Biden regime to supply Taiwan with 400 Harpoon anti-ship missiles: Incompetence compounded by obvious death wish
By Gilbert Doctorow | April 18, 2023
The News Review discussion on Press TV, Iran shortly after noon today focused on the announced plans of the Biden Administration to supply Taiwan with Harpoon missiles. Though delivery will not begin for some years, the release of these plans by Bloomberg late yesterday could not have come at a worse time for American interests: precisely in the midst of Chinese Defense Minister Li Shangfu’s four day visit to Moscow. This timing gives the Russians and Chinese the perfect opportunity to discuss scenarios of joint response to the threat such missiles would pose to Chinese ambitions for reunification with Taiwan, by force if necessary. It also pushes the two countries still closer together, to the detriment of American national security.
The reason given by Bloomberg for supplying Harpoons to Taiwan is to enable them to thwart any invasion from mainland China. However, as we saw last week in the PRC’s massive naval exercises in the sea around Taiwan that in effect simulated a blockade of the island, China can bring Taiwan to its knees without putting a single soldier on Taiwanese soil. In this case, the Harpoons represent an attempt by the United States to foil a blockade. However, it should be clear to anyone with sense that for the Harpoons to pose such a threat they must first arrive in the island and China has every possibility and reason to ensure that will not happen. What we have here is precisely the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 in reverse, with the USA planning to deliver weapons to an island off the shores of its rival for global leadership, or enemy, if you will. It is simply stunning that the ‘best and the brightest’ of today advising the Oval Office have no memory of past Great Power confrontations and apparently no ability to foresee the next moves of their chess partners.
I trust that readers will enjoy this brief interview. My fellow panelist is a well spoken analyst based in Beijing.
©Gilbert Doctorow, 2023
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6 MAJOR US foreign policy failures of the post-Cold War era
By Adam Garrie | The Duran | September 14, 2017
In the 1990s, US officials, all of whom would go on to serve in the George W. Bush White House, authored two short, but deeply important policy documents that have subsequently been the guiding force behind every major US foreign policy decision taken since the year 2000 and particularly since 9/11.
These documents include the Defense Planning Guidance for the 1994–99 fiscal years (more commonly known as the Wolfowitz Doctrine). This document, as the name implies was authored by George W. Bush’s deeply influential Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz as well as I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, who served as an advisor to former US Vice President Dick Cheney.
The other major document, A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm, from 1996 was authored by former Chairman of the Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee in the administration of George W. Bush, Richard Norman Perle.
Both documents provide a simplistic but highly unambiguous blueprint for US foreign police in the Middle East, Russia’s near abroad and East Asia. The contents of the Wolfowitz Doctrine were first published by the New York Times in 1992 after they were leaked to the media. Shortly thereafter, many of the specific threats made in the document were re-written using broader language. In this sense, when comparing the official version with the leaked version, it reads in the manner of the proverbial ‘what I said versus what I meant’ adage.
By contrast, A Clean Break was written in 1996 as a kind of gift to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who apparently was not impressed with the document at the time. In spite of this, the US has implemented many of the recommendations in the document in spite of who was/is in power in Tel Aviv.
While many of the recommendations in both documents have indeed been implemented, their overall success rate has been staggeringly bad.
Below are major points from the documents followed by an assessment of their success or failure. … continue
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Good post. I made a comment last night at GD’s site–‘Agree 100 percent (i.e., “…incompetence compounded by an obvious death wish”). Insanity rules in WashDC, “fueled” by the MIC, Zionazi neocons, Biden regime + Congressional ilk, complicit/compliant media…. This floundering, flailing and failing will not have a pleasant end.’
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