East China Sea Air Defense ID Zone

[airsuperiority]

See, nationalism is interesting. Once we accept various acts as normal we stop seeing the nationalistic semantic behind it.

The US media and film industry and society is one of the most nationalistic in the world. They could be more nationalistic, but they've effectively internalized the idea that they have the right to intervene in every country in the world and spread its values through a variety of means including war, and that they have a right to unfettered all aspect military domination.

Slogans like "go navy" rings of old sounsd like "britannia rule the waves".

Channels like the military channel and discovery constantly broadcast films about US/western military developments, indirectly threatening enemies of the US with such advanced state of the art killing machines.
I used to like watching "weapons of the future" and such like that before realizing how it was effectively glamourizing US interventionism without me even knowing.


All this is off topic of course. I was merely commenting that all countries are relatively nationalistic, and pointing a finger and claiming one is more nationalistic than another is basically trying to paint the other side's arguments or positions as unreasonable, which I think is not conducive to proper discussion of the situation.

Always appreciated your political sensitivity, especially with this post. Nationalism is a gun that shoots both ways. People thinks nationalism is something to be proud of, but in fact it's just making them more ignorant, more intolerant, more closed-minded, and less likely to dialogue with others. It's counter-productive to humanity's progression technically. If we treat state actors as individuals, nationalism is basically egocentricism.

 

[airsuperiority]

China and Japan are jostling to assert their claims, but the US is doing all she can to make the best of a bad situation. Also, the US has a two-century tradition of 'freedom of navigation,' starting with the Barbary Pirates, so it's in US interest to argue the point. The ADIZ was a good move by China to contest Diaoyu dao, and to keep pressure on Japan.


Shinzo Abe is trying to defend the undefensible, namely his administration's assertion that there's no dispute over Diaoyu islands (even though previous Japanese high government officials say there are disputes). He has painted himself into a corner and can't get out without losing face.


Xi's administration did well on ADIZ. Inch by inch, China tightens the vice on Japan.



The US's rebalance to Asia has nothing to do with "checking China's growth," and everything to do with refocusing on the most dynamic region of the world. Also, the US's "love interest" with Japan goes only as far as it suits our national interest, and that's beginning to change. The national interests of Japan and the US are diverging, slightly for now, but probably more over time. Japan sees that, and has heart attacks every time China and US hold summits.

Well said stone.

 

[airsuperiority]

I think it is inaccurate to say America is the most nationalistic country in the world. To be truly nationalistic one needs to know a thing or two about one's own country. American likely know less about their own country then any other people in the world.

Instead, Americans are the most full of themselves of any people in the world. Because they think so highly of themselves individually, they are compelled by their exorbatantly high opinion of themselves to believe the country they were born into must be the greatest and bestest of all time as well.

Actually I don't think you need to know too much about your country to be a nationalist other than to blindly support your federal government without critically thinking about it.

On the other hand, patriotism is where you aren't afraid to speak about what your country, society is doing wrong, and how you will put every drop of your energy trying to do something, simply because you love the people.

That's how I see the difference between both.

 

[airsuperiority]

Biden will be in asia this week, washington post is talking about his "damage control" mission, I think the situation is going to calm down a little bit.

the big flash point is yasukuni, if Abe visits yasukuni in Dec as some of his aids said, then thing may get really ugly. China is tired of protests, it will surely resort to strong actions, that will certainly include Diaoyu.

Maybe a textbook war's not a bad idea.

 

[plawolf]

After the last few days' events, I think I have gotten a better feel for China's strategy with regards to its ADIZ.

I think most of us wrongly followed the western media's alarmist hype and thought that China was intending to take an almost Russian like approach and go toe-to-toe with America and Japan and give them a little taste of their own medicine and treat American, and Japanese especially, military aircraft in the same confrontational and aggressive manner as they have treated Chinese military aircraft operating in international airspace.

However, that was never China's style, and rather mark a shift in strategy, what we have seen is a continuation of past Chinese trends of being firm but subtle.

China knew right from the start that the usual suspects would get all annoyed and sing the old China threat song, so China used that predictablilty and turned it against them.

