United States getting ready to drag China in Taiwan conflict

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has made it critically important for Washington to supply arms to Taiwan in the face of Beijing’s threats, said Republican Elise Stefanik.

“China is watching. They’re watching the US foreign policy when it comes to the war in Ukraine,” Stefanik told NTD’s “Capitol Report” program in a recent interview. “I think we need to be thinking very carefully about what that means for the future of Taiwan.”

Stefanik said the mistake President Joe Biden has made with regards to Ukraine should not be repeated.

“One of the lessons that—frankly, Republicans would have never let this happen, but Joe Biden let happen—was they didn’t get the weapons, munitions, in early enough to Ukraine,” she added.

“We need to be arming Taiwan now,” Stefanik said. “We need to be getting the support to Taiwan now, both as deterrence but also making sure that they are armed to self defend.”

Taiwan has been on a heightened state of alert since Russia launched a full-scale invasion against Ukraine on February 24, wary that China might make a similar military move to seize sovereignty of the self-governing island.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) claims that Taiwan is a part of the mainland and has never renounced the use of force to absorb the island. Internationally, Taiwan is widely recognized as a de facto independent state with its own military, constitution, and democratically-elected government officials.

Beijing may be tempted to attack Taiwan now, believing that Moscow would lend its support under their “no-limits” partnership, a new Sino–Russian alliance announced three weeks before the invasion of Ukraine. While Beijing has officially stuck with a “neutral” position between Russia and Ukraine, the regime has sided with Moscow on UN votes and amplified Russian justifications for the war.

Under the alliance, Russia has openly supported China’s claims for Taiwan. A joint communiqué announcing the partnership on February 04 said that Moscow “opposes any forms of independence of Taiwan.”

Admiral John Aquilino, Head of the US Indo–Pacific Command, shares Stefanik’s concerns about Taiwan. In an interview with the Financial Times on March 25, Aquilino said the lesson from the Russian invasion should be that a Chinese attack on Taiwan “could really happen.”

He said China has “increased maritime and air operations” in what he called a “pressure campaign” against Taiwan. He added, “We have to make sure we are prepared should any actions get taken.”

In recent years, China has repeatedly flown its military aircraft into the island’s air defense identification zone (ADIZ). On Feb. 24, the day Russia began attacking Ukraine, China sent nine military planes into the island’s ADIZ.

Since that day, similar sorties have happened on 18 different days, according to Taiwan’s defense ministry. The latest incursion happened on March 27, when three Chinese military planes, including two bombers, entered Taiwan’s southeast ADIZ, promoting the island to deploy its military aircraft and air defense missile systems in response.

In Taiwan, the majority of Taiwanese do not believe the island can fend off a Chinese invasion by itself. That belief was shared by 78 percent of 1,077 respondents polled, according to a Taiwan Public Opinion Foundation survey released on March 22.

When asked whether the United States would go into a war against China to defend Taiwan, only 34.5 percent of those surveyed said they believed Washington would, while 55.9 percent said the United States wouldn’t.

Washington and Taipei are currently not formal allies and the United States has maintained a policy of “strategic ambiguity,” meaning that the United States is deliberately vague on the question of whether it would come to Taiwan’s defense.

Stefanik also criticized Biden for having not used “every tool at his disposal” to confront the CCP, taking exception to the president’s “no threats” remark on March 24 to characterize his phone call with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

At NATO headquarters in Brussels on Friday, Biden said he had a “straightforward conversation” with Xi. The president added that he did not threaten his Chinese counterpart but “[made] sure he understood the consequences of him helping Russia.”

“You are dealing with a China that is strengthening their ties to Russian President Vladmir Putin prior to the invasion,” Stefanik said, before calling Xi and Putin “authoritarian, blood-thirsty despots” who “see weakness in the United States.”

In mid-March, several media outlets, citing unnamed US officials, stated that Russia had requested military assistance and financial aid for its war in Ukraine, and Beijing had signaled a willingness to comply. The two nations have denied the allegations.

 

Iran drills 75 oil and gas wells in a year

According to The Tehran Times, National Iranian Drilling Company (NIDC) has completed operation and drilled 75 oil and gas wells during the Iranian calendar year, ended on March 20, 2022. 

Hamidreza Golpayegani, Managing Director of the company informed that NIDC has drilled six development, five exploratory and 64 workover ones.

The official stated that 56 of the mentioned wells were drilled in the operational zone of the National Iranian South Oil Company (NISOC), 10 wells were drilled in the fields under the supervision of the Iranian Offshore Oil Company (IOOC), three in the fields under the operation of Petroleum Engineering and Development Company (PEDEC), one in the field under the supervisor of Iranian Central Oil Fields Company (ICOFC), three wells in the framework of project and two in the operational zone of the drilling management department of National Iranian Oil company (NIOC).

