How China Views the World

 Security and defense officials from Asia and other parts of the world gathered in Singapore for the Shangri-La Dialogue from May 31 to June 2. This annual forum, where officials exchange views and discuss pressing security matters, also offers some of the most unvarnished opinions of China’s perspective on the world.

So how does China view the state of security worldwide, and what does that mean for the world?

https://www.theepochtimes.com/opinion/how-china-views-the-world-5663499

While most diplomatic forums are filled with smoothing niceties designed to polish over disagreements, the Shangri-La Forum is known more for open and honest discussion. China extends even further. While Beijing may officially recoil at the term “wolf warrior,” China’s international representatives continue to issue starkly blunt warnings and rely on fiery rhetoric to express their viewpoints. While we may not enjoy Beijing’s rhetoric, it leaves us little doubt about the Chinese regime’s position.

China’s main representatives issued stern warnings to countries such as Taiwan and the Philippines, issuing threatening and bombastic language about the destruction that would come their way if they didn’t accept Beijing’s position. Beijing propagandists tried to include language that Western listeners would recognize by insisting it was recognized by international law that the South China Sea and Taiwan were China’s sovereign domain, despite losing a lawsuit to Manila on the matter and no international declaration on the status of Taiwan at any point. Chinese Communist Party (CCP) acolytes continued to threaten all countries in the region and far-flung countries such as the United States and Europe about behavior that might not support Beijing’s position. The threats of “destruction” seemed clear to all.

On one hand, this rhetoric isn’t surprising from China. Whether in Ministry of Foreign Affairs briefings or press statements about events and military exercises, Beijing regularly engages in bombastic rhetoric that threatens and warns directly involved states such as Taiwan or the Philippines and related countries such as the United States.

Just because the rhetoric is familiar doesn’t mean we should become immune to the threats Beijing is issuing and the very real risk that one day it will act upon this rhetoric. The Chinese regime is actively engaging Philippine vessels in low-level conflict, such as ramming and hitting them with water cannons within the Philippine exclusive economic zone. China conducts ever larger military exercises surrounding Taiwan. The line between low-level conflict and actual live fire conflict initiated by Beijing isn’t large.

The most important part, however, is how the CCP approaches foreign policy and its projection of power on the world. Beijing has made clear its view of its relationship with other states, whether Taiwan, the Philippines, or the United States, both directly and through understanding its worldview.

Though regularly translated as meaning the Middle Kingdom, which is technically accurate, the Chinese word for “middle” doesn’t mean what it is conceptualized in Western minds—the middle seat in a row, for instance. Instead, it means something closer to the center or the middle around which others rotate, similar to the sun.

Another fundamental viewpoint of modern-day China in how it sees itself relative to other states comes from a 2010 statement from the minister of foreign affairs, who declared, “China is a big country, and other countries are small countries, and that’s just a fact.”

These ideas don’t present a China that views other states as equal and capable of their own policies and viewpoints around which states will understandably differ, but rather entities to control and dominate that subsume themselves under Beijing’s will regardless of agreement or law.

It enrages Beijing that Taiwan even has second thoughts about giving up democracy and freedom to become a vassal of Beijing. Beijing doesn’t care about the international tribunal decision, which it is a signatory of, that the South China Sea isn’t China’s sovereign land or that the Philippines remains sovereign in its coastal areas. Communist China considers itself the sovereign center, and all other countries, small as they might be, must lay prone before Beijing demands or risk incurring its wrath.

A constant concern is that individuals and institutions become blind to the risks they always face until those risks become real. For years, the CCP has told us how it views the world and how others should behave. We must prepare as if the rhetorical threats convey how the Chinese regime will act in the future, all the while hoping it does not.

Americans Want to Know Who is Really in Charge in the White House

Whether Biden remains in office for the remainder of his term or lets Harris take over, our country is facing a leadership crisis that puts U.S. national security at serious risk.

by Fred Fleitz for American Greatness

In last Thursday’s presidential debate, we saw the most decisive loss ever by an incumbent American president. Biden’s performance was so abysmal that it raises serious questions about how he can continue to function as president, especially in his role as commander-in-chief.

Donald Trump dominated the debate, making important new criticisms that Biden failed to answer—especially how the surge in illegal immigration during the Biden presidency is hurting social security. Trump put Biden on the defensive, parried tough questions, and pointed out how many of Biden’s statements were incoherent.

