US CHINA in Shock as India gets Military Base in Indonesia

Discussion in 'Latest US & World News' started by trucker, Jun 16, 2018.

  1. Swede Hansen

    Swede Hansen Banned at Members Request

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    Both will remain regional powers. There is only one superpower and no room at the top for more. The US Navy will continue to controlled every ocean as it has for 80 years.
     
  2. NMNeil

    NMNeil Well-Known Member

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    But if the money taken from taxpayers for the general welfare and defense of the United States is spent elsewhere is that fraud or embezzlement?
     
  3. Swede Hansen

    Swede Hansen Banned at Members Request

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    Neither. Your elected representative votes for you thus you had your say in the matter before the appropriation was approved and sent to the president for signature. Don't you just love representative democracy!
     
  4. APACHERAT

    APACHERAT Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    China and India aren't the best of friends, still fighting over border issues.

    But India and Russia are good friends.
    Well maybe not as much as they were.
    [​IMG]
    Su-57

    There was a new sheriff in town on January 20th in America.
    Things changed.
    India drops out of the joint Russian/Indian Sukhoi Su-57 project.
    Maybe India has their eyes on American made F-35's ?


    In 1972 Nixon made a Cold War geopolitical strategic move, he visited Communist China. The strategy was to drive a wedge between Sino/Soviet relationships

    It worked.

    Vladimir Putin is a chess master on the geopolitical chessboard.

    Why would Putin cozy up with the Chi-Coms ?

    Does Putin think he's another Richard M. Nixon ?

    Nixon was #1 when it came to geopolitics in the last half of the 20th Century.

    So far in the 21st Century, Putin is #1 when it comes to geopolitics.
     
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  5. Striped Horse

    Striped Horse Well-Known Member

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    I'm not so sure about India.

    Firstly, it doesn't look like they are buying the F-35, or at least no definite decision has been made yet. They have a tender out to a variety of aircraft manufacturers at present if this report is accurate (HERE). The same article states that India has denied interest in the F-35 (see penultimate paragraph).

    Meanwhile, India remain Russia's second largest defence industry market with about 68% of India defence procurement coming from Russia. They are also buying Russia's S-400 missile system despite disapproval from Washington. India are also partners in the BRICS and Russia's state nuclear corporation, Rosatom is building a new Russian nuclear energy plant in India. Besides that both nations have committed to a bilateral trade agreement target of $30 billion by 2025 and are planning on a free trade agreement.

    You will recall that India was a founding member of the Non Aligned Movement and moved closer to Moscow when Nixon supported Pakistan in the Indo-Pakistan War in 1971. Wisely, I think, they are adapting to a unipolar world and have closer relations with the US because they wish to protect their sovereignty and remain autonomous.

    In the last analysis, it seems to me that they intend to trade with one and all and not be beholden to any nation. A very sensible position.

    I do agree with you about Putin being the smarter geopolitical thinker.

    I think Russia's chumming up with China is a natural and understandable reaction to the immense hostility of the US and NATO, who have (and continue to) driven both nations together. For me, this has been the biggest mistake US geopolitical planners could possible have come up with. And I think it is a factor of the Wolfowitz Doctrine at play, where the US would not allow "competitor" nations to arise. Well, the fact is that China is rising and the US can't do anything to stop it (although they can hinder it) short of a major world war where the outcome is exceedingly uncertain for all.
     
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  6. cerberus

    cerberus Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Wow, SH, I don't wanna come across as obsequious, but respect for that one.
     
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  7. Striped Horse

    Striped Horse Well-Known Member

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    There's an interesting story told by the late L Fletcher Prouty (in his JFK, CIA and Vietnam War book, as I recall). Prouty was a member of the so called "Secret Team" who was represented by Donald Sutherland playing the role of Mr. X in Oliver Stone's film JFK.

    Prouty noted in his book that at the end of WWII, the US surplus weapons in Europe or Japan (or both, I can't recall exact details) were not repatriated to the USA but were divided into 2 massive consignments. One of these went to Korea and the other to Indo-China (Vietnam). The inference was that the US, even at the end of WWII knew they would launch wars in these regions.

    I believe Prouty was familiar with the CFR War & Peace Studies Project and knew that America had planned to replace Great Britain as the world hegemon and to do that they had to militarily project themselves in the Southern hemisphere and particularly those territories previously controlled by the British, French and Dutch.
     
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  8. APACHERAT

    APACHERAT Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Excellent response.

    One thing I never understood was why Nixon supported Pakistan during the Indo-Pakistan War not remembering probably because I had just got out of the service and was decompressing while sailing around the Pacific. At the time the only source for news was short wave radio.
     
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  9. Mircea

    Mircea Well-Known Member

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    India has always wanted to expand its influence, so it's no surprise, except to the uneducated and uninformed.
     