The official said that 76,125 meters of drilling was conducted in the mentioned wells. Collectively 44 light and heavy drilling rigs of NIDC are operating in the operational zone of NISCO, two rigs including one onshore and one offshore, in the zone of IOOC, seven rigs in the zone of PEDEC, six rigs in the zone of the drilling management department of NIOC, and one rigs in the project of using underground waters implemented by the Vice-Presidency for Science and Technology.

NIDC owns 70 light, heavy and super-heavy drilling rigs, including 67 onshore drilling rigs and three offshore rigs.

The company managed to carry out 10,182 meters of horizontal and directional drilling in 43 oil and gas wells across the country during the Iranian year 1399.

Some 654 meters of core extraction drilling was also conducted in the mentioned period which was a huge achievement for assessing the condition of the country’s oil and gas reserves.

Back in July 2021, Shahram Shamipour, Director of Renovation and Upgrading in NIDC had informed that the Company had allocated 5.2 trillion rials, about US$18 million for the renovation and upgrading of its drilling rigs and equipment in the company’s operational, technical, specialized, and logistical departments.

According to him, the renovation and upgrading operations are aimed at improving the performance of these rigs which are active in the country’s oil and gas field development projects.

Shamipour noted that the equipment going through renovation operations include fluid pumps, draw-works machinery, charting tools, pumps for cementing and acidizing trucks, tow trucks, cranes, piping machines, generators, hydrogen sulfide gas treatment systems, acid-coated storage tanks, and cement transport bunkers. 

Considering the National Iranian Oil Company’s strategies for strengthening the presence of domestic companies in the development of the country’s oil fields, NIDC, as a major subsidiary of the company, has been supporting such companies by lending them drilling rigs and other necessary equipment.

After the US reimposition of sanctions against Iran, indigenizing the know-how for the manufacturing of the parts and equipment applied in different industrial sectors is one of the major strategies that the Islamic Republic has been strongly following up to reach self-reliance and nullify the sanctions.

Oil, gas, and petrochemical industries have outstanding performances, with indigenizing the knowledge for manufacturing many parts and equipment that were previously imported.

Among different sectors of the mentioned industries, drilling could be mentioned as a prominent example in this regard.

 

United States to seize assets owned by Russian elites

In a far-flung conflict where Joe Biden has pledged to refrain from military intervention, the United States has largely turned to financial sanctions to exact punishment on Russia. 

Those efforts have been centered on some of the wealthiest Russians with ties to Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin — a group whose connections have led to fortune and an opulent lifestyle directly targeted by Biden.

As the nation’s intelligence leaders gathered before lawmakers earlier this month to offer grim assessments of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, there was one topic that sparked both impatience and excitement.

“Are we going to seize some yachts?” Patrick Maloney asked FBI Director Christopher Wray.

“I mean, that sounds great. Are we going to see some of the stuff taken out of their hands?”

“We are joining with our European allies to find and seize your yachts, your luxury apartments, your private jets. We are coming for your ill-begotten gains,” Biden said during his State of the Union address.

The Department of Justice the next day announced its KleptoCapture task force to do just that.

But experts say the task force may not be able to immediately deliver the wins — and the seizures — lawmakers are eager for. 

“It's a bit of the fascination with the luxury of asset recovery, and what are in essence sort of the shiny exemplars of corruption, excess, that can be symbols of sort of poetic justice or rightful retribution,” said Juan Zarate, the first-ever assistant secretary of the Treasury for terrorist financing and financial crimes under the George W. Bush administration.

“But asset recovery is more than just the luxury items, and it gets quite complicated,” added Zarate, who helped seize Saddam Hussein's fleet of private jets and return them to Iraq.

Investigators are coming up against what’s designed to be a complex labyrinth.

“These people are extremely savvy when it comes to protecting their ill-gotten gains,” Dennis Lormel, a former special agent with the FBI who served as chief of its financial crimes program, told The Hill. 

“They're going to circumvent controls, they're going to circumvent the system, they are going to be as non-transparent as possible.”

Russia’s uber wealthy seldom directly own their vast holdings, instead creating layers and layers of shell companies.

“Think of these situations as kind of an asset version of Russian nesting dolls,” said David Laufman, who oversaw the enforcement of sanctions at the Department of Justice during the Obama and Trump administrations.

The result means lots of tracking down records from across the globe and sifting through piles of paperwork to determine ownership.

Adding to the complication is that many holdings may be owned by a trusted ally of the person being targeted.