Biden could hardly have done worse. He was incoherent, lost his train of thought and appeared confused. He offered no believable defenses for his record as president. The defenses he did provide made no sense.

The left-wing publication Slate gave this stark assessment of Biden’s performance in the debate, claiming it “revealed that [he] is indeed an old man who appears to be in no condition to be running this country, even now—not to mention in another four years.”

Many Americans had the same concern after the debate.

We saw Biden staring into space and looking slack-jawed with his eyes glazed over when Trump spoke. If Biden acts this way during Oval Office meetings, cabinet meetings, and meetings with foreign leaders, one has to ask: How is he making decisions as president?  Is Biden simply signing everything his staff puts in front of him?  Do unnamed White House advisers run cabinet meetings while Biden sits motionless in his chair?

Are these nameless White House advisers essentially acting as president and implementing their own radical-left policies without Biden’s knowledge and beyond the reach of congressional oversight?

Making this worse—much worse—was a revelation by Biden aides to the press this week that the president has difficulty functioning outside of a 6-hour window of 10 AM to 4 PM and that on-camera interviews are therefore scheduled for this period.

It goes without saying that Biden’s commander-in-chief responsibilities to protect our nation and its troops is a 24-7 job. America’s enemies are not going to schedule their military provocations and terrorist attacks for the six hours a day when Biden is well-rested and alert.

We have come a long way from the TV ads Hillary Clinton ran during the 2008 and 2016 presidential campaigns that she would be the best qualified president to answer an emergency 3 AM phone call at the White House about a foreign crisis. (She wasn’t, of course.)

So again, the question is, who is in charge at the White House?  Who is deciding that America will keep criticizing Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu over the Israel-Hamas War but do little to force Hamas to release its Israeli hostages? Who is preventing the United States from pressing Ukraine to begin peace talks to end the Ukraine-Russia War?  Who is ordering U.S. officials to keep appeasing Iran and not enforce U.S. oil sanctions?  Who in the White House is looking the other way while China makes new trade deals with longtime U.S. allies like Saudi Arabia at our expense?

National Review’s Michael Brendan Dougherty wrote yesterday that because America requires a functioning executive and since the debate indicated that Biden is no longer competent to do the job, Biden should step down now and be succeeded by Kamala Harris. But Harris has proved to be so vapid and unserious as vice president that she could prove to be an even worse president than Biden.

Whether Biden remains in office for the remainder of his term or lets Harris take over for his final six months in office, our country is facing a leadership crisis that puts U.S. national security at serious risk. The world is already much more unstable and dangerous than it was when Donald Trump left office. Global instability could grow significantly this year as America’s enemies race to exploit strong indications that the United States will not have a competent commander-in-chief for the remainder of the Biden presidency.

This is a crisis that Biden and his supporters knowingly created. Joe Biden was not competent to be president in 2020 but was engineered into the office by political operatives, the mainstream media, intelligence officers, and others because of their hatred of President Trump. American voters must hold Biden and his enablers accountable for this when they go to the polls this November.

X22, And we Know, and more- July 7

 

I don't like doom and gloomers infecting a whole thread, FYI. So think carefully before trying to spread that defeatist nonsense on my threads!

Democrats Have No Good Way Forward And Deserve To Suffer

posted by Derek Hunter at Townhall 

It’s horrible when bad things happen to good people. This isn’t a story about that, this is a story about bad things happening to Democrats – think of it as evidence that karma may, in fact, exist. Or at least that God has a sense of humor. Because the corner that Democrats have painted themselves into has no good or easy way out, and the only have themselves to blame.

This doesn’t mean that Democrats are going to lose – never underestimate the Republican skill of being able to blow an election – it just means it will take extraordinary events in order to just get them back to even.

Does Joe Biden survive the week is not a crack about his age, it’s a question about his will. Sooner or later, the time will come where enough Democrats look at a shrinking calendar and poll numbers and realize there is likely not enough of the former to make up for the latter. But all of their alternatives are just as tainted by Joe Biden as Joe Biden is.  

It’s a glorious mess they’ve created for themselves. That they’ve taken so much of the media with them is the icing on top. How can they get out of it?

