Russian and Chinese navy vessels have completed their first joint patrol mission in the Pacific Ocean, covering a distance of over 1,700 nautical miles (around 3,100km) in a week, Russia’s Defense Ministry has said.
The landmark mission was aimed at maintaining stability in the Pacific region and safeguarding the maritime infrastructure of the two nations, the ministry said. It started last Sunday and successfully concluded on Saturday.
During the patrol, the Russian and Chinese ships sailed through the Tsugaru Strait between Japan's islands of Honshu and Hokkaido. The Japanese Navy, which monitored their actions, said that the passage was carried out in line with international law and that the country’s territorial waters weren't violated.
The Russian and Chinese military sailors also worked out joint tactical maneuvering and performed other training exercises along their route.
Read more at:
WATCH Russian & Chinese warships on first ever joint patrol mission in Pacific — RT Russia & Former Soviet Union
Showing posts with label Pacific. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pacific. Show all posts
10/29/21
4/15/17
EU must say no to participating in any further costly US military adventures : war=destruction=refugees=terrorism
 |
| EU It's high time to stop these disastrous wars |
As new advisers replace the former Breitbart crew, President Trump might dial back the expression of hostility to the EU. European leaders can never again be certain, however, what might happen if those new advisers are in turn replaced. America has been immeasurably strengthened by its allies’ trust. Even as Trump’s aggressive words fade into reassuring conventionality, those allies will not soon forget their accumulated and well-grounded reasons for mistrust.
Within weeks of his inauguration, President Donald Trump had already wrought a strategic revolution in U.S. foreign policy. Russia, formerly an antagonist, has been promoted to preferred partner. In its place, Team Trump has identified a new enemy. With this enemy there can be no coexistence, no cooperation. It must be humbled and divided, not merely defeated but utterly overthrown. This enemy is the European Union.
Meanwhile, Trump has offered sharp personal comments on Chancellor Angela Merkel. One of his top advisers has called for Germany to flout the EU and negotiate bilaterally with the U.S. so as to reduce German trade surpluses. In a meeting with Merkel, Trump also called for direct negotiations, and suggested that Germany had outmaneuvered the U.S. On bad days, the U.S.–German relationship looks more strained than at any time since the end of the Cold War, including during the Iraq War. The Trump administration seems determined only to widen the breach.
Of course, it's easy to spot signs of disarray. Modern Europe is messy, and its institutions and policies are imperfect. Some of the threats facing the EU are real: slow growth and austerity, for instance, within the eurozone. Others, like rising right-wing nationalism and migration, are less so.
Yet amid all the hyperbole and hysteria, a basic point gets missed. Europe today is a genuine superpower and will likely remain one for decades to come. By most objective measures, it either rivals or surpasses the United States and China in its ability to project a full spectrum of global military, economic, and soft power. Europe consistently deploys military troops within and beyond its immediate neighborhood. It manipulates economic power with a skill and success unmatched by any other country or region. And its ability to employ "soft power" to persuade other countries to change their behavior is unique.
If a superpower is a political entity that can consistently project military, economic, and soft power transcontinentally with a reasonable chance of success, Europe surely qualifies. Its power, moreover, is likely to remain entrenched for at least another generation, regardless of the outcome of current European crises. In sum, Europe is the "invisible superpower" in contemporary world politics. Here's why.
Before turning to Europe's specific military, economic, and soft power assets, let's dismiss the nearly universal belief that Europe is too decentralized to act as a superpower. Europe is not a sovereign state. Yet in practice, it generally acts as a single force in world politics.
We ignore European unity at our peril. Most observers analyze Europe as 28 separate countries - even though doing so generates geopolitical nonsense. To see why, consider one recent example: Russia's foreign-policy options after its invasion of Ukraine triggered Western sanctions. Many predicted that China's rising economic weight meant the Kremlin would surely turn to Beijing.
In July 2015, leading newspapers across Eurasia ran the same story (originally from Agence France-Presse) reporting that "China has emerged as Russia's largest trading partner as Moscow turns east, seeking markets in Asia in the face of Western sanctions."
Treating Europe as disunited was geopolitically naive. Even though EU law imposes no legal obligation to implement sanctions, Europe acted - and paid more than 90 percent of the costs of the Western policy response to Russia. European power and unity are the glue that has held together this Western policy for the past two years. This despite all the nonsense the US Trump Administration has been declaring.
This is only one example of how, despite its fragmentation, Europe effectively projects power in those areas that count most for global influence. Certainly, European governments often disagree among themselves, sometimes vociferously and in public. Yet policy coordination, both formal and informal, permits European governments to act as a unit to influence the outside world.
Three modes of European coordination are critical: common EU policies, coordination, and tacit policy convergence.
For these reasons,the US should recognize Europe as a single superpower in projecting military, economic, or soft power - whether or not it acts formally as one.
