Tag Archives: Robert Gates

China’s PLA has ability to independently launch nuclear weapons

Posted by on November 9, 2012 Comments Off

Here is what the US thinks it knows about China’s nuclear capabilities – Quartz

Has an autonomous military that might launch weapons without consulting the government. 

The committee says there is an independent branch of  China’s  People’s Liberation Army named “The Second Artillery Forces” that employs “100,00 people and about 28 missile launch brigades.”

In theory, the decision about whether to use nuclear weapons would be made by the Politburo Standing Committee, China’s cabinet. But US defense sources believe the PLA—and, within that, the Second Artillery Forces—enjoy great autonomy. For example, the draft report states, when China’s military held a test flight of a J-20 fighter aircraft in 2011, this “may have caught China’s civilian leaders off guard.” The J-20 test was particularly surprising because it occurred during a visit to China by then US defense secretary Robert Gates and appeared to highlight a rift between China’s government and military.

Here is what the US thinks it knows about China’s nuclear capabilities – Quartz

US turns the screws on NATO, lauds its ally Australia

Posted by on May 19, 2012 Comments Off

In a blunt speech on his retirement last year, the former US secretary of defence Robert Gates said NATO faced a ”dim, if not dismal” future if its European members did not increase their spending and re-assess their political view of the alliance.

Instead the economic crisis has bitten deeper and the continent has embraced, or grudgingly accepted, austerity. Of the 28 member nations only the United States, Greece, Britain, Albania and France, spend the 2 per cent of GDP considered necessary to maintain the alliance’s military capacity.

US turns the screws on NATO, lauds its ally Australia

In the face of new Russian aggressiveness, the West needs NATO more than ever. Instead, NATO is falling apart. Just one more bad sign for the future.

Putin, Russia & the West: The War [Russia-Georgia War] – YouTube

Posted by on March 22, 2012 Comments Off

This video reveals just how close to war America and Russia came. It had never been closer.

If the major powers have only known peace between each other since 1945, then how is it possible that World War III almost occurred over Georgia? If the longer you have peace then the more peace you will have, how is it possible to interrupt peace?

Moscow has issued an extraordinary warning to the West that military assistance to Georgia for use against South Ossetia or Abkhazia would be viewed as a “declaration of war” by Russia.

The extreme rhetoric from the Kremlin’s envoy to NATO came as President Dmitry Medvedev stressed he will make a military response to US missile defence installations in eastern Europe, sending new shudders across countries whose people were once blighted by the Iron Curtain.

Military help for Georgia is a ‘declaration of war’, says Moscow in extraordinary warning to the West | Mail Online

Doesn’t the entire concept of nuclear war now between America and Russia go against everything you know? Yet, there it is. It almost happened.

Could it be that the longer there is peace then the closer one is to war? In other words, the world does not work the way most people think it should. At a time when all the generations who have known war have mostly died out along with their wisdom, the surviving generations have become susceptible to war 

The third episode tells how, in August 2008, Russia went to war with America’s ally, Georgia. Russia’s president Dmitry Medvedev and Georgia’s president Mikheil Saakashvili reveal why each decided it was necessary to make war on the other.

Former American secretary of state Condoleezza Rice and former secretary of defense Robert Gates describe what happened inside the National Security Council as President Bush considered whether to send in ground troops to save Georgia’s capital. They reveal just how near to war the conflict brought the two nuclear super-powers.

Putin, Russia & the West: The War – YouTube

Nuke expert: Time to attack Iran – Israel News, Ynetnews

Posted by on December 24, 2011 Comments Off

A former special adviser on Iran policy to the Obama Administration said that a US-perpetrated strike on the Islamic Republic on is the “least bad” option in dealing with its nuclear threat.

“The truth is that a military strike intended to destroy Iran’s nuclear program, if managed carefully, could spare the region and the world a very real threat and dramatically improve the long-term national security of the United States,” Matthew Kroenig, a nuclear security expert at the Council on Foreign Relations who served as a strategist under Defense Secretary Robert Gates, said in an article published by Foreign Affairs Magazine.

