UKRAINE & WASHINGTON DECISION-MAKING

Daily Beast.  U.S. intelligence said Putin would not invade the Ukraine--it sounds like American intelligence is as ignorant as it was before 9/11.  The reason:  the Soviet foreign minister told Secretary of State Kerrey that Russia would honor Ukraine's "territorial integrity". 

Nonetheless, until Friday, no one anticipated a Russian invasion of Ukrainian territory."Nobody thought Putin was going to invade last night,” one Senate aide who works closely on the Ukraine crisis. “He has the G8 summit in Sochi coming up, no one really saw this kind of thing coming." This source also stressed that events are still moving quickly on the ground. “There is still a question about whether this is Russian troops coming across the border or Russian troops moving around the installations in Crimea.”

It seems like a lot of assumptions are being made by Washington.  (And no one seems to remember the 2008 Russian move on Georgia).  And the Obama administration was still "formulating options and hoping for the best."  (Underlining mine)  A dose of realpolitik is needed in the administration.

Michael Barone has come up with an interesting list of 7 options that the administration could use.  He also refers to Walter Russell Mead's comment.

Mead makes the point that the pundits who predicted until Saturday that Russia would not move into Ukraine are solipsists -- they assume that Putin sees the world as they do and will act as they would. That would indeed be nice. But Putin doesn't see the world they way we -- Obama supporters and Obama critics -- do. We are told we should not mourn the transformation of a unipolar world into a multipolar world. It's just selfish to want to see the United States as the world's leading power. But the alternative is between a unipolar world and a zeropolar world, in which aggressive actors like Putin's Russia, the mullahs' Iran and Syria's Assad can inflict tyranny, suffering and death to millions--and no one can stop or (preferably) deter them.

Mead has a very critical assessment of administration foreign policy.

Anthony Codevilla interprets the events in the Ukraine more broadly, noting the weakness of the American military.  And it is not just Russia that is threatening American interests, but China is as well.  Obama has said "there will be costs," but what kind of leverage does he really have?  No one fears America anymore.

And Josh Rogin at the the Daily Beast wonders if any of Obama's plans will work.

But Simon Shuster in Time believes it is Putin who will be backing down. His popularity has slipped in Russia and there will be economic problems.  There is not upside for Putin in this invasion.

CHINESE CREATE SUPER VIRUS

Why in the world do Chinese scientists need to create a super bird-flu virus?  Researchers can't even cure some of the current strains.  It is like biological warfare has begun.  Washington is worried about guns when maybe it should be focused on chemical and biological weapons of the future.

Senior scientists have criticised the “appalling irresponsibility” of researchers in China who have deliberately created new strains of influenza virus in a veterinary laboratory.


They warned there is a danger that the new viral strains created by mixing bird-flu virus with human influenza could escape from the laboratory to cause a global pandemic killing millions of people.

ABORTION DEATHS IN CHINA

The number is mind-boggling--since 1971 over 330,000,000 abortions have been done in China as a result of its "one child policy".  Now the country faces an ageing problem.

CHINA BUILDING CANAL IN NICARAGUA

China has signed an agreement to build a canal in Nicaragua.  Where is US investment?  This will be a signifant entry of Chinese economic power into the Westerm Hemisphere.

According to spokespeople, the canal will take an approximate 10 years to be built, and will cost $30 billion US dollars. According to the agreement, the Nicaraguan canal will be partially built by 2019, by which time it will have the capacity to transport 416 million metric tons, which would represent 3.9% of the world’s maritime load.

CHINA MOCKS US POLITICAL MODEL

A sign of American decline and weakness? The US no longer inspires credibility.

Chinese political and business leaders are increasingly triumphant after two decades of rapid economic growth that lifted unprecedented millions of people out of poverty and turned the nation into an economic superpower, saying their success proves its political and economic system is superior to the Western model.

CHINA'S GLOBAL INVESTMENTS vs. US ECONOMY

An interesting chart.

And then you look at the net zero job growth for August in the US (the first time this has happened since WW II).

"Though much attention is being paid to ‘zero job growth’ in August, the real news in today’s numbers is that job growth is worse than in recent months, and the nation continues to produce far fewer jobs than needed to meaningfully reduce the unemployment rate," Heidi Shierholz, economist at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, D.C., said in a statement. "In fact, in some ways the report was less than zero in that weekly hours fell, as did hourly earnings."

Now the White House is backtracking on the unemployment numbers that its stimulus bills were/are supposed to bring down.

CHINA'S CYBER-ESPIONAGE

How much info is being stolen? The consequences could be very serious in 8-10 years in the opinion of the author.

After photos surfaced recently of a prototype Chinese stealth fighter, Pentagon officials acknowledged that they have continually underestimated the pace of Chinese technological advances. Perhaps that’s because China is stealing technology from the West at a blinding pace, through cyber-espionage. And U.S. companies are doing little to stop it.

AMERICA IN DECLINE

From Foreign Policy. Conclusion: The United States still has formidable strengths. Its economy will eventually recover. Its military has a global presence and a technological edge that no other country can yet match. But America will never again experience the global dominance it enjoyed in the 17 years between the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991 and the financial crisis of 2008. Those days are over.

CHINESE MISSILE

China is developing a missile that can take out US aircraft carriers. If it works, the US (and the navy) will face a major challenge politically and strategically. And billions of dollars spent on aircraft carriers suddenly goes down the drain.