If you aren’t worried about America’s nuclear deterrence, you
should be. The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) just released its
latest assessment of the nuclear capabilities of America’s most
dangerous enemies: Nuclear Challenges: The Growing Capabilities of Strategic Competitors and Regional Rivals.
Replace the word “challenges” with “threats,” and you get a better
picture of the dire situation. China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran
continue to grow larger on America’s nuclear threat windscreen.
Nuclear Challenges
Over the past four years, America’s nuclear posture has been deemed inadequate.
In this presidential election, leadership choices becomes even more
significant. The DIA report executive summary opens with a sobering analysis:
“Russia, China, and North Korea are modernizing their
legacy stockpiles by incorporating advanced technologies to penetrate or
avoid missile defense systems. Countries are also developing nuclear
weapons with smaller yields, improved precision, and increased range for
military of coercive use … Beijing has far surpassed earlier growth
estimates assessed in 2018 and is currently exceeding 500 deliverable
nuclear warheads in its stockpile.”
The report estimates that China will reach 1,000 warheads by the year
2030. Perhaps more troubling from a deterrence perspective is that the
People’s Republic of China (PRC) emphasizes lower yield, more tactical
atomic weapons. Moving away from high yield in the mega-ton category
gives the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) more flexibility and makes the
use of nuclear weapons more suitable for a “proportional” response, as
the report suggests. However, the PLA’s more “appealing” choice of
tactical nuclear weapons makes the US deterrence calculus more
difficult. Furthermore, the DIA analysis asserts, “The PLA is
implementing a launch-on-warning posture where it would be able to, upon
warning of [a] missile strike, launch a counterstrike before an enemy
first strike can detonate.” Russian President Vladimir Putin announced
Russia is assisting China to establish a ballistic missile “early
warning system.”
There seems to be little desire on the part of Beijing to
engage in nuclear disarmament talks as China’s nuclear capability is in
ascendancy. The Biden-Harris administration’s first attempts to create a
mutual accommodation relationship with the PRC set the stage for a geopolitical mismatch
that has continued until this day.
The Chinese gained the negotiation’s
upper hand and have not let go. Despite the Biden-Harris
administration’s entreaties to Chinese leadership to cease aggressive
activities against Taiwan, the intensity has increased. In addition, the
military collaboration between the PLA and Russia’s armed forces has
grown.
Russia sustains its stockpile of 1,550 strategic nuclear warheads
with a bomber force, submarine fleet, and ground-launched
intercontinental ballistic missiles to deliver the warheads.
Additionally, Russia claims to have nuclear weapons capable of avoiding
US countermeasures. Sino-Russian military exercises have increased in
frequency and magnitude. “Russia launched its largest navy drills of the
post-Soviet era … alongside Chinese warships, the latest sign of
deepening military cooperation between the two global powers. The drills
will continue until September 16 and will involve more than 400
warships, submarines, and other maritime vessels,” France 24 reported.
Other Global Actors Present Threats
North Korea presents a unique problem for the United States.
According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies,
Pyongyang’s missile testing became less frequent, around 50 for nearly
three years, during the Trump administration (no tests in 2018). North
Korean tests began again in earnest with the Biden-Harris national
security team in position. Between January 2021 and April 2023, there
were more than 130 test firings by the Democratic People’s Republic of
Korea (DPRK). The DIA assessment of North Korea’s nuclear capability
concludes:
“North Korea has demonstrated the capability to produce
plutonium and highly enriched uranium, has conducted nuclear tests, and
has developed new ballistic missiles systems intended to strike regional
and CONUS [Continental United States] targets.”
The DPRK’s recent military agreement with Russia makes North Korea a more formidable threat than in the past.
Give Cable TV the Boot – Check This Out!
The Middle East teeters on the brink of an Iran armed with nuclear
weapons. Recent attacks on Israel by Iran are testimony to Tehran’s
missile capability for launching a nuclear warhead. The failure of
Barack Obama’s Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action to limit the
development of ballistic missile technology is one of the reasons the
Trump administration withdrew from the agreement. As a result, “The
Iranian missile force is the largest in the Middle East and can strike
targets up to 2,000 km (over 1,200 miles) from Iran’s borders.” Numerous
recent assessments reveal Iran may be on the cusp of having the
wherewithal to develop a nuclear weapon. The Biden-Harris administration
has failed to check Iran’s aggression through its proxies or Tehran’s
direct attacks on Israel.
