Next Theatre of War: China Flexes Muscle in East Asia as Washington Boosts Military Presence

As the United States prepares to boost its military presence in East Asia by expanding her troops' strength in the Philippines, China shows off her military might; probably telling Washington, 'this is not the Middle East or Africa'. China has been embroiled in series of conflicts with her neighbours over land issues, mostly bothering on sea routes and maritime endowments. It is based on the skirmishes with some East Asian countries that Washington feels it has to contain China in her territory not elsewhere.

What comes easily to mind is how Washington denounced any interference in her own 'sphere of influence' during the Cold War to the extent of 'risking' a nuclear holocaust with the Soviet Union. Washington also rebuffed the International Court of Justice when it was to rule between her and Mexico on land dispute. She said she will not accept any arbitration in her 'sphere of influence'.

Apparently, the United States has succeeded to a good extent in destabilizing the Middle East as the region is really boiling now from Damascus to Cairo and among major countries that mattered most; notably, Saudi Arabia and Iran. Africa is already under her grip militarily and in all other facets. Africa is a perfect stooge, continually under her tutelage and seems to notoriously nauseously love to genuflect for her. Now it is time to go Asia and China is simply waiting.

As reported by RT, China has launched four days of live-fire naval exercises in the East China Sea that coincide with the anniversary of Japan’s defeat in WWII. The exercises come after Japanese Cabinet ministers visited Tokyo’s most controversial war shrine.

China and South Korea, which both suffered under Japan’s militarist expansion in the 1930s and 40s, have expressed concern at Japanese Cabinet ministers’ visit to the Tokyo Yasukuni Shrine as glorification of the country's militaristic past and aggression. Established in 1869 and funded by the Imperial Japanese government until 1945, the shrine has been dedicated to the nation's 2.5 million war dead, including – controversially – 1,000 convicted war criminals.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry summoned Japan's envoy and issued a statement condemning the visits by nearly 100 Japanese lawmakers, saying they "fundamentally attempt to deny and gloss over Japan's history of invasion." According to the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post, the East China Sea drills will be conducted off the coast of Zhejiang province by the East Sea Fleet, which oversees the waters around the disputed Diaoyu Islands.

Earlier this month, on August 8, four Chinese coast guard vessels stayed a record 28 hours in waters near islands claimed by Japan and China. Japan summoned the Chinese envoy in Tokyo to lodge a formal protest. The latest intrusion into Japanese territorial waters near the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea by Chinese ships was twice as long as the last one, on February 4. Chinese ships have been entering the disputed area regularly since last September, when the Japanese government bought the islands.

China and Japan have long struggled for the ownership of supposedly oil-rich islands located in the East China Sea. The islands are known as the Diaoyu to the Chinese, and Senkaku to the Japanese. The dispute over the islands and the maritime boundaries around them has continued for years. The Senkaku Islands have been controlled by Japan since 1895, but China insists that it has historic rights to them dating back to the 16th century.

The standoff escalated after Tokyo announced the purchase of three of the islands from a private Japanese owner in September of last year. After that, China witnessed mass anti-Japanese demonstrations. A diplomatic scandal led to problems in bilateral economic relations, with Japanese businesses withdrawing investment. Several Japanese companies in China suspended their work for security reasons, and Chinese Customs’ clearance of goods slowed from Japan.

The tiny archipelago of islands, which is halfway between both countries, are currently uninhabited, but the ground below could house significant mineral resources.

"It is expected that there will be more drills in the East China Sea to build up the combat capabilities of the Chinese Army," Ni Lexiong , director of the Sea Power and Defence Policy Research Institute at the Shanghai University of Political Science and Law, told the South China Morning Post. "It is also possible that China's aircraft carrier will participate in some of these drills."

China News Service reported that Liaoning, the country's first aircraft carrier, which it refitted after buying a Soviet-era vessel from Ukraine, has also been dispatched from its home port of Qingdao, in Shandong province, for training of ship-borne aircraft in the East China Sea. The ship is reportedly sailing to the northern Bohai Sea, off Liaoning province, where a separate round of military exercises was launched.

'America is our worst enemy': Pakistani victim of US Drone strikes speaks out

Drone strikes in Pakistan have killed 1,000 civilians, activists say, while the US maintains they only target terrorists. Victims of drone warfare and their families live in constant fear of another strike, and say they are “angry and want revenge.”

A review of classified US intelligence records has revealed that the CIA could not confirm the identity of about one-quarter of those killed by drone strikes in Pakistan during a period spanning 2010 and 2011. In a review of 14 months of classified records, 26 out of 114 attacks designate fatalities as “other militants,” and in four other attacks those killed are described as “foreign fighters.”

