Chinese, Russian, US navies set sights on Mediterranean

[beijingwalker]

Chinese, Russian, US navies set sights on Mediterranean
By Peter Apps | From the Newspaper | 3 hours ago

PORT SAID (Egypt): Egypt has seen no shortage of empires come and go, from its own ancient civilisations to those of Greece, Rome, Britain and France. Now, it is among the outposts of the latest Mediterranean power: China.

Situated at the northern end of the Suez Canal, the Port Said container terminal is one of the busiest in the region, vital for shipments not only to Egypt but also much of Europe and the Middle East.

Like several other key ports in the region — including Piraeus in Greece and Naples in Italy — it is now partially owned by China.

The state-owned Cosco Pacific holds 20 per cent the terminal, helping make it one of the dominant — if not the dominant — Mediterranean port operators.

Cosco stresses that it is a purely commercial venture and many analysts agree. But few doubt that Beijing has made a wider geopolitical decision to become much more involved in the region.

For the last two years, the Chinese Navy has sent one or more warships through the Suez Canal to visit southern European ports, the furthest its fleet has ever operated from home.

But China is not the only great power now increasing its involvement in the area. With Russia sending warships to positions off Syria and the United States signalling it too intends to take the region more seriously, the Mediterranean is clearly no longer seen as the strategic backwater many believed it had become.

“The assumption that the Mediterranean would become a purely western sphere of influence appears to have been premature,” says Nikolas Gvosdev, professor of national security studies at the United States Naval War College in Rhode Island.

“The Chinese are showing their flag in an area far from their traditional area of operations in part to show that they are a global power. The renewed Russian deployments are part intended as a sign that Moscow has not gone away.”

Other strategic shifts are also taking place in the region.

The “Arab Spring” has unleashed a period of unrest and instability across North Africa and beyond while the eurozone crisis has left troubled southern European states struggling with debt and searching for ready investment.

Meanwhile, the gas platforms beginning to *** the disputed waters of the eastern Mediterranean have unleashed a scramble for resources that has further exacerbated pre-existing tensions between Cyprus, Turkey and Israel.

The US had hoped it could pull back from the area, helping transfer military resources to the Pacific and South China Sea as part of a pivot to Asia aimed heavily at containing a rising China. But last year’s Libya conflict provided stark warning that European states had distinctly limited capacity, and as the financial crisis bites defence budgets have been further cut.

“I don’t see a conflict,” says Gvosdev at the Naval War College. “But… (it) does make it more difficult to do an Asia pivot on the cheap.”

US destroyers to Spain

In 2011 Admiral Gary Roughead — at the time Chief of Naval Operations and the professional head of the US Navy — told senior officers the US needed to return to the Mediterranean.

In the years since the end of the Cold War and Balkan conflicts that followed, the US had quietly stopped maintaining a permanent aircraft carrier there as it focused on Iraq and Afghanistan and confrontation with Iran.

Limited resources mean putting a permanent carrier back in the region is all but impossible. But other ships now look set to take up a much more permanent presence.

Last year, the Pentagon announced it was deploying four state-of-the-art missile destroyers to the Spanish port of Rota, in part to counter any missile threat to Europe from Iran or elsewhere in the Middle East.

In November, as Israeli forces pounded Gaza in their brief air campaign against Hamas, several US assault ships and escorts entered the eastern Mediterranean in what was seen as a precursor to any evacuation of US citizens. It was the sort of deployment military officials say will likely become more common in the years to come.

Nor, current and former officials say, does Washington have any intention of letting gas tensions between its various Eastern Mediterranean allies turn into open conflict.

“The Maghreb and Levant are clearly going to be unstable for some time,” said Roughead, now retired and a senior visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

“The eastern Mediterranean is also worrying. There’s no doubt it’s going to require more attention.”

Syria worries drive Russian presence

It was the positioning of a US carrier off Syria in November 2011 that appeared to prompt one of the largest Russian naval moves in recent years. As Bashar al Assad’s crackdown on rebels and protesters became ever bloodier, Washington had quietly moved it and its battle group towards Syria.—Reuters

 

[Syrian Lion]

I think China presence in the Mediterranean is always good, I think it would be great if Russia, China, Iran, and Syria hold military drills in the near future...