As for the EU to avoid getting dragged into any more US failed military adventures, it is critical that all the EU participating nation, as one unit, issue an ultimatum to the US, Russia and Syria to cease all military operations in the Middle East and immediately start bi-lateral negotiation within a period of 90 days.
Bottom-line : war=destruction=refugees=terrorism. More military involvement will only increase these problems as they have always done.
EU-Digest
12/16/16
US - China Relations: Trump’s Swaggering Sparks War Talk from China
In mid-summer 2015, the Pentagon deployed a vast fleet to the Western Pacific with an invasion force of 33,000 troops. The little reported exercise was supported by warplanes and attack helicopters, along with 21 ships, including the aircraft carrier George Washington and three nuclear missile-bearing submarines.
It was only a game, the Navy said. But it looked very much like practice for the real thing on or near Chinese shores. On the night of July 4—Independence Day in the U.S.—Operation Talisman Saber kicked off with U.S. high-altitude paratroopers dropping from the sky near Fog Bay, in Australia’s Northern Territory. Naval artillery boomed. Tanks rolled ashore. The invasion was on.
A U.S. Navy press release made it sound routine, an “exercise [that] illustrates the closeness of the Australian and U.S. alliance…” But Military Times, a close observer of the Defense Department, put its finger on what it was really about: “Talisman Sabre: Trying to Deter China,” its headline said.
The problem with The Coming War on China is that it’s not so much about a future conflict as it is a dramatic rehash of America’s march to military supremacy in the Pacific, including updates on local resistance to U.S. bases. While it offers a salutary alternative to the often frantic media reports about China’s militarization of islets in the South China Sea, it only vaguely recognizes that Beijing may be overreaching. Now the “unthinkable,” a military clash between the two, has suddenly became all too thinkable—even inevitable, in some circles. When President-elect Trump triggered Beijing’s wrath by taking a telephone call from Taiwan’s pro-independence leader in early December—threatening four decades of diplomatic stability—the two countries inched closer to the type of incident that could lead to a dangerous string of tit-for-tat reprisals. Trump’s further disparagement of China in the following days only ratcheted up the potential for a face-saving showdown.
While Chinese President Xi Jinping has plenty of power in the Politburo to deal with Trump on several contentious matters, starting with trade, he has none on Taiwan’s status, analysts firmly believe. Beijing’s bedrock policy on Taiwan, reiterated for decades in official documents and private conversations with foreign visitors, is that the island has been a renegade province ever since U.S.-backed nationalist forces retreated there in 1949. With the triumph of its revolution in 1950, the Chinese Communist Party ended more than a century of repeated humiliations at the hands of foreign invaders—except for “breakaway” Taiwan. And it will not countenance any efforts by Trump to declare Taiwan free, says Fu Ying, a former Chinese ambassador to Britain and now spokeswoman for the National People’s Congress. “History matters,” she told a group of visiting reporters, including Newsweek’s Jonathan Broder, in June. “We’ve lost enough.”
Xi will not risk being seen as “soft” on Taiwan, Wang Dong, a professor of international relations at Peking University, tells Newsweek. "If the upcoming Trump administration pursues policies that tramp on China's core interests—sovereignty and territorial integrity—then they shouldn't expect anything short of a forceful response.”In mid-summer 2015, the Pentagon deployed a vast fleet to the Western Pacific with an invasion force of 33,000 troops. The little reported exercise was supported by warplanes and attack helicopters, along with 21 ships, including the aircraft carrier George Washington and three nuclear missile-bearing submarines.
It was only a game, the Navy said. But it looked very much like practice for the real thing on or near Chinese shores. On the night of July 4—Independence Day in the U.S.—Operation Talisman Saber kicked off with U.S. high-altitude paratroopers dropping from the sky near Fog Bay, in Australia’s Northern Territory. Naval artillery boomed. Tanks rolled ashore. The invasion was on.
A U.S. Navy press release made it sound routine, an “exercise [that] illustrates the closeness of the Australian and U.S. alliance…” But Military Times, a close observer of the Defense Department, put its finger on what it was really about: “Talisman Sabre: Trying to Deter China,” its headline said.
The problem with The Coming War on China is that it’s not so much about a future conflict as it is a dramatic rehash of America’s march to military supremacy in the Pacific, including updates on local resistance to U.S. bases. While it offers a salutary alternative to the often frantic media reports about China’s militarization of islets in the South China Sea, it only vaguely recognizes that Beijing may be overreaching. Now the “unthinkable,” a military clash between the two, has suddenly became all too thinkable—even inevitable, in some circles. When President-elect Trump triggered Beijing’s wrath by taking a telephone call from Taiwan’s pro-independence leader in early December—threatening four decades of diplomatic stability—the two countries inched closer to the type of incident that could lead to a dangerous string of tit-for-tat reprisals. Trump’s further disparagement of China in the following days only ratcheted up the potential for a face-saving showdown.