The CIA is reluctant to reveal information on its drone programme, Chris Woods of the Bureau of Investigative Journalism told RT.

“With so many civilians reported killed, and yet the CIA reporting that it’s killed no more than 50 or 60 civilians, I think there is need for an open, not only an open inquiry, but also for the CIA to share the information it has on who it believes it’s killed in places like Pakistan. President Obama’s speech the other week did seem to promise more openness but unfortunately we’re not seeing signs of that just yet,” Woods said.

In his post-election address to parliament, Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif called for an end to US drone attacks in the country’s northern tribal areas bordering Afghanistan.

"This daily routine of drone attacks, this chapter shall now be closed," Sharif said to enthusiastic applause. "We do respect others' sovereignty. It is mandatory on others that they respect our sovereignty."

“Most of the strikes in Pakistan these days are really not related to Al-Qaeda or those terrorist activities but really to the war across the border in Afghanistan. The drone war has changed quite significantly over the ten years or so it’s been running. We see the US talking about using drones in Syria for example; we have had calls from Iraq and Rwanda recently for the US to use drones there. So there’s a concern among some that the US wants now to use these drones as an easy plank in their view of foreign policy,” Woods explained.

Residents of Pakistan say they are living “in constant fear of another strike.” Amin Ullah was on his way to work at a mine near his village when a drone struck the area. He lost his leg in the attack, and three other miners were killed. "The Americans should be able to tell an ordinary person from a Taliban leader. They should know who they're killing. What did we do to deserve this?" Ullah told RT.

“We are simple villagers who are stuck in a war that we didn’t ask for. It’s a hopeless feeling. Death is above our heads all the time,” he added.

Another victim of the drone attack, Nek Bahadar, lost part of his hearing and nearly his foot: “The drone’s shockwave was so intense that it threw us outside far from the place where we were sleeping. After several minutes there was another strike and it killed many more people.”

“Of course this has made me hate the Americans. We are angry and want revenge. They’ve destroyed our lives. My parents, my wife my children – we all see America our worst enemy now,” Bahadar said.

Pakistani human rights lawyer Shahzad Mirza Akbar has sued both the US and Pakistan on behalf of civilian victims in Waziristan, a mountainous region in northwestern Pakistan bordering Afghanistan.

“I simply call it a concentration camp, that you've built a wall of military and militants, and behind this wall you are keeping more than 800,000 people who are not allowed to come out and no one from the rest of the country is allowed to go in. And that is kind of laboratory that US is using to use test its drone program,” Akbar told RT’s Lucy Kafanov.

Evidence of drone strikes is difficult to gather; fragments of the attacks were collected by a local journalist Noor Behram, who spent years documenting the civilian toll of drones, especially on children.

“Whenever my 3-year-old daughter hears the plane she runs inside and won’t sleep that night. The children here have been traumatized by the drones. The sound of a door banging shut is enough to terrify them,” Behram said.

There are fears that the US campaign to eliminate terrorists could end up creating more. “By carrying out drone strikes, killing innocent people who are not part of the conflict, you are just widening the conflict. You are giving the reason to people who were not part of the conflict here to become part of the conflict,” Akbar explained.
 
Breakthrough advances in unmanned aircraft technology have also sparked concerns at the UN. The UN’s rapporteur for extrajudicial killings, Christof Heyns, is calling for a worldwide ban on "killer robots" that could attack targets autonomously, without a human having to pull the trigger.

According to the report, the US, Japan, South Korea and Israel have developed various types of fully- or semi-autonomous weapons.

“It’s important to say there’s no particular day we’ll be able to say, now we have fully autonomous robots. But there are already very high levels of autonomy available, and full autonomy may be available within a few years. It’s important to emphasize the distinction between drones and lethal autonomous robots (LARs). With drones you have a human in the loop with somebody sitting behind the computer and taking the decision to pull the trigger. With robots there’s no human being in the loop, it’s a computer that takes a decision,” Heyns explained.

Courtesy: Russia Today

United States Radar to Visit Japan

North Korea has got the US, South Korea and Japan on their toes with the last rocket launch. This has made the US to concentrate more on the events going on around the region.

The US is planning to install an early-warning radar system at a coastal base near the Japanese city of Kyoto to bolster its defences against the North Korean missile threat, reports in the Japanese media claim.

It’ll be the second X-band radar system to be installed in Japan, with another one already operating in northern Aomori prefecture. The location was selected as military experts believe that a North Korean missile targeting Guam or Hawaii would most likely fly over western or central parts of Japan.