There is no good way.  

1) Biden stays. They can’t get rid of him, legally, anyway. I suppose the delegates could simply refuse to vote for him in defiance of their party’s rules. Not sure what would happen there, or what would happen if they walked out without voting for enough rounds that they got to the point where the Super Delegates get a say and they’re all free to vote how they like, but it would be fun to watch. 

The problem is some state’s laws obligate delegates to vote how the primary commanded them to. It’s unlikely that the party of letting violent criminals go is going to charge hard after delegates not voting for a slightly animated corpse, but if their Attorney General is a Biden loyalist, you never know. 

2) Someone who matters speaks out. It’s always funny when a few backbench Members of the House put together a letter complaining about this or that, trying to “pressure” leadership into the action they want. Unless it is all of them, or at least damn near most, these letter are political junk mail – quickly tossed out. Those who signed it might brag to their constituents about it, but it never matters. That’s all there is about Biden, so far.

There are very few people who could speak out and make it matter. Nancy Pelosi is one. I’d say Hakeem Jeffries, but he’s Pelosi’s puppet. Chuck Schumer, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton. If they call for Joe to go, he won’t really have much choice. 

But you have to remember that Joe has always been a nasty, vindictive person. He would go, but he could do a lot of damage on the way out the door. A decent portion of Democrats do like Joe, and would be angry at his ouster. There’s no reason to think they’d vote for the party after that.

3) Whoever comes next. Kamala Harris or Gavin Newsom, were one of them to come out against Joe, could do serious damage, but it would be a suicide mission. They don’t like each other, so they’re both fighting to be seen as the most loyal Biden supporter right now. If Joe leaves on his own, they could lay claim, with varying degrees of success, to the mantle of heir apparent. But if one cracks too early and calls for Joe to go, it would likely lead to a flood of people doing the same right behind them, but they would be denounced as disloyal and opportunistic. They all are, but being labels as such would be damaging with the voters they’d need the support of. 

Of these two – the obvious and only real options for replacing Biden – whoever breaks first, comes in last. 

Will Democrats break? Will they bypass a black woman for a rich white man? Can they reanimate Joe to the point that he limps across the finish line? If they go convince him to withdraw as a candidate, will they force him to resign as president too? If not, how will they justify saying he’s unfit for a second term but somehow fine to be President now? 

There are more questions than there are answers and they know it. And there are no good answers to the questions we do know about. 

I would like nothing more than to have them keep Joe Biden on the ticket, not because I think he’d be easier to beat – though, I do – but because I want him to lose. I want one of his last memories as he drifts off into full dementia to be that American people rejected him and everything he did; that he will go down as the worst President in history. I want that to be the last thing that blends into the fog. 

Joe Biden has been such a destructive force to the country, and a divisive force to Americans, that I desire he unambiguously know his presidency was the inflection point where the country recoiled in horror from his politics, his policies, his family and him. 

Perhaps that’s cruel, but a man who made his name lying about his own life and his opponents, while making his fortune off exploiting the public trust, deserves nothing less. And the American Public, who’ve suffered under him, deserve at least that small measure of satisfaction. 

🎭 𝐖𝟑𝐏 𝓓𝓐𝓘𝓛𝓨 𝓗𝓾𝓶𝓸𝓻, 𝓜𝓾𝓼𝓲𝓬, 𝓐𝓻𝓽, 𝓞𝓟𝓔𝓝 𝓣𝓗𝓡𝓔𝓐𝓓

Welcome to 

The 𝐖𝟑𝐏 𝓓𝓐𝓘𝓛𝓨 𝓗𝓾𝓶𝓸𝓻, 𝓜𝓾𝓼𝓲𝓬, 𝓐𝓻𝓽, 𝓞𝓟𝓔𝓝 𝓣𝓗𝓡𝓔𝓐𝓓 

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No politics or divisive posts on this thread. 

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Covenant School Judge Nonsensically Claims Manifesto Is Copyrighted and Will Remain Hidden

Jim Thompson reporting for RedState 

Right before midnight on Thursday, July 4th, a Nashville judge named I'Ashea Myles ruled that the Covenant School shooter's manifesto cannot be released to the public. Her ruling is 60 pages of repetitive language and nonsensical misapprehension of law and fact. She denied the release of the murderer’s manifesto on the basis of the canard of an “ongoing” criminal investigation and a new theory — the writings seized as evidence from the murderer are protected from disclosure because the entire collection is copyrighted. 