“Russian oligarchs and elites have not openly held their assets. They've held them through shell companies or nominees or proxies,” said Sharon Cohen Levin, a partner with Sullivan & Cromwell who led the money laundering and asset forfeiture unit of the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York for two decades.

The combination makes it particularly difficult — not impossible, but challenging — to unwind and understand the true owners of the property.

“The first challenge that KleptoCapture task force is going to face is to be able to not just identify the yacht, but answer the question who actually owns it? The fact that you’ve seen an oligarch on it doesn't necessarily mean that it's their property,” she said — even if the oligarch “named the yacht after their mother.”

While the wealth of oligarchs affords a number of luxuries — high-rise penthouse apartments, private jets, even football clubs — yachts have remained a top focus.

A Twitter account charting the movement of oligarch-affiliated yachts created earlier this month has already climbed to nearly 30,000 followers, while several news outlets have mapped the ports where they are parked.

“Yachts are fancy playthings for very rich people,” Laufman said, “They are symbolically representative of the kinds of vast wealth of these oligarchs and create kind of a feel good ‘we got you’ moment for governments that are participating in this coalition to counter Russia's aggression.”

Some countries have already managed to commandeer yachts. France earlier this month seized Amore Vero, a yacht believed to belong to Igor Sechin, the head of oil giant Rosneft. Italian authorities have also seized at least three such vessels.

But there are only so many oligarchs and so many yachts to seize. 

The number of those sanctioned by the US ballooned Thursday, when the White House announced it would sanction another 400 individuals, including 328 members of the Duma.

Of the smaller group of those initially sanctioned, however, The Associated Press compiled a list of some 56 superyachts believed to be owned by Russian oligarchs. Maps from a number of outlets show the vessels scattered across the globe — with very few in US waters. 

Laufman said the yacht fixation overlooks the vast amount of wealth otherwise held by Russian elites.

“I’m not dumping on seizing yachts,” he said. “I’m a fan of seizing yachts, but that’s not even the tip of the iceberg. That’s just two or three snowflakes on the iceberg compared to the wealth that has likely been squirreled away in accounts that may currently be evading the visibility of US law enforcement or intelligence agencies.”

Once the task force identifies assets belonging to sanctioned oligarchs it can freeze them, but to formally seize them they will need to go to court.

The distinction may matter little to the public. Freezing an asset — whether a bank account or boat — blocks its use, cutting off access to a certain lifestyle.

US law also allows such a status in perpetuity, the reason some Iranian assets have been frozen since the late 1970s.

But the formal seizure requires proving that the assets were used in furtherance of a crime or gained through some form of corruption.

For Zarate, even attempting to seize those assets on the basis of corruption is itself a mind shift.

“We are now judging all of this to be illegitimate or at least worthy of seizure and investigation in a way that we haven't before, right? It's not new that these oligarchs all owned yachts. Everyone knew this. What's different is not just the invasion, but this conversion of an attitude toward what those assets represent. And they represent the proceeds of illicit or corrupt activity tied to the Russian economy and tied to the Kremlin,” he said. 

“That's the shift here that's happened both intentionally and unintentionally.”

To make a case in court, however, Cohen Levin said DOJ’s task force will need not just prosecutors and investigators but data analysts and others that can do the hard work to help demonstrate that an asset is indeed owned by an oligarch.

It’s a case that may have to be built on circumstantial evidence.

“It's absolutely super complex for them,” Cohen Levin said. 

 “What the government's going to have to do is they're going to have to show — they're going to have to prove by a preponderance of the evidence, that it's more likely than not — that this person owns it. So they're going to have to say, ‘This Company is really owned by this company, which is owned by this company, which is owned by this company, and then this person that runs it really works for this Russian oligarch,’ ” she said.

Experts warned the process will ultimately take months. But law enforcement officials did not seem deterred when questioned by lawmakers watching with anticipation.

“Whatever we can lawfully seize,” Wray told Maloney, “we’re gonna go after."

 

United States does not have a policy of regime change in Russia, says US Ambassador to NATO

Over the years, the US presidents have got so addicted to playing ‘regime change mantra’ that Joe Biden uttered the same for Russian President Vladimir Putin. After having realized the potential repercussions, efforts are being made to twist the statement. 

It appears gone are the days, when United States was able to do ‘anything’ it likes; now the President can face resentment against such statements even from Senate as well as Congress.

United States Ambassador to NATO Julianne Smith on Sunday made an effort to walk back President Biden’s comment that Russian President Vladimir Putin should not remain in power, asserting that America does not have a policy of regime change in Russia.

