Wake Up, America! You’re Falling Behind!!

Note: The following is an edited portion of an interview with Kishore Mahbubani, the Dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore. Mahbubani previously served for 33 years in Singapore’s diplomatic service and is the author of The New Asian Hemisphere, Can Asians Think? and Beyond the Age of Innocence.

Every time the United States or the West steps into an Islamic country it presents a major geopolitical gift to China. (When the U.S. decided to intervene in Libya) China was saying, “Great, go ahead! Go into more Islamic countries. Make my day.”

If you’re a logical, long-term, hard-headed geopolitical realist thinker from America it is very, very clear that the only country that can overtake the United States in absolute power - militarily, economically, in every sense - is China.

The Islamic world will not overtake America– not in my lifetime and not in your lifetime.  So America should be devoting 90% of its resources on managing China and 10% of its resources on managing the Islamic world.

Instead it is spending 90% of its resources getting involved in the Islamic world - whether it is Iraq or Afghanistan or Palestine or Libya– and 10% of its time managing China.

The U.S.should engage China more seriously and try to work out a long-term, viable, geopolitical partnership with China.  It should also give up its dream of achieving democracy in China.  It should stop believing that a “Jasmine Revolution” is on the way and realize that this government in China is going to survive and possibly do very well.

You may wish for all kinds of worst-case scenarios for China, but as a geopolitical planner you should plan for the best-case scenario.

China is going to go from strength to strength. And if China is going to go from strength to strength and you spend all your time either in the Islamic world or having this absolutely stupid domestic debate about how to cut the deficit, you’re just buying time for China.

A lot of my writings are intended to serve as a wake-up call to the West. I’m not anti-West nor am I anti-American - even though many people think I am. I’m actually just telling the West that you are acting against your own long-term geopolitical and economic interests in your policies towards the rest of the world. There was a time - and it lasted only 200 years - when the West could make decisions and the rest of the world had to comply. That era is gone, finished – poof!

Now the West has got to learn to understand what the rest of the world wants and pragmatically adjust. The biggest advantage that Asian countries have over the United States and other Western countries is that they’re very pragmatic and flexible and America has become ideological and dogmatic. America needs to become pragmatic and flexible too.

Unfortunately, American public intellectuals have an incestuous, self-referential discourse among themselves saying, “Aren't we the greatest in the world? Gee, aren't we wonderful?” And they don’t realize that Western power - American power - is receding steadily in the world.

Look at Southeast Asia.  After the U.S.won the Cold War, (Southeast Asia) was frankly an American lake. And then suddenly Americans became very arrogant and they said, “Hey, we don’t need the world; forget you.”

You do what you want to do and slowly, steadily,China is (advancing). I admire what the Chinese have done. It’s amazing how careful, deliberate, and systematic they are in their policies towards the rest of the world and how arrogant and ignorant American policies are.

If you want to learn about how to grow a country’s economy right, don’t go to Europe, don’t go to America; go to Asia.  Frankly, the best governed country in the world - and I can say this somewhat immodestly - is Singapore. Or even go to China.

Let me give you a very simple example. The most shocking thing I’ve learned recently for someone who lived in New York for 10 and a half years is that the Tappan Zee Bridge which carries thousands of cars can only survive another 10 years. Isn't that shocking? In the meantime, while you can't hold up one bridge across one river, guess what,China is building the world’s fastest trains and the world’s best airports.

I’ve flown several times, just by chance, directly from Shanghai to JFK (airport in New York). And when you fly from Shanghai airport to JFK, you’re flying from the first world to the third world. And yet Americans are not aware of how far they’ve fallen behind. The Americans cannot conceive of the idea that you can learn about governance from the rest of the world. Chinacan and Chinadoes. China spends so much time studying best practices in the rest of the world and America spends no time studying best practices in the rest of the world.

So my message to America is that the clock is ticking. Time is no more on your side. And fortunately even today there’s a huge reservoir of goodwill towards America in the world.  Try to figure out how you can use this reservoir of goodwill for the long-term benefit of America. Don’t waste it.

