Posted on 10/13/2015 7:25:48 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
As China continues to pour billions into its massive military buildup, a pressing concern is its territorial ambitions in the South China Sea. Within the next two weeks the Pentagon is expected to send U.S. Navy warships to the area that will steam past China's artificial South China Sea islands in the first direct challenge to China's claims in the region.
The stakes are high, and the U.S. naval action could drive them higher still. Trillions in global seaborne trade transit the South China Sea each year (including roughly $1.2 trillion in goods bound for U.S. ports), but the vast majority of East Asia's energy resources pass through the Strait of Malacca and South China Sea as well.
The sea itself could also be a source of vast mineral wealth. The U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates that there could be 11 billion barrels of oil and 190 trillion cubic feet of natural gas lurking in the seabed there.
If the naval maneuvers are approved, they would mark a material escalation in what, up to this point, has been largely a war of words between U.S. and Chinese officials....
(Excerpt) Read more at cnbc.com ...
As long as Obama is in charge, any country that does any kind of military buildup is a threat to the US.
Deploy the food stamp frigates!
America really, really needs to return manufacturing to America.
Big time.
Actually, more than a decade ago, we should have assisted the SE Asian countries in building outposts on these island that they claimed and were closer to them than Red China. Now we have allowed the Chinese to get physical foot holds in these place and they won’t remove them unless they are blasted out. Having lived in this area for 30 years off and on and sailed them during the VN war as a Naval Officer, I know first hand the importance of these locations to maintaining the sea lanes from the ME and Europe to Asia. We have messed up big time. Even before OBAMA.
Per capita spending top 10, US #`1 no China
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0DgbOY_hTM
Overall aggregate defense top 10
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dcyN61aa1Q
Again US number one by almost 5X China and ()X Russia
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dcyN61aa1Q
In online conversations I have validated these to be current and correct, please let me know if you find alternate views and send a link if you will
Want the US can buy/build for $100 ... The Chinese and Russians can build for $10
I’ve seen these figures as well.
What’s missing is the fact that China and Russia get FAR More for the defense expenditures then the US or EU countries do, ie: low labor costs, raw and assembled materials, engineering costs.
If cost and spending were the end all, then the F-35 would give us overwhelming air supremacy.
RE:”Again US number one by almost 5X China and ()X Russia”
I’d be interested to know the real value in the spending; what the relative costs are for a military basket of goodies between the nations. Vast amounts of waste in these kinds of budgets.
The chinese now have the ability and the resources, thanks to US companies and consumers, to literally kick our asses whenever they decide to do it.
And the worst thing, the US won't do shit about it, because all of corporate owned politicians and free traitors will be directed by their communist chinese masters to NOT do anything about it.
Get in bed with the devil, and you get totally screwed.
What might be called a cost/benefit analysis...
Why $550 hammers, are they better?
There is soooo much extra in there it is ridiculous. unraveling 60 plus years for the industries to become the voracious beast it has become...
A lot of the economy is based on this, as it is in other arms producing countries...
I don't fear the Chi-coms, the Rooskies, or any of these other boogie men the government throws out there to distract us from the real enemy. Islam and the illegal invaders along with the welfare community have killed or wounded more Americans than anyone else has.
FOCUS PEOPLE...
:-)
The Free Republic Free Traitor™ Army better go on notice. You guys are not going to do well with a war against China/Russia.
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