by Harley Schlanger, LaRouche PAC:

U.S., Chinese and Russian Defense Ministers were part of the “ASEAN Plus” forum in Singapore this week, where dramatic steps were taken to prevent any U.S.-China conflict in the South China Sea. After years of intense efforts by the Bush and Obama Administrations to provoke a military showdown with China over sovereignty issues in the South China Sea, Singapore Defense Minister Ng Eng Hen announced Saturday that ASEAN naval contingents were on their way to Zhanjiang in Guangdong Province (the base for the PLA Navy) to take part in a joint ASEAN-China naval exercise in the South China Sea, beginning Monday. Ng also announced, following a meeting of ASEAN defense ministers with their U.S. counterpart, Gen. James Mattis, that ASEAN and the U.S. will also hold naval exercises sometime next year (location to be determined).

The ten ASEAN defense ministers issued a statement which included: “[we] welcome the conduct of the ASEAN-China Maritime Exercise in 2018, and intention to conduct the ASEAN-United States Maritime Exercise in 2019, which will enhance friendship and confidence between ASEAN member states navies and the People’s Liberation Army Navy and the United States Navy.” General Mattis also held a one-on-one meeting with Chinese Defense Minister Wei Fenghe for 90 minutes. Randall Schriver, a U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense for Asian and Pacific Security Affairs, told reporters after the meeting that Mattis had described the meeting as “straightforward and candid,” and that the Chinese “are interested in having a military relationship that’s a stabilizing force in the overall relationship.”

A “deconfliction” agreement was signed by the ASEAN ministers, and endorsed by defense ministers Mattis and Wei, to expand on guidelines intended to “reduce the likelihood of encounters or incidents spiraling into conflict in the event of miscalculation.”

The Trump Administration has confirmed that he will meet with President Xi Jinping at the G20 meeting in Argentina on Nov. 20, soon after the Nov. 6 midterm election, while a summit with President Vladimir Putin is also likely in November, according to unnamed administration sources. All three leaders, as well as India’s Narendra Modi, will be together in the Argentina event. It is an opportunity for these leaders to discuss not only ending the anti-China and anti-Russia hysteria in the West, but also the urgent necessity of convening a new Bretton Woods conference to deal with the global financial chaos, to prevent an uncontrolled break down of the quadrillion dollar derivatives bubble threatening the world’s real economy.

It is increasingly likely, but by no means certain, that the Democratic Party, which has devolved into a war-mongering, mob-inciting entity with no purpose other than to support the British coup attempt against President Donald Trump, will fail in their effort to take over the Congress and to launch impeachment proceedings. The LaRouchePAC-supported candidacies of Kesha Rogers in Texas and Ron Wieczorek in South Dakota are leading a national effort to assure the defense of the President against this criminal effort, to support Trump’s stated intention to establish friendly relations with Putin and Xi, and to restore the American System.

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