  10. Striped Horse

    Striped Horse Well-Known Member

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    I agree. I always found it curious and this remained the case until I watched the film starring Hugh Bonneville, Viceroy's House, when Mounbatten was sent to India as the last Viceroy to oversee the partition of India. Mountbatten was clearly against the partition idea but Churchill insisted upon it, because he feared Stalin would convince India to allow the SU to use the warm sea port of Karachi as a Russian naval base, giving it easy passage to the Middle East.

    Although little was available when I researched the validity of this story - and opinion remains divided - my tentative conclusion is that Gurinder was probably right. There is an awful cold war logic to what he says.
     
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  11. APACHERAT

    APACHERAT Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Russia going back to the 1800's has always wanted to be a maritime power with a blue water navy.

    One thing Russia needed was warm water ports for its navy.

    They had one in the Black Sea but to get their ships out of the Black Sea there was one problem, Turkey.

    You're the first person I have heard mentioning Russia and war water ports in 28 years.

    So what was the Soviet-Afghan War all about ?

    SOVIET ACCESS TO WARM-WATER PORTS FROM AFGHANISTAN
    https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/document/cia-rdp81b00401r000600120003-3


    Why Did the Soviet Union Invade Afghanistan?
    First of all, the Soviet drive into the heart of Southwest Asia coincided with an age-long, imperial Russian longing for a warm-water port
    http://www.e-ir.info/2010/01/03/the-soviet-union’s-last-war/


    https://publications.lakeforest.edu...ticle=1029&context=allcollege_writing_contest
     
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  12. Concord

    Concord Well-Known Member

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    1700s even. The Great Northern War saw Peter the Great attain this goal with the establishment of St Petersburg. But the Baltic Sea, like the Black Sea, has the problem of bottlenecking at a single passage.
     
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  13. Striped Horse

    Striped Horse Well-Known Member

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    Thanks for that. It makes perfect sense for the Soviet Union to seek a warm water port in Afganistan.

    But I thought the Russians had already achieved that requirement, when they built a massive submarine base at the world's deepest lake, Baikal. It was a very, very secret submarine base with underground rivers that came out in Loch Ness in Scotland.

    mafghan.gif

    Meanwhile, I understand the Soviet Air force used to fly their most secret test aircraft from bases hidden deep inside the hollow earth through secret portals at the Polar regions.

    They probably learned about this from captured fleeing Nazis who had discovered the legendary Agartha during their Tibetan foray (HERE & HERE). Which explains those seven Tibetan monks (one wearing a pair of bright green gloves) who were found suicided in Berlin at the end of WWII (HERE).
     
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  14. cerberus

    cerberus Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    The first words of the Bitter Lake narrative is 'Afghanistan is a land-locked country', so how does having 'a warm-water port' in Afghanistan work then? [​IMG]
     
  15. APACHERAT

    APACHERAT Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    The warm water port was going to be in Pakistan but first the Soviets had to control Afghanistan.

    Afghanistan is land locked.

    Establishing a warm water forward naval operating base requires lots of marine fuel oil, marine diesel fuel and JP fuels.
    Warships are very thirsty war platforms that need lots of fuel.

    You build a pipeline from Russia across Afghanistan to the warm water port.That's where Afghanistan came into the picture.

    A nuclear Nimitz class aircraft carrier air wing needs JP fuel for it's aircraft to fly.
    That's why when conducting air operations at sea a Nimitz class carrier has to be refuled with JP fuel every three days by a fleet oiler. The carrier's escorts also have to be refueld at sea or put into a port to refuel.
     
  16. APACHERAT

    APACHERAT Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Look above this post.
     
  17. Mandelus

    Mandelus Well-Known Member

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    The whole thing can be seen in the geostrategic context of the Cold War as far as the local conditions are concerned. Pakistan has been the ally of the US before ... but the Nixonhier, on the side of Pakistan, against the numerous advice of its own people, also shows the numerous hypocrisy of the United States regarding human rights and its ally.
     
  18. APACHERAT

    APACHERAT Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    If you ever wonder why you never see taker trucks full of JP fuel entering airports or military air bases is because they get their fuels from underground pipelines.

    LAX, John Wayne Airport in the OC, Burbank, Ontario, March AFB, Edwards AFB, the former MCAS El Toro all have underground pipelines running to the Port of L.A. and to all of the oil refineries in SoCal.

    If you live in Southern California it's likely that natural gas that heats your home and you cook your food with came from Texas by pipelines, mostly underground.

    [​IMG]
     
  19. cerberus

    cerberus Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Sorry but I still don't get it. I didn't sleep too well last night, so maybe that's the reason.
     
