The withdrawal of some 4,000 US troops from Afghanistan, expected to be formally announced soon, isn’t just a drawdown for its own sake. Rather, Defense Secretary Mark Esper said he wants to focus on competition with China, which he views as “higher priority.”
Esper says the troops will be sent to the Indo-Pacific “to face off our greatest challenge in terms of the great power competition that’s vis-a-vis China.” It’s not clear where in the Indo-Pacific those troops will end up.
Nor is it apparent what 4,000 more troops scattered around China’s periphery would really do in a challenge sense. China, after all, has the world’s second largest military and is focused almost exclusively on control and defense of its own region.
This would be just one of many, many adventures the Pentagon has decided it is participating in, and between the Indo-Pacific, Iran’s periphery, and eastern Europe, the US is committing a lot of troops to standing around doing non-specific things close to major rivals that they envision future wars against.
The Pentagon term “drawdown” seems to mean quite the opposite actually. Four thousand troops is a meaningless number when they get to pull numbers out of any convenient orifice and present that without any corroborating evidence.
The fiery Dragon will flame the feathers of the flaccid Eagle. Go, Team China!
China has now launched its first home-built aircraft carrier named Shandong. It will perform infinitely better than the Russian carrier.
No carrier is worth its weight in junk unless it has a defensive purpose. All of our aircraft carriers are in offensive posture, and thus vulnerable. China needs them only as an artificial island. Its performance? Other then landing aircraft, all other functions can be done better by any number of military assets.
Russia used its only one as a major transport vehicle of military hardware.
Russia, unlike China, has only Arctic Ocean and its adjoining seas to defend, and for that it has icebreakers. Black Sea is congested and its Pacific coast at the moment out of Western priority interest. As Russian defense minister said, we do not build carriers, we build weapons to destroy them.
Forward placed naval vessels are our most vulnerable assets.
If the US is to confront China, which seems inevitable based on the pattern of history, presumably it will need a significant military presence in Afghanistan, one of the battle grounds. It might be more urgent to seek peace with Beijing than the Taliban, if world war is to be avoided.
https://www.ghostsofhistory.wordpress.com/
There is massive profit to be had in World Wars, but so far mostly from coming in rather late in the process.
If China is the adversary, why did Trump just approve massive pork and chicken sales to them from US factory farms?
“Esper said he had not yet ordered any downsizing, noting that the decision was ultimately the responsibility of President Donald Trump.”
Posted before anyone can blame Esper and not “DJT”.
When you confront somebody in their own backyard, that’s not a legitimate “face off”, that’s an invasion of another’s sovereign territory and the boys in the Pentagon don’t seem to give a hoot.
Sovereign territory? The USA does not accept any of that except the USA and Greater Israel (ie wherever Israel wants to stretch to).
Look at the way Germany and any allies involved in the gas pipeline from Russia are treated, as if the USA had any right at all to interfere.
First a joke: What do you get when you cross an owl with a bundgee cord?