As the world moves to war

Majority Of Chinese Say War With Japan Is Just A Matter Of Time

Zero Hedge,

11 September, 2014

When it comes to current geopolitics, one has to stretch their memory to recall a time when there were more overt and not so overt conflicts, humanitarian interventions, drone bombings and proxy or outright civil, and/or otherwise, wars.

But even the escalating cold war (as in European winter cold) between Russia and the west will pale by comparison to what may happen in the far east, if the pent up for generations tensions between China and Japan, which have historically hardly been in a state of "amicable relations", finally spill over into an all out war. Which, incidentally, is precisely what a majority, or 53% of Chinese respondents, and some 29% of their Japanese peers, expect will happen in the coming years.

As the FT reports, the Genron/China Daily survey poll found that "38 per cent of Japanese think war will be avoided, but that marked a nine point drop from 2013. It also found that a record 93 per cent of Japanese have an unfavourable view of their Chinese neighbours, while the number of Chinese who view Japanese unfavourably fell 6 points to 87 per cent."

It is almost as if all that fake pleasantry and courtesy over the past several decades between the two feuding nations was merely to facilitate globalized trade. Trade, which in the new normal is no longer relevant since central banks can just print prosperity in lieu of actual commerce, and which means that the people's underlying feelings can finally bubble to the surface. 

And what's making things worse is that over the past year, both government have made nationalistic sentiment a cornerstone of their domestic and foreign policy (something which a depressionary Europe is quite familiar with):

Jeff Kingston, a Japan expert at Temple University in Philadelphia, said Japanese tabloid media were driving the already negative sentiment towards China by focusing on its “warmongering”. He added that the government was “amplifying the anxiety” by talking about the threat from China.

The poll was released ahead of the second anniversary of Japan’s move to nationalise some of the contested Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea.

Ironically, one of the biggest contributions of Abenomics to Japan's economy may be a massive GDP boost... through war:

Sino-Japanese relations started to improve about a year ago, spurring Tokyo to start laying the groundwork for a possible first meeting between Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Chinese President Xi Jinping. But ties deteriorated rapidly again after Mr Abe’s visit in December to Yasukuni, a controversial shrine dedicated to Japan’s war dead including a handful of convicted war criminals.

Mr Abe wants to hold a summit with Mr Xi in November on the sidelines of an Apec summit in Beijing but China has shown no sign of interest. Critics say Mr Abe has hurt efforts to repair ties by visiting Yasukuni and also because of the perception that he is an unrepentant ultranationalist.

This week two members of Mr Abe’s ruling Liberal Democratic party, including a new cabinet minister, were forced to distance themselves from photographs that showed them posing with the leader of a Japanese neo-Nazi party.

“He just replaced the rightwing loonies [in his cabinet] with another group of rightwing loonies,” said Mr Kingston.

As if the world needed more evidence of the intellectual capacity of the people bringing you Abenomics every day. That said, with loonies running the show, something tells us those 53% of Chinese respondents expecting war in the near and not-so-near future, will be 100% right

‘Deterrence not arms race’: Russia hints it may develop rival to US Prompt Global Strike

RT

11 September, 2014

A highly-placed Defense Ministry official says that Russia may be forced to match the US Conventional Prompt Global Strike (CPGS) doctrine, which prescribes that a non-nuclear US missile must be able to hit any target on Earth within one hour.

“Russia is capable of and will have to develop a similar system,” Deputy Defense Minister Yuri Borisov said during a public discussion of the Russian rearmament program for the decade of 2016 through 2025. 

“But mostly we will concentrate on countering CPGS, as our military doctrine is a defensive one.” 

But the official denied that the Kremlin was setting off for another Cold War-style arms race with the West. 

“This is not in these plans, and I hope will never happen,” said Borisov. “We simply want to protect our civilian population from outside threats.”

Russian Deputy Defense Minister Yury Borisov.(RIA Novosti / Michael Klimentyev)

While Prompt Global Strike is often treated as a futuristic super-weapon, it is simply a system that ensures that strike areas of existing technologies cover the entirety of the planet. The concept of CPGS was first explicitly stated in official US documents during the first George W. Bush administration, and in more than a decade on, it has gone through various iterations, from ones that would see kinetic weapons fired at targets on the ground from space, to hypersonic missiles, to conventional solutions of placing short and medium range missiles around the world. 

There is no deadline for the program’s official completion, which as just as much a subject to budget constraints as other articles of the defense budget, or consistent status updates on whether its aims may have already been achieved through existing armaments.

Despite its vague remit and gradual implementation, the program has caused considerable consternation in Moscow and Beijing. A previous US study showed that up to 30 percent of enemy nuclear launchers could be taken out with conventional weapons that would form part of the CPGS. Russian officials have said that together with the missile defense system the US is deploying around the world, this could mean that the current nuclear balance could be undermined. 



This was clearly on Vladimir Putin’s mind when he spoke of creating new “assault capabilities, including maintaining a guaranteed solution to the task of nuclear deterrence" at the same Wednesday meeting. 

But most experts agreed that Russia current abilities are already sufficient to withstand CPGS, even if it lacks the same attack capabilities. 

"We already have a system of swift retaliation," said Yuri Baluyevsky, Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces. The retired general is helping to develop the Kremlin to develop a new military doctrine by the end of the year, in the face of geopolitical changes in Ukraine, NATO’s increased presence in Eastern Europe, and the NATO missile shield. 



"Russia has missiles, such as the long-range, air-based X-101 strategic cruise missile, which is able to strike at distances of 5,000 kilometers (about 3,100 miles)," the president of the Academy of Geopolitical Problems, Konstantin Sivkov, told RIA news agency. 

"It also has high-precision ballistic missiles that could strike ground targets, providing they had normal warheads. These are the two main elements of a rapid long-range strike, That is, it can be done now. Basically, existing long-range aviation would be sufficient.”

S-400 Triumf.(RIA Novosti / Valeriy Melnikov)

Another expert suggested that Russia’s air defense systems – which cost considerably less than launches of ballistic missiles – should form the backbone of the country’s response to CPGS. 



"To create an adequate aerospace defense system it is important to develop interceptor systems, such as the S-500. It is capable of hitting targets not only in the air but also in near space at an altitude of 200 kilometers above the Earth, which are moving at a speed of up to 8 kilometers per second," said Igor Korotchenko, editor-in-chief of National Defense magazine. 



The unveiling of CPGS has not only bred stiff resistance around the world, but also doubts at home in the US itself. A Carnegie Center study from last year said that the system held some of the same risks as a nuclear attack, and was much more likely to be used. Within the allocated 60-minute timeframe, incoming conventional missiles could be mistaken for nuclear warheads, their trajectory could be misunderstood, or they could simply hit the wrong target – all situations that may unleash a rapid response, which Russia and China, at the very least, appear to be very capable of already