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Party, military challenge rules-based system as Biden prepares for Asia tour.. China’s ruling Communist Party and the People’s Liberation Army are subverting the rules-based international order and increasing global efforts to expand power, the U.S. admiral in charge of Pacific forces told a House hearing .. Adm. John Aquilino, commander of the Indo-Pacific Command, discussed China’s strategic and military goals for rapidly becoming a global superpower in detailed written testimony. “The PRC seeks to become a global military power and acquire the ability to seize Taiwan, while developing conventional weapons that can reach the U.S. homeland,” Adm. Aquilino said, using...

Bubbles are sustained only by ever increasing amounts of Credit. The most pernicious Bubbles are those fueled by “money” – perceived safe and liquid Credit instruments. Bubbles are mechanisms of wealth redistribution and destruction. Structural impairment caused by Bubble excess escalates over the life of the boom. The pain and dislocation unleashed during the bust is proportional to the excesses of the preceding boom. Though we’re in uncharted waters when it comes to global Bubble Dynamics, I’ll suggest that geopolitical risks expand exponentially over time. My thesis holds that 2022 is a pivotal year for a historic multi-decade Bubble period....

Here comes One World Government according to plan: All make like world leaders and “Bow to the King” “I”, “I”,”I”, “Me”, “Me, “Me””, “Me” Barack Hussein Obama is coming to the United Nations on Tuesday to brag to citizens of the world how they now belong to the globalists and their One World Government utopia. “In one of his last major appearances on the world stage, President Barack Obama will try to define how his leadership has made the planet safer and more prosperous when he gives his farewell speech to the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday.” (AP, Sept. 17,...

Where previous presidents fostered American strength, Obama revels in weakness. Director Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life, set during the Depression, was a divine counterfactual thought experiment designed to remind a suicidal George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart) that his hometown, Bedford Falls, would have turned out to be a pretty miserable place called Pottersville without his seemingly ordinary presence. Consider the Obama administration’s first six years as a prolonged counterfactual take on what the world might have been like for the last 70 years without a traditionally engaged American president dedicating our country to preserving the postwar Western-inspired global order. The...

Unbeknownst to the press, President Obama met this evening with former president George H.W. Bush and his son, former Florida governor Jeb Bush in the Oval Office. White House officials did not list the meeting on the president's schedule but released a photo through Flickr and Twitter. According to the date and time stamp on the photo, it was taken shortly after 5 p.m. That's about the time Obama returned to the White House from a fundraiser at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel. White House officials did not immediately respond to questions about the subject of the meeting and its exclusion...

Harold Macmillan, the prime minister who watched US power rise as the British empire crumbled, used to say that Britain would play ancient Greece to America’s Rome. These days it looks as if Rome is declining too. The US finds it increasingly hard to drive forward its vision of international trade and economics over the objections of big emerging-market countries.

The big message in Hu Jintao's interview with the WSJ is that China is ready for the yuan to play a larger role in the global economy. But the interview just caps what was already a big week for the Chinese currency. For example, China said for the first time that it will low foreign investors to participate in yuan-denominated private equity vehicles.

There is scope for debate – and innumerable newspaper quizzes – about who was the most influential public figure of the year, or which the most significant event. But there can be little doubt which word won the prize for most important adjective. 2009 was the year in which "global" swept the rest of the political lexicon into obscurity. There were "global crises" and "global challenges", the only possible resolution to which lay in "global solutions" necessitating "global agreements". Gordon Brown actually suggested something called a "global alliance" in response to climate change. (Would this be an alliance against the...

MOSCOW — Nearly two decades after the collapse of the Communist Party, Russia’s rulers have hit upon a model for future success: the Communist Party. Aleksandr D. Zhukov, a Russian deputy prime minister, praised the Chinese Communist Party at a meeting in Suifenhe, China. Or at least, the one that reigns next door. Like an envious underachiever, Vladimir V. Putin’s party, United Russia, is increasingly examining how it can emulate the Chinese Communist Party, especially its skill in shepherding China through the financial crisis relatively unbowed. United Russia’s leaders even convened a special meeting this month with senior Chinese Communist...

SNIPWe'll get to all that. But first I want to mention a White House memorandum released last Friday to the heads of federal departments and agencies because it appears the Obama Administration wants to zone the oceans. The memo indicates that Obama is creating a task force that within 180 days will recommend "a framework for effective coastal and marine spatial planning." What's called The Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force will make recommendations to the president on protecting ocean and Great Lake resources as they experience "growing demands" from "renewable energy, shipping and aquaculture." "This framework," the memo reads, "should...

Tuesday, April 3, 2007 7:29 a.m. EDT Font size=+3>Kissinger: U.S., China Can Form 'New Global Order'Newsmax, Reporting Reuters. China's rise as a global power is inevitable and could lead to conflict unless Beijing and Washington can cooperate to create a new global order, former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said on Tuesday. Kissinger first came to Beijing in 1971, on a secret mission to re-establish Sino-U.S. ties after more than two decades of diplomatic silence. Since then, economic reforms have turned China into a powerhouse. Beijing is now running a trade surplus with the United States that Washington last...

"Globalisation" has become one of the great buzzwords of modern times. Microsoft's Bill Gates is amongst those who say the world is 'flatter' It came to the fore during the 1990s, and the impact of globalisation looks set to play a prominent part in shaping our world during the first decades of this new century.  To see the advocates of globalisation at work and play there is no better vantage point than the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.  Its members have probably all read columnist Tom Friedman's best-seller, The World Is Flat: A Brief...