There have been few times in America’s recent history when the threat
to the US homeland has been as significant. As Election Day looms,
voters must consider the US position in a dangerous world. It is not
growing less perilous. The DIA report is a call to action.
The views expressed are those of the author and not of any other affiliate.
~
Liberty Nation does not endorse candidates, campaigns, or legislation, and this presentation is no endorsement.
We've
already seen how Biden and his corrupt cabal are dealing with this. A
lot of rhetoric that's largely meaningless. He's demanding Israeli's
not "hit back too hard", and make sure there aren't any civilian
casualties, but why isn't he demanding Hamas stop preventing
Palestinians from leaving targeted areas? Areas the Israeli's are
warning about in order for them to have time to evacuate?
Do
you get the impression they're not putting any blame or responsibility
for civilian deaths on Hamas in spite of the fact they use their own
population as human shields? Well, if you do, you have the correct
understanding. But this is an undeclared war by Hamas, Iran, and
Islam. And it's a war where the enemy has no ground rules. Everyone is
subject to abuse, murder, rape, and kidnapping.
In
a war between the barbarians and the wimps, the barbarians win every
time. Okay, so, let's see a show of hands. How many would have liked for
either of these two misfit to have been President on December 7th, 1941?
There are those who keep claiming HAMAS really doesn't represent the Palestinian people, and seemingly that kind of thinking also applies to the people living in the GAZA strip, so Israel shouldn't attack GAZA, Lebanon with HAMAS' ally the Hezbollah are busy attacking Israel becasue Palestininas are actually innocent. Really? They elected HAMAS, and so we should ask. Did Mao Tse Tung represent the Chinese people? Did Hitler really represent the German people? Did Idi Ami faithfully represent the Ugandan people? Was Pol Pot in harmony with the people of Cambodia. Did Cubans love the horrors Fidel Castro heaped on them? Does it matter? The horrors they perpetrated went on irrespective of what the population thought, and that has to be the mind set of Israel as they orchestrate the defense of their nation.
Will Israel finally abandon policies driven by moral hazard?- October 8, 2023 By Andrea Widburg - For decades, Israel
has graciously allowed herself to be subjected to slow bleeds by a
hundred pinpricks here and a hundred pinpricks there. This was because
of a form of “moral hazard,” a
term I’ll explain in a minute. The savage brutality of this latest
Palestinian-launched war, though, may finally have broken through that
essentially passive mindset and forced Israel to reckon with the real
costs of a genocidal enemy on her border.
“Moral hazard” is a fascinating concept
that has nothing to do with morality and everything to do with risk
assessment. In its simplest terms, moral hazard means that, the more you
feel insulated from risks, the more likely you are to engage in
dangerous activities.......
Will Israel Do What it Takes to Secure Peace?By Jason D. HillOctober 11, 2023 - The joint aerial bombing by the British and the United States of
Dresden, Germany between February 12-15, 1945, killed up to 25,000
people. They were mostly civilians. The bombings had a devastating
effect on Hitler’s Germany and played a key role in Germany’s surrender
in the Second World War on May 8, 1945. On August 6th and 9th of that same year, the
United States of America detonated two atomic bombs over the Japanese
cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The explosions killed between 129, 000
and 226,000 people. Less than a month later, the Japanese surrendered,
thereby ending World War II and Japanese imperialism...........
Legal Expert: Israel’s Siege of Gaza Is Lawful, Not ‘Collective Punishment’ - Joel B. Pollak Legal expert Mark Goldfeder, Special Counsel
for International Affairs at the American Center for Law and Justice,
has written a detailed post on X/Twitter explaining why Israel’s seige
of Gaza is legal under international law, and not “collective
punishment.” Goldfeder, who is also Director of the National
Jewish Advocacy Center, was responding to a claim by Rep. Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), who accused Israel of a “war crime” and “collective punishment” due to its blockade of Hamas-controlled Gaza........
Graham: ‘If Israel Does Not Occupy Gaza, They Will Get Hit Again’ - Jeff Poor Friday
on FNC’s “Hannity,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) argued Israel
had to occupy the Gaza Strip or face a renewed threat from Hamas. The
South Carolina Republican described it as a “World War II-type action.”
“Well, you know Israel has no choice but to go into
Gaza and occupy the Gaza Strip and destroy Hamas, or they’ll get hit
again,” Graham said. “The old way of doing business died with those
babies. So this is a World War II-type action, total war against Hamas.
I’m not calling for the eradication of the Palestinian people. There are
plenty of Palestinians I know I consider friends. All Palestinians are
not Hamas, but I’ll tell you this, Hamas and the ayatollah of Iran want
to kill all the Jews just like the Nazis.”.........
Anne Bayefsky: The UN Is Denying Israel’s Right to Defend Itself - Joel B. Pollak Human rights expert Anne Bayefsky has written a
detailed timeline showing that the United Nations (UN) denied Israel’s
right to defend itself after the brutal Palestinian terror attack Oct. 7
— long before Israel began responding by attacking Hamas in Gaza. At the Times of Israel, Bayefsky writes that the UN has “blood on its hands”:.................
ISRAEL FIGHTS TERROR: Response to Hamas Legal and Justified?…Breitbart News Joel Pollak, a graduate of Harvard Law School,
explains why Israel’s response to the horrific Hamas terror attack is
both legal and necessary as it attempts to destroy the terrorist threat
to its populace while minimizing civilian casualties in Gaza...............
25-Year-Old Israeli Woman Kills 5 Terrorists, Leads Team to Save Kibbutz from Hamas - Katherine Hamilton A young Israeli woman is being hailed as a
hero after her early action helped to save an entire kibbutz from being
brutally killed by Hamas terrorists. Inbal Lieberman, the security coordinator of Kibbutz
Nir Am since December 2022, is being credited with leading a group of
residents to kill more than two dozen oncoming terrorists, as well as
killing five herself, the New York Postreported..........
Secretary of State Blinken Joins Hamas Ally in Calling for ‘Ceasefire’ Despicable even for this administration. - by Daniel Greenfield - It
didn’t take long. On October 8th, Secretary of State Blinken tweeted
that, “Turkish
Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan and I spoke further on Hamas’ terrorist
attacks on Israel. I encouraged Türkiye’s advocacy for a cease-fire and
the release of all hostages held by Hamas immediately.” As FDD’s
Jonathan Schanzer, a former terror finance analyst at the Treasury
Department pointed out,
“Hakan Fidan was the intelligence chief who presided over the
establishment of a Hamas headquarters in Turkey that included an active
terrorist commander directing attacks in the West Bank, Saleh
al-Arouri.”...............
The Hamas terror attacks shattered the gun control ‘safety’ myth - By D. Parker
October 14, 2023 - Have you noticed
that the ghouls of the gun grabber lobby have been awfully quiet the
past few days? These cynical control freaks who are all too ready and
willing to exploit other people’s pain for their political gain would
normally be coming out of the woodwork with all the ‘gun violence’ going on, citing the mass Hamas attack in Israel. Why has it only been crickets from the gun confiscation crowd? Despite perceptions, Israel was a dream state for these people. Israel had strict controls on guns, and the people’s common sense civil right of self-defense. That made it nearly a Utopia for
the likes of groups with names like Mom’s Demanding Civilian
Disarmament in Everytown and Brady United Against Your Second Amendment
Right to Own A Gun........The serious problem for the fascist far
left and the gun grabber lobby in particular is that the Hamas terror
attacks have shattered the gun control ‘safety’ myth.............
A History of Pogroms: The Case for a Jewish State - October 20, 2023 By Huck Davenport- Beneath the seemingly
civilized exterior of man lies tribal hatred, desperately trying to claw
its way out. When it does, man can easily rationalize even the most
heinous of his acts as virtuous. His target invariably becomes a
demonized, marginalized group he can scapegoat as needed. No group has
suffered more of this tribal hatred than the Jews. The Twelve Tribes of Israel, descendants
of Jacob, inhabited the land now known as Israel since antiquity. Ten of
those Tribes ruled the Kingdom of Israel
until the Assyrians expelled them in 722 BCE. The other two tribes
ruled the Kingdom of Judah until the Babylonians dispersed them in 586
BCE. Jews restored Judah by around 538 BCE. It was only in the Second
Century AD that the Romans ended the Jewish Kingdom, starting 1,800
years of colonial occupation............
Thinking Seriously About Deterring Iran and Hezb'allah - October 20, 2023 By Robert F. Turner - Roughly 2,500 years ago, Sun Tzu wisely observed,
“For to win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the
acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of
skill.”We call that deterrence and its
success generally depends upon two key perceptions. (At this stage,
realities are only relevant to the degree to which they contribute to
perceptions.) A wise potential aggressor will ask first about the
relative correlation of forces—the relative strength of each
side. Can his armies defeat their opponents, and what are the chances
that other nations will join in collective defense to defeat his plans?
