After abandoning Americans behind enemy lines in Afghanistan, the Biden administration expects world powers to take its threats seriously.
China is threatening Taiwan and Russia is threatening the Ukraine. China and Russia aren’t making these threats just with words, but with sizable military deployments.
US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Saturday that recent extensive Chinese military operations near Taiwan resembled “rehearsals” and he reaffirmed Washington’s strong support for Taipei.
In recent months, the Chinese military has mounted an increasingly aggressive series of sea and air military operations near Taiwan, which it claims as its own.
U.S. officials believe Russia is planning a multi-front military invasion of Ukraine, involving as many as 175,000 troops, as soon as early 2022, Fox News has confirmed.
The U.S. is taking recent signaling from the Kremlin very seriously, and does not consider the matter a bluff, a senior U.S. defense official told Fox News.
And yet the Biden administration’s response is a series of bluffs.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken fired a warning shot at China, saying any move to invade Taiwan would bring “terrible consequences.”
“We’ve been very clear and consistently clear, over many years that we are committed to making sure that Taiwan has the means to defend itself and … we will continue to make good on that commitment,” Blinken said on the subject of committing military forces in the event China does invade Taiwan.
The terrible consequences are… arms sales to Taiwan?
“But here again, I hope that China’s leaders think very carefully about this and about not precipitating a crisis that would have, I think, terrible consequences for lots of people, and one that’s in no one’s interest, starting with China,” Blinken said at the Reuters Next conference on Friday, Reuters reported.
I’m sure Xi is shaking in his slippers.
Biden on Friday warned Russian President Vladimir Putin against taking military action against Ukraine after US intelligence warned of Russia’s plans to launch an offensive attack as early as 2022.
“We’ve been aware of Russia’s actions for a long time and my expectation is we’re gonna have a long discussion with Putin,” Biden told reporters outside Camp David in Maryland on Friday, according to the Associated Press.
“What I am doing is putting together what I believe to be will be the most comprehensive and meaningful set of initiatives to make it very, very difficult for Mr. Putin to go ahead and do what people are worried he may do,” Biden also said Friday.
Between the long discussions and meaningful initiatives, I’m sure Putin is equally terrified.
Serious countries put forces in the field because they mean to make a move or show that they can. Unserious ones issue pointless press releases and communiques the way that the British and the French did in the run-up to WW2.
If you’re not going to do anything, it’s best to keep quiet instead of acting like you’re going to do something when all you’re really going to do is maybe consider selling the victim some weapons, which you’ll probably slow-walk so they don’t actually get them in time.
This is what a serious country faced with a serious threat does.
Last Sunday, the Japanese cabinet approved an unprecedented 773.8 billion yen (roughly $6.8 billion) in additional military spending requested by Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, far exceeding prior defense spending supplements. That may boost Japan’s baseline 2021 defense budget of around 5.34 trillion yen ($47 billion) to the equivalent of $53.8 billion, increasing defense spending to account for 1.3% of Japanese GDP.
Nonetheless, Japan’s conservative Liberal Democratic Party has vowed to eventually boost that up to 2% GDP at the same time as Tokyo is more openly backing Taiwan than before. Taiwan, which lies only 60 miles away from the Japanese archipelago’s southwestern tip, is under increasing pressure from China, including the threat of possible invasion if it refuses reunification.
If you want to see what an unserious country does, spend some time in D.C.
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