usa clubs

Big Trouble in Little China Defense Tech asks whether China will soon "have the teeth to chomp down on Taiwan" and concludes that it will, citing increases in China's amphibious warfare capability.  the PLA has shifted focus towards amphibious operations for a significant part of the ground forces ... this has included the reorganisation of two motorised infantry divisions in the Nanjing and Guangzhou Military Regions into amphibious infantry divisions and the transfer of another infantry division to the navy to form a second marine brigade in the late 1990s. ... round a quarter of all PLA manoeuvre units, which number around 20 divisions or brigades, plus supporting artillery and air-defence units, have participated in training exercises for amphibious operations… The US intelligence community has reported that since 2001, the Chinese shipbuilding industry has produced 23 new amphibious assault ships and 13 conventional attack submarines. ... The P...

Faustian Bargain Let's start from the source least likely to run the headline: the Guardian reviews newspaper reports which suggest that French voters may reject the proffered European Constitution, scheduled for ratification on May 29. The French are becoming increasingly disenchanted with Europe and are ready to turn their backs on the EU, according to the latest opinion polls in the French newspapers Le Figaro and Le Parisien. Their polls, published yesterday and last Thursday respectively, show that more than half of French voters say they will vote no to the European constitution when the country goes to the polls on May 29. Then let's go to the 'why' part of the disenchantment. Why are the French "feeling sick of Europe", asked Eric le Boucher in Le Monde. "They regret the enlargement of the EU. They detest the idea that their public services are open to foreign competition. They complain about the liberal slant of the union....

Dymphna at Gates of Vienna During the outage of I Could Scream , Dympha will be posting at  Gates of Vienna . The problem is at the service provider end, and we will do our best to keep content up under all circumstances.

Taiwan and China (This is a copy of content currently on the new site which is unavailable due to the outage) James Dunnigan at the Strategy Page discusses the idea of an "out of the blue" (OOTB) attack by China on Taiwan. What this means is that, during what appears to be peacetime maneuvers, the troops involved will suddenly move against a nearby nation and invade. ... The OOTB was most noticeably used, and successfully at that, when the Russian trained Egyptian army surprised the Israelis and recaptured the Suez canal in 1973. ... if the Chinese could get control of the air over Taiwan for a day or so, three Chinese airborne divisions could be dropped on Taiwan as well. Taiwan has always expected assistance from the U.S. Navy and Air Force. But without advance warning to get a carrier or two into the area, and a few hundred U.S. Air Force planes alerted for movement to Taiwan, Japan and Guam, the American assistance would be too late.  An OOTB attack necessarily trades...

The Business End In article entitled Beyond Ruthless , the Washington Post describes what victory consists of: the physical destruction of the enemy. Writer Steve Fainaru follows Sgt. 1st Class Domingo Ruiz as he ambushes insurgents and chases them all around Mosul. Ruiz's unit, the 4th Platoon, has killed at least 15 suspected insurgents in the past two months, according to soldiers. Commanders said the unit encounters more enemy contact than any other platoon in the battalion. The platoon calls itself the "Violators." Its patch depicts a leering skull clad in a green beret, blood dripping from its mouth. Its motto is "Carpe Noctum," or "Seize the Night," a reference in Latin to the platoon's propensity to operate after dark. A self-described "greaser," Ruiz wears a pencil-thin mustache and slicks back the dark hair on the top of his head with Rebound Activator Gel. The lower half of his scalp is shaved. Which gives y...

Nightfall Theodore Dalrymple describes the curious phenomenon which anyone, at one time or another, may have felt: the slow pull of evil. Human beings experience it in many forms; the shameful and surreptitious attraction to pornography, drink,  cruelty or plain laziness: the subconscious knowledge that you are going to do something bad; and though you try to deceive yourself into imagining you will not succumb just yet, you let yourself approach the edge just near enough so that in a moment of weakness you will fall over as planned. Except, as Dalrymple argues in the City Journal , the human recognition of evil normally allows us to resist so it never has us wholly in its grasp. Looking back on 14 years of service in hospitals and prisons, Dalrymple realized he was witnessing the inexorable incapacitation of human discernment; the deadening of the ability to distinguish between good and evil which is so essential to survival. My work has caused me to become perhaps unhealthily p...

The New Belmont Club Site Is Up It is sad to say goodbye to Blogger. The painfully slow response of the last weeks has gone and it seems its old sprightly self again. If things don't work out on the other site, there's always a home to come back to. The Sitemeter was at 6,326,000 at the time of abandonment, which was a pretty good run. The new Belmont Club site is at http://belmontclub.wretchard.com . Alternatively, you can use this url: http://www.wretchard.com/blogs/the_belmont_club/default.aspx See you there!