China knew that its detractors in the west would immediately assume the worst of its intentions when it declared the ADIZ, so it was deliberately vague during the announcement to allow the rabidly anti-China elements in the western press and governments the wiggle room they needed to make all sorts of scary predictions and whip up a sense of fear and tension. The more hysterical the western media and Japan got, the more calm and relaxed China behaved, and the more starkly the reality and the projections clashed. At the end of the day, no matter how well you spin a story, if you are constantly shown to be wrong, odds are you are going to loose influence and even your job. Maybe that won't happen that much in the western press, but I would like to think the US military values their analysis being right more than them telling the brass what they like to hear.

Practically, rather than allow itself to be led around the nose chasing after every probe by foreign air forces, the PLAAF has opted to calmly and professionally conduct its patrols in a non-confrontational manner, exactly the way one would emply an ADIZ as an ADIZ rather than as a pretext to intimidate foreign military aircraft flying in the zone.

Those B52s were a test by America of China's intentions. Their huge size and the duration they stayed within the new ADIZ meant that the PLAAF could not have not seen them, and could easily have intercepted them if it wished to. The US was also being subtle and coy by sending those B52s without escort and ordering them to only skirt the edge of the ADIZ and fly in a North-South heading along the zone's edge rather than towards China so as to show no hostile intent.

In a sense, rather than just being a belligerent act of provokation to proverbially flip Beijing the bird as it was being widely portrayed in the western media, the B52 flight was designed more as a subtle and practical test of intentions to see whether China's ADIZ was an attempt to limit foreign freedom of navigation within that declared zone as Washington initially feared.

Publicly, the US might be all tough talk and condemnations, but I think privately, they were very reassured by China's response to their test. And that may well have been a significant factor in the US government decision to publically advise its airlines to recognise and obey China's ADIZ as a sort of tacit acknowledgement of China's ADIZ and a signal to Beijing that so long as it does not try to interfere with non-threatening movement within its ADIZ, Washington can live with it even if they are not exactly happy about it.

I believe the advanced warning China gave South Korea and the similar non-confrontational response the PLAAF gave to probing South Korean fighters also greatly mollified the South Koreans, and while publically the US, South Korea and Japan may appear to form a united front against China's ADIZ, in reality, China has managed to isolate Japan as the only one who feels truly threatened and annoyed by the ADIZ. The Japanese are not stupid and they can see how the cards are falling and they feel their growing isolation on their opposition to China's ADIZ keenly, which is why they seem to be turning to ever more desperate long shots and acting ever more hysterical, which ironically is further isolating itself and moving it further away from the positions of the US and South Korea.

If Japan doesn't get a grip soon and keep carrying on as it has, there may well be a turning point whereby even the most rabid anti-China spin doctor in the western press or the most hawkish generals in the Pentegon cannot help but start seeing Japan as the source of tensions and troubles rather than China, and I think that is precisely China's game plan.

 

[port_08]

Fascist is a word with a specific meaning, not just a general curse word to apply to any government we revile.

Depending on how you define fascist, it may or may not be true that all fascist states have adopted particularly racist policies by the stamdards of their eras. Conversely, few, if any, non fascist states are entire innocent of racist policies.

Unfortunately, I think china is by no means one of the most racism-free countries in the world, although it may be one where racism is least recognized and tackled. I've met many people from china who can refuse to share an elevator with a black person during one minute, snicker at a philipino the next, and deny they or their fellows are guilty of the least hint of any racism whatsoever the third.

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Citizens demonstrating against the controversial state secrets bill are committing “an act terrorism,” according to Liberal Democratic Party Secretary-General Shigeru Ishiba.

In a blog post Friday, he wrote: “If you want to realize your ideas and principles, you should follow the democratic principles, by gaining as much support as you can. I think the strategy of merely shouting one’s opinions at the top of one’s lungs is not so fundamentally different from an act of terrorism.”...

If you have such "leader" like the secretary general of LDP government spouting such view...prepare for the worst from Japan in coming decades. Japan is getting more intolerant and such a society under such government would soon be spiraling Japan into darker era.

Stating one's opinion can be label as a terrorist soon, and later you probably have Japanese secret police acting like the Nazi SS. I do hope US take a real close look to the current Japanese administration and do necessary before it is too late. Give Japan some good advice and do more to reduce regional tension. The following ADIZ situation can be use as starting point by US to advice Japan to come to negotiation with China. US may need to think, perhaps better to pivot more and create better relation to China then with Japan now. I hope one day US and China can be much better allies, that could do more to maintain world peace.

