Obama Steps Up U.S. Training of Communist Chinese Military

The New American – by Alex Newman

Even as the Communist Chinese dictatorship ruthlessly oppresses the people of China while stepping up itsaggressive rhetoric, espionage, and military activities aimed beyond its borders, the Obama administration has been training Beijing’s troops in U.S. military tactics, techniques, and procedures. Critics have long opposed the high-level “mil-mil cooperation” between the U.S. Armed Forces and one of the most brutal autocracies on the planet. At least one U.S. lawmaker has been expressing concerns. But the Obama administration, which boasts of its actions and has called for even deeper military ties with Beijing, shows no signs of backing down from the highly controversial and potentially dangerous programs.  

In 2013, the Obama administration shocked the world by inviting Communist Chinese troops to the United States to train with American forces for the first time in history. Ostensibly aimed at practicing “disaster management,” the U.S.-Communist China military exercises raised widespread alarm among national security experts. And while the Pentagon downplayed the risk and denied in comments to The New American that any weapons were involved, Chinese officials were boasting of “weapon demonstration, technique exchange, and cooperative action.” Earlier in 2013, a senior Chinese general, who in 2005 threatened to destroy hundreds of U.S. cities with nuclear weapons, led a “military exchange program” delegation to Washington, D.C. from Beijing.

The next year, again for the first time in history, Obama offered further opportunities for Chinese forces to gather sensitive intelligence on how the U.S. military works — this time by inviting Beijing’s Navy to participate in the “RIMPAC war games.” Hosted off the American coast by the U.S. Pacific Command, RIMPAC is the largest multinational maritime exercise in the world. And by allowing the Chinese regime’s ships to participate, Beijing was able to gather important insight into the U.S. military’s “tactics, techniques and procedures” (TTPs), according to analysts. Beijing was invited again this year, even as it steps up its aggressive actions against U.S. Navy ships in international waters.

Since Obama took office, U.S. forces have been training Chinese troops and sailors in “counter-piracy operations” in the Indian Ocean, too. The Obama administration also waived the ban on Chinese parts in U.S. weapons systems, with potentially catastrophic implications for national security. And in February of this year, the administration invited dozens of Chinese naval officers to tour the U.S. Naval Academy, the U.S. Surface Warfare Officers School, and the U.S. Naval War College. The dictatorship’s officers also “took part in seminars with trainees at the Surface Warfare Officers School,” the Chinese Navy headquarters boasted to the regime’s propaganda outlets.

In recent years, the administration has gone even further in terms of linking up the U.S. military to Beijing’s “People’s Liberation Army.” “The military-to-military ties between the United States and China have grown and strengthened in recent years and it is an area of cooperation that the United States values,” said Obama National Security Advisor Susan Rice last year while in Beijing meeting with top Communist Chinese officials, including dictator Xi Jinping. “President Obama firmly believes that the U.S.-China relationship is one of the most consequential bilateral relationships in the world and that there is virtually no problem of global significance that can be better resolved when the United States and China are working together at the same table.”

The deepening bonds between U.S. and Chinese forces under the Obama administration, justified by the administration and the establishment as an effort to prevent “misunderstandings,” has now attracted some attention even from establishment media organs. In a Reuters column last week about how the United States is training China’s military even while inching toward conflict, columnist William Johnson noted that, despite tensions, “the two nations’ militaries train together at a very high level.” He noted that even though the two governments were coming closer to “armed confrontation,” the Obama administration was simultaneously “training Chinese forces in the American way of war.” The two militaries are also developing “increased interoperability,” Johnson observed.

Beijing is taking full advantage of the opportunities to learn about the U.S. military and how it operates, too. Various “cooperative” and “international” military efforts with U.S. forces are being used by China to, for example, “explore the anti-submarine warfare tactics of the U.S. forces stationed on Diego Garcia Island, south of India, as well as those of U.S. and allied forces in the Gulf of Aden,” according to Johnson. Meanwhile, with Beijing being allowed to use the European Union’s MERCURY communications network, China is able “to understand exactly how NATO allies coordinate efforts in every stage of sea battle, from planning to execution to assessment,” Johnson explained. Incredibly, the columnist goes on to argue for increased military cooperation.

Apparently, some military officials also support the administration’s ongoing support for the Chinese regime’s armed forces. “The PLA(N) [People’s Liberation Army-Navy] and PLAAF [People’s Liberation Army-Air Force] are now global brands and our desire is for them to increasingly contribute to security and stability operations,” wrote Vice Admiral Robert Thomas in a column published by Defense One. “What’s next? Our goal is clear: we want to work with the PLA(N) and PLAAF to ensure their efforts contribute to regional stability and that they act as a proponent of the rule of law in the international system. To this end, increased cooperation between the U.S. 7th Fleet and the PLA(N) will benefit all nations in the Indo-Asia-Pacific region.”

