear crisis” as they continue with their “intentional, persistent and provocative war drills.” KCNA said North Korea’s latest drills verified the operational reliability of the drone, which it said the North has been developing since 2012 and tested more 50 times in the past two years, although the weapon was never mentioned in state media until Friday.

This ought to help fund more adventurism in the Korean Peninsula…..

This is worth a watch for future military commitments from the US.

Let’s see if this news gets as much attention as the Russian nukes in Belarus.  (Any bets?)

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An Unknown ‘Hero’ Or A ‘Mad Man”?

It is Black history month and I try to bring some black history that has been missed in your education.

Have you ever heard of David Fagen?

The year is 1899 and the place is the Philippines.

You won’t find this story anywhere else for Black History Month, but you should! By the mid-1900’s, a “Buffalo Soldier” named David Fagen was virtually a household name, particularly in the African American community. Fagen’s story makes myth of the false contention that African Americans offered little resistance to institutionalized racism from the Civil War until the end of WWII.

Was Fagen a hero or “a mad dog”?  The answer is rooted in whether you believe that fighting against U.S. colonialism/imperialism in 1899, in this case the U.S. war of Philippine conquest, is righteous and worthy of giving rise to a true hero, martyr and courageous Buffalo Soldier, who deserted the U.S. side and joined the Philippine Revolutionary Army. The PRA was fighting to establish their own independent republic after the Spanish were kicked out.

In diaries and letters, Black soldiers posted in the Philippines. recounted how racism was endemic in the U.S. military, describing the racist abuses suffered by both African Americans and Filipinos.

Fagen was a native of Tampa, Florida, the youngest of 6 children of former slaves. He grew up where Jim Crow racial segregation laws prevailed. With the specter of lynching, race riots and the chain gang looming over Tampa’s Blacks, Fagen “lived in dread at all times.” Searching for any escape from Jim Crow, Fagen enlisted in 1898, being assigned to the 24th Infantry Regiment, a unit of so-called Buffalo Soldiers.

Expansionist USA, intent on developing a global commercial empire, dispatched 6000 African American soldiers, including 2100 of the famed Buffalo Soldiers, to the Philippines islands per President McKinley’s assessment that the racial inferiority of Filipinos justified denying them sovereignty and engaging in a bloody war of conquest. Fagen, now on the battlefield, detested his white commanding officer Lt. Moss, a West Point graduate. Moss and Fagen clashed repeatedly, with Moss eventually fining Fagen more than a month’s pay and sentencing him to 30 days of hard labor. Life was immutably altered when Fagen, after  a few months of battling Filipino rebels, turned his back on the U.S. army and joined Filipino revolutionaries who were actually fighting against American invaders.

Forgotten: an African American Soldier Turned Rebel Leader in the Philippines  

Regardless of what one thinks of his actions he is still a person from history and his life and actions should be studied.

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It’s China Again!

It seems that all the hoopla about that balloon floating over the US has some animosities toward China erupting all over the blogosphere.

That is the M-IC think tanks have all the chest thumping but what about the average Joe thinks and feels?

I am glad I asked.

A large majority of Americans support talks aimed at reducing tensions with North Korea and China, according to a survey released Friday by The Harris Poll. The results are at odds with the state of opinion in Washington, where policy elites continue to one-up each other over how to respond to an incident in which an apparent Chinese surveillance balloon flew over the U.S. in recent days.

Two-thirds of respondents agreed that the U.S. should “engage in dialogue as much as possible to reduce tensions” with China, while 20 percent said Washington should “not restart official dialogue and instead spend more money on military build-up.” Support for talks focused on deescalation went up by five points since 2021, when Harris last asked the question.

Meanwhile, 68 percent of Americans polled told Harris that President Joe Biden should offer to hold direct talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un, and 58 percent said the United States should offer diplomatic or economic incentives “in exchange for steps toward denuclearization.” 

In Washington, optimistic views of China’s geopolitical rise have soured in recent years, as demonstrated by the ongoing controversy over what appears to be a Chinese surveillance balloon. While some experts (including Pentagon officials) were quick to point out that the Chinese balloon posed no threat, the incident caused an uproar among many foreign policy elites, which no doubt contributed to Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s decision to postpone a scheduled trip to Beijing this past weekend.

As for North Korea, Biden has balked at the idea of changing U.S. policy toward the isolated state, opting instead to leave severe sanctions in place while expanding military cooperation with South Korea. And increased tensions with Russia and China have largely pushed issues related to North Korea to the periphery of policy making conversations.

Harris conducted the online survey from January 17-19 on behalf of the American Friends Service Committee, a prominent Quaker anti-war organization. The results are weighted to be representative and are based on a sample of 2063 American adults.

The pollsters also found increased support (59 percent) for establishing a diplomatic presence in North Korea since 2021, when a slim majority of respondents (52 percent) approved of the idea. 

Americans far less hawkish on North Korea and China than policy elites: poll

I find this poll interesting….Americans seem to want hostilities to weaken with China and North Korea but are chest thumping primates when it comes to an actually shooting match.

The poll is not an indication of what I read on IST….so I am a bit skeptical of the results of the poll.

Only the Pentagon knows what is really happening….and they will NEVER tell the American people the truth.

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Senkaku Islands

Huh?

Where the Hell are these islands?

Easy remedy to that question…..

Japan-China relations - Jingoist jangles | Asia | The Economist

There seems to be a bit of a problem with the oil and gas fields in and around the islands…..everybody wants a slice of that pie…..especially China….

Let me continue the education…..this is the conflict according to Japan…..

China’s maritime adventurism in the East and South China Seas has lately attracted considerable attention. Fifty percent of China’s claimed jurisdictional waters are competing with neighboring countries in the East Asia.2 The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has named People’s Republic of China (PRC) as a maritime power in the 18th Party Congress in 2012 (People’s daily Online in Japanese, November 12 2012), and the PRC challenges Japan, the U.S.A., and the ASEAN countries. What happens in the East China Sea? China takes the maritime offensive against Japan. The authordefines the word “offensive” not only the military means, but also the political, legal, economic, and psychological means to oppress the competitor.3 If so, the Chinese maritime offensive against Japan includes not only the actual maritime conflict in the East China Sea, but also the natural resources demand at the disputed waters, anti-Japan demonstration inside and outside of China, the sovereignty assertion in relevant to historical issues with Japan, CCP’s internal power struggle, and China’s national integration policy.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/24761028.2019.1626567

The question is what is China’s desire for this region?

China’s recent moves are destabilizing, and Japan clearly stated as much in a newly released defense white paper. In the report, the Japanese government presents the nature of the Chinese challenge to its security — especially to the Senkaku islands — in the strongest terms yet. Chinese authorities are in fact described as “relentlessly” pressing their claims to the islands with ever-increasing levels of maritime activities undermining the status quo. Japanese Defense Minister Taro Kono made clear that further intensification of activities might trigger the intervention of Japanese military assets. In response to Japanese concerns, the commander of U.S. military forces in Japan has stated that the United States would help monitor the situation. Every successful step Beijing takes in undermining the status quo around the Senkakus through coercion and force is a direct challenge to the credibility of the U.S.-Japanese alliance and, crucially, to the principles informing the maritime rules-based order centered on the 1982 Convention on the Law of the Sea. While the United States is not party to this treaty, both China and Japan are, and Abe has clearly articulated why China’s actions around the Senkakus fundamentally undermine the principles enshrined in the convention.

What Is China’s Strategy in the Senkaku Islands?

In recent years the US has been itching for a fight with China…the South China Sea and now the Senkaku Islands……it is so serious that the US has stated that it could send troops to the islands…..

American troops could be sent to disputed islands inthe East China Sea, the head of US forces in Japan said, as the two allies began a high-profile drill amid growing concerns overBeijing’s military activities in the region

“Our arrival today was simply to demonstrate the ability to move a few people, but the same capability could be used to deploy combat troops to defend the Senkaku Islands or respond to other crises and contingencies,” Lieutenant General Kevin Schneider, commander of US Forces Japan,

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3107291/american-troops-could-be-sent-defend-senkaku-islands-us

Just those warmongering words should terrify Americans…they are basically daring China to act…..and the ultimatum could be disastrous…..

Hopefully calmer heads will prevail in January.

Then again those heads may not prevail…….

According to a readout of a call between President-elect Joe Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Suga, Biden recommitted the U.S. to defending the Senkaku Islands as part of the mutual defense treaty between the U.S. and Japan:

Biden confirmed that Article 5 of the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty will be applied to the defense of Okinawa Prefecture and the Senkaku Islands. Article 5 stipulates that the U.S. is obliged to defend Japan should its territories come under attack. Former President Barack Obama was the first U.S. leader to declare that the pact applies to the Senkakus.

Biden is reaffirming the position that the Obama administration took in 2014, but that doesn’t make this commitment any wiser or better than it was when it was first made. As a general rule, the U.S. shouldn’t extend its defense commitments to include disputed territories. In this particular case, committing to defend the Senkakus makes even less sense because these are just uninhabited rocks in the ocean. It strains credulity that the U.S. would actually go to war with China for the sake of these rocks, and that makes it more likely that China will test that commitment. The U.S. risks undermining its commitments to treaty allies when it recklessly expands them to include territory that we aren’t going to defend when push comes to shove. Instead of deterring China and protecting a treaty ally, this commitment seems more likely to create an unnecessary flashpoint that could lead to further escalation.

Would You Die for the Senkakus?

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News Line: North Korea

The news around North Korea these days is about the missiles it recently fired off…..this gave South Korea and Japan a bit of a start….after some months of test free days……and then the US confiscated a tanker bound for North Korea….but the best part is the war of words coming from Bolton and then being slapped down by Trump…..

Kim is not mincing his words….he thinks one of Trump’s adviser is a “deformed” individual…..my bad…”defective”……..

North Korea on Monday called U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton a “war monger” and “defective human product” after he called the North’s recent tests of short-range missiles a violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions. The statement by an unnamed North Korean foreign ministry spokesman came as President Trump continued his visit to Japan for meetings with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in which the nuclear standoff with North Korea was expected to be high on the agenda.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/north-korea-john-bolton-war-monger-defective-human-product-missile-tests/

But through everything our dear beloved leader thinks that Kim is a man of his word and trusts him without waver…..and yet he is finding himself all alone on this situation……not Japan or South Korea views it as Trump sees it……..

President Donald Trump is isolating himself from allies and even his own advisers on North Korea, eager to insist that his denuclearization efforts will be successful going into his 2020 reelection bid.

The widening gap was apparent Monday morning when Trump disagreed with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe during a joint news conference when asked about recent North Korean missile tests.

Abe had called the tests of several short-range ballistic missiles “quite a regrettable act” that violated a United Nations Security Council resolution, echoing language that Trump’s own national security adviser, John Bolton, had used on Saturday.

But the president on Monday, at the end of his short trip to Japan to meet the new emperor, insisted that he was not “personally” bothered by the tests and was “very happy with the way it’s going” in his efforts to engage North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Notably, Trump said he did not think the tests violated the U.N. resolution.

“My people think it could have been a violation,” Trump said. “I view it differently.”

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/05/27/donald-trump-north-korea-1345034

I think Trump is putting too much stock in his celebrity to ink a deal……but we will see.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-denies-north-korea-launched-ballistic-missiles-contradicting-japan/2019/05/27/3b02431a-7e38-11e9-8bb7-0fc796cf2ec0_story.html

But with all the rhetoric let us be sure of one thing…..

John Bolton accused North Korea’s recent tests of short-range missiles of being a violation of UN Security Council resolutions, but on Monday President Trump said he views the tests differently. Reporters are asking the State Department to reconcile this into a single position.

State spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus said that “the entire North Korean WMD program is in conflict with the UN Security Council resolutions,” saying that the US was focused on ending the WMD program.

The short range missile tests don’t appear to have had anything to do with WMDs, as Trump pointed out. Bolton argued that they were ballistic missiles, while the State Department said they have yet to announce if they think they were ballistic missiles or not.

Though President Trump has made clear that he doesn’t consider the tests a big deal at all, an doesn’t want to do anything about them, other US officials seem keen to keep the topic up for discussion, and not endorse the president’s position specifically.

(antiwar.com)

Further Reading:

Trump Contradicts Bolton on North Korea’s Missile Tests, Says He’s Confident in Kim

Blind trust is NO foreign policy…..Bring back a Reagan mantra….”Trust But Verify”.

Has the luster faded?

A new statement from North Korea’s Foreign Ministry was deeply critical of the US government, accusing them of acting in bad faith during the peace process, while continuing to conduct drills as part of an “evil ambition” to conquer North Korea by force.

The statement was attributed to the Policy Research Director of North Korea’s Foreign Ministry’s Institute for American Studies, who said the US has shown “ulterior intention” in the lead up to and following the failed Hanoi summit.

They further singled out John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for having “insulted the dignity” of North Korea’s leadership, and used “abusive language” in comments about the diplomatic process.

It concluded with a warning that US hostile acts would only add to tensions on the already unstable Korean Peninsula, and adding that the “use of strength is not at all a monopoly of the United States.”

(antiwar.com)

China Versus Taiwan

Let me say from the onset that I am by no means an expert in Chinese affairs…..but this is something that has been boiling for 5 decades or longer.

For over 50 years there have been two Chinas…Mainland and the island of Taiwan….and in all that time they have been at the others throat.

But why have they been hating each other all that time?

Let me make this situation as simple as possible.

Now that you know why the hatred is there and simmering just below the surface of geopolitics….

In the first week of 2019, as China grabbed headlines for landing a spacecraft on the far side of the moon, a New Year’s Day editorial in the nation’s official military newspaper told its readers that “war preparations” should be a top priority for the year. The following day, President Xi Jinping offered a forceful reminder of what Beijing considers its most likely focus of conflict to be: Taiwan.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apps-taiwan-commentary/commentary-will-china-go-to-war-over-taiwan-idUSKCN1P11IT

And to help with the understanding of this situation….a short video may help…..

Taiwan is an ally of the US and if push came to shove with China I think the US would side with Taiwan and act accordingly….even if it meant going to war.

In his opening speech of 2019, and his first ever on the subject of Taiwan, the Chinese president Xi Jinping was characteristically uncompromising. Forty years after Beijing agreed to stop its daily shelling of the Taiwanese islands of Quemoy and Matsu, and launched a policy of commercial seduction, relations have coarsened. Addressing an audience of military and party officials and his country’s wider public on 2 January, China’s nationalist president-for-life signalled his impatience with the status quo, refused to rule out the use of military force and warned “foreign powers” against intervening in what Beijing regards as a domestic matter. For any Taiwanese viewer, it was a chilling moment.

https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/observations/2019/01/china-and-taiwan-s-dangerous-face

With that said there has been a study that does not think the US could win a state vs state war with China……

One of the first things one learns as an infantry platoon leader is that he who tries to secure everything with his soldiers on the battlefield usually ends up securing nothing. Unfortunately for U.S. national security, this old maxim appears to have been forgotten at the strategic and political level by some of America’s brightest minds in the defense community as evidenced in a recent report.

The November 2018 study Providing for the Common Defense, issued by the National Defense Strategy Commission, a congressionally-mandated blue-ribbon panel led by former U.S. Undersecretary of Defense Eric Edelman and retired U.S. Navy Admiral Gary Roughead, recommends that the United States should spend more on its armed forces and reinforce its global military presence lest Washington be confronted by a national security emergency at a period when the nation is at a “greater risk than at any time in decades.”

https://thediplomat.com/2018/12/would-the-us-really-lose-a-war-with-china-and-russia/

I know that everyone thinks the US is the bees knees but is it possible that we could not win a state vs state war with China?