The second variable, equally important, is perceived will. It doesn’t matter how strong other players are if the potential aggressor believes they lack the will to engage.Individuals decide to engage in aggressive behavior...........
Let’s talk about why it’s okay to say that Hamas’s troops are Nazis - October 19, 2023 By Andrea Widburg - At American Thinker,
we are careful not to call our American political opponents “Nazis”
because that cheapens discourse and dishonors the Nazis’ victims. I’ll
acknowledge that the Nazis were, and many of the Democrats are, proud
socialists. And, as has become obvious in the past week, the Nazis
loathed Jews, as do many at the heart of the Democrat party. But
Democrats are not slaughtering Jews en masse and are not
seeking world domination through force of arms. However, Islamists (an
umbrella term that includes Hamas) share every metric with Nazis and,
now that we have more details about how they slaughtered Jews, that
similarity is more apparent than ever before. Nazis were socialists, meaning that all
power was centralized in the state. Everyone, voluntarily or not, was
part of the socialist collective. Islamists are theocrats, meaning the
religion and the state are one. Everyone, voluntarily or not, is part of
the theocratic collective.
Life is cheap in the Arab world -- and the West won't grasp the evil - October 20, 2023 By Victoria White Berger - If Americans do not
have good background history, or very good intuition and common sense,
it is increasingly difficult to cognitively negotiate the mainstream
media war ‘news’ since the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel.Our gut tells us that we must sort this
one out, quickly. Concurrently, our decision-making as a free people is
being hijacked by the leftist Democrats’ neurotic permaglue in massing
to support the indefensible, e.g., the horror of Hamas (this leftist
germinally fascistic stance that might also serve them well, briefly, as
‘socialists’). Putting these phenomenally purblind Democrats aside, let’s look at what happened this week in Palestine..............
The goal is clear and obvious following the October 7 attacks:
eliminating Hamas as a political and military force. The terrorist
organization reportedly has 40,000 fighters ready to battle in the
streets and the network of terror tunnels they’ve constructed over the
years. This expected ground war will not be a cakewalk, but the invasion
is said to be “imminent.”
The corruption of every major American institution by the left has
picked up speed under the Biden administration. In its morning
newsletter, the Washington Free Beacon notes:
WHAT WE’RE WATCHING:
Making plans for a symposium on deterrence, U.S. Strategic Command
(STRATCOM) decided that a top Iranian official cum Princeton professor,
Hussein Mousavian, would make a good keynote speaker. Mousavian last
made headlines when he was captured on Iranian television smirking about the regime’s threats to assassinate U.S. officials. He showed up
in Nebraska to lavish praise on the defunct nuclear agreement and urge
mutual nuclear disarmament. Our Adam Kredo has the story.
Minister of Defence Boris Pistorius admitted this week that the German military is incapable of defending the nation if needed. Pistorius, who assumed the role of the
commander-in-chief of the Bundeswehr last month, said that the German
armed forces as they are currently constituted would not be able to
defend their homeland or protect NATO allies in Europe should they be
forced into a direct war with a power such as Russia. The defence minister said in comments reported by the Bild
newspaper: “We have no armed forces that are capable of defence, i.e.
capable of defending against an offensive brutally conducted war of
aggression.”.......To read More...
My Take - Once again we see just how stupid these European nation's leaders are. They've brought this Ukraine War on themselves, and now they can't fix it. Well, tough!
Remember how Washington’s foreign policy establishment and their
media echo chamber bashed the “isolationist” President Donald Trump for
abusing, humiliating and making life miserable for our close European
allies, in the process obliterating the “liberal international order”?
Remember how some of the Europeans responded? Germany’s Angela Merkel declared “a
new chapter” in US-European relations, saying that Europe “really must
take our fate into our own hands.” France’s Emanuel Macron stated that Europeans need to stop “being naïve,” and assert their strategic independence from the US.
I’m haunted by a photograph from the nightmare years. A Jewish boy,
9 or 10 years old, dressed in an oversized coat and cap, is being led
away from the ruins of the Warsaw Ghetto, his hands in the air. German
troops are taking the child to a certain death.
For me, it symbolized the culmination of 2,000 years of Diaspora
history – of mass murder, torture and every horror imaginable, leading
to the Holocaust and the slaughter of one out of every three Jews on
earth. But that was only a way station. The end of the road is nowhere
in sight.
I contrast this with images of an Israeli war plane sitting on a tarmac and plumes of smoke rising from buildings in Gaza.
