Contra the myth of shining happy progress, China and Japan appear to be heading directly into military conflict again:
Chan Kai Yee of China Daily Mail, a blog with no connection to Beijing, Feb. 22, 2014, provides the following summary translation of an article in Qianzhan.com,
a Chinese-language news site headquartered in the city of Shenzhen in
China’s southeastern Guangdong province, with offices in Beijing and
Hong Kong:Quite a few people have said that the conflict over the Diaoyus (known as Senkakus in Japan) has passed the stage of oral confrontation and what follows may very probably be direct military conflict.
It is especially so as, relying on US support, Japan is obviously declaring war against China already. Sources say that China’s Central Military Commission has directly given Chinese military the instruction: “Fight if it is appropriate to fight.
Sources pointed out that they had received information that Xi Jinping, Chairman of the Central Military Commission, gave a relevant warning to a Japanese economic and trade delegation that recently visited China. Xi specially pointed out to the delegation when he met them, if Japan kept provoking China and thus gave rise to an unstable situation, it alone has to be responsible for all the consequences.
What we are seeing here is the pre-positioning for the collapse of the global Pax Americana. The US is intervening in the internal affairs of foreign governments ever more actively than any time since the 1950s, but it is doing so now without the benefit of a credible military threat. While the weaponry is still significantly advanced and there is still a core of excellent soldiers, it is no secret that the population has zero will-to-fight and the military has been all but broken by constant misuse and overuse as well as the incessant social meddling by its civilian overseers. Vladimir Putin recognizes this, as do the Communist oligarchs of China. So, too, do the Eurofascists of the EU.
The world’s second-rate powers can’t stand directly against the USA yet, but they know the time is rapidly approaching when they will be able to do so. Remember, it only took 22 years for Germany to go from laying prostrate and defeated before the Western Allies to defeating France. Already, the US finds itself unable to impose its will upon China. In another generation, the USA will be unable to impose its will in Asia. It’s not unthinkable that a generation after that, its European influence will be gone and US hegemony will be largely limited to the area of the historical Monroe Doctrine.
And clearly it isn’t only the foreign governments who anticipate this:
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel plans to shrink the United States Army to its smallest force since before the World War II buildup and eliminate an entire class of Air Force attack jets in a new spending proposal that officials describe as the first Pentagon budget to aggressively push the military off the war footing adopted after the terror attacks of 2001.
The proposal, described by several Pentagon officials on the condition of anonymity in advance of its release on Monday, takes into account the fiscal reality of government austerity and the political reality of a president who pledged to end two costly and exhausting land wars. A result, the officials argue, will be a military capable of defeating any adversary, but too small for protracted foreign occupations.
The size of the military and the expenditure upon it can rapidly change, but the population from which it draws won’t. Between Bush the Elder, Clinton, Bush the Younger, and Obama, is there a single individual one could honestly recommend anyone accepting on oath as a commander-in-chief? And as for the time-hallowed notion of “serving one’s country”, what country would one serve now? North Mexico? Israel? Melting Pottomia? Democracy?
The only people in whose interests the US government appears completely unwilling to intervene is the Revolutionary American people.