China, the NorKs, Iran and Chavez

First off, them 'thar Asians sure have some funny/great slang names......but I won't go there.

There's a major chess match going on in the world and I've got an uneasy feeling about China, just read an interview with one very smart guy, Jed Babbin by Jamie Glazov at Front Page Mag.com. Mr. Babbin has a new book just out, Showdown: Why China Wants War with the United States. here's an excerpt from the interview:

FP: Fair enough, but how exactly is China a threat to us?

Babbin: China is a threat to us because it is a direct threat to all our allies and interests in the Pacific. Our main Pacific ally, Japan, is directly in China's path. South Korea, Taiwan and every other nation we have alliances with in the region are in China's way. More immediately, China has chosen the wrong side in the war on terror. It's very closely allied with Iran and is a major trading partner of every state sponsor of terrorism. While they bolster the terrorist nations, it's much harder for us to defeat them.

FP: The alliance with Iran is truly troubling. Tell us a bit about the unholy alliance between Communist China and radical Islam.

Babbin: Iran sells China a lot of oil. In return, China is training, equipping and helping arm Iran's military. Along with Russia, they have aided Iran's nuclear weapons program. In other nations -- Syria for instance -- China is allying itself with the Islamic radicals. I won't go so far as to say that they are actually allied with radical Islam itself because I don't really believe it. China's ideology is communism. Radical Islam (which is an ideology, not a religion) isn't compatible. I think it'd be a mistake to say that China is allied with radical Islam. It is, however, allied with the terrorist nations.

FP: How does China fit into the North Korean nuclear menace?

Babbin: North Korea is a client state of China. The Kim Jong-il regime would not be doing what it is without China's permission. They may even be spurring Kim on. North Korea is utterly dependent on China for food. If China wanted to stop the missile launches, it could.

Then we just found out that China again rejects NK resolution by the U.N.

Then Latin American sources report that China is engaged in covert talks with oil-rich Venezuela to cut crude exports to the United States, increase shipments to Beijing--and begin selling oil to its impoverished ally, North Korea.

China is the world's second largest oil-consuming nation after the US, which buys around 18 percent of its oil from Venezuela, the world's fifth largest oil-producing nation.

Venezuela's populist president Hugo Chavez, an avowed enemy of the US, recently announced plans to visit North Korea in late July. Chavez also intends to visit Russia and Iran.

And it has been been reported that an oil-for-arms deal is in the works, involving North Korean conventional weapons, missiles--and, incredible as it may seem, maybe even an atomic bomb--under cover of a pending "strategic alliance" and a so-called science and technology cooperation agreement.

Should Chavez and North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il dare to deal in missiles and nukes it would constitute the biggest threat to US national security from a Western Hemisphere nation since the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962, when the Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union came close to nuclear conflict.

Nearly 44 years later, a crisis caused by Cuban ally Venezuela teaming with Stalinist North Korea could trigger a new kind of Cold War--with China. In the wake of North Korea's provocative missile tests and nuclear threats, Washington would not hesitate to blame Beijing for allowing a Pyongyang-Caracas axis to develop.

In fact, relations between North Korea and Venezuela have been warming dramatically. Senior Venezuelan government officials have made statements in support of North Korea's missile tests, and high-level North Korean political and trade officials--and intelligence officers--have visited Venezuela. In May, a delegation of Venezuelan foreign ministry officials visited Pyongyang, just a month after Caracas opened its first-ever embassy there.

Chavez, who proudly considers himself a protege of Cuba's Communist dictator Fidel Castro, is also forging an alliance with another Chinese ally, oil-rich Iran, which is engaged in a nuclear enrichment standoff with the West.

Energy-starved China has tried to downplay deepening ties to Venezuela. While increasingly interested in the South American country's oil--including the huge, untapped heavy crude deposits of the Orinoco River belt--Beijing is concerned that relations with Chavez could needlessly antagonize Washington and hamper efforts by Chinese state-run companies to secure supplies of oil and other raw materials in a region historically considered within the US sphere of influence.

Yowsa.