If you’re a Jew, those are the choices: Live on your feet or die on your knees.
When there are creatures screaming for your blood – who fired 4,000
missiles from Gaza, staged mini-Kristallnachts from New York to LA,
marched throughout Europe waving Palestinian flags shouting “F___ the
Jews, F___ their mothers, Rape their daughters,” posted 17,000 Tweets
with variations of “Hitler was right”-- the choice is very simple: Do
you want to be a survivor or a statistic?...........To Read More....
Rioters in downtown Cleveland "systematically smashed out windows and looted stores, restaurants, and bars" on Saturday, WJW-TV reported. But family members who own and run Corbo's Bakery weren't about to let rioters have free rein upon the business they worked hard to build over the years.............when rioters tried forcing their way into the bakery using bats and other weapons, owner Joe Corbo and his two sons armed themselves with guns, met the rioters at the door, and said — in effect — just try us.
By and large the protesters kept a move on after seeing the firepower they were up against, but livestreamed video of the incident caught one of the bakery's windows being broken — and that apparently was the extent of the rioters' courageous stand.........To Read More....
My Take - Cleveland's my town and like the owner, I love
Cleveland. This store is in an area known as Little Italy! I've been to his
store, I've eaten in many of the restaurants, and Little Italy is one of my
favorite parts of Cleveland for a number of reasons. One, great food!!!!! Two,
absolute safety! You can walk around the streets and go into the art galleries
with your wife and friends and feel comfortable you'll get home without
incident.
This kind of crap has played out in the past in Little Italy where a bus
load of young black thugs went into Little Italy and planned on causing
trouble. They were met with locals who had a different view. The local papers
called them racists and more, but one thing was made clear. No one was going to
come into Little Italy and destroy it.If Ohio’s restaurants weren’t shut down by our idiot governor, I doubt
this would have gotten as far is it did.
Anyone who has watched a Trump rally or followed Trump’s Twitter feed knows that he’s been open about his disdain for the House’s impeachment proceedings. However, now that the House formally delivered the Articles of Impeachment to the Senate, Trump’s lawyers can finally make known the President’s official legal stand against the Democrats’ blatant political effort to overturn the 2016 election.
In five-and-a-half fiery pages, Jay Alan Sekulow and Pat A. Cipollone attack both the impeachment process and the legal and factual bases (or lack thereof) underlying the articles of impeachment. Sekulow and Cipollone understand that the real audience is the American people, so the document is written in ordinary English, not legalese.
Regarding the entire impeachment, the lawyers state that this warped process attacks the American people and free elections:..........To Read More....
NATO heads of state met to inaugurate the alliance’s new headquarters in Brussels on May 25, and the two main topics of conversation were defense spending and the alliance’s role in fighting terrorism. Both issues indicate that NATO is increasing its political role while diminishing its military function.
The alliance’s link to the national interests of its member states is breaking, meaning that discussions on strategy rarely take place within the alliance. Its military function is declining because alliance members no longer share a common interest as they once did. This is evident from the way member states decide to buy new equipment and prioritize defense spending. In an ideal world, the U.S. would like Europe’s collective military capability to equal at least 50 percent of U.S. military capability. Washington would argue that it is unfair for the U.S. to account for more than 70 percent of NATO members’ defense spending while its gross domestic product is only 48 percent of their combined GDP..........
Consensus Isn’t Possible
NATO won’t easily come to an agreement on defense spending because each country faces a different geopolitical reality and therefore has different needs when it comes to defense. They may be able to settle on broad political statements but not on specific plans. Portugal has different national interests than Romania – and not only will they disagree on the amount of money that they should be spending on defense, but they will also have varying military priorities and views on how to spend it.....To Read More......
The back and forth of the NSA Director’s unauthorized meeting with Donald Trump, and the deceptive intelligence dossier on Trump’s supposed romp in a Moscow hotel room has spawned the notion at The Conservative Treehouse of a closing act of a shadow war within the intelligence community led by the “white hats” in the DoD intel apparatus. There are certainly white hats in every government agency, and the intel community is no exception.
But Sundance wildly overestimates the white hats’ effect outside of a few select leaders. He even goes so far as to promote a thesis that the DoD itself has seceded from the political elites. Yes, a shadow war is ongoing, but we are in no way near to the closing act, and Sundance’s conclusions do not reflect the reality of the depth of elite power broker penetration in our agencies, even DoD..........More
There is an old term, “the inscrutable Oriental”! What does that mean and why? I have my own personal view about this. It's a cultural thing. The Chinese are not direct in coming to the point. They were more concerned with being “more tactful, [their] chief concern being to make the other fellow feel comfortable, to give him “face,” rather than to tell the truth.