Nuke expert: Time to attack Iran – Israel News, Ynetnews

America’s permanent robot war | guardian.co.uk

Posted by on October 5, 2011 Comments Off

In the world of weaponry, they are the sexiest things around. Others countries are desperate to have them. Almost anyone who writes about them becomes a groupie. Reporters exploring their onrushing future swoon at their potentially wondrous techno-talents. They are, of course, the pilotless drones, our grimly named Predators and Reapers.

As CIA director, Leon Panetta called them “the only game in town”. As secretary of defence, Robert Gates pushed hard to up their numbers and increase their funding drastically. The US Air Force is already training more personnel to become drone “pilots” than to pilot actual planes. You don’t need it in skywriting to know that, as icons of American-style war, they are clearly in our future – and they’re even heading for the homeland as police departments clamor for them.

America’s permanent robot war | Tom Engelhardt | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

The special US-Saudi relations are history

Posted by on June 27, 2011 Comments Off

Because of this plan, King Abdullah embarked on the phased separation of the kingdom’s foreign and security policies from the US, starting with his acrimonious telephone conversation with Obama which took place on Feb. 9 when he was recuperating from back surgery in Morocco.

Since then, the Saudi king has made no bones about letting the US president know that, for him, the oil-for-security formula which governed relations between the world’s leading superpower and its biggest oil superpower for 60 years is history.

This means in practice that Saudi Arabia no longer depends on an American defense umbrella for its security and America can no longer rely on Riyadh to regulate its oil supply policy – and therefore its financial activities on world markets – for meeting US political, military and economic interests.

Obama initially sent two senior officials to Riyadh – US Defense Secretary Robert Gates on April 6 and by US National Security Adviser Tom Donilon on April 12 – to try and bring the Saudis back into the fold. Abdullah was not to be talked around.
Riyadh’s policy reorientation is now anchored in six major changes, outlined here by DEBKA-Net-Weekly:

The special US-Saudi relations are history

Nato is dead – it’s just that we won’t admit it

Posted by on June 16, 2011 Comments Off

If ever the death knell was sounded for an organisation, it was sounded by the US Defence Secretary, Robert Gates, in a farewell speech to Nato in Brussels last Friday.

Of course, in talking of the 60-year-old alliance facing a “dim if not dismal” future of “military irrelevance”, he was primarily expressing Washington’s growing irritation with its European allies for not doing more in Afghanistan and over Libya. If they didn’t pull their socks, up, he said with the bluntness that only a departing minister can voice, it would all be over for Nato.

Nato is dead – it’s just that we won’t admit it

North Korea will be direct threat to US in the next few years

Posted by on January 27, 2011 Comments Off

The U.S. Defense Department believes North Korea will become a “direct threat” in the next few years.

Commenting on Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ remark that North Korea is “becoming a direct threat to the United States” during his visit to China some two weeks ago, Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell said Wednesday, “By that he doesn’t mean at this very moment. But given their pursuit of both the nuclear weapons and their ballistic-missile capabilities, that he sees them being a direct threat not within five years, but sooner than that.”

The Chosun Ilbo (English Edition): Daily News from Korea – Pentagon Sees N.Korea as Rising Threat

China’s ‘stealthy’ signal to US before President Hu’s state visit – The China Post

Posted by on January 16, 2011 Comments Off

It’s not clear who authorized the test flight of China’s new J-20 “stealth” fighter during Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ visit to Beijing this week, but the message was pretty clear: China has arrived — and we really don’t care what you think anymore, America.

China’s ‘stealthy’ signal to US before President Hu’s state visit – The China Post

Are China’s Neocons Taking Power? | The National Interest Blog

Posted by on January 11, 2011 Comments Off

So China flew its experimental J-20 stealth fighter jet while Defense Secretary Robert Gates was visiting President Hu Jintao? It would be hard to think of a more calculated insult–and one that America should, and will, take in stride. The Los Angeles Times reports that China’s military didn’t even bother to inform the civilian leadership. Gates knew about the test. Hu didn’t.

What does that tell you?

Are China’s Neocons Taking Power? | The National Interest Blog