Posted on 08/12/2007 3:23:23 PM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
Let's connect some dots. While Americans were celebrating the Fourth of July, a formal alliance to dethrone the United States as the sole global superpower was announced in Tehran. And Venezuela and Iran have helpers.
The binder for the "axis of friendship," as President Ahmadinejad called it, is oil.
But the Axis (why in the world do they want to call themselves that?) enjoys the informal support of two major powers who'd also like to see the U.S. brought down in the world: Russia, a fallen superpower and major oil producer, and the nation in line to become the next superpower, China.
The first thing to notice is that the only thing uniting these guys is their hatred of the United States.
Otherwise, an alliance of authoritarians, Communists, crypto-fascists, socialists, Islamic terrorists and an Islamic radical state makes no sense. Second, all the nation-states involved have authoritarian governments. Russia's Vladimir Putin is not alone in having recently completed the process of transforming his country into a semi-dictatorship with a government-controlled media and state ownership of his nation's natural resources. So has Venezuela's Hugo Chavez.
In Chavez's case, he's had the help of Cuban advisors. Chavez and Fidel Castro are best buds. Following Castro's and Putin's lead, Chavez this year nationalized Venezuela's energy and banking industries. He's also silenced the last independent TV station.
Venezuela last year backed the election of a new socialist president for Bolivia. Juan Morales is also a full-blooded Indian and a pagan, a practitioner of the traditional Incan religion. Cuban and Venezuelan advisors are now working in Bolivia. President Morales has announced his intention to nationalize several industries.
This week, Chavez announced that Venezuela would give economic support to Argentina, where the wife of the anti-U.S. current president is trying to succeed him. Chavez last year backed the election of communist and former Sandinista Daniel Ortega as the president of Nicaragua.
So, looking at the map, there are now three new, anti-American regimes clustered on either side of the Panama Canal. Plus Cuba.
The canal, economically and militarily, is one of America's two choke points (the other being our dependence on foreign oil). It will become even more so when the current widening of the canal is completed and it can transit container ships on their way to the East Coast from the Orient. Right now, they have to go around the horn.
That's because the volume of our consumer, food and manufactured goods coming from the Far East is now so vast that the port of San Diego and the Union Pacific Railroad can't handle the traffic. It's quicker to come around the horn to Savannah, Charleston, Baltimore, Richmond or Wilmington. (Philadelphia, by the way, has not benefited from this boom because the Delaware River channel still hasn't been deepened. Gov. Ed Rendell has just announced plans to do so. But, in the meantime, the container trucks roar up the interstate from Baltimore.) The Economist and the Wall Street Journal reported last week that Red China will soon build its first aircraft carrier. The Chinese have port rights near the Panama Canal and are building a deep-water port in Pakistan. As the Atlantic's cover story detailed, China's explosive growth is what's driving this worldwide boom.
China's economy is poised to become the world's third largest. China's purchases of U.S. government bonds enable us to finance our deficit. The New York Times has reported that Chinese investors will also be needed to fund the baby boomers' retirement.
China's corporate fascism today offers the world the only alternative to our democratic capitalism economic model. Chinese trading companies owned by the Red Army (or the children of government officials) are buying raw materials all over the world, including Brazil and across Africa. Last year, China's president led a trade mission to Latin America.
China has its own choke point. Having no oil, China imports 72 percent of what it needs through the Straits of Malacca from the Persian Gulf and Africa. China's principal oil suppliers are Iran and Sudan, both of which have anti-American, Islamic fundamentalist governments.
China currently relies on the United States Navy to police the Gulf and the Straits of Malacca. But when China's land, space, naval and missile build-up is complete, they'll be able to do their own policy. They'll also be in a position to attack Taiwan - and possibly deter America from coming to Taiwan's aid. As chronicled in last month's special issue of Vanity Fair on Africa, China is building roads and other infrastructure across that continent in exchange for oil drilling rights. China's veto in the Security Council prevents the U.N. from acting to stop genocide in Sudan's Darfur region. China - which has its own dismal human rights record - thus enriches and protects the Sudanese government, which once sheltered Osama bin Laden.
According to the Washington Times' Bill Gertz, China is supplying arms to the Taliban to kill American and NATO forces in Afghanistan. So is Iran.
Iran is also doing much more. Iranian proxies surround Israel on the north, east and south. Their proxies are working to take over the governments of Lebanon and the West Bank. There's every reason to believe the Iranian government when they say they intend to drive the Jews from the Middle East. There's every reason not to believe them when they deny trying to build nuclear weapons.
The U.S. is trying to discourage Iran from going nuclear by asking for touch sanctions from the U.N. Security Council. As with Darfur, China and Russia's vetoes block such action.
In the meantime, as part of the new "axis of friendship," Venezuela will supply gasoline to Iran, which has no refineries for its oil. The two countries will also build petrochemical plants. Both moves are intended to frustrate Western sanctions.
Those are the "dots." Close your eyes and what do you see? This - not the nonsense of the presidential debates - is the challenge facing the next American president.
BTW, five refineries are also being built in several Asian countries, including China, to supply Iran with gasoline.
Ping.
“become the next superpower, China” ... not likely.... India is the next superpower. China is a communist land dependent on us... they are more or less our little bitc.
When I read articles like this I wonder why our adversaries are thinking in strategic terms based on their self-interest and we aren’t.
these Iranians? Way fuunnnny!
they can build nuclear toys for the destruction of Israel and domination of the west...and they cant build a cracking tower??? Did these guys just get in the oil business???
What happened? did they discover that AK-47s, IEDs and RPGs cant be used as a substitute for fuel?
idiots! persian idiots...
ping or later
One thing that isn’t mentioned about all these other countries..............they can never trust one another. They will turn on each other at the drop of a hat. Iran wants to totally control the Middle East. Russia will want to control everyone, including South America. Once South America realizes how ruthless they can be, they will turn on them. These ideas of corroperation will be short lived. Russia doesn’t have the money to sustain them. Their whole Navy is rusting away, they can’t even pay their existing military.
PING!
Interesting analysis...
Another sign of Chinese hegemony: “May you live in interesting times...”
Ping
Russia now is flush with hundreds of times more cash than it was during the peak of the Soviet Union. It can pay for its military now.
May you live in interesting times....
We face a replay of the Battle of Catalaunian Fields. The West nearly perished then, but miraculously pulled victory from the jaws of defeat. Can we do it again?
Because we are hobbits. We see the best in others until forced to see the evil in them.
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