Friday 8 February 2013

China & Japan Troubles Look Ominous

The sun is timed to blink out in approximately 5 billion years but it is unlikely that humans will still be around then to see it, the smart money is on us wiping ourselves out long before then and the prominent species being hedgehogs or worms who will be staring at the massive yellow ball going out.
There are many potential flash points in the World and a handful of countries doing there level best to make sure that they are top dog or take out the rest of us trying.
Israel and Iran, India and Pakistan, America along with Britain and anyone with a natural resource we want and there is the one that keeps bubbling away, China and Japan who are having a barney over a row of small islands in the East China Sea.
In the latest development, Japan says a Chinese frigate locked weapon-targeting radar on one of its navy ships, a warning as Japan send more naval ships into the surrounding waters and flies warplanes over the disputed Diaoyu Islands and is trying its best to involve the US on its behalf in this dispute citing the US-Japan Defence Treaty.
Rather than cooling down, things seems to be in danger of escalating and it doesn't take a brain surgeon to realise that it won't take much more provocation or an accident to push the stand off into something much more serious.
China are repeating the tactics of last year when they took control of the Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea from the Philippines by sending their warships to the shoal and daring the Philippines to shift them or back down.
The Philippines blinked first that time but Japan seems to be made of sterner stuff and are ignoring the threats of 'serious consequences' being made by China who have got themselves into a situation where they don't want to be seen to back down but risk a possible conflict with their neighbour and the global superpower they are looking to oust if they don't.     
The stale-mate we have at the moment can't continue indefinitely but neither side look like backing down and the increasing military presence from both sides are beginning to bump up against each other in such a small area so that an 'accident' seems to be a matter of when and not if.
Out of all the tinderbox situations around the globe, this is the one that looks as though it could turn the nastiest.

6 comments:

Liber - Latin for "The Free One" said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Lucy said...

I have never believed that China, if and when it becomes a 'Superpower', will be a force for good because no-one throughout history has become top dog and not been a nasty piece of work.

Anonymous said...

oh come on now, they have done more to insure everybody is equal than any other nation, exception of Cuba perhaps. I mean, there are entire cities where everybody lives in apartments with exactly the same floorplan, finishings, furniture, etc. (well, except for the pols, they have what ever they want...).

q

Anonymous said...

and you know what, we had the world's biggest military, were the only standing industrial complex, and were the only ones with nukes. What did we do with that advantage? We helped rebuild Europe and Japan and let Russia catch up with nukes.

q

Lucy said...

Thanks.

Cheezy said...

The spies & double agents within the Manhattan Project were also pretty important in terms of the Soviet Union's development of nukes.