Too Many Threats and Not Enough Action

The Islamic State has grown in numbers, despite air targeting, expanding beyond Syria and Iraq, establishing itself in Libya.

Meanwhile, China and Russia are expanding their strategic nuclear forces with new missile systems, as reported to the House Armed Services Committee on global threats. President Obama has downplayed all of it, especially the Iran nuclear threat. Indeed, he has included as a national security threat in recent report to Congress the climate change/global warming phenomenon.

Despite billions of US dollars in support and training, Iraq and Afghanistan are unable to defend their countries from ISIL and their coalition terrorist groups.

A combination growing threat is posed by China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea and critical because Obama would rather spend tax dollars on foreign aid and broken programs like Obamacare. 

General Vincent Stewart:

...when taken in aggregate, have created security challenges more diverse and complex than those we have experienced in our lifetimes. Our challenges range from highly capable, near-peer competitors to empowered individuals and the concomitant reduction in our own capacity will make those challenges all the more stressing on our defense and intelligence establishments. This strategic environment will be with us for some time, and the threat’s increasing scope, volatility, and complexity will be the ‘new normal.

Armed Forces Committee Chairman, Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-TX):

I have certainly been struck by the consensus of opinion from our most respected and practiced statesmen that our country faces a strategic environment today more complex, more diverse and in many ways more dangerous than we’ve ever faced before.

The Islamic State is spreading throughout the Middle East and North Africa and is recruiting via the Internet gullible young recruits from the United Kingdom and United States.

Jordan has redoubled their resolve to destroy ISIL especially after burning alive one of their downed captured pilots.

Last year the terrorist attacks in Baghdad have been relentless and it continues into 2015.  

ISIL has increased its presence and influence in Libya, particularly in Darnah, where it has begun establishing Islamic institutions.

Pakistan continues to build its nuclear arsenal.

The threat from both China and Russia is their anti-satellite warfare programs. China has also utilized cyberwarfare and cyber-espionage.

General Stewart stated:

Russia’s military doctrine emphasizes space defense as a vital component of its national defense. Russian leaders openly assert that the Russian armed forces have anti-satellite weapons and conduct anti-satellite research. China has plans to interfere with, damage, and destroy reconnaissance, navigation, and communication satellites in a conflict. Beijing has satellite jammers and other anti-satellite systems. … The South China Sea (SCS) remains a potential flashpoint. Overlapping claims among China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Taiwan, and Brunei, exacerbated by large-scale construction or major steps to militarize or expand law enforcement has increased tensions among SCS claimants, and has prompted an increase in defense acquisition to include submarine capabilities in some of these countries.

China is expected to conduct first ballistic missile submarine patrols this year, along with its expansion of nuclear missiles that include ICBMs. The missile buildup threatens Taiwan with more than 1,200 short-range missiles in place.

China continues to deploy growing numbers of the DF-21D anti-ship ballistic missile and is developing a tiered ballistic missile defense system, having successfully tested the upper-tier capability on two occasions. North Korea has announced another nuclear test in response to a critical United Nations report on the regime's human rights abuses. We believe North Korea continues to develop its nuclear weapons and missile programs which pose a serious threat to the US and regional allies.

Tehran, Iran is building numerous underground facilities for its military forces. Cyber attacks against government networks are expected to continue this year.

As part of the report and for the record, it appears that the White House intends to gradually release the Guantanamo Islamic Jihadists as part of the plan to close the facility, and General Stewart added that the DIA was not consulted about the release of five Taliban detainees exchanged for Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl.

Honolulu, Hawaii …

China’s ruling Communist Party is “rejuvenating” and preparing for a military conflict in Asia, the outgoing intelligence chief of the Navy’s Pacific Fleet is warning.

Navy Capt. James E. Fanell:

The strategic trend lines indicate the Communist Party of China is not only ‘rejuvenating’ itself for internal stability purposes, but has been and continues to prepare to use military force. … We should not have to wait for an actual shooting war to start before we acknowledge there is a problem and before we start taking serious action. Recently, China launched a secret 100-year modernization program … For more than four decades, Chinese leaders lulled presidents, cabinet secretaries, and other government analysts and policymakers into falsely assessing China as a benign power deserving of U.S. support, says Michael Pillsbury, the Mandarin-speaking analyst who has worked on China policy and intelligence issues for every U.S. administration since Richard Nixon.

William S. Lind, Space War, wrote:

In the 1980s, when I was on the staff of Democratic Sen. Gary Hart of Colorado, I traveled regularly to Maxwell Air Force Base to give the slide-show briefing of the Congressional Military Reform Caucus to Squadron Officers' School. After one such session, a U.S. Air Force captain, an intelligence officer, came up to me and asked, "Does military reform mean we can stop inflating the threat? …China's conventional forces are a long way from being able to take the United States on, especially at sea or in the air. The issue is less equipment -- not that China has much of it -- but personnel. … Under its "one China" policy, the United States recognizes that Taiwan is part of China. So the "Chinese threat" is that China may be able to deter or counter American intervention in a Chinese civil war. … A war between China and the United States could easily result in a similar fatal weakening of the United States -- perhaps after a strategic nuclear exchange -- while a defeated Chinese state may dissolve, with China becoming a vast region of stateless, Fourth Generation instability. Is Taiwan worth risking such an outcome? In a 21st century where the most important division will be between centers of order and centers or sources of disorder, it is vital to American interests that China remain a center of order. America needs to handle a rising China the way Britain handled a rising America, not a rising Germany. From that perspective, the proper place for DOD's China report, the threat inflation it represents and the strategic rivalry it stokes is in the trash can marked "bad ideas."

Kenneth Rapoza asks Is China's Ownership of U.S. Debt a National Security Threat? …

China owns almost $1 trillion in US Treasury debt, an assessment made by USBC, a lobby group for US multinationals doing business in China.

The domestic problems here in our homeland is sufficient to bring about our own downfall, with predatory nations who scoffed at our leadership, waiting in the wings to carve it up.

The United States is financing China to continue to build their military machine despite that China has a long-term plan of bringing the United States down, financially or militarily or a combination of both.

The United Nations has become nothing but an organization with the agenda to be the world government and a haven for anti-semitism.