What Happens Next in China and the United States

The next step in China’s economic growth will come from the ongoing and careful courtship of Taiwan. China absorbed Hong Kong and Macao without any major economic and cultural disruptions. While there was a decline in property values in Hong Kong in the late 1990s when it was absorbed into the People’s Republic of China, property values now are comparable or higher than when it was annexed. The reunification with Taiwan has been a more delicate courtship. It is being done in many small steps, such as permitting direct flights between the two. These flights have stimulated tourism between Taiwan and mainland China.

China: The Growing Giant

Prosperity and Poverty

Arriving in China through the airports of Beijing or Shanghai, you enter a spacious and ultramodern terminal. The building is clean. There are large open spaces and soaring ceilings. Everything appears efficient and contemporary-no different from terminals in Zurich, Tokyo, or New York City. It’s easy to get through baggage claim and customs fast. Gateways have always been important in Chinese culture as a way of protecting the interior as well as impressing visitors with their splendor, and these portals to modern China initially impress you as well-planned, twenty-first-century hubs.

United States: The Weakening Giant

Think of the United States as a large and mature oak tree. It is tall and has many branches, representing the political, geographical, and economic diversity of the country.

Beating America

The devastation of Europe and Japan during World War II gave the United States a unique opportunity to dominate international commerce and, later, to dominate the world political stage as the biggest superpower. Before the war, Britain, France, and Germany were viewed as the world’s superpowers, but that ended in the ashes of ?res and bomb fragments in Dresden, Coventry, and throughout the rest of the Continent. During the decades in which Europe, Russia, and Japan recovered from the war’s devastation, the United States was able to exploit its own unchallenged economic and political power. The result was a new world order.

Introduction

China is threatening to usurp the position of the United States as the global leader in wealth. Will the United States remain wealthy and strong, or will the United States be financially weakened by China?

Contents

ChinAmerica: The Uneasy Partnership that Will Change the World
By Handel Jones
2010

Contents

Introduction

Part I: Beating America
1. The Front Lines of the ChinAmerica Wealth Battle
2. How CEOs Replaced Generals

Part II: United States: The Weakening Giant
3. The Declining U.S. Automobile and Steel Industries
4. U.S. Computer industry—a winner to date
5. The Role of Government in U.S. Industry

Part III: China: The Growing Giant
6. What Is China Today?
7. Chinese Culture
8. Chinese Government Policies
9. Chinese Economic Philosophies
10. China’s Future Looks Bright

Part IV: What Happens Next in China and the United States
11. Taiwan and Its Synergy with China
12. A Restructuring Plan for the United States

Obama’s Wars: Chapter 1 (C)

The problem was sending American forces across the border into Pakistani cities where drones could not strike. Just two months earlier, on September 3, a day after McConnell had given candidate Obama his first briefing, President Bush authorized a cross-border operation into Pakistan. It was supposed to be a quiet, in-out Special Forces ground raid by about two dozen Navy SEALs on a house believed to be used by al Qaeda in the town of Angor Adda in the FATA. The plan was for the SEALs to seize al Qaeda’s documents and computers, their “stuff,” as McConnell called it.

Obama’s Wars: Chapter 1 (B)

In his September overview, McConnell also discussed strikes by small unmanned aerial vehicles such as Predators that had sophisticated surveillance cameras and Hellfire missiles. The covert action program authorized by President Bush targeted al Qaeda leadership and other groups inside Pakistan. Although classified, the program had been widely reported in the Pakistani and American media.

Obama’s Wars: Chapter 1 (A)

On Thursday, November 6, 2008, two days after he was elected president of the United States, Senator Barack Obama arranged to meet in Chicago with Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence (DNI).

Obama’s Wars: Note to Readers

A word of explanation about how the information in this book was obtained, evaluated and used. This book is designed to present, as best my reporting could determine, what really happened.

Obama’s Wars

Bob Woodward, Obama’s Wars, Simon & Schuster, New York, 2010

Israel’s Military Option

Giora Eiland
Center for Strategic and International Studies, The Washington Quarterly, January 2010

(Maj. Gen. (Ret.) Giora Eiland is a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) in Tel Aviv, and was the head of the Israeli National Security Council from 2004 to 2006. He can be reached at giora_eiland@yahoo.com.)

Israel’s Military Option

Washington finally made the offer Tehran has been waiting to hear since 2006: to negotiate a peaceful halt to Iran’s nuclear program without any preconditions. In 2006, Iran was willing to temporarily freeze uranium enrichment for direct negotiation with the United States, since negotiations would have awarded the regime a great deal of legitimacy. Two years prior to that, in 2004, Iran had not dared to enrich uranium and had shelved its military plan. Today, the opening conditions are different. Washington courts Tehran while Iran declares its readiness to talk about any important strategic topic with the United States separately and with the P5 +1 (the five permanent members of the UN Security Council-China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States-and Germany). Nevertheless, it does not consider “its natural right to develop nuclear energy” a topic worthy of discussion and certainly is not ready to freeze any activity during the talks.

Saudi-Iranian Relations Since the Fall of Saddam: Rivalry, Cooperation, and Implications for U.S. Policy: Summary

The fall of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in 2003 and the war in Iraq have affected sweeping changes in the strategic landscape of the Middle East, radically shifting the regional balance of power. Old security paradigms have been thrown into question, and local states appear to be reaffirming, renegotiating, or rethinking their relations with one another and with outside powers. Saudi Arabia and Iran have in many respects been the central players in this unfolding transformation. The dynamic relations between the two powers have affected the Persian Gulf, Iraq, Lebanon, and Palestine with important implications for regional stability and U.S. interests.

Saudi-Iranian Relations Since the Fall of Saddam: Rivalry, Cooperation, and Implications for U.S. Policy: Preface and Contents

Saudi-Iranian Relations Since the Fall of Saddam: Rivalry, Cooperation, and Implications for U.S. Policy: Preface and Contents

Frederic Wehrey, Theodore W. Karasik, Alireza Nader, Jeremy Ghez, Lydia Hansell, Robert A. Guffey
National Security Research Division
RAND Corporation 2009

Sponsored by the Smith Richardson Foundation NATIONAL SECURITY RESEARCH DIVISION

The research described in this report was sponsored by the Smith Richardson Foundation and was conducted under the auspices of the International Security and Defense Policy Center within the RAND National Security Research Division (NSRD). NSRD conducts research and analysis for the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Staff, the Unified Commands, the defense agencies, the Department of the Navy, the Marine Corps, the U.S. Coast Guard, the U.S. Intelligence Community, allied foreign governments, and foundations.

“We Blew Her to Pieces”

Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan by Aaron Glantz
Reviewed by Dahr Jamail
Inter-Press Service, 16/09/08

MARFA, Texas – Aside from the Iraqi people, nobody knows what the U.S. military is doing in Iraq better than the soldiers themselves. A new book gives readers vivid and detailed accounts of the devastation the U.S. occupation has brought to Iraq, in the soldiers’ own words.