{"id":1493399,"date":"2024-10-02T03:25:00","date_gmt":"2024-10-02T07:25:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/?p=1493399"},"modified":"2024-10-02T03:25:00","modified_gmt":"2024-10-02T07:25:00","slug":"the-chinese-are-watching-says-incoming-eu-defense-commissioner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/the-chinese-are-watching-says-incoming-eu-defense-commissioner\/1493399\/","title":{"rendered":"“The Chinese Are Watching”, Says Incoming EU Defense Commissioner"},"content":{"rendered":"

“The Chinese Are Watching”, Says Incoming EU Defense Commissioner<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Authored by Anders Corr via The Epoch Times,<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The incoming defense commissioner of the European Union says that China sees the U.S. and EU responses to Russian aggression in Ukraine as weak. He\u2019s right. Our show of weakness only invites further aggression by other rogue members of the \u201caxis of evil,\u201d including China, Iran, and North Korea.<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

As the world devolves into wars that strain U.S. and partner defense budgets\u2014along with the borders that divide the democracies from authoritarian states like Russia, Iran, and North Korea\u2014\u201cthe Chinese are watching,\u201d according to the European Union\u2019s first incoming defense commissioner, Andrius Kubilius<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the case of Europe\u2019s response to Russia, according to a Sept. 22 report, \u201cThe Chinese will make one simple conclusion,\u201d noted Kubilius. \u201cThe West is quite weak.\u201d He said that despite economies that are 25 times that of Russia, we are not winning. \u201cWhat is the reason?\u201d he asked. \u201cIt\u2019s a question of political will.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also a question of risk avoidance, of course. Democracies are more risk averse than autocracies when it comes to war. This makes sense from one perspective, as democracies care more about people\u2014both in their own societies and those of other states\u2014than do dictators and terrorists. It could also make sense from a strategic perspective if modern war is a \u201cwood chipper<\/a>\u201d for attacking armies, as Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin rightly noted in 2022 regarding Ukraine.<\/p>\n

The axis dictators are power-hungry to the point of a willingness to kill tens of millions<\/a> in pursuit of their territorial and ideological ambitions. <\/strong>The number of Russian and Ukrainian dead from the current war has now reached approximately 1 million,<\/a> according to a Sept. 17 report. Even more have been wounded. And Vladimir Putin is raising the stakes by frequently threatening nuclear strikes that could escalate to a direct war with the United States.<\/p>\n

Iran is following the same strategy of feeding its proxies into the wood chipper, with its pursuit of nuclear weapons and support for terrorist proxies like Hamas, the Houthis, and Hezbollah against Israel, giving just cause for a robust defense. On Sept. 22, the United States warned<\/a> Israel against starting a full-scale war against the latter terrorist organization after Hezbollah refused to end its cross-border rocket attacks and let tens of thousands of internally displaced Israeli refugees return to their homes in northern Israel.<\/p>\n

U.S. and allied ammunition reserves are running so low due to these wars<\/strong>\u2014for which the United States has served as the \u201carsenal of democracy\u201d since World War I\u2014that Taiwan<\/a> is now searching for new sources of ammunition necessary to defend itself in a war against the People\u2019s Liberation Army, according to a Sept. 21 report.<\/p>\n

Perhaps that is why Beijing tacitly approved of Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine and why the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) allies with Iran in its negotiations with the United States, thus encouraging its violence against Israel and Saudi Arabia. The CCP bankrolls all of the \u201caxis of evil\u201d companies through energy purchases from Russia and Iran and being the biggest trade partner of North Korea<\/a>. The CCP has a motive for encouraging these far-flung wars and North Korea\u2019s nuclear saber-rattling. It distracts the democracies, depletes our arsenals, and thus will make it harder to defend Taiwan if that day comes.<\/p>\n

Xi Jinping has told the People\u2019s Liberation Army to be ready for a Taiwan war in 2027, and the chief of Naval Operations of the U.S. Navy,<\/a> in turn, told her forces to be ready for a war with China by the same date.\u00a0Meanwhile, the FBI continues to discover Beijing\u2019s preparations for massive\u00a0cyberattacks<\/a>\u00a0on U.S. infrastructure that could disable us during a Taiwan war. <\/strong>Such preparations are destabilizing as the first to strike the other\u2019s electricity grid and satellites, for example, will have a major advantage on the battlefield.<\/p>\n

So the question of U.S. and European weakness that Kubilius and Beijing perceive matters. What we do to defend Ukraine matters to whether the CCP decides to launch a war against Taiwan in 2027. Defeating Russia in Ukraine by 2026 could avoid a war with China<\/a> that year that blacks out the entire United States and destroys us as a global superpower, even if we win. In that case, we would not be very helpful in defending Europe.<\/p>\n

Kubilius of Lithuania is one unlikely successor to former president Ronald Reagan and his doctrine of \u201cpeace through strength.\u201d <\/strong>But this is his approach. He wants the European Union to borrow money to massively increase defense spending. He wants to require each country in the EU to stockpile enough ammunition for a war with Russia that could come within a few years, he said. Germany, according to a report in 2022, only had enough ammunition for two days of war. That explains its general willingness to give in to Russia, China, and Iran.<\/p>\n

EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen likewise believes the European Union must spend far more on defense to deter war with Russia. She estimates that the EU must spend approximately $560 billion<\/a> to account for low defense spending that stretches back to the wishful thinking of the 1990s when some in the United States thought we had achieved global \u201cprimacy.\u201d In fact, the enemies of democracy were just regrouping for a future fight.<\/p>\n

The CCP regime is indeed watching as Ukraine and Israel struggle to put down dictatorial and terrorist aggressions against them. <\/strong>Calls in the United States for them to moderate their responses, however popular among our voters, look weak to the CCP. Similar calls over the decades for Taiwan to moderate its response to the CCP also look weak. To keep the peace that is left in the world, we need to meet these aggressions not with fear and weakness but with strength and courage. That is the surest way to not only a lasting peace but to one with justice.<\/p>\n

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Tyler Durden<\/a><\/span>
\nTue, 10\/01\/2024 – 23:25<\/span><\/p>\n

\u200bhttps:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/geopolitical\/chinese-are-watching-says-incoming-eu-defense-commissioner<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“The Chinese Are Watching”, Says Incoming EU Defense Commissioner Authored by Anders Corr via The Epoch Times, The incoming defense commissioner of the European Union…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":1493400,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1493399","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","wpcat-1-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1493399","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1493399"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1493399\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1493400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1493399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1493399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1493399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}