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hc
Post Roaster
Joined: Apr 04, 2007
Posts: 4545
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 Posted:
June 01, 2008 - 02:40 PM |
 
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| Post subject: And yet more hypocrisy.... |
U.S. issues thinly veiled warnings to China
By Eric Schmitt
Published: May 31, 2008
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SINGAPORE: Defense Secretary Robert Gates issued a set of thinly veiled warnings to China on Saturday, cautioning that it could risk its share of further gains in Asia's economic prosperity if it bullied its neighbors over natural resources in contested areas like the South China Sea.
(Shall we mention coup d'etats across the board to protect american interests in several parts of the world? United Fruit anyone? Nationalization of copper in Chile anyone?)
Three years ago at the same lectern here, Gates's predecessor, Donald Rumsfeld, bluntly criticized China's swift military buildup. Last year Gates struck a more conciliatory tone, saying Beijing and Washington had a chance to "build trust over time."
Gates seemed to take a third approach in his remarks to a major regional Asia security conference here, seeking to lay down clear markers of continued U.S. commitments to the region while also obliquely criticizing China.
He said that in his four trips to Asia since becoming defense secretary 18 months ago, several countries had expressed concern about "the security implications of rising demand for resources" (translation: China's voracious quest for new sources of energy and raw materials) and about "coercive diplomacy" (translation: China's contested claims of resource-rich territorial waters).
(Last time I checked the biggest consumer of energy and resources overall in the planet wasn't China)
Gates said there were rewards for playing by an international set of rules in a transparent way. "We should not forget that globalization has permitted our shared rise in wealth over recent decades," he said. "This achievement rests above all on openness: openness of trade, openness of ideas, and openness of what I would call the 'common areas,' whether in the maritime, space or cyber domains."
The secretary specifically praised Beijing twice, noting that he had recently set up a telephone hot line with his Chinese counterpart and that the six-nation negotiations intended to temper North Korea's nuclear ambitions "would not be possible without China's valued cooperation."
Otherwise, Gates spoke in a diplomatic code that his senior aides said would be clearly understood not only in Beijing but also in other Asian capitals and by the hundreds of security experts attending the annual regional conference, sponsored by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a private group based in London.
Gates and his aides had debated just how blunt he ought to be in his address, which opened the Saturday session. In the end, aides said, he accepted the argument that taking a more direct approach would play to Beijing's advantage and that a subtler, more indirect tack would win more support among Asian allies.
In the speech, he recalled disputes in the mid-1990s between China and its neighbors over competing boundary and resource claims in the South China Sea, tensions that have resurfaced among China, Vietnam, Indonesia and Malaysia.
(He forgot to mention that there were big incentives for tension buildup a couple of decades ago, all sponsored by you know which country...shall we talk about the invasion of Timor Leste that was rubber stamped by Kissinger and Ford in a meeting with Suharto?)
"We urged then, as we do today, the maintenance of a calm and nonassertive environment in which contending claims may be discussed and, if possible, resolved," he said.
(Calm my ass amigo. Go ask thousands murdered in Chile, Granada, Guatemala, Nicaragua if you had any "calm" there, not to mention Iraq).
Gates, as he did last year at the conference, said the United States "seeks more openness in military modernization in Asia."
"Transparency enhances confidence and reduces competitive spending," he said.
He also delivered a scolding reference to China's unannounced destruction of a satellite in January 2007 when he described how the Pentagon handled a similar situation much differently in February, alerting others before shooting down a failing satellite over the Pacific just before it tumbled uncontrollably to Earth carrying toxic fuel.
Lieutenant General Ma Xiaotian, deputy chief of the general staff of the Chinas People's Liberation Army, pushed back during his speech, saying that China was not engaged in an arms races and that its military spending, compared to other sectors of its economy, was limited and proportional.
In a clear reference to the U.S. plan to build advanced antimissile systems in Central Europe, Ma said such deployments were not helpful to military stability.
Gates made clear that central to the Bush administration's Asia policy was maintaining U.S. military might and economic sway in the region.
Indeed, Gates's first stop on his weeklong visit to Asia was in Guam, where he took a helicopter tour Friday to review Pentagon plans to spend $15 billion over the next six years to upgrade and expand World War II-era installations to accommodate thousands of additional U.S. troops, and to broaden training missions with regional partners like Japan.
He said Saturday that Washington's policy also focused on empowering regional allies to defend themselves by strengthening their armed forces and by building more robust economies and open political systems.
(like selling nuclear technology to India, basically raping the NPT)
This policy is almost sure to endure no matter which party wins the White House in the November election, he said.
He showed an unusual flash on anger in response to a question after his speech about U.S. efforts to deliver relief to cyclone victims in Myanmar, saying the United States had tried 15 times to get the Burmese leadership to allow more foreign assistance, to no avail.
"We have reached out, they have kept their hands in their pockets," he said.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/05/31/asia/gates.php
Hey coffeehawk, I thought that China wasn't a threat? I'm wondering why Gates is threating it as so? Hmmmm.....
Maybe you better pm our spineless friend so that he can can the thread before it gets too hairy. |
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Cambronne
Veejay
Joined: Feb 23, 2008
Posts: 1822
Status: Offline
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| Posted:
June 01, 2008 - 06:20 PM |
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Reminds me of how the media tell us Russia bullies its neighbors over natural resources as well. That is, they stop subsidizing them as did the evil USSR to its member states. |
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