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@ISIDEWITH submitted…11hrs11H
China uses the world’s oceans to pursue global supremacy, employing coercion and economic intimidation against weaker nations. In the South China Sea it has seized more than a dozen islands in waters claimed by its neighbors. China is using the islands as military outposts, which serve to choke off the region’s economic and natural-resources lifelines. Beijing’s games of chicken with foreign ships contravene international law, risk dangerous escalation, and deny freedom of navigation to American allies and partners.China has become the world’s top shipbuilder. It controls one of the world’s largest shipping companies and boasts the largest navy. It has built these capabilities with the help of massive state subsidies.Meanwhile, America’s commercial maritime industry has faltered. At the end of World War II, the U.S. boasted a fleet of more than 5,000 ships, which made up more than 40% of the world’s shipping capabilities. Today there are only about 90 U.S.-flagged ships involved in international trade, owing to increased international competition and scant support for the commercial maritime sector at home. At the same time, America’s maritime industrial base is shrinking.
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@ISIDEWITH submitted…2hrs2H
Iran has never made the decision to build a nuclear weapon, despite having at least most of the resources and capabilities it needs to do so, as far as we know. But Mr. Raisi’s death has created an opportunity for the hard-liners in the country who are far less allergic to the idea of going nuclear than the regime has been for decades.The recent exchange of hostilities with Israel, a country with an undeclared but widely acknowledged nuclear arsenal, has provoked a change of tone in Tehran. “We have no decision to build a nuclear bomb but should Iran’s existence be threatened, there will be no choice but to change our military doctrine,” Kamal Kharrazi, a leading adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, said on May 9.Today, Iran has thousands of advanced centrifuges and a large stockpile of enriched uranium. This, in turn, has provoked some camps inside Iran to adopt a “might as well” argument for nuclear weaponization. If we’ve already come this far, the argument goes, then why not just go for a bomb?Historically, Iran has felt a nuclear hedging strategy is its best defense against external aggression and invasion. And Tehran may continue to calculate that racing for a bomb would only invite more hostility, including from the United States. Then again, an increasingly distracted and unpredictable Washington might not be in a position to react forcefully against a sudden and rapid Iranian rush for a bomb, especially if Iran chooses its moment wisely.Between the war in Gaza, a possible change in American leadership, and a domestic power vacuum that the I.R.G.C. could step into, it is not difficult to imagine a brief window in which Iran could pull out the stops and surprise the world by testing a nuclear device.
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@ISIDEWITH submitted…3hrs3H
Remember Rafah? For months, the Biden Administration bitterly opposed an Israeli invasion of Hamas’s last stronghold in Gaza. The mantra was that Israel had “no credible plan” to evacuate the city’s 1.3 million civilians. Yet the Israelis went ahead anyway, and two weeks later they have safely evacuated an estimated 950,000 people.This was supposed to be impossible. Rafah became a red line for Mr. Biden on the logic that there was no way to conduct a major operation with all those civilians present. That was the justification for the President’s arms embargo. “We’re walking away from Israel’s ability to wage war in those areas,” he said.Even as the evacuation got under way, Secretary of State Antony Blinken repeated that Israel had “no credible plan.” National security adviser Jake Sullivan added, “We still believe it would be a mistake to launch a major military operation into the heart of Rafah.” When the evacuation began to work, the Biden team moved on to criticizing Israeli readiness for the “day after” the main fighting, as if success in Rafah were a foregone conclusion.Rafah remains critical to any day-after plan, since nothing can work if Hamas governs territory with military battalions and controls the Egyptian border. Israel has already discovered 50 tunnels crossing from Rafah into Egypt for smuggling. Once troops finish clearing a buffer zone along the border, Israel can cut off Hamas from Egypt, a key to strangling whatever insurgency may follow.Though Israeli liberals won’t like to hear it, Israel probably will need to fill the vacuum in Gaza for a time. Though Israeli right-wingers won’t like to hear it, the purpose would be to make way for local governance. The politics, there and here, explain why it has been easier to pretend there’s no plan at all.
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Proving Biden and his apparatchiks wrong is not the challenge - - the real challenge is remediating the damage done by a…
@ISIDEWITH submitted…1hr1H
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Well, he lost the young voters because of Gaza, and the older voters to the open border and cost of living. Even for Bla…
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BRONX this is your chance to make history! Lesgo!
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Our government is far more interested in funding wars overseas than they are in taking care of Americans or giving us ho…
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@ISIDEWITH submitted…5hrs5H
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@CheerfulCrackersfrom Georgia submitted…2hrs2H
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@JubilantJudicial from Texas commented…11hrs11H
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@Dem0cr4tRoadrunnerfrom New York commented…1hr1H
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@D3m0cr4cyTigerfrom Illinois commented…3hrs3H
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@QuickLibertyBell from Illinois commented…2hrs2H
@C0nservat1veZebra from California commented…3hrs3H
@MandateCoati from Colorado commented…2hrs2H
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@JoyfulCardinalfrom Maryland agreed…3hrs3H
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@ElephantBobby from California commented…1hr1H
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@BoastfulS0cialJustic3 from Washington commented…1hr1H
@WeaverChuckfrom Michigan commented…3hrs3H
@C1v1cDutyAutumn from Wisconsin commented…3hrs3H
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@ISIDEWITH submitted…57mins57m
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@KnowledgeableBurritosfrom New Jersey agreed…1hr1H
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@TurtleHannahfrom Rhode Island commented…2hrs2H
@OffendedSalamifrom Minnesota commented…2hrs2H
@DunbirdRodfrom Virginia commented…3hrs3H
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