All those claims are nonsense.  

The first claim is complete claptrap. The Covenant School mass shooting took place in March 2023, 15 months ago. There is no evidence of a conspiracy. There is no evidence that the murderer had help in any form or fashion. There is no "ticking timebomb." She acted alone. In 15 months, not a shred of evidence has been produced that would warrant an “open” investigation. The killer is dead. The investigation is dead. 

The second claim is also nonsense. Myles claimed that because the murderer’s parents assigned “all copyright” rights to the parents of Covenant children, they had a right to shield the writings from disclosure. Although Tennessee has a public disclosure law that requires the release of public documents (with few exceptions), Myles claimed for the first time in Tennessee history that copyright holders (who are assignees) can prevent the release of evidence because they have an assigned right.  

Again, it’s nonsense.  

She wrote: 

“School shootings and violence have unfortunately become commonplace in our society.... Further, where the United States Congress has spoken, as the supreme law of the land, even the laws enacted in Tennessee must yield to their supremacy.”  

Notwithstanding the clunky grammar, her reasoning is nonsense. 

On page 50, she noted exceptions to prevent disclosure of “public” documents. She cited several exemption examples, including out-of-state case law, all of which discuss documents that fall within a specific exemption – that being academic, scientific, or instructional research. Pedagogic or scientific work product. In other words, she equated a murderer's assassination scribblings with the work of academics. Specifically, actual work product. It is absolute nonsense.  

Myles also noted that she didn’t want school safety protocol to be disclosed. More nonsense. That information was disclosed the day after when security video from the school was publicly released, and news reports described how the killer got in. 

Deb Fisher, the executive director of Tennessee Coalition for Open Government, said:   

“She applied that [exemption] very broadly. And I do believe the school security exemption is supposed to be things like, ‘we don’t want other people to know how to break into this school,’ right? That’s really what that’s about. It’s not about, ‘Hey, this person did this crazy thing, and other people want to be a copycat.’”

Myles further opined: 

In this case, the Tennessee General Assembly has set forth both state law exceptions and statutory which will prevent the disclosure of materials held by the Respondent not only to preserve the criminal legal system and the integrity of ongoing investigations but also to keep from public view information which is related to school security coming from any source. 

Nonsense. 

Myles is a 2014 graduate of a local law school that opened its doors in 2011. She was a member of the first graduating class. In eight years of practice, she worked for three law firms before becoming a judge.  

Myles has a TikTok account and an Instagram account (now private) in which she lets the world know she’s a judge. I have friends who are judges. None of them have even a Facebook account. None of them reached the bench within eight years of law school.

Much of, if not all, of her nonsense ruling has been “preempted” by facts. A substantial portion of the murderer’s material has already been seen, released by anonymous officials incensed by the “ongoing investigation” myth. There is no “ongoing” investigation. The motives of the murderer are abundantly clear. She was a Christian-hating transgender. The copyright claim and the judge’s reasoning are absurd. Plenty of transgender mass murderers have committed their murders without the benefit of the Covenant School manifesto.

The reason Myles went to tortured ends to come up with her absurd reasons for not releasing the material seems obvious to me. The Covenant School murderer was an avowed Christian-hating transgender nut. That fact must be whitewashed at all costs. Public disclosure might endanger an agenda.

I rest my case.

Biden Refuses to Take Cognitive Test Despite Doubts About His Health

Sarah Arnold reporting for Townhall 

President Joe Biden is refusing to take a cognitive test despite an avalanche of pressure for him to drop out of the 2024 race due to his declining health. 

During his first post-debate interview, Biden told ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos that he was having a “bad night” during the debate, citing a “cold.” 

Referencing a New York Times headline, “Biden's Lapses Are Said to Be Increasingly Common and Worrisome," Stephanopoulos asked whether he would commit to an outside cognitive test. 

“No. No one said I had to. No one said. They said I'm good,” Biden said. 

During the first 2024 presidential debate, Biden suffered a series of malfunctions in front of the country, prompting people, including Democrats, to be concerned he was not fit enough to serve as president. 

