The Obama Land Office is doing booming business these days. Strategic gains are being made by America’s enemies at a record clip.
Not since Roosevelt gave away Eastern Europe at Yalta, has an American president so disordered the strategic balance of power worldwide. Roosevelt we now know was dying when he attended the Yalta conference. Obama, on the other hand, has been dead from the neck up for a long time.
So it comes as little surprise that U.S.-Chinese relations have entered a new phase with hardliners behind the bamboo curtain directly challenging Japanese sovereignty and thereby directly challenging American power in the Far East.
China has claimed air defense zones above islands in the East China Sea that are occupied by the Japanese.
“China declared a protected territorial zone over territory it does not occupy,” explains NightWatch. “It has the power, but not the right to make such a declaration. The right is that of the occupant or owner. Whenever a claimant asserts such a right, it is a de facto challenge to the occupying power and fundamentally destabilizing.”
NightWatch goes on to say that stability has been a key tenet of Chinese policy throughout the region, even to the extent of chastising North Korea for its destabilizing tendencies.
“Chinese military leaders and sovereignty hard-liners have moved too fast in two respects,” reports NightWatch. “They have issued declarations that exceed China's enforcement capabilities and they have issued rules that inherently destabilize northeast Asia, which party leaders have insisted repeatedly must remain stable.”
Yes, except destabilization has worked wonders for Russia and Iran in the Middle East.
For both Tehran and Moscow, Obama’s curious lack of policy has been one of those accidents of history-- a golden BB that sinks the mightiest battleship.
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The Obama administration has shown no resolve in tackling tough foreign policy issues, instead the administration runs foreign policy by power vacuum.
They retreat and then see what happens in the absence of US power.
This policy has the benefit of at least being lazy. It costs them almost no effort. And since everyone else does the work for them, there’s no possibility of a flawed rollout. The rollouts, of course, have really hampered things on the domestic front—green energy, stimulus, Fast and Furious, Dodd-Frank, Obamacare.
So the administration’s policy has been to cede power directly to others... so long as they aren’t individual American citizens.
“Obama’s concessions to Russia have had the same effect in the east,” writes Daniel Greenfield. “The ‘flexibility’ that he transmitted to Vladimir [Putin] was another strategic withdrawal of American power and influence from a crucial region and the transfer of that power and influence to Russia.”
About the only country they have shown a willingness to stand up to is Libya under Gadhafi, and he was isolated and weak. A fifth-grade football team could have toppled him.
I have a rule when it comes to intelligence analysis that says that when confronted with inconsistencies, it means that you don’t have all of the information yet to properly understand the information.
In this case the inconsistencies are a Chinese policy of “stability” for the region on the one hand and assertions of expanded sovereignty on the other, which is inherently destabilizing.
One possible explanation for the inconsistencies is that China sees the rapid gains being made by Russia and Iran in the Middle East and realizes that the Obama land rush will only last three more years.
At the very least, one could suppose that the Chinese are seeking to test U.S. resolve in the area. After all when has Obama stood up to anyone really?
I certainly don’t think China’s worried about a possible adverse Obama reaction to Chinese assertions of authority in Asia.
He’s not worried about the Islamists in Afghanistan and Pakistan; he abandoned Iraq to Tehran; he sold out the Egyptians to the Muslim Brotherhood; he sold out the Ukraine, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Israel to a new enemy every day.
Russian power, under their current president, Vladimir Putin, has expanded in the Middle East beyond all proportion to their actual strength. What Russia could not get on their own because they lacked the legitimacy and strength to do so, Obama has granted.
Already the administration is sending mixed signals, which is death when it comes to diplomacy.
“Tokyo has been urging Japanese commercial flights not to notify China before flying through the zone,” reports the USAToday. “Word that the U.S. had advised American commercial carriers to comply rankled leaders in Tokyo, who are hoping a united front with the U.S. will increase pressure on Beijing to reverse course.”
While people questioned American foresight, strategy and wisdom under George Bush, they were never confused about our aims and our resolve.
Today countries around the world are questioning our foresight, strategy, wisdom, aims AND resolve.
So you can’t blame the Chinese for thinking the Obama Land Office might be open only three more years.
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