While Chinese President Xi Jinping has plenty of power in the Politburo to deal with Trump on several contentious matters, starting with trade, he has none on Taiwan’s status, analysts firmly believe. Beijing’s bedrock policy on Taiwan, reiterated for decades in official documents and private conversations with foreign visitors, is that the island has been a renegade province ever since U.S.-backed nationalist forces retreated there in 1949. With the triumph of its revolution in 1950, the Chinese Communist Party ended more than a century of repeated humiliations at the hands of foreign invaders—except for “breakaway” Taiwan. And it will not countenance any efforts by Trump to declare Taiwan free, says Fu Ying, a former Chinese ambassador to Britain and now spokeswoman for the National People’s Congress. “History matters,” she told a group of visiting reporters, including Newsweek’s Jonathan Broder, in June. “We’ve lost enough.”
Read more: Trump’s Swaggering Sparks War Talk from China
It was only a game, the Navy said. But it looked very much like practice for the real thing on or near Chinese shores. On the night of July 4—Independence Day in the U.S.—Operation Talisman Saber kicked off with U.S. high-altitude paratroopers dropping from the sky near Fog Bay, in Australia’s Northern Territory. Naval artillery boomed. Tanks rolled ashore. The invasion was on.
A U.S. Navy press release made it sound routine, an “exercise [that] illustrates the closeness of the Australian and U.S. alliance…” But Military Times, a close observer of the Defense Department, put its finger on what it was really about: “Talisman Sabre: Trying to Deter China,” its headline said.
The problem with The Coming War on China is that it’s not so much about a future conflict as it is a dramatic rehash of America’s march to military supremacy in the Pacific, including updates on local resistance to U.S. bases. While it offers a salutary alternative to the often frantic media reports about China’s militarization of islets in the South China Sea, it only vaguely recognizes that Beijing may be overreaching. Now the “unthinkable,” a military clash between the two, has suddenly became all too thinkable—even inevitable, in some circles. When President-elect Trump triggered Beijing’s wrath by taking a telephone call from Taiwan’s pro-independence leader in early December—threatening four decades of diplomatic stability—the two countries inched closer to the type of incident that could lead to a dangerous string of tit-for-tat reprisals. Trump’s further disparagement of China in the following days only ratcheted up the potential for a face-saving showdown.
While Chinese President Xi Jinping has plenty of power in the Politburo to deal with Trump on several contentious matters, starting with trade, he has none on Taiwan’s status, analysts firmly believe. Beijing’s bedrock policy on Taiwan, reiterated for decades in official documents and private conversations with foreign visitors, is that the island has been a renegade province ever since U.S.-backed nationalist forces retreated there in 1949. With the triumph of its revolution in 1950, the Chinese Communist Party ended more than a century of repeated humiliations at the hands of foreign invaders—except for “breakaway” Taiwan. And it will not countenance any efforts by Trump to declare Taiwan free, says Fu Ying, a former Chinese ambassador to Britain and now spokeswoman for the National People’s Congress. “History matters,” she told a group of visiting reporters, including Newsweek’s Jonathan Broder, in June. “We’ve lost enough.”
Xi will not risk being seen as “soft” on Taiwan, Wang Dong, a professor of international relations at Peking University, tells Newsweek. "If the upcoming Trump administration pursues policies that tramp on China's core interests—sovereignty and territorial integrity—then they shouldn't expect anything short of a forceful response.”In mid-summer 2015, the Pentagon deployed a vast fleet to the Western Pacific with an invasion force of 33,000 troops. The little reported exercise was supported by warplanes and attack helicopters, along with 21 ships, including the aircraft carrier George Washington and three nuclear missile-bearing submarines.
It was only a game, the Navy said. But it looked very much like practice for the real thing on or near Chinese shores. On the night of July 4—Independence Day in the U.S.—Operation Talisman Saber kicked off with U.S. high-altitude paratroopers dropping from the sky near Fog Bay, in Australia’s Northern Territory. Naval artillery boomed. Tanks rolled ashore. The invasion was on.
A U.S. Navy press release made it sound routine, an “exercise [that] illustrates the closeness of the Australian and U.S. alliance…” But Military Times, a close observer of the Defense Department, put its finger on what it was really about: “Talisman Sabre: Trying to Deter China,” its headline said.
The problem with The Coming War on China is that it’s not so much about a future conflict as it is a dramatic rehash of America’s march to military supremacy in the Pacific, including updates on local resistance to U.S. bases. While it offers a salutary alternative to the often frantic media reports about China’s militarization of islets in the South China Sea, it only vaguely recognizes that Beijing may be overreaching. Now the “unthinkable,” a military clash between the two, has suddenly became all too thinkable—even inevitable, in some circles. When President-elect Trump triggered Beijing’s wrath by taking a telephone call from Taiwan’s pro-independence leader in early December—threatening four decades of diplomatic stability—the two countries inched closer to the type of incident that could lead to a dangerous string of tit-for-tat reprisals. Trump’s further disparagement of China in the following days only ratcheted up the potential for a face-saving showdown.