 

[Audio]

I think China presence in the Mediterranean is always good, I think it would be great if Russia, China, Iran, and Syria hold military drills in the near future...

You need to follow the trends....they (the Chinese) are being evicted slowly from the African continent.
Investing in Egypt is sorely needed for Egyptians, but atm it is a very unsafe investment.
Who knows what will happen with the pharaoh in the next years. Maybe he will see another revolution in his time that will oust him from power.

Examples: -Libya nullified Chinese contracts-most of them were given to Italian oil company
-Sudan lost it's oil fields, now property of South Sudan, which has just signed a deal with an Israeli oil company.

 

[kawaraj]

Lybia war was another colonial war for Africans in a more subtle way by the west.

 

[beijingwalker]

You need to follow the trends....they (the Chinese) are being evicted slowly from the African continent.
Investing in Egypt is sorely needed for Egyptians, but atm it is a very unsafe investment.
Who knows what will happen with the pharaoh in the next years. Maybe he will see another revolution in his time that will oust him from power.

you must be smoking something for too long

China Becomes Africa's Largest Trading Partner
2012-12-22 07:00:26
This year, China has surpassed the United States and Europe as Africa's largest trading partner. Bilateral trade was around eleven billion US dollars in 2000 and reached 160 billion dollars in 2011.

Chinese businesses are putting their investments into Africa with overseas direct investment going from 500 million dollars in 2002 to nearly 15 billion last year. To see the direction Chinese businesses will be taking in Africa we go to Autumn Szeliga.

The CEO of Johannesburg-based marketing firm Brand South Africa, Miller Matola, outlines the reasons behind China's investments in Africa.

"It has admittedly huge natural resources, and obviously to fuel its growth China does need those resources but also Africa is a very resilient and growing economy if you consider what's going on in the eurozone and those believe that Africa has a role to play in assisting with the current economic challenges."

Africa has approximately 40 percent of the world's chromite, 60 percent of the world's cobalt and 20 percent of the world's gold.

The opportunities in Africa have brought over two thousand Chinese companies to do business on the continent.

Some criticize this investment as "neo-colonialism" by China.

US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton brought public attention to this during the summer..

"The days of having outsiders come and extract the wealth of Africa for themselves, leaving nothing or very little behind, should be over in the 21st century."

The Vice President of the China Institute of International Studies, Ruan Zongze, argues Chinese investments in Africa are far more diverse than just natural resources.

"The accusation for example says China just focuses on mining or resources issues, but apart from those, China is also very much focuses on agriculture and also focused on personnel training and to provide expertise for those people from Africa. And also China's enterprises, they learn to play a bigger part in exercising their social responsibility".

 

[Audio]

you must be smoking something for too long

Only time will tell.

 

[beijingwalker]

Only time will tell.

you are right this time,each passing year will push you into deeper despair,even the west now admits that China's rise is unstoppable and they have to come to terms with this fact.

 

[Audio]

you are right this time,each passing year will push you into deeper despair,even the west now admits that China's rise is unstoppable and they have to come to terms with this fact.

The same west whose articles you shun as being infactual, smearing everytime they write about some of what is hiding below the glitter?

Anyhow, what i wrote in the statement you quoted is factual.

 

[DevilDog]

Ports owned by the Chinese? Greece is okay but the one in Naples, I don't think so. Because, Naples is the HQ of the NATO Naval Forces. And Aviono AB is in there. One of the biggest installitions of USAF and NATO AWACSs are based at Aviono. I've been there.

 

[Kiss_of_the_Dragon]

You need to follow the trends....they (the Chinese) are being evicted slowly from the African continent.
Investing in Egypt is sorely needed for Egyptians, but atm it is a very unsafe investment.
Who knows what will happen with the pharaoh in the next years. Maybe he will see another revolution in his time that will oust him from power.

Examples: -Libya nullified Chinese contracts-most of them were given to Italian oil company
-Sudan lost it's oil fields, now property of South Sudan, which has just signed a deal with an Israeli oil company.

talk about nullified...how many countries such Sudan, Venesuela..almost all countries in Africa and south Latine america that China has nullified American influences and embargo...China can afford to play this game.