“The US does not have a policy of regime change in Russia, full stop,” Smith told co-anchor Dana Bash on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Biden turned heads on Saturday when, during a speech in Warsaw, he said Putin cannot remain in power. The ad-libbed comment came at the end of the president’s speech.

The White House attempted to walk back the comment on Saturday, with an official saying that the remark was referring to Putin exercising power outside of Russia. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Sunday also said the US has no plans for regime change in Russia.

Asked by Bash if Biden’s comment was a mistake, Smith said the remark was “a principal human reaction” to the stories he heard from Ukrainian refugees earlier that day.

“The president had spent the day visiting with Ukrainian refugees; he went to the National Stadium in Warsaw and literally met with hundreds of Ukrainians. He heard their heroic stories as they were fleeing Ukraine in the wake of Russia's brutal war in Ukraine. In the moment, I think that was a principled human reaction to the stories that he had heard that day,” Smith said.

Pressed on if the US not having a policy of regime change in Russia means officials think Putin should remain in power, Smith said the administration, including Biden, does not believe American can empower the Russian president to wage a war in Ukraine.

“I think what it means is that we are not pursuing a policy of regime change. But I think the full administration, the president included, believes that we cannot empower Putin right now to wage war in Ukraine or pursue these acts of aggression,” Smith said.

 

United States and allies have declared hybrid war on Russia: says Kremlin

The United States and its Western allies have declared a hybrid ‘total war’ against Russia said Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

“Today a real hybrid war, a ‘total war’ has been declared against us. This term, which was used by Nazi Germany, is now used by many European politicians when they explain what they want to do to the Russian Federation,” Lavrov said, according to state-run media.

He claimed, “And their goals are not hidden, they want to destroy, to break, to strangle the Russian economy, and Russia as a whole.”

“The desire by the West to maintain its dominance in international affairs, to subjugate everything and everyone and return to a unipolar world … these are, of course, illusions,” Lavrov also remarked, adding, “In fact, we are witnessing the culmination of the policy of containment of Russia, which the West has pursued for a long time.”

Lavrov’s comments appear to be an escalation in rhetoric from Russia’s leadership against the United States and NATO allies.

Since February 24, the start of the conflict, the United States, Europe, Japan, and other like-minded nations have placed heavy sanctions on Russian economy, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Lavrov, and other top Kremlin officials.

On Thursday, the White House announced even more sanctions against hundreds of Russian lawmakers, defense companies, and other entities.

The United States also placed a ban on Russian oil imports, although European Union countries have not done so, citing the bloc’s heavy dependence on Russian energy products.

On Thursday, about three-fourths of the United Nations General Assembly voted to demand aid access and civilian protection in Ukraine and claimed Russia was creating what they said is a dire humanitarian situation in Ukraine. 

Ukraine and Western allies have claimed Moscow is attacking civilians indiscriminately, which the Kremlin has denied.

But Russian ex-President and Deputy Head of Security Council Dmitry Medvedev claimed Friday that the sanctions won’t sway the Kremlin. 

The sanctions will only consolidate the Russian society and not cause popular discontent with the authorities, Medvedev told Russia’s RIA news agency in an interview.

“Let us ask ourselves, can any of these major businessmen have even the tiniest quantum of influence of the position of the country’s leadership?” Medvedev said. “I openly tell you: no, no way.”

 

War in Ukraine to wipe out 15 years of Russian economic growth

In today’s time media plays a more lethal role, as compared to weapons. The conventional media, controlled by the West, spreads disinformation by portraying bleaker outlook for the country under the US sanctions.  One such example is the details about Russia released by Institute of International Finance.

According to Institute of International Finance (IIF), Russia is likely to erase 15 years of economic gains by the end of 2023 after its invasion of Ukraine spurred a multitude of sanctions and prompted companies to pull out of the country.

The economy is expected to contract 15% in 2022, followed by a decline of 3% in 2023, leaving gross domestic product where it was about fifteen years ago. This was written by economists Benjamin Hilgenstock and Elina Ribakova in a preliminary assessment of the impact of the war, noting that further sanctions may change their view.

“Sharply lower domestic demand is likely to play a crucial role, while a collapse in imports should offset lower exports, leading to a marginally-positive contribution from net foreign demand,” the economists wrote.

“However, should further sanctions in the form of trade embargos be implemented, exports might fall more than we currently forecast.”

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 spurred a collapse of its currency (ruble) and threw global supply chains and commodities prices into chaos. This also sparked mass departure of companies from the country. French automaker Renault SA is among the latest firms to pull out, announcing that it will halt operations at its Moscow plant. It is also considering the future of a longstanding Russian venture called AvtoVaz.

