WORLD AT WAR: 9.18.21 - The U.S. And China Are Closer To War

The U.S. And China Are Closer To War Than Most Americans Would Dare To Imagine - by Michael Snyder - http://endoftheamericandream.com/the-u-s-and-china-are-closer-to-war-than-most-americans-would-dare-to-imagine/ Are we in danger of stumbling into a major military conflict? This week, a couple of startling revelations have really shaken up those that closely watch U.S. relationswith China. The relationship between our two nations continues to deteriorate, and we are now closer to a war with China than we have ever been since the end of the Korean War. This is something that I have been warning about for a long time, and I am extremelyalarmed by what has just been revealed. But for most Americans, a war with China is so improbable that it isn’t even worth thinking about. In fact, if you put together a list of all the issues that the American people are concerned about, war with China wouldprobably not even make the top 1000. Here in the United States, it is pretty much a non-issue, because the vast majority of the population does not think that such a war will ever happen in their entire lifetimes. But over in China they see things very differently. In fact, state-controlled media outlets openly talk about an invasion of Taiwan and a future military conflict with theUnited States. To the Chinese, reunification with Taiwan is a top national priority, and the U.S. military is the only thing standing in the way of achieving that extremely important goal. In recent years, the U.S. military has conducted “freedom of navigation” exercises in the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea as a “show of strength” to China. In response, the Chinese Navy is now conducting “freedom of navigation” exercises off the coast of Alaska. The following comes from Zero Hedge… The US Coast Guard revealed a significant incident involving Chinese military vessels coming near American waters off Alaska. While the incident was first divulged to thepublic on Monday, it happened at the end of August. No less than four People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Navy ships were spotted and shadowed by US vessels off Alaska’s Aleutian Islands, including a guided missile destroyer andguided missile cruiser, as well as an intelligence gathering vessel and auxiliary ship. They stayed in international waters but came within the United States’ exclusive economic zone. Needless to say, this is extremely unusual. According to a Coast Guard news release, Chinese vessels actually came as close as 46 miles to U.S. territory… During the deployment, Bertholf and Kimball observed four ships from the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) operating as close as 46 miles off the Aleutian Island coast.While the ships were within the U.S. exclusive economic zone, they followed international laws and norms and at no point entered U.S. territorial waters. The PLAN task force included a guided missile cruiser, a guided missile destroyer, a general intelligence vessel, and an auxiliary vessel. The Chinese vessels conductedmilitary and surveillance operations during their deployment to the Bering Sea and North Pacific Ocean. This “intrusion” made a lot of people angry, but the truth is that the Chinese are only doing this because of what we have been doing to them for several years. Most Americans don’t realize this, but our relations with China have been going down the tubes for a long time. By the end of the Trump administration, things were so tensethat the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff called his counterpart in China twice to assure him that we were not about to launch some sort of an attack… Twice in the final months of the Trump administration, the country’s top military officer was so fearful that the president’s actions might spark a war with China that hemoved urgently to avert armed conflict. In a pair of secret phone calls, Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, assured his Chinese counterpart, Gen. Li Zuocheng of the People’s LiberationArmy, that the United States would not strike, according to a new book by Washington Post associate editor Bob Woodward and national political reporter Robert Costa. In fact, Milley specifically promised the Chinese that he would tell them ahead of time if the U.S. was about to initiate a strike… ‘General Li, you and I have known each other for now five years. If we’re going to attack, I’m going to call you ahead of time. It’s not going to be a surprise,’ Milleyreportedly told him. Of course the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is not ever supposed to do something of this nature. Many have pointed out that it was treason for him to go behind PresidentTrump’s back like this, and there have been lots of calls for him to resign now that this has been revealed. When Senator Marco Rubio heard about this, he wrote to Joe Biden and asked him to immediately fire Milley… He wrote President Biden demanding he dismiss Milley ‘immediately.’ ‘I write with grave concern regarding recent reporting that General Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, worked to actively undermine the sitting Commanderin Chief of the United States Armed Forces and contemplated a treasonous leak of classified information to the Chinese Communist Party in advance of a potential armed conflict with the People’s Republic of China (PRC),’ Rubio wrote. Unfortunately, we all know that Biden is not going to dismiss Milley. Hardly anyone ever gets held accountable in Washington anymore. We were promised that relations with China would improve once Biden was in the White House, but instead things have just gotten even more tense. The Biden administrationhas been very aggressive with China regarding the status of Taiwan, and the Chinese have responded by sending lots and lots of military aircraft into Taiwanese airspace. But so far the Chinese have not sent any military aircraft over the island itself. Could that soon change? This week, a newspaper controlled by the CCP published a piece that suggested that now is the time to send Chinese fighter jets directly over Taiwan… Sending PLA fighter jets over the island of Taiwan is a step we must take. The move will pose a fundamental warning to the Taiwan authorities and bring about reconstructionof the situation across the Taiwan Straits. It will be a clear declaration of China’s sovereignty over Taiwan island, and create unprecedented conditions for us to further implement this sovereignty. The “airspace” over the Taiwan island belongs to the airspace of China. The so-called middle line of the Taiwan Straits has never been recognized by the Chinese mainland.Therefore, there is sufficient legal basis for the PLA fighter jets to fly over the island. Previously, PLA fighter jets did not fly over Taiwan. That was out of consideration for taking care of the emotions and feelings of Taiwan residents and out of thegoodwill to maintain stability across the Straits. Now that the DPP authority has gone completely hostile toward the mainland and is willing to play a role as a pawn of the US in strategically containing the Chinese mainland, it is time for us to take backthe favor we granted to the island in the past and prepare to exercise the sovereignty of sending fighter jets to patrol the Taiwan island. Of course if Chinese military aircraft fly over the island, there is a really good chance that the Taiwanese military will start shooting at them. The same piece that I just quoted above suggested that such an action by the Taiwanese military could be the start of “a war to liberate the Taiwan island”… Will the military on the Taiwan island dare to prevent PLA fighters from flying over the island and fire? Our answer is that: As long as the mainland’s determination toconduct such a patrol is unwavering, if Taiwan fires, it would mean that the Chinese mainland will launch a destructive retaliation. Even a war to liberate the Taiwan island will start. In this context, the Taiwan military will never dare to fire at a PLAaircraft on such a mission. The mainland fighter jets’ flight over the Taiwan island must be backed by large-scale and overwhelming military preparedness. Fighters flying over the Taiwan Straits isonly a part of the Chinese mainland’s determination to reset the situation across the Straits. This will be a showdown that gives the DPP authority two choices: either accept the patrol and refrain from the extreme anti-mainland line of colluding with theUS and Japan, or start a war by firing at military aircraft of the Chinese mainland and face the consequence of being destroyed and eliminated by the PLA. If China did invade Taiwan, that would instantly put the United States and China into a state of military conflict. And the war that most Americans thought could never happen will have begun. We are so close. All it will take is one false move and there will be no turning back. So let us hope for peace. Unfortunately, we have a hothead that is in an advanced state of mental decline in the Oval Office, and he is surrounded by the worst foreign policyteam in modern American history. ----------------------------------------- US, Iran, Israel nuke standoff, everyone blinks - now what? � Yonah Jeremy Bob - https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/iran-news/us-iran-israel-nuke-standoff-everyone-blinks-now-what-analysis-679648 Blinking from all sides over the last few weeks and even days has started to reshape the geopolitics surrounding the issue of the Iran nuclear deal talks. In the ongoing nuclear standoff involving the US and Iran � with Israel and the moderate Sunni Arab states the most actively interested parties on the sidelines � everyonehas now blinked. Where that means the nuclear standoff will go next is less certain. The US blinked first. Israeli intelligence sources have explained that when Washington saw that Ebrahim Raisi would be elected president, it softened some of its redlines, hoping to wrap up adeal before he came on. These softened positions included showing a willingness to allow the Islamic Republic place its advanced centrifuges - which could allow it to produce a material for a nuclearbomb at a faster rate - in storage as opposed to the original demand that almost all be destroyed. Incidentally, under the 2015 JCPOA Iran nuclear deal, Tehran was allowed to retain a very limited number of its advanced centrifuges, compared to the now hundreds it hasoperating. Further, the Biden administration reportedly