{"id":8668,"date":"2015-05-31T08:05:12","date_gmt":"2015-05-31T13:05:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=8668"},"modified":"2015-05-31T08:05:12","modified_gmt":"2015-05-31T13:05:12","slug":"why-is-obama-goading-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=8668","title":{"rendered":"Why is Obama Goading China?"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3 class=\"subheadlinestyle\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/2015\/05\/29\/why-is-obama-goading-china\/\" target=\"_blank\">Why is Obama Goading China?<\/a><\/h3>\n<div class=\"mainauthorstyle\"><strong>Pivot Insanity<\/strong><\/div>\n<div class=\"main-text\">\n<p>US Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter is willing to risk a war with China in order to defend\u00a0 \u201cfreedom of navigation\u201d in the South China Sea. Speaking in Honolulu, Hawaii on Wednesday, Carter issued his \u201cmost forceful\u201d warning yet, demanding \u201can immediate and lasting halt to land reclamation\u201d by China in the disputed Spratly Islands.<\/p>\n<p>Carter said:\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cThere should be no mistake: The United States will fly, sail, and operate wherever international law allows, as we do all around the world.\u201d He also added that the United States intended to remain \u201cthe principal security power in the Asia-Pacific for decades to come.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In order to show Chinese leaders \u201cwho\u2019s the boss\u201d, Carter has threatened to deploy US warships and surveillance aircraft to within twelve miles of the islands that China claims are within their territorial waters. Not surprisingly, the US is challenging China under the provisions of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea,\u00a0 a document the US has stubbornly refused to ratify.\u00a0 But that\u2019s neither here nor there for the bellicose Carter whose insatiable appetite for confrontation makes him the most reckless Sec-Def since Donald Rumsfeld.<\/p>\n<p>So what\u2019s this really all about?\u00a0 Why does Washington care so much about a couple hundred yards of sand piled up on reefs reefs in the South China Sea? What danger does that pose to US national security? And, haven\u2019t Vietnam, Taiwan and the Philippines all engaged in similar \u201cland reclamation\u201d activities without raising hackles in DC?<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Why is Obama Goading China? Pivot Insanity US Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter is willing to risk a war with China in order to defend\u00a0 \u201cfreedom of navigation\u201d in the South China Sea. Speaking in Honolulu, Hawaii on Wednesday, Carter issued his \u201cmost forceful\u201d warning yet, demanding \u201can immediate and lasting halt to land reclamation\u201d [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[5910,3306,130,712,1439,827,834,865],"class_list":["post-8668","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","tag-ashton-carter","tag-barack-obama","tag-china","tag-security","tag-south-china-sea","tag-united-states","tag-us","tag-washington"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8668","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8668"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8668\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8669,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8668\/revisions\/8669"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}