Isidingo - The Need

It had to happen that if you continuously point out the error of foaming at the mouth right wingers, they tend to ban you from their sites. Oh well. All I can do is offer a voice of reason to the spewing of racist half-wit Jan Lamprecht of www.africancrisis.org . Frankly I would be more concerned about his site if he had more than a handful of readers, but he doesn't, thank god for small mercies.
Under his latest:
U.S. makes plans for a hostile China
He finally wakes up to something I've been telling him for ages now. Duh! China might be powerful.
Then he goes on a little mindless rant about the possible power of Japan. He gleefully announces that Japan is sitting there with over 100 million people and the world's second strongest economy. In World War II, Japan invaded China and socked it to them. First of all, Japan invaded China long before WWII. They were provoking China as early as 1931 and war broke out in 1937. And at the time, China was not communist, it was an agrarian society with a very poor military resistance. Things might be a bit different now.
I would not write Japan off so easily. If the Japanese build up their military, and remain friendly to the USA they could be an excellent ally in the region, Lamprecht babbles on.
If only pigs could fly... He forgets about the whole post second world was agreement and plans and oaths never to fight again. It would take them a while to get past that and then get organised.
He has finally noticed, though I've told him this several times, that China is very interested in Africa. Yes, it is pouring billions into Africa, buying up debt, building hospitals and bridges and schools. And more importantly, buying up oil contracts. Just as it does with any oil rich country in the world. And this is where the western world is falling on its behind. Imposing sanctions, getting snotty about leadership (Venezuela and Chavez), letting their companies payoff police in corrupt areas, threatening and cajoling and generally acting like they own the world...The oil will go elsewhere. Already Venezuela is moving its supply away from America. Europe is, excuse the pun, over the barrel with Russian supply. Russian doesn't NEED to supply oil to Europe. China is waiting with an open cheque book. Japan is also waiting with an open cheque book. If Japan can't organise its own oil supply it's not going to be much of a threat.
The Western world and China may yet clash in Africa in this century, Jan hopes. I suppose by that he means the UKUS alliance. Can't see anyone else stepping up to the fight. And what fight? There has to be a reason to go to war and "give us oil" doesn't fly very well in a democracy as it smacks of robbery. Of course history has taught us that the US is not above manufacturing reasons to go to war, so there is always that possibility.
An important subtext of Chinese President Hu Jintao's visit to the White House is the growing U.S.-China military competition. There is no competition. China is merely building up its military. It has nothing to do with the US. China's defense spending surges, Okay, let's put this into context here. China has the largest standing army in the world at around 1 million troops. These guys are paid pish. A small pay rise of, say, US$40 for each man, means an increase of US$40 million in military spending. If hey get a whopping 400 dollar increase, it's US$4 billion A MONTH. So multiply that by 12 and you get US48 billion a year. Lions and tigers and bears, Oh MY!
Add into that the day to day costs of housing, food, uniforms etc etc and you can see where a huge portion of the money goes.
The United States' defence budget this year is US$419.3 billion. China's budget is US$29.9 billion dollars.
The other aspect of this is something a lot of western countries fail to understand. China's army is not only a fighting force. It takes on the roll of civil defence in times of floods or famine or other natural disasters, building bridges, helping to evacuate people, putting up sandbags to prevent flooding. In certain times it's even been known to help gather the harvest.
What we are seeing is the Pentagon flooding the area with its military, along with supplying weapons to the renegade Taiwan and causing arms build up between Seoul and Pyongyang. They've signed a nuclear agreement with India, against international protocols, and are now contemplating a nuclear strike against Iran.
The Pentagon is pursuing a strategy of strengthening its forces in the Asia-Pacific region as a hedge against the possible emergence of a hostile China. The Navy is putting a larger proportion of its submarine fleet in the Pacific, plans to add one aircraft carrier battle group in that region and is outfitting strategic missile submarines with nonnuclear cruise missiles. The Air Force has been improving its ability to deploy B-2 stealth bombers from Guam, a U.S. territory in the Pacific; the Marines are shifting some troops to Guam; the Army has talked of moving the headquarters of its I Corps, which focuses on potential conflicts in the Pacific, from Fort Lewis to Japan. The Pentagon has made no secret of its increasing focus on China as a potential threat to stability in Asia and the Pacific, where U.S. alliances with Japan and South Korea have been key underpinnings of the region's economic growth. Lamprecht quotes from a report by AP.
Where is this hostility to the west that everyone keeps talking about? What has China ever done to the west to make them imagine they should be enemies now? If anything it should be the other way around as during the last days of the second world war, western allied soldiers turned their guns on Chinese communist soldiers who had been their allies in downing Japan.
While Lamprecht rubs his hands in glee at the thought of a militarised Japan being sicced on China I wonder if he has the vaguest notion of the atrocities that were committed by the Imperial Japanese army during the second world war. So much is made of the holocaust in Europe but we were never taught of the atrocities committed by the Japanese.
It would be a good idea for Lamprecht to famliarise himself with some world history and current events.