This comes from hundreds of years of Confucian thought and the need to get along in often crowded and uncomfortable surroundings.” We have the tendency to “find this tactfulness exaggerated and the emphasis on face irritating and incomprehensible.” Thus we have the tendency to find it means there is something going on in the background. And with the Chinese, there probably is. Much like Don Corleone…”never let anyone outside the family know what you are thinking.
Many years ago I read a book dealing with the old Chinese system of study known as “The Classics”, which was required in order to rise within the ranks of the Mandarin; the bureaucrats that ran the Empire. That created interesting paradigms within the Chinese government. If during some internal power struggle one were to openly attack on adversary it would be looked down upon by the rest of the leadership. But if you could get them downgraded cleverly, or even executed, without anyone being able to trace it to you…while at the same time making sure everyone knew you did it; it was looked on with favor. Although this system changed during the centuries; after all those centuries the training molded the thinking of the entire culture until became a cultural paradigm, no matter who was ruling. That hasn’t changed.
However, when Henry Kissinger (the guy that is supposed to be so smart) went to China he told Mao Tse Tung that the nice thing about this visit was that neither of them wanted anything from the other. Mao looked over at him and said; “If I didn't want something from you I wouldn't have invited you, and if you didn't want something from me you shouldn't have come." The only "face" Mao was concerned about was his own. He wouldn't even let his main henchman in mass murder, Chow En Lai, receive medical treatment to save his life. The thinking is that he didn't want any of his close associates to outlive him and spill the beans about his activities.
Now the Chinese leadership faces the same dilemma the Russians face. In order to maintain their socialist systems they have to keep repainting history in order to justify their existence. Although in Russia it is a bit different, the same party apparatchiks still run everything…even more incompetently than did the Soviets. There are even people in Russia who declare that Stalin really didn't kill all those people. I guess Hitler didn't kill all those Jews either.
In so many socialist tyrannies there seems to be a recurring theme. So many bodies turn up in mass graves that no one killed.
China started a sweeping crackdown of its vibrant social networking media over the weekend, detaining six people, closing 16 Web sites and shutting off the comment function for two gigantic micro-blogs. The campaign, which was announced late Friday and put in place in stages through Saturday, was directly linked to the political instability that has gripped China since one of its most charismatic politicians, Bo Xilai, lost his post in mid-March. That spurred rumors of a coup, which the government-run Xinhua news agency cited as the reason for the measures. Xinhua quoted an official with the State Internet Information Office as saying that the sites had spread reports of “military vehicles entering Beijing and something wrong going on in Beijing.”…. In addition to the six detainees — whose names were not released — Xinhua said others were “admonished and educated” and had promised to “repent.”
Former Red Guard leader Tang Dahua says memories of the fanatical bloodshed that tore apart the southwestern Chinese city of Chongqing return to him with startling clarity. Decades after Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution made Chongqing a bloody ideological battleground, the riverside megacity, China's largest, is at the heart of a different political storm - one that has exposed rifts inside the ruling Communist Party after the ouster of the city's charismatic leader, Bo Xilai. Tang was a prominent leader in the late 1960s battles between Red Guard factions in Chongqing that killed many hundreds in ferocious fighting, and he dismissed the idea that the violence that ravaged China then could return. But Bo's downfall has exposed ideological fault lines in the government and the public that could trouble the party months before a delicate reshuffle of top leaders.
China’s Defence Budget for 2012 continues to follow anticipated trend lines in keeping with its plan of carrying out Revolution in Military Affairs in a calibrated, coordinated and comprehensive manner. The actual figures of the Chinese Defence budget continues to be a source of conjecture and no standard factors can assist in accurate prediction of the real expenditure. The allocation for 2012 appears to suggest that ‘it is business as usual’ for the PLA, although there are reports of a substantial rise in salaries and expenditure on improving the living standards even as it finds new ways to woo young men and women to join the PLA. It would be prudent to assume that the bulk of the monies will be directed at ensuring domination of the Asia- Pacific by developing its ‘ Anti-Access Area Denial’ strategies while building on a nascent expeditionary capability for power projection and protection of its interests globally. As far as India is concerned, we will see no let up in the momentum of infrastructure development in the TAR and the possible establishment of the PLA`s first base overseas in the Indian Ocean in the near future.