 

[airsuperiority]

Fascist is a word with a specific meaning, not just a general curse word to apply to any government we revile.

Depending on how you define fascist, it may or may not be true that all fascist states have adopted particularly racist policies by the stamdards of their eras. Conversely, few, if any, non fascist states are entire innocent of racist policies.

Unfortunately, I think china is by no means one of the most racism-free countries in the world, although it may be one where racism is least recognized and tackled. I've met many people from china who can refuse to share an elevator with a black person during one minute, snicker at a philipino the next, and deny they or their fellows are guilty of the least hint of any racism whatsoever the third.

Agreed. I've complained of HK having issues with racism, and I don't think China is faring too great neither. Almost everywhere is racist, but question is how aware are people towards these -isms and what are they planning to do about it. Canada is always labelled multicultural, but in Vancouver alone we struggled with integrating the segmented communities together. I dialogued with my class(fascinating group of people who are incredibly intelligent and open-minded) about this issue(we eventually hosted a community dialogue on the topic), and my key question I raised was "Diverse =/= Multicultural. Canada is getting more diverse, but are we becoming more multicultural?"
So for that reason, while Canada is more multicultural than some places, we still suffer from issues and we continue to recognize that and look to improve them. This awareness is probably where I consider the most important (although again in our class, we looked deeper and also recognized the awareness isn't enough, as there are groups who are still suffering from these). However, that being said, Canada might, imo, still fare better than the US because of US assimilation approaches (melting pot vs mosaic, and whereas melting pot ignores the differences and diversity of groups, which actually in a sense is also ignoring issues with privilege..), while US fares a hell a lot better than China because at least there's much more awareness of when racism strikes on the radar. In conclusion, even though Canada and US ain't the best, but certainly perform way better than China simply from having much greater awareness to this. However again we will never be perfect, so we will always need to work on things more.

A conversation I had with a girl in my class who I liked a lot(part of what I'm attracted about her was her intelligence)

Me: "Because we humans are fallible, the systems we create system will always be fallible"
Her: "It's not the system that's fallible, it's us humans who are always changing"

 

[siegecrossbow]

The sheer amount of off topic content is mind-boggling!
Chief offender Blackstone received a one week ban, and port_08 received infraction. He will be also be banned for a week on his next violation.
The rest of you, get back to topic, now!

 

[Mindsculptor]

I came here because I'm quite at a loss as to what the Chinese general staff were thinking when they decided this was a good idea. What did they think the American reaction was going to be? If that SNAFU with the USN surveillance aircraft hadn't happened, maybe the Pentagon wouldn't have sent the B-52 flight and maybe the White House wouldn't have publicly stated that the islands were covered under the mutual defense treaty with Japan.

Also, I'm rather shocked by the prosaic reaction of the PLAAF to two B-52s flying in a so-called air defense zone. Maybe it escaped their attention that two BUFFs equals 40 Tomahawks, which is quite a bit of destructive power even conventionally armed. And what if they had been armed and their training flight had not been scheduled for months? Congratulation, PLAAF, you succesfully tracked a couple bombers that just blew away one of your air bases (hypothetically). What are you going to do for your next trick, not track the B-2s that are going to take out every government building in Beijing (again, hypothetically)? At least the USAF treats the Russian Air Force, even in their degraded state, with enough professional courtesy to do a peaceful intercept of Bear bombers when they do a training overflight of Guam.

 

[port_08]

Currently there is still potential tension, I hope relevant government dial down and lessen the provocative measure, if more news about fighter jets flying in and out, I'm sure we'll be seeing in the media, the respond from each government due to need for face saving measure. Eg. If US media playing up fighter/bombers flying in, I'm sure Chinese media there will respond with another monitoring or scrambling jets, tit for tat kinda response. This would be not good for overall region safety aspect.

US civilian airliners already made to be complying with rules needed when they are in foreign airspace to avoid potential issues later. The danger is currently with Japan, now the whole world playing up by media where it is call by for JAL to ignore, what happen, who's responsibility. What's so special about Japan airlines flouting rules?? Very dangerous.

[video=youtube;IJ--QkQE86A]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJ--QkQE86A[/video]