Tuesday, January 10, 2023

Setting the Theatre - Vox Popoli

 The US military is promising to do for Japan and the Philippines what it has done for Ukraine.

The US and Japanese armed forces are rapidly integrating their command structure and scaling up combined operations as Washington and its Asian allies prepare for a possible conflict with China such as a war over Taiwan, according to the top Marine Corps general in Japan.

The two militaries have “seen exponential increases . . . just over the last year” in their operations on the territory they would have to defend in case of a war, Lieutenant General James Bierman, commanding general of the Third Marine Expeditionary Force (III MEF) and of Marine Forces Japan, told the Financial Times in an interview.

Bierman said that the US and its allies in Asia were emulating the groundwork that had enabled western countries to support Ukraine’s resistance to Russia in preparing for scenarios such as a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.

“Why have we achieved the level of success we’ve achieved in Ukraine? A big part of that has been because after Russian aggression in 2014 and 2015, we earnestly got after preparing for future conflict: training for the Ukrainians, pre-positioning of supplies, identification of sites from which we could operate support, sustain operations.

“We call that setting the theatre. And we are setting the theatre in Japan, in the Philippines, in other locations.”

The thought of “achieving the level of success” the US military has “achieved in Ukraine” should absolutely terrify everyone living in Japan or the Philippines. The Ukrainian military is now down to teenagers, Poles, and US soldiers disguised as “foreign mercenaries” and the NATO-Russian War isn’t even one year old yet. And 12 percent of the Ukrainian population has already fled the country, so where are 15 million Japanese and 14 million Filippinos going to go, and given that both are island countries, how are they going to get there?

I’ve predicted that the USA would collapse sometime around 2033 since the turn of the century, but I never imagined that it would be the result of a military debacle as comprehensive as the coming one appears it’s going to be.

But at least we can answer one question raised by Lieutenant General James Bierman, commanding general of the Third Marine Expeditionary Force (III MEF). Xi Xinping owns the starting pistol for the next stage of WWIII.

DISCUSS ON SG

https://voxday.net/2023/01/10/setting-the-theatre/