Stephanopoulos then asked if the 81-year-old president would undergo a medical evaluation that included neurological and cognitive tests. He then released the results to the American people to assure them he could serve in office. 

However, Biden declined to do that as well. 

“Look. I have a cognitive test every single day,” Biden said. "Every day I have that test. Everything I do. You know, not only am I campaigning, but I'm running the world. Not – and that's not hi -- sounds like hyperbole, but we are the essential nation of the world."

Critics of Biden’s slammed the president for defying Americans and refusing to prove he can effectively govern the country.

Joe Biden Blames Trump for Poor Debate Performance

Sarah Arnold reporting for Townhall 

President Joe Biden claimed that he got “distracted” by former President Donald Trump’s “shouting” during the first 2024 debate. 

However, no such thing occurred. 

During his first post-debate interview with ABC News’s George Stephanopoulos, Biden said he realized he was having a “bad night” when the moderators turned Trump’s mic off and was “still shouting.” 

“Well, it came to me I was having a bad night when I realized that even when I was answering the question, even though they turned his mic off, he was still shouting. And I let it distract me," Biden said. "But I'm not blaming it on that, but I realized that I just wasn't in control." 

Trump was never heard or seen shouting during the debate. Both candidates agreed to have the mics shut off when they were not answering a question, and at times, footage catches Trump still talking but never did he raise his voice. 

Biden blamed his poor debate performance on having a “cold” and jet lag from a few weeks prior. However, Stephanopoulos pointed out that Biden had 12 days to recover from his travels. 

The 81-year-old president blamed his disastrous debate performance on several things instead of taking responsibility for his own health. 

“It was a bad episode," Biden claimed. "No indication of a serious condition. I was exhausted. I didn't listen to my instincts in terms of preparing. It was a bad night.” 

The interview, which was supposed to reassure Americans he is capable of staying in the race, seemed to backfire.

Just moments before, Biden said he couldn’t remember if he had re-watched the debate when Stephanopoulos asked. 

As Biden faces pressure to drop out of the race, including from Democrats, he said that only the “Lord almighty” can convince him to resign. 

Judge Cannon Issues New Ruling That Delays Trump Classified Documents Case

Becca Lower reporting for RedState 

As if Joe Biden's reelection hopes doing a kabuki dance of massive implosion aren't enough good news for the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Saturday brings even more positive reports for Donald Trump-- this time on the lawsuit front.

As we wrote a few days back, the case against former President Trump in Manhattan court about business records fraud has been delayed to some currently unknown extent, in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision on presidential immunity. My colleague Bob Hoge shared that it could be September or even later, but certainly after the GOP convention in less than two weeks on July 15th:

Reports indicate that the sentencing has been officially postponed, and will now not occur until at least September. This means that it won't happen before the GOP convention in mid-July where Trump will accept the nomination, so this is a clear win for the former president.

Now, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon has pulled the rug out from under the lawfare mavens in the classified documents case in Florida, by agreeing to a request by Trump attorneys to hold up (at least in the short term) a required disclosure that had a deadline fast approaching this week, and put in place a deadline for Special Counsel Jack Smith's office to reply to a defense motion, among several decisions that affect both parties in the case

via Axios:

The latest: Cannon's recent order grants a temporary stay on expert disclosures due July 8 and the defense's reciprocal discovery due July 10.

• The judge also set a July 18 deadline for special counsel to respond to Trump's motion to stay and request for supplemental briefing and set a July 21 deadline for both sides to respond.

This is a developing story. RedState will share further updates as they become available.

House Democrats are “Bringing Out the Big Guns” to Allow Illegal Aliens to Vote in 2024 Presidential Election By Jim Hᴏft Jul. 6, 2024 4:40 pm

 Axios has reported that the House Democrat leadership is rallying its forces against a Republican bill due for a vote next week.

The bill in question, the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act (SAVE Act), seeks to mandate proof of U.S. citizenship for voting in federal elections.

Stephen Miller, Senior Advisor to President Trump and Founder of America First Legal, expressed his disbelief on X, writing, “Read the below. Then read it again. A major DC establishment publication says that House Democrats are “bringing out the big guns,” to get illegal aliens to vote in 2024. How can any American support a party that wants to flood the ballot box with illegals?”

