China says Pentagon report will hurt military ties

The United States' latest report on China's growing military power throws new obstacles in the way of restoring defense ties between the two powers, a Chinese spokesman said in the latest broadside at Washington.
Beijing has already voiced its unhappiness with the U.S. Defense Department's annual report on Chinese military capabilities, released this week.
But now Hu Changming, spokesman for the Chinese Ministry of Defense, has said his government's anger over the report could have real implications for plans to improve military contacts, which took a dive last year over U.S. arms sales to Taiwan.

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Pentagon Says China's Military Power Grows as Intentions Still Unclear

The annual Pentagon report on China's military power says China continues to increase the "pace and scope" of its military modernization, and expresses concern about a lack of clarity on how Chinese leaders intend to use their growing capability. But the report also says China is years from being able to seriously challenge U.S. military power, even in areas fairly close to China's borders.

The annual report, required by the Congress, says China continues to spend large amounts of money to upgrade its forces and give them high-technology capabilities. But the report says it will be well into the 2020 decade before China will have the ability to sustain substantial forces far from home. It says the Chinese army compensates for its limited abilities by investing in what the Pentagon calls "disruptive" technologies, designed to deny an adversary access to a specific area or to attack an enemy's computer networks or space-based assets.

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E.U. President Calls U.S. Stimulus the ‘Way to Hell’

Transatlantic tension over the handling of the global economic crisis intensified Wednesday when the prime minister of the Czech Republic, which holds the European Union presidency, described the President Obama’s stimulus measures as the “way to hell.”

Addressing the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France, Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek argued that the Obama administration’s fiscal package and financial bailout “will undermine the stability of the global financial market.”
Mr. Topolanek’s comments, only a day after he offered his government’s resignation following a no confidence vote, took European officials by surprise.

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US to Attend Shanghai Group Meeting on Afghanistan

he State Department confirmed Thursday it is sending a senior diplomat to a Moscow conference on Afghanistan next week of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Iran will also attend the meeting and U.S. officials do not rule out interaction with Iranian officials.

The Shanghai group, made up of Russia, China and four Central Asian states, was founded in 2001 and has been widely viewed as a vehicle aimed at countering U.S. influence in the region.

Thus the invitation for the United States to attend the Moscow gathering next week, among several other non-member countries, is being seen as a conciliatory gesture toward the new U.S. administration.

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U.S. nuclear submarine collides in strait near Iran

A nuclear-powered U.S. submarine and another U.S. vessel collided Friday in the Strait of Hormuz bordering Iran, but there was no damage to the atomic propulsion unit, the U.S. Navy said.
Fifteen sailors were slightly injured in the collision between the submarine USS Hartford and an amphibious vessel, USS New Orleans, the Navy said in a statement.
It was the second collision involving a U.S. nuclear submarine in the Strait of Hormuz in just over two years.
"There is no damage to the nuclear propulsion plant of the Hartford," U.S. Fifth Fleet spokesman Lieutenant Nathan Christensen told Reuters.
The Strait of Hormuz, a narrow stretch of water separating Oman and Iran, connects the biggest Gulf oil producers, such as Saudi Arabia, with the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea.

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U.N. panel says world should ditch dollar

A U.N. panel will next week recommend that the world ditch the dollar as its reserve currency in favor of a shared basket of currencies, a member of the panel said on Wednesday, adding to pressure on the dollar.
Currency specialist Avinash Persaud, a member of the panel of experts, told a Reuters Funds Summit in Luxembourg that the proposal was to create something like the old Ecu, or European currency unit, that was a hard-traded, weighted basket.

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China may boost patrols in South China Sea

China may convert more decommissioned navy ships into fishery patrol vessels, state media said on Thursday, as it seeks to extend its reach over disputed South China Sea islands that straddle key Asian shipping lanes.
The report comes less than two weeks after Chinese boats jostled with a U.S. naval ocean surveillance vessel that Beijing said was conducting an illegal survey in its waters.
China's use of fishery patrol ships, rather than military vessels, helps mark its stance while avoiding direct confrontation with the U.S. or with rival claimants to the resource-rich and strategically important South China Sea.