Even after the immediate hit to Russia’s economy, the economy will suffer for years to come from a “brain drain” the exodus of educated, middle class Russians with the financial means to leave the country.

Sanctions from United States and European Union, which control export of technology, including microelectronics, will also hinder technological development in Russia for years, according to the IIF.

At the same time, “self-sanctioning” by foreign companies which no longer want to do business with Russia will lead to a weakening of important sectors of the Russian economy, the report said.

 “The negative effect on medium- and long-term economic prospects could be even more important,” the IIF economists wrote.

 

Ukraine war marks beginning of a new world order

Joe Biden, President of United States believes the Ukraine war will mark the start of a ‘new world order’. In the middle of the COVID global pandemic, Klaus Schwab and global elites likewise announced a ‘great reset’.

Accordingly, the nations of the world would have to surrender their sovereignty to an international body of experts. They would enlighten the governments on taxes, diversity, and green policies.

When former President Donald Trump got elected in 2016, marquee journalists announced partisan reporting would have to displace the old, supposedly disinterested approach to the news.

In normal times progressives worry that they do not have public support for their policies. Only in crises do they feel that the political left and media can merge to use apocalyptic times to ram through usually unpopular approaches to foreign and domestic problems.

We saw that last year, fleeing from Afghanistan, the embrace of critical race theory, trying to end the filibuster, pack the court, junk the Electoral College, and nationalize voting laws.

These ‘new orders’ and ‘resets’ always entail far bigger government and more unelected, powerful bureaucracies. Elites assume that their radical changes in energy use, media reporting, voting, sovereignty, and racial and ethnic quotas will never quite apply to themselves, the architects of such top-down changes.

They preach, common folk must quit fossil fuels, but not those who need to use corporate jets. Walls will not mar our borders but will protect the homes of Nancy Pelosi, Mark Zuckerberg, and Bill Gates.

Hunter Biden’s lost laptop will be declared, by fiat, not news. In contrast, the fake Alfa Bank ‘collusion’ narrative will be national headline news for weeks.

Middle class lifestyles will be curbed as they are instructed to strive for sustainability and transition to apartment living and mass transit. But the Obamas will still keep their three mansions, and Silicon Valley futurists will insist on exemptions for their yachts.

In truth, the world is about to see a radical reset—of the current reset. It will be a different sort of transformation than the elites are expecting and one that they should greatly fear.

The world and the United States are furious over hyperinflation that may soon exceed 10% per year. Ordinary people will be lucky if it ends only in recession or stagflation, rather than a global depression.

The mess was created by those who propagated modern monetary theory. That silly university idea claimed prosperity would follow vastly expanding the money supply, keeping interest rates at de facto zero levels, running huge annual deficits, piling up unsustainable national debt, and subsidizing workers to stay home.

Natural gas and oil costs are now soaring to unsustainable levels—and to the point where the middle class simply will not be able to travel, keep warm in winter, or cool in summer.

Both in Europe and the United States left-wing governments deliberately curbed drilling and non-Russian pipelines. They shut down nuclear power plants and subsidized costly, inefficient solar and wind projects.

They ended up not with utopia, but with fuel shortages, high prices, and energy dependency on the world’s most repressive regimes.

The woke revolution in the West was supposed to teach us that the white male-dominated Western world is toxic. Its origins, ascendance, and current leisure and affluence were supposedly due only to systemic exploitation, racism, and sexism.

Few asked how a supposedly noxious West of some 2,500 years duration became the number one destination of millions of global non-Western migrants and offered the greatest degree of global prosperity and freedom for its citizens.

So a reset reckoning is coming—in reaction to the ‘new orders’ championed by Biden and the Davos set.

In the November 2022 midterms, Americans are likely to see a historic “No!” to the orthodox left-wing agenda that has resulted in unsustainable inflation, unaffordable energy, war, and humiliation abroad, spiraling crime, racial hostility—as well as arrogant defiance from those who deliberately enacted these disastrous policies. What will replace it is a return to what until recently had worked.

Closed and secure borders with only legal and measured immigration will return. Americans will demand tough police enforcement and deterrent sentencing, and a return to integration and the primacy of individual character rather than separatist fixations on the ‘color of our skin’.

The public will continue to tune out of the partisan and mediocre ‘mainstream’ media. They will see greater increased production of oil and natural gas to transition us slowly to a wider variety of energy, strong national defense, and deterrent foreign policies.

The prophets of the new world order sowed the wind and they will soon reap the whirlwind of an angry public worn out by elite incompetence, arrogance, and ignorance.

Courtesy: The Epoch Times