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/07/house-democrats-are-bringing-big-guns-allow-illegal/

The SAVE Act is scheduled for a vote next week and if passed, will require “documentary proof of United States citizenship” for voting in federal elections.

Mike Johnson summarized the key features of the SAVE Act:

• It requires state election officials to ask about citizenship before providing voter registration forms.
• It mandates an individual to provide proof of citizenship to register to vote in federal elections.
• It allows state officials to accept a wide variety of documents that will make it easy for citizens to register to vote in federal elections.
• It provides states with access to federal agency databases so they can remove noncitizens from voter rolls and confirm citizenship for individuals lacking proof of citizenship.
• It directs DHS to determine whether to conduct removal proceedings if a noncitizen has been identified as having registered to vote in federal elections.
• It requires DHS to notify a state chief election official whenever an individual has been naturalized.

Axios reported that House Minority Whip Katherine Clark’s (D-Mass.) office has urged House Democrats to “VOTE NO” on the bill. Clark’s office warned that the bill would “prevent Americans from registering to vote with their driver’s license alone” and would make a passport the “only acceptable standalone form of identification.”

They added that the bill would create an “extreme burden for countless Americans” and “further intimidate election officials and overburden states’ abilities to enroll new voters.”

Elon Musk has weighed in on the controversy, tweeting, “Those who oppose this are traitors. All Caps: TRAITORS. What is the penalty for traitors again?”

Earlier this year, The Oversight Project reported that flyers instructing illegal immigrants to vote for Joe Biden in the forthcoming U.S. election have been reportedly distributed at a non-governmental organization (NGO) in Mexico.

The controversial flyers were discovered scattered around the Resource Center Matamoras (RCM), an establishment known for aiding migrants. Some of these were even found on the walls inside port-a-potties at the location.

READ:

Checkmate? US Removes Missiles From the Philippines As China's Xi Plays JFK to Biden's Khrushchev

streiff reporting for RedState 

Friday night, President Joe Biden sat for an extended interview with ABC Washington correspondent and former Clinton White House muppet George Stephanopoulos. This interview was the first Biden has conducted since his humiliating performance in Thursday's debate with former president Donald Trump. It was also the first interview Biden gave in 2024 and only the 23rd interview Biden gave during his presidency—the last was in November. It came as a critical time for Biden as his dementia has become so pronounced that even the media and other Democrats have begun to notice. 

Nothing in the interview did anything to tamp down rumors and news stories about his general unfitness to serve now, much less run for another full term. If anything, any doubt you may have had about the stories was quickly dispelled.

There was some scary stuff in the interview. This is a sample:

STEPHANOPOULOS: Elections are about the future, not the past. They are about tomorrow, not yesterday, and the question on so many people's minds right now is, "Can you serve effectively for the next four years?" 

BIDEN: George, I'm the guy that put NATO together, the future, no one thought I could expand it. I'm the guy who shut Putin down. No one thought it could happen. I'm the guy who put together a South Pacific initiative with (inaudible). I'm the guy that got 50 nations, not only in Europe, outside of Europe as well, to help Ukraine. I'm the guy that got Japanese to expand their budget, so I mean, me, for example, when I'm decided, we used to have 40 percent computer chipping, we invented the chip, that little chip, the computer chip. 

For the record, I'd like to remind everyone that far from being the guy who "shut Putin down," Joe Biden was the guy who played a weaker and more timorous Neville Chamberlain in Putin's invasion of Ukraine. From my post titled Kyiv Is 'Stunned' That Biden Appears to Greenlight 'Minor Incursion' Into Ukraine:

Joe Biden gave a press conference on Wednesday during which he covered a lot of topics including their false ‘voting rights’ push and the border.

But one of the things that he said that raised a lot of eyebrows was when he was asked about what would cause a reaction of powerful sanctions. Biden suggested that a “minor incursion” by Russia wouldn’t prompt that kind of response.

 Perhaps the most demented response Biden gave was regarding the current strategic situation with China: [emphasis added] 

STEPHANOPOULOS: And if you stay in, and Trump is elected and everything you’re warning about comes to pass, how will you feel in January?

BIDEN: I’ll feel as long as I gave it my all and I did as good a job as I know I can do, that’s what this is about. Look, George. Think of it this way. You’ve heard me say this before. I think the United States and the world is at an inflection point when the things that happen in the next several years are going to determine what the next six, seven decades are going to be like.

