@coldjoint,
coldjoint wrote:
Quote:I also think that he is sure that the global political axis is about to shift, that the West is going into long term major decline, and that the East will rule. He is setting Russia up to be on the winning team.
I don't think that shift can come without war. And we are already in quite a decline.
How much of the last 100 years have we spent at war? A lot anyways. War is not unusual.
It could come very soon as China asserts is dominance over the South China Sea. We are not in any position to prevent it, but we a treaty bound to show up for war over it. We shall see if we do.
Obama plays into this BTW: Word has it that the Chinese are going around telling everyone about how the Americans are so feckless, they claim that they will protect you but look at how rarely Obama comes around. Where is the military, their largest outpost around here which is in Japan is constantly in jeopardy from the Japenese, and is way too small to do anything anyways. The Americans yak constantly about North Korea but they have been removing troops from Korea steadily since the Korean war. Was around 60,000, was down to 35,000 in the 90's, is down to 28,500 now and is not less only because at the last minute they cancelled most of a plan to take out 12,000 because North Korea started playing with nukes.
Excuse me, JBLM is now at 27,000, and we have this
Quote:A decade of growth at Joint Base Lewis-McChord could be wiped away by 2020 if the Army carries out severe force reductions in the South Sound as described in a planning document released Thursday.
In a worst-case scenario, JBLM would lose 16,000 active-duty military and civilian positions from its peak strength in 2011. The base has already lost about 5,400 soldiers over the past two years.
That would leave the base with about 16,000 active-duty soldiers in 2020, fewer than it had in 2001 when the Army was building up its first Stryker brigades at the South Sound Army installation
http://www.military.com/daily-news/2014/06/27/report-projects-cuts-of-16000-soldiers-from-jblm.html
That so called " pivot to Asia" that Obama was yakking about?? Pure bullshit. Political theater, nothing worth paying attention to.
The Chinese and Putin know it.