  20. APACHERAT

    APACHERAT Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Afghanistan wasn't always a shithole country.

    During the 1960's it was a pretty nice place. It use to be a destination for European and American families to go on vacation too.

    It was communism (as usual), the Soviet Union and the Taliban who turned Afghanistan into a shithole country.

    Afghanistan during the good old days
    http://www.politicalforum.com/index.php?threads/afghanistan-during-the-good-old-days.527278/
     
    Last edited: Jun 26, 2018
  21. Mandelus

    Mandelus Well-Known Member

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    Sure, but Afghanistan isn't the topic here and wasn't any topic at this age there, because it was the Chinese influence with Tibet invasion, the hoepless US fighting in Vietnam etc. ...
     
  22. bigfella

    bigfella Well-Known Member

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    So they just left a bunch of surplus military equipment lying around waiting for a war that came 20 years later? Is this the stuff they used when the US deployed forces in the 60s? The French begged the US to intervene in the 50s & they didn't, so there goes that theory.

    And what about the stuff that went to Korea? Damned sure didn't go to creating a well armed force there. The only well armed force there was backed by the Russians. To the extent the South had an army in 1950 it didn't have a single tank or much in the air. Maybe those shipments didn't make it. :roll:

    This is the sort of gobbeldygook you come up with listening to the distant memories of 'trusted sources' rather than reading history books. The US shipped a mountain of surplus equipment to Asia in the years after the end of WW2. Most of it went straight to Nationalist China, which received truly vast amounts of equipment from 1945-47. A decent amount ended up arming French forces in Indochina (yep, the French actually fought a war there before the US. Who knew?). I'm sure more ended up arming the Koreans after 1950 & probably more spread around the Philippines & possibly the Dutch in Indonesia.

    All very simple & very straightforward. No 'secret knowledge' required. No special sources. Just a passable understanding of postwar East Asia. Of course, mundane things like basic historical knowledge don't make people feel like they have some special understanding of the world or buttress their conspiracy theories. Basic knowledge is never going to be as sexy as a good conspiracy theory.
     
  23. bigfella

    bigfella Well-Known Member

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    Nixon supported Pakistan because it was a US ally and India was aligned to Russia. This didn't start after the US backed Pakistan in a war. India, like a lot of other 'non-aligned' nations, leaned heavily toward the communist world. It leaned heavily that way before the movement even began. The US tried to court India in the 40s, but quickly realised that India wasn't interested. India was getting Russian military & economic aid within a couple of years of independence and openly aligned itself with the USSR. This helped to drive Pakistan to seek closer relations with the US. The US openly backed India against China in 1962 to the extent it considered using nukes, but stuck with its ally Pakistan in 1965.

    Pakistan has and has had a lot wrong with it as a nation, but it has been a reliable US ally for well over 60 years.

    None of that excuses Nixon using the threat of US intervention to stop the Indian military intervening in Bangladesh in 1970-71 to stop the genocide there. That is one of the least well known & most evil acts of a thoroughly amoral man. The US could have supported Pakistan in other ways. Poisoned US-India relations for over a generation.
     
  24. Striped Horse

    Striped Horse Well-Known Member

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    I suppose the problem was that the Afghans weren't consulted about this cunning plan. By either the Soviets or later the US when they decided to run the Unocal oil & gas pipeline through the country.

    The rest is history, of course.
     
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  25. bigfella

    bigfella Well-Known Member

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    This is mostly a Reaganite Cold War fantasy. The idea that somehow Russia was going to control territory containing 100 million angry, well armed Pakistanis and base a fleet at the end of such a vulnerable pipeline is actually sorta funny. Russia could barely control its own Muslim population by the late 70s, but somehow it was going to control Pakistan's. Yeah. Sure. Maybe some Russian planner floated this as a thought bubble, but it was never a credible threat.

    The invasion of Afghanistan was largely driven by Russia's internal problems. The USSR was losing the ability to control the large Muslims populations of Central Asia & the Caucuses. Increasingly religious-based opposition groups were arising that the KGB couldn't effectively penetrate. In this context the rise of fundamentalist movements in Afghanistan & the increasing instability of that nation was seen as an existential threat. Those ideas were spreading into the USSR. The Russians picked a side in the internal struggles there & used that as an excuse to intervene in hopes of stablizing Afghanistan and thus Central Asia. The US has invaded nations for less. Much less.

    In 1979 The USSR had secure port access in Asia, the Middle East, Africa & the Americas. The cost of even attempting an invasion of Pakistan was so out of proportion with any benefit that even someone completely ignorant of the actual reasons for invading Afghanistan can see how absurd it was.

    I love that both left and right feel the need to create fanciful and elaborate explanations for events so easily explained in more mundane, factual ways.
     

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