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Obama offers Iran 'new beginning'

"My administration is now committed to diplomacy that addresses the full range of issues before us," Mr Obama said.
An advisor to Iran's president welcomed Mr Obama's message but said Washington had to fundamentally change policy.
Relations between Iran and the US have been strained over Tehran's controversial nuclear activities.
The US fears Iran's uranium enrichment programme is a cover to build atomic weapons, a charge Iranian officials deny.

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Soldiers’ Accounts of Gaza Killings Raise Furor in Israel

Now testimony is emerging from within the ranks of soldiers and officers alleging a permissive attitude toward the killing of civilians and reckless destruction of property that is sure to inflame the domestic and international debate about the army’s conduct in Gaza. On Thursday, the military’s chief advocate general ordered an investigation into a soldier’s account of a sniper killing a woman and her two children who walked too close to a designated no-go area by mistake, and another account of a sharpshooter who killed an elderly woman who came within 100 yards of a commandeered house.

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What Is "the Most Dangerous Country in the World Today?"

Recent protests in Pakistan reveal the country's potential explosiveness. Pakistan has nuclear weapons and a government disconnected from the crippling poverty, rampant malnutrition, and lack of healthcare afflicting its people. Though Pakistan remains an ally of the United States, tensions continue to rise as the U.S. considers broadening military strikes within Pakistan's borders. Part two of our Rethink Afghanistan documentary focuses on how the Afghanistan crisis affects Pakistan and all of us.

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US Army Confirms Israeli Nukes

Officially, the United States has a policy of "ambiguity" regarding Israel's nuclear capability. Essentially, it has played a game by which it neither acknowledges nor denies that Israel is a nuclear power.
But a Defense Department study completed last year offers what may be the first time in a unclassified report that Israel is a nuclear power. On page 37 of the U.S. Joint Forces Command report, the Army includes Israel within "a growing arc of nuclear powers running from Israel in the west through an emerging Iran to Pakistan, India, and on to China, North Korea, and Russia in the east."

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Yes, We Can

If you believe the headlines, Afghanistan is "the graveyard of empires," a "quagmire" and a "fiasco," the place where President Barack Obama will meet his "Vietnam." In the media's imagination, the Taliban are on the march, and Kabul is on the verge of falling to a resurgent insurgency that already controls much of the countryside. Increasing numbers of voices, on both the left and the right, counsel that the war is unwinnable and that we need to radically "downsize" our objectives in order to salvage something from a failing war effort lest we go the way of the Russians or British, previous conquerors who foundered in this merciless land of violence and fanaticism.

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Trade Barriers Could Threaten Global Economy

 At least 17 of the 20 major nations that vowed at a November summit to avoid protectionist steps that could spark a global trade war have violated that promise, with countries from Russia to the United States to China enacting measures aimed at limiting the flow of imported goods, according to a World Bank report unveiled yesterday.

The report underscores a "worrying" trend toward protectionism as countries rush to shield their ailing domestic industries during the global economic crisis. It comes one day after Mexico vowed to slap new restrictions on 90 U.S. products. That action is being taken in retaliation against Washington for canceling a program that allowed Mexican truck drivers the right to transport goods across the United States, illustrating the tit-for-tat responses that experts fear could grow in coming months.

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Beijing raises stakes with tit-for-tat deployment in South China Sea

 Beijing has increased tension in a disputed part of the South China Sea by sending a patrol ship to protect fishing boats after the United States deployed a destroyer in the area. The American move was in response to alleged Chinese harassment of one of its surveillance vessels.
The Yuzheng 311, a converted naval rescue vessel, is the largest and most modern patrol ship in the Chinese Navy, the Beijing News said. It was due to arrive in the Paracel Islands yesterday to patrol China’s exclusive economic zone and to "strengthen fishery administration" in the South China Sea. It will patrol the waters around the Paracels and the Spratly Islands, protecting Chinese fishing boats and transport vessels.

