New Cold War: Russia, China To Coodinate Response Against U.S. Global Missile Shield
BEIJING: Russia and China are planning to intensify their cooperation on missile defense in response to America’s growing missile defense potential around the globe, Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev said on Wednesday.“We are concerned about US plans to build a global missile defense system, including in the Asia-Pacific region,” Patrushev said during the 8th round of Russian-Chinese consultations on strategic security in Beijing.
“Our Chinese partners share our concerns and we have agreed to coordinate our actions in that respect,” he said, adding that it would help both countries to develop a “constructive” approach toward missile defense issue.
Russia and China have been keeping a close eye on US moves to deploy missile defenses around the arc of the South China Sea in addition to the planned European missile shield.
Washington and Tokyo agreed last September to construct an advanced X-band missile early-warning radar in southern Japan to join an existing AN/TPY-2 radar in Japan’s northern Aomori Prefecture.
Some reports suggest that US Missile Defense Agency and the US Pacific Command are considering a third such radar somewhere else in Southeast Asia, possibly in the Philippines.
Washington is also planning to expand the grouping of Aegis-equipped US warships that patrol international waters in the region.
Moscow and Beijing are objecting to US missile defense initiatives saying they are worsening the global and regional security environment, especially military and nonproliferation processes, to the detriment of Russian and Chinese nuclear deterrents.
Putin sends warships to boost Syria
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin.
July 12, 2012
RUSSIA has sent a flotilla of warships to its naval base in a key Syrian port in an apparent show of support for President Bashar al-Assad in what would be the largest display of Russian military power in the region since the Syrian conflict began almost 17 months ago.
Two destroyers and three amphibious landing vessels carrying marines set sail from Russian bases in the Arctic and the Black Sea, according to Russian military sources.
The development appeared intended to underline Russia’s effort to position itself as an increasingly decisive broker in resolving the anti-government uprising in Syria, Russia’s last ally in the Middle East and where Russia has its only foreign military base outside the former Soviet Union.
The move follows Russia’s announcement earlier this week that it was halting new shipments of weapons to the Syrian military until the conflict settled down.
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US (Hillary) threatens Russia, China for not supporting campaign of terror in Syria.
By Tony Cartalucci
July 06, 2012 “Information Clearing House” — The US’ increasingly unhinged rhetoric reached a new level of absurdity this week as US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called on Western nations and their Arab proxies to “make it clear that Russia and China will pay a price because they are holding up progress” in regards to the US’ premeditated campaign of terrorism and violent regime change in Syria.
It was made public as early as 2007 by Seymour Hersh in his report “The Redirection” published in the New Yorker that the US, Israel, Saudi Arabia and others were gathering, funding, arming, and deploying a front of violent sectarian extremists, many with ties to Al Qaeda, to undermine, destabilize, and eventually lead to the overthrow of the governments of Lebanon, Syria, and Iran. The violent campaign was rolled out publicly in the wake of a similarly premeditated geopolitical ploy, the so-called “Arab Spring,” and has since then been clearly exposed as the work of violent terrorist networks. Ironically, these terrorist networks are those allegedly the impetus of the “War on Terror,” now paradoxically being funded, armed, and politically backed by the West.
It was reported that Libyan terrorists led by Abdul Hakim Belhaj, commander of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), a US State Department-listed “Foreign Terrorist Organization,” had joined the so-called “Free Syrian Army” (FSA) along with sectarian extremists from Iraq who specialize in the indiscriminate terrorist bombings now ravaging Syria.
In fact, the true nature of Syria’s “rebels” has become so well known, that recent attempts to sway public opinion with continued, but unsubstantiated reports of “atrocities” aimed at demonizing the Syrian government have been met with skepticism, doubt, and even indignation by the public – giving nations like Russia and China not only the opportunity to defy Western dictates, but a moral imperative to do so as well.
Collapsing Legitimacy Leads to Collapsing Empires
The global hegemony of Wall Street and London has been built behind a facade of “human rights,” “freedom,” and “democracy.” As these principles are eroded back home in the West, their use for dressing up otherwise naked imperialism, corporate monopolization, and military aggression abroad has become overt and increasingly ineffective.
While the US Secretary of State attempts to blame Russia and China for “holding up progress” in the West’s campaign of premeditated destabilization in Syria, it is more likely that the West’s own loss of legitimacy is the true reason it has not successfully convinced the world to go along with what is increasingly appearing to be a self-serving and very untenable agenda.
Should the US fail in its attempts to overthrow the government of Syria, and quite likely even if it does manage to succeed at this late hour, so much damage has been done to the West’s credibility, as well as to the credibility of its allegedly independent institutions, that future gambits will be even more difficult to execute. As the West’s economy and geopolitical power crumbles and its reach becomes less subtle and more adversarial, shareholders will seek more secure investments, financially, politically, and even tactically.
Maintaining an empire relies on an immense global infrastructure the West still possesses – but it is an infrastructure that is meeting competition from not only rival hegemonies, but from within individual nations as well, on both a national and grassroots level. Empires are also built on psychological factors such as faith in one’s institutions and fear of one’s military prowess. The West has been increasingly faltering in all respects in a world where these concepts are becoming increasingly challenged by shifting social, economic, and technological paradigms.
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