showed some additional flexibility on which sanctions it would remove as part of a return to the JCPOA. These pre-Raisi concessions are part of what may have encouraged the new Iranian leader to seek more concessions by stalling he negotiations for four months and barrelingforward with 60% enrichment � only one step down from the 90% needed for weapons-grade uranium. Iran blinked next. Last week, the Islamic Republic agreed to renew talks with the IAEA over nuclear inspections and allowed the agency initial access to some of its nuclear observation equipmentafter months of being locked out. Notably, some of the equipment was reported as damaged and the IAEA gave its first details about the damage. The IAEA did not reveal whether the damage to its cameras was caused by the June attack on Iran's Karaj nuclear facility (attributed to Israel) and whether its conclusionwas based on Iranian reports or it had independently confirmed the cause of the damage. This is an important question since it raises suspicions that the Iranians tampered with IAEA equipment over the last few months to hide certain activities � though it isnoteworthy that Israeli officials have not denied involvement in the Karaj attack. One could argue that Iran did not blink so much as it finally started to cash in on the new conciliatory approach in Washington. But blinking is still blinking and the Islamic Republic has not yet received the major concession it has sought - a full lifting of sanctions by the US before a return tothe JCPOA. Under the deal, Iran would need to give up all of its uranium enriched to 60% and 20% and most of what has been enriched to 5% before sanctions are lifted. Israel also seemed to blink in pre-Yom Kippur interviews. Defense Minister Benny Gantz became the first senior Israeli official to publicly reduce opposition to an American return to the JCPOA. Until now Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Gantz and all other Israeli officials were publicly opposed to the deal. If there was a difference between the Netanyahu and Bennett approaches, it was in style: Netanyahu wanted to make the fight with the US over Iran a constant source of frictionto win political points with portions of the American and Israeli electorate and possibly to intimidate Iran. Bennett has tried to win back support for Israel in the Democratic party which reached historically-low levels under Netanyahu and after he publicly attacked Barack Obamawith a speech before the US Congress in 2015. Gantz's statement crossed a new line. It came only a day after Foreign Minister Yair Lapid played down Iran's achievement of getting to a point of being only one month from sufficient uranium for a nuclear weapon. Lapid said out loud what only Israeli critics, nuclear scientists and sometimes IDF officials were saying quietly when Israeli politicians rattled their sabers about howclose Iran was to a nuclear weapon. He explained that even if the Islamic Republic gets to the point where it has enough uranium, it would still be more than a few months away from being able to deliver anuclear weapon. In fact, even hawkish nuclear experts and (non-political) Israeli intelligence officials have said for some time that the fastest Iran could develop a nuclear weapon afterit had sufficient weaponized uranium would be six months. IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Aviv Kohavi and multiple IDF intelligence officials have put the number at closer to two years. The disparity primarily derives from how much Iran has accomplished clandestinely in the areas of detonation and ballistic missile development since the 2003 era (an erawhich Israel knows a lot about after the Mossad seized Iran's nuclear archives) and what activities Tehran might or might not be physically and financially capable of undertaking in parallel. But saying this out loud, Lapid reduced the urgency that Israel has placed on Iran's pressing forward to a nuclear bomb. Lapid could be trying to ease pressure on the US to rush back into a deal under the argument that if Iran is not that close to building a bomb, then the US can wait fora "better" deal. But taken along with Gantz's statement, it seems that at least some members of the current Israeli government are ready to swallow a US return to the JCPOA provided theyget guarantees of economic sanctions snapping back in the event of a violation and assurances from the US that it would not resist Israeli plans to attack Iranian nuclear facilities in the future if necessary. Will all of this lead to an Iranian and American return to the JCPOA? What will the new JCPOA look like and will the Biden administration stay true to its commitment to enforce an add-on to the JCPOA to fix the deal's holes? How will Israel act if Washington and the West simply wilt under Iranian pressure and suffice with a slightly weaker JCPOA in which Iran permanently gets to keep its hundredsof advanced centrifuges � even if they are temporarily closeted? These are all open questions. But the blinking from all sides over the last few days has started to reshape the geopolitics surrounding the issue, and it seems some more changes and surprises may notbe far off. VISIT: PROPHECY WATCHER WEEKLY NEWS: HTTP://PROPHECY-WATCHER-WEEKLY-NEWS.BLOGSPOT.COM