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Unlikely bedfellows in Afghanistan

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) is scheduled to hold a conference on Afghanistan in Moscow on March 27, a few days ahead of a similar United Nations meeting in The Hague in the Netherlands. Russia, which holds the current SCO presidency, has sent out invitations to India, Turkey, Pakistan, Iran, the Group of Eight nations, the UN, as well as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to what is increasingly shaping up as a landmark event.

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Wen puts US honor on the debt line

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, faced with growing concern that United States efforts to stem the financial crisis will hit the value of China's vast holdings of US debt, used the world's press on Friday to demand that the US honor its promises.

Wen told a press conference after the conclusion of a two-week meeting of the country's legislators that he was "a little bit worried" about the safety of Chinese assets in the US, and called on the US "to maintain its good credit, to honor its promises and to guarantee the safety of China's assets." He also reiterated that other countries had no right to push China into appreciating its currency, the yuan.

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China: The Next Big Enemy?

Those Chinese sailors who "harassed" a U.S. military vessel lingering perilously close to a Chinese base on Hainan Island, in the South China Sea, reportedly stripped down to their underwear when our sailors turned water hoses on them. Maybe the shower facilities on Chinese fishing vessels – it was fishing trawlers, not military gunboats, that met the Americans on China's doorstep – are insufficient, or maybe the Chinese were mooning us. I'm inclined to think the latter. In any case, Sunday's incident ratchets up tensions with China – which have been roiled in recent weeks, not only by a series of similar incidents, but also on account of issues broader than China's claims to virtually the whole of the South China Sea.

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Bank to begin 'printing money' to boost economy

 The Bank of England will start pumping newly created money into the economy today by buying £2 billion in gilts as it embarks on "quantitative easing" in an effort to boost the economy.
The central bank, which has already slashed interest rates by 4.5 percentage points to a record low of 0.5 per cent over the past six months, said last week that it would initially pump £75 billion into the economy via twice-weekly gilt auctions, but has permission from Alistair Darling, the Chancellor, to create another £75 billion if it needs to.
Mervyn King, the Governor of the Bank, indicated last week that the Bank would continue this course of action until the lending markets became unglued.

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Rising navy, assertiveness behind US-China flap

China's weekend scrap with a U.S. Navy surveillance ship is drawing attention to a new submarine base that Beijing is using to strengthen its presence on the strategically vital South China Sea, which it claims as a whole.

For the second day running, the Foreign Ministry in Beijing fired back Wednesday at U.S. complaints over what the Pentagon called harassment of the U.S. Navy mapping ship by Chinese boats in international waters about 75 miles (120 kilometers) off its southern island province of Hainan.
U.S. claims that the USNS Impeccable was operating legally within China's exclusive economic zone when it was harassed by Chinese boats are "gravely in contravention of the facts and unacceptable to China," spokesman Ma Zhaoxu said in a statement posted on the ministry's Web site.

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The War of the World: Twentieth-Century Conflict and the Descent of the West

Historians have been writing about the great conflicts of the twentieth century for some time now, but often with little imagination. Developments of the past one hundred plus years are usually defined by the reigns of certain monarchs, the administrations of specific politicians, and by the rule of a handful of dictators. Additionally, this historical period can also be seen through the lens of a number of major but time-limited wars: World Wars I and II, Korea, and Vietnam.

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World Economic Crisis Erases $50 Trillion in Wealth

The Asian Development Bank says the global economic crisis has erased $50 trillion in wealth around the world.

Bank President Haruhiko Kuroda said Monday the current crisis is the most serious the world has seen since the Great Depression. Kuroda said he believes Asia will be one among the first regions to emerge from the crisis and will be stronger than before.

Another note of alarm was sounded by billionaire investor Warren Buffett, who said the U.S. economy has "fallen off a cliff." Buffett called on the U.S. Congress to unite behind President Barack Obama, comparing the crisis to a military conflict that needs a commander in chief.

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