But more than a few high-profile voices have said the cooperation ought to end — and that it is putting U.S. national security in danger. In an analysis published by the Center for Security Policy, for example, U.S. Admiral James “Ace” Lyons (Ret.) started off by blasting the invitation extended to Communist China to participate in RIMPAC. That massive exercise “is for allies and friends, not nations planning to eventually wage war on the United States,” he said, quoting analyst Robert Sutter’s 2005 assertion that “China is the only large power in the world preparing to shoot Americans.” That assessment remains true today, Admiral Lyons noted: “Beijing is configuring its forces — especially its navy — to fight ours.”

“As Beijing’s behavior has become more troubling, the Pentagon has clung to the hope that military-to-military relations will somehow relieve tensions with the Chinese,” Lyons continued, rightly or wrongly assuming that the Obama administration’s training of Chinese forces is at least well-intentioned, if naïve. “Yet as Ronald Reagan taught us, the nature of regimes matter. We are now helping an incurably aggressive state develop its military — to our peril. There is something very wrong at the core of the Obama administration’s and the Pentagon’s China policies.” Of course, numerous other respected analysts and Western officials have offered similar warnings about Beijing’s intentions.

The Chinese regime’s increasingly aggressive confrontations with U.S. ships and aircraft in international waters and airspace have raised alarm, too. Meanwhile, Beijing’s generals have, even in recent years, threatened to annihilate hundreds of U.S. cities in a nuclear holocaust if the U.S. government were to stick by its treaty obligations and defend the free Republic of China (Taiwan) from the communist regime ruling the mainland. Obama responded by inviting the communist general to the United States on an official exchange mission. The regime has also been aggressively spying on the United States, most recently found culpable in a massive hacking attack. Plus, the fact that the Communist Chinese dictatorship has murdered more human beings than any other in historyshould, in and of itself, be cause for serious concern.

In Congress, some lawmakers have started questioning the Obama administration’s “mil-mil” actions, too. Late last year, Rep. Randy Forbes (R. Va.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee’s Seapower and Projection Forces Subcommittee, sent a letter to Obama’s defense chiefs asking for a “review” of the cooperation. “I believe that the Department currently lacks the thorough guidance and oversight mechanisms necessary to maintain a consistent mil-mil policy that best serves U.S. national security objectives over the ‘long-haul’ of the emerging U.S.-China peacetime competition,” the congressman wrote, citing “multiple examples” of senior U.S. officials “pursuing multiple, divergent mil-mil engagement objectives.” But even Forbes’ publicly expressed doubts hardly hit on the main problems.

Of course, Obama has not been alone in handing sensitive insight into the U.S. military to Beijing on a silver platter. Former U.S. President Bill Clinton, for example, helped the hostile communist government access some of the most sensitive American military technology, even while covering up various crimes for the regime and its agents, as documented in the February 15, 1999 “Chinagate: Treason in the White House” issue of The New American. “President Clinton promised to restrain those who ordered the Tiananmen Square massacre, but he has now allowed these men whose hands are stained with the blood of martyrs of freedom into the highest reaches of our military defenses, and made available to them significant portions of our advanced military technology,” wrote former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Thomas Moorer.

The Obama administration’s seemingly bizarre decision to cooperate so closely with the brutal Chinese regime is in line with advice offered by billionaire globalist financier George Soros. In recent months, the Rothschild dynasty protégée has become increasingly vocal in demanding an even broader “strategic partnership” with the dictatorship, allegedly to avoid another world war. Soros has also called regularly for Beijing to “own” what he touts as the “New World Order.” The broader globalist establishment, meanwhile, continues to build up the ruthless autocracy, even as Chinese Communists increasingly seize control of more and more of the architecture of “global governance.”

For the sake of U.S. national security and liberty, the U.S. government should end any and all programs that could benefit the brutal autocracy or its armed forces in any way — particularly in the event of conflict with the United States. The Obama administration, which has also invited Russian terror troops to U.S. soil for training with U.S. forces for the first time in history, clearly has no intention of reining in the potentially catastrophic assistance to hostile foreign regimes. But Congress, which controls the purse strings, can and should take action to protect America.

 

Alex Newman, a foreign correspondent for The New American, is normally based in Europe. Follow him on Twitter@ALEXNEWMAN_JOU. He can be reached at anewman@thenewamerican.com.

http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/foreign-policy/item/21351-obama-steps-up-u-s-training-of-communist-chinese-military