While Chinese President Xi Jinping has plenty of power in the Politburo to deal with Trump on several contentious matters, starting with trade, he has none on Taiwan’s status, analysts firmly believe. Beijing’s bedrock policy on Taiwan, reiterated for decades in official documents and private conversations with foreign visitors, is that the island has been a renegade province ever since U.S.-backed nationalist forces retreated there in 1949. With the triumph of its revolution in 1950, the Chinese Communist Party ended more than a century of repeated humiliations at the hands of foreign invaders—except for “breakaway” Taiwan. And it will not countenance any efforts by Trump to declare Taiwan free, says Fu Ying, a former Chinese ambassador to Britain and now spokeswoman for the National People’s Congress. “History matters,” she told a group of visiting reporters, including Newsweek’s Jonathan Broder, in June. “We’ve lost enough.”
Read more: Trump’s Swaggering Sparks War Talk from China
2/1/14
Russia: Arctic city hopes to cash in as melting ice opens new sea route to China - by John Vidal
The city of Nadym, in the extreme north of Siberia, is one of the
Earth's least hospitable places, shrouded in darkness for half of the
year, with temperatures plunging below -30C and the nearby Kara Sea
semi-permanently frozen.
But things are looking up for this Arctic conurbation halfway between Europe and China. Over the next 30 years climate change is likely to open up a polar shipping route between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, cutting travel time to Asia by 40% and allowing Russia's vast oil and gas resources to be exported to China, Japan and south Asia much faster.
Nadym stands to benefit from a warmer climate more than any other Arctic city – the Russian government plans to connect it by road and rail to other oil and gas centres; Gazprom, the world's largest gas company, is building a port nearby with French oil major Total; and if the new northern sea route is open for even six months of the year, Nadym will find itself on the 21st-century equivalent of the ancient silk route.
"The entire centre of gravity of the world economy is shifting to Nadym," said the mayor, Stanislav Shegurov, a former gas worker, at a recent meeting of Arctic leaders in Norway.
Expectations are high that the route will complement the Suez canal as a key waterway for trade to and from Asia. "The Arctic is our home and our future. We will make full use of the northern sea route. We are building infrastructure, we are making history. We have ambitious plans," said Anton Vasiliev, Russian ambassador for the Arctic.
Only 71 large ships, working mostly with Russian icebreakers, navigated the route in 2013, but Russia expects a 30-fold increase in shipping by 2020 and ice-free water over most of its length by 2050.
Read more: Arctic city hopes to cash in as melting ice opens new sea route to China | World news | The Observer
But things are looking up for this Arctic conurbation halfway between Europe and China. Over the next 30 years climate change is likely to open up a polar shipping route between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, cutting travel time to Asia by 40% and allowing Russia's vast oil and gas resources to be exported to China, Japan and south Asia much faster.
Nadym stands to benefit from a warmer climate more than any other Arctic city – the Russian government plans to connect it by road and rail to other oil and gas centres; Gazprom, the world's largest gas company, is building a port nearby with French oil major Total; and if the new northern sea route is open for even six months of the year, Nadym will find itself on the 21st-century equivalent of the ancient silk route.
"The entire centre of gravity of the world economy is shifting to Nadym," said the mayor, Stanislav Shegurov, a former gas worker, at a recent meeting of Arctic leaders in Norway.
Expectations are high that the route will complement the Suez canal as a key waterway for trade to and from Asia. "The Arctic is our home and our future. We will make full use of the northern sea route. We are building infrastructure, we are making history. We have ambitious plans," said Anton Vasiliev, Russian ambassador for the Arctic.
Only 71 large ships, working mostly with Russian icebreakers, navigated the route in 2013, but Russia expects a 30-fold increase in shipping by 2020 and ice-free water over most of its length by 2050.
Read more: Arctic city hopes to cash in as melting ice opens new sea route to China | World news | The Observer
6/3/12
'Europe must rethink defence' after US naval shift to Asia
France said Sunday Europe needed to rethink its defence strategy as the US repositions the majority of its naval fleet to the Pacific.
French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said questions relating to Europe's defence framework have emerged due to the US shift, and are also exacerbated by Washington's defence spending cut.
"In the coming 10 years, the US budget for defense is going to be diminished by about $500 billion," he said at a news conference after attending the Shangri-La Dialogue, an annual security summit in Singapore.
Read more: 'Europe must rethink defence' after US naval shift to Asia < French news | Expatica France
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