Article by Global Public Square

China Fired Missile Seen In Southern California

Pentagon and Its Embedded Media Covering Up Chinese Show of Force off Los Angeles

China flexed its military muscle Monday evening in the skies west of Los Angeles when a Chinese Navy Jin class ballistic missile nuclear submarine, deployed secretly from its underground home base on the south coast of Hainan island, launched an intercontinental ballistic missile from international waters off the southern California coast. WMR’s intelligence sources in Asia, including Japan, say the belief by the military commands in Asia and the intelligence services is that the Chinese decided to demonstrate to the United States its capabilities on the eve of the G-20 Summit in Seoul and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Tokyo, where President Obama is scheduled to attend during his ten-day trip to Asia.

The reported Chinese missile test off Los Angeles came as a double blow to Obama. The day after the missile firing, China’s leading credit rating agency, Dagong Global Credit Rating, downgraded sovereign debt rating of the United States to A-plus from AA. The missile demonstration coupled with the downgrading of the United States financial grade represents a military and financial show of force by Beijing to Washington.

The Pentagon spin machine, backed by the media reporters who regularly cover the Defense Department, as well as officials of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), and the U.S. Northern Command, is now spinning various conspiracy theories, including describing the missile plume videotaped by KCBS news helicopter cameraman Gil Leyvas at around 5:00 pm Pacific Standard Time, during the height of evening rush hour, as the condensation trail from a jet aircraft. Other Pentagon-inspired cover stories are that the missile was actually an amateur rocket or an optical illusion.

Experts agree that this was a ballistic missile being fired off of Los Angeles. Pentagon insists it was a jet aircraft or model rocket.

There are no records of a plane in the area having taken off from Los Angeles International Airport or from  other airports in the region. The Navy and Air Force have said that they were not conducting any missile tests from submarines, ships, or Vandenberg Air Force Base. The Navy has also ruled out an accidental firing from one of its own submarines.

Missile experts, including those from Jane’s in London, say the plume was definitely from a missile, possibly launched from a submarine. WMR has learned that the missile was likely a  JL-2 ICBM, which has a range of 7,000 miles, and was fired in a northwesterly direction over the Pacific and away from U.S. territory from a Jin class submarine. The Jin class can carry up to twelve such missiles.

Navy sources have revealed that the missile may have impacted on Chinese territory and that the National Security Agency (NSA) likely possesses intercepts of Chinese telemetry signals during the missile firing and subsequent testing operations.

Japanese and other Asian intelligence agencies believe that a Chinese Jin-class SSBN submarine conducted missile “show of force” in skies west of Los Angeles.

Asian intelligence sources believe the submarine transited from its base on Hainan through South Pacific waters, where U.S. anti-submarine warfare detection capabilities are not as effective as they are in the northern and mid-Pacific, and then transited north to waters off of Los Angeles. The Pentagon, which has spent billions on ballistic missile defense systems, a pet project of former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, is clearly embarrassed over the Chinese show of strength.

Likely route of Jin-class submarine from Hainan base.

The White House also wants to donwplay the missile story before Presidnet Obama meets with his Chinese counterpart in Seoul and Tokyo. According to Japanese intelligence sources, Beijing has been angry over United States and allied naval exercises in the South China and Yellow Seas, in what China considers its sphere of influence, and the missile firing within the view of people in Southern California was a demonstration that China’s navy can also play in waters off the American coast.

For the U.S. Navy, the Chinese show of force is a huge embarassment, especially for the Navy’s Pacific Command in Pearl Harbor, where Japan’s December 7, 1941 attack on the fleet at Pearl Harbor remains a sore subject.

In 2002, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice reportedly scolded visiting Chinese General Xiong Guankai, the deputy chief of staff for intelligence of the People’s Liberation Army, for remarks he allegedly made in 1995 that China would use nuclear weapons on Los Angeles. Xiong denied he made any such comments but the “spin” on the story helped convince Congress to sink billions of additional dollars into  ballistic missile defense, sometimes referred to at “Star Wars II.”

Article by Wayne Madsen, Madsen Report

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Wake Up Americans or You Will Find Yourself Kow-Towing To a New Master!