And who’s going to be able to hold NATO together like me? Who’s going to be able to be in a position where I’m able to keep the Pacific Basin in a position where we’re — we’re at least checkmating China now? Who’s going to — who’s going to do that? Who has that reach? Who has — who knows all these pe—? We’re going to have, I guess a good way to judge me, is you’re going to have now the NATO conference here in the United States next week. Come listen. See what they say.

My personal belief is that China will not allow Biden to make any moves in the Pacific that aren't pre-approved by China. Given Hunter's frequent visits to China, there is an infinite amount of compromising material on him. Given Hunter's predilection for drugs and women, there is no telling how many unacknowledged grandchildren Biden has in China, but you can bet the Chinese intelligence services can provide proof of conception...assuming they had reached puberty.

So, let's look at how well the "checkmating" is going.

Most concerning is that claiming “checkmate” in the Pacific overlooks the fact that China has the largest Navy, largest Coast Guard, largest Naval Militia, and largest shipbuilders in the world. It also has the world’s largest fleets of military controlled merchant ships and owns ports globally.

A small and diminishing minority of naval experts still believe the United States has the ability to win a war in the Pacific against China, but no serious naval expert believes it would be an easy fight. Throughout the administration, gCaptain has interviewed dozens of admirals and naval security experts, and never once have I heard the word “checkmate.”

Not only is our ally, the Philippines, having its ships mauled by the Chinese and getting pushed out of territory that international treaties recognize as belonging to the Philippines, but we are also getting orders from Beijing about the deployment of U.S. forces on Philippine territory.

At issue was the Typhon missile system, which would be critical in any conflict with China or anyone else in the Pacific.

The US Army plans to deploy its new Mid-Range Capability (MRC) long-range launcher in the Indo-Pacific next year, according to a four-star general.

Also known as Typhon, the service designed the land-based system to launch Raytheon’s existing SM-6 missiles and Tomahawk cruise missiles to hit targets between the Precision Strike Missile’s (PrSM’s) planned 500-kilometer range and the 2,776-kilometer reach of the future Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon (LRHW).

“We have tested [Typhon] and we have a battery, or two of them today,” US Army Pacific commander Gen. Charles Flynn told reporters at the Halifax International Security Forum today. 

“In ‘24, we intend to deploy that system in the region,” he added. “I’m not going to say where and when, but I will just say that we will deploy them in the region.”

Well, China says "no," Hoss, and they are calling the shots with Joey SoftServe in the White House.

A US mid-range missile system deployed in the Philippines for annual joint military exercises -- to the annoyance of China -- will be pulled out of the country, a Philippine Army spokesman said Thursday.

The US Army said in April it had deployed the Mid-Range Capability missile system which can fire the Standard Missile 6 (SM-6) and the Tomahawk Land Attack Missile in the northern Philippines.

...

The presence of the mid-range missile system on Philippine soil had angered Beijing. 

Chinese Defence Minister Dong Jun warned in June there were "limits" to Beijing's restraint on the South China Sea and over the deployment of ballistic missiles in the Asia-Pacific region.

Dong's remarks at a security forum in Singapore were a clear reference to the Philippines and the United States, which have been boosting defence ties in the face of China's growing military might and influence.

The deployment of "medium-range ballistic missiles" was "severely damaging regional security and stability", Dong said.

"Acting in this way will ultimately burn oneself."

The climax of the Cuban Missile Crisis was summed up in Secretary of State Dean Rusk's quip, "We're eyeball to eyeball, and I think the other fellow just blinked." In this case, we didn't get eyeball to eyeball because Joe Biden did a kowtow based on a glare.

Even though the deployment of this missile system was intended to be "temporary," temporary was never defined. Pulling the missile out as China is grousing about it is a bad look as China is doing nothing to "reduce tensions" in the South China Sea because it looks, smells, and tastes like surrender.

Just as Biden's half-hearted efforts to roll back Russian aggression in Ukraine haven't gone unnoticed by our allies and adversaries, neither has Biden's reluctance to confront Chinese adventurism and provocations in the Pacific. Instead of standing firm, Biden has let China dictate to the US what kind of military equipment we can station on the territory of a willing ally.