China-Taiwan: Notes on a war game

NBC’s Meet the Press Reports published a new online episode this past week in which the network sponsored a war game for a China-Taiwan scenario developing in 2027.  The episode, entitled “War Games: Battle for Taiwan,” and hosted by Chuck Todd, can be accessed here.

These are just a few notes on a topic that needs a much more in-depth treatment.  But it’s worth registering some top-level comments as this subject garners more and more attention in the coming days.

I would say at the outset that criticism here isn’t intended in any way to mock the effort made to hold the war game and put it together for presentation.  It’s a tough proposition for anyone, and summarizing the results is invariably a matter of choosing and framing priorities, regardless of who’s doing it.

Video: Aussies stick heads in sand to shame G20 leaders

Aussies get behind climate activism.

New post up at Liberty Unyielding.  Enjoy!

Chinese power move in South China Sea: This is big

Mariners and the specialty mariner press know it’s big.  But mariners can’t fix this.  It will take national policies to fix it, and non-specialist citizens therefore need to understand its importance.

So, I reiterate: this is big.  After several years of preparations for this day (see, for example, here, here, and here), China has issued a unilateral order that foreign fishing vessels will have to obtain permits from China to fish in two-thirds of the South China Sea (SCS), an area in which China has long made excessive territorial claims.

Rollback down under

Tony Abbott may turn out to be the real deal.  The newly elected conservative (Liberal) prime minister of Australia is coming out of the starting gate at a gallop, dismaying entrenched political interests along the way.

Abbott’s new cabinet will have no separate ministry for “climate change,” rolling that function instead into the ministry for environment (h/t: WUWT).  Here’s Abbott on the role of the new minister for the environment, Greg Hunt (emphasis added):

Australia and the missing Obama Doctrine

I love Oz.  It’s a great place, and there’s no one I’d rather have watching my six in a military operation than the Aussies.  I still treasure the officer’s hat given to me by a visiting Australian maritime reconnaissance detachment, after I gave them a tour of USS Nimitz (CVN-68) when we were in port in Dubai years ago.  I was privileged to participate, in 1992, in the 50th anniversary commemoration of the Battle of the Coral Sea, an occasion between longstanding allies that I will never forget.  No one could have bad memories of either working with the Australian military or visiting Australia.

So the news that the US will be stationing a detachment of 2500 Marines in northeastern Australia, for what will apparently be six-month rotations, prompts a reaction along the lines of “You lucky devil dogs!”

It also raises some questions.  The first is a general but nagging one: