Spoke Evan Ramstad, WSJ, at approximately 1:30 AM on Tuesday 23 to learn of the artillery attack on the occupied island of fisherman off the west coast of Korea. Houses afire. Casualties. Report of aircraft launched by South Korea. Much excitement in the media and on Twitter account. Does it connect to the ongoing story of the secret centrifuge facility in North Korea? Am told that this is evidence that North Korea is developing a uranium bomb. This is far more useful that its plutonium bomb. Uranium bomb can be miniaturized for a warhead. North Korea succession struggle continues. The incoherence is the story. The North Koreans are now claiming that it fired in response to a live-fire exercise by the South Koreans at the close of a five-day naval exercise in the West Sea. Blame-shifting developing in slow motion. Markets selling off. Much hemming.
Let’s stipulate that a general collapse of the United States would plunge the entire world into unfathomable chaos; that no nation would be spared from the resulting fallout.
I have since read various assessments of Barack Hussein Obama’s recent high-profile globetrotting and it’s pretty much unanimous: It was an unmitigated disaster for the U. S. Obama failed to deliver in all he set out to accomplish, leaving the general impression that Obama is far from being a prime-time player on the world stage.
The only bright spot was India where he was warmly received and his rhetoric was much applauded and appreciated. But even in India, on reflection, it is now acknowledged that his words were empty. Still, the major media in the U. S. have seized on Obama’s India visit and proclaimed it as a huge success, even going so far as Newsweek depicting the president as a god, specifically Shiva, juggling the demands of his office competently and with an abundance of good cheer within a halo of fire. (It is likely that Newsweek failed to grasp the irony of choosing Shiva as representing the American president for, within the holy Hindu trinity, Shiva is known as The Destroyer.)
We’ve already witnessed the world tearing at its seams since Obama’s election - nations jockeying for position in the absence of traditional restraints. We’ve watched the divides within our own nation becoming more and more pronounced. We’ve watched our economy going down the drain and no one stepping forward to stop the hemorrhaging.
We’re not the only ones watching. China is watching as well. They see us as rogue and unpredictable – not North Korea, which is totally under its control.
China may be sending us a message. By repeatedly exposing Obama’s reticence to act globally, his child-like impetuousness at home (playing fast and loose with the economy), they are trying to tell us that we better get our act together before it all falls apart.
If China REALLY wants Taiwan, they have to act in two years.