Center for Security Policy founder Frank Gaffney joined SiriusXM host Stephen K. Bannon on Breitbart News Daily Wednesday morning to discuss the irony of President Obama’s trip to Hiroshima to “bray about the need to rid the world of nuclear weapons,” while Obama’s policies have done nothing but encourage their proliferation.
Gaffney and Bannon opened by discussing the strategic situation in the Pacific, where Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter just completed a tour.
“It didn’t really go that well, did it?” Bannon asked.
“Well, I guess it went about as well as you could expect, when he’s forced to acknowledge, effectively, that there’s no ‘pivot to Asia’ forthcoming, despite a lot of talk about it earlier in the Administration,” Gaffney replied.
He noted that the reduced U.S. Navy lacks the resources for a strategic pivot into the Pacific. “There aren’t the ships that enable us to project power into that region, and such ships as we have are increasingly threatened by the growing presence of the Chinese.”
Gaffney described U.S. allies in Asia as “increasingly frantic.”
“They’re looking at a growing threat from China that’s unmistakable. They do not see the United States providing either the conventional forces, or that so-called ‘nuclear umbrella’ that has long been sort of a security blanket, at the very least, if not an actual shield against the threats that others in the region represent, North Korea being another.”
He said that in his forthcoming book Warning Order, “a number of eminent national security professionals” assemble to warn that “China is putting into place all of the steps they need to engage in conflict with the United States – at sea and in the air, sort of ‘terrestrially,’ but also in cyberspace, economic warfare, and not least in space itself.”
Gaffney said this situation “raises real alarms for folks like the Japanese and South Koreans.”
“This will be an irony, that the President is heading off to Hiroshima to bray about the need to rid the world of nuclear weapons,” he said. “No President in our history has done more to catalyze proliferation – not just in the Pacific, but also in the Middle East, of course.”
Gaffney thought there was “an opportunity to make some lemonade” from the lemons of nationalism in the Philippines, with the proper American leadership.
“There is an appetite on the part of a lot of nations, including some that haven’t so friendly to us, as you know, over the years, like Vietnam, and the Philippines themselves wanted us out of there, a decade or two ago. They want us back now,” he said. “They want America’s support, they want America’s protection.”
“But look, if they can’t get it, they’re either going to seek their own means of deterring the Chinese – including possibly nuclear capabilities, in some cases – or they’re going to make a separate peace with the Chinese,” he cautioned. “Either way, it’s not going to be good for American interests, and, I think, for national security.”
Gaffney said Warning Order should be made available to the public within the next week, and would include contributors such as former Senator Jim Talent, China expert Gordon Chang, former Commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet Admiral James “Ace” Lyons. He said their goal was to “warn that we are not prepared for what China may be angling to do.”
“The Chinese have – going back to Sun Tzu, of course – a preference for winning without going to war. The trouble is, they look as if they’re increasingly preparing to go to war with us if they need to, and if we don’t relent,” said Gaffney. “This is a very momentous time, and I think it’s imperative that Ash Carter and others not be simply strutting about and talking up a good game, but actually preparing to deal with what China has now got coming our way, I’m afraid.”
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