Having responded to disparate Chinese requests for specific arms, General Marshall moved quickly to ensure tighter coordination between Chinese requirements and U.S. production plans. He established the American Military Mission to China (AMMISCA) on 3 July 1941 under Brig. Gen. John Magruder, an officer with previous China experience.

Rather than simply serve as a conduit for Nationalist requests for supplies, Marshall directed Magruder to advise the Chinese on their military needs and ensure a closer match between those needs and the capabilities of U.S. defense production.

The White House has asked Congress for $106 billion in funding to allow Washington to continue supporting its allies in three separate global flashpoints: Ukraine, Israel and Asia. Sputnik reached out to retired US Army Lieutenant Colonel and international geopolitics and military affairs consultant Earl Rasmussen for his take on the situation.

Congress will almost certainly pass President Biden’s massive $106 billion supplemental funding request bundling new assistance for Tel Aviv together with other security spending, because “no one is going to vote against aid to Israel,” Rasmussen told Sputnik.

The current US-led world order has “sort of run out of steam,” but Washington will shape the system that replaces it, US President Joe Biden told supporters on Saturday. Leaders in Moscow and Beijing, however, have argued otherwise.

Speaking at a campaign reception in Washington, Biden bragged about how he convinced Japan and South Korea to send financial aid to Ukraine, and how he signed a rail and ports deal with the EU, India, and Saudi Arabia at the G20 summit in New Delhi last month.

“So, I think we have an opportunity to do things, if we’re bold enough and have enough confidence in ourselves, to unite the world in ways that it never has been,” Biden declared.

Rishi Sunak has given Britain’s full approval to the flattening of Gaza.

Late on Oct. 7, the prime minister tweeted “we stand unequivocally with Israel.” Sunak had expressed “full solidarity” to Benjamin Netanyahu, the tweet added.

As Netanyahu had promised “mighty vengeance” following the Hamas-led offensive that morning, there was no room for doubt about the signal which Sunak was sending.

But Blinken wasn’t the only senior U.S. national security official in Asia recently. While the Beijing talks grabbed all the headlines, national security adviser Jake Sullivan was in Tokyo, participating in high-level diplomatic meetings with America’s top regional partners. Sullivan’s counterparts from Japan, the Philippines and South Korea all met with U.S. officials and (in various groupings) with each other. These meetings — in the long run — will prove more consequential for dealing with China’s rise than Blinken’s Beijing visit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiRPpf-ot4I

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The ambassadors to Hungary of NATO countries have held an unscheduled meeting amid concerns about a recent encounter between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban in Beijing, the US state-run media outlet Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) reported Thursday.

Putin and Orban met on October 17 in the Chinese capital, during the country's Belt and Road Forum. It was the first meeting between the Russian president and the Hungarian prime minister since the conflict in Ukraine erupted.

As the US rushes to support Israel in its war with Hamas regardless of the civilian costs, much of the Global South is breaking with Washington, which it sees as a “huge hypocrite,” a human rights lawyer told Sputnik. The geopolitical shift is undermining US efforts to gather support for Ukraine.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QshKJQQyCAE

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The head of Australia’s national intelligence agency has said that the Canadian government’s claims of possessing evidence of India’s involvement in the killing of a Sikh separatist leader near Vancouver this past June are credible – even without Ottawa providing any evidence to back up its accusations, which are denied by New Delhi.  

The director of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), Mike Burgess, told ABC News that he had “no reason to dispute what the Canadian government has said in this matter.”  

WASHINGTON — The highest ranking general of the U.S. Army in the Pacific stressed the importance of joint exercises with allies in the region to keep deterring China after the Israel-Hamas war erupted.

Gen. Charles Flynn, the commanding general of the U.S. Army Pacific, told Medill News Service on Thursday that the Army would keep conducting international training exercises, including through the Joint Pacific Multinational Readiness Center.

After the strikes around Gaza attracted worldwide attention, some U.S. allies worried that aggressive regimes would take advantage of the distraction caused by the Middle East conflict.

The Biden administration’s proposal to put the World Bank in charge of a fund that would pay poorer countries suffering irreversible climate damage is threatening to rattle U.N. climate talks that begin next month in Dubai.

By 1923, in most of Europe at least, the gunfire had ceased. Yet in Germany, a group of young academics felt that the social upheaval following World War I still had the potential to produce catastrophe — and believed that an institute for social research was a necessary step to meet this challenge.

BY MARC ORTMANN

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A French train that was chartered by the European Parliament to transport MEPs and other officials on Monday, briefly ended up at the Disneyland Paris stop. Trains reserved exclusively for MEPs are regularly contracted by the European Parliament to shuttle legislators between its split seat in Brussels, Belgium and Strasbourg in eastern France.

The train, operated by French railway company SNCF took an unscheduled turn, heading towards the French capital and ending up at the Marne-la-Vallee station, which services Europe’s Disneyland theme park. The detour, apparently caused by a track-switching error, resulted in a 45-minute delay.