Russian and Chinese Warships to Hold Joint Naval Exercises for the First Time.

According to the World Socialist Website, Russian and Chinese warships will hold joint naval exercises in the Mediterranean Sea later this month.  Citing Chinese military sources, Pro-Palestinian Journalist Alex Lantier writes "This unprecedented decision reveals the sharp tensions between the major world powers arising from the US-led “pivot to Asia” against China and the NATO war drive against Russia over the Ukraine crisis."

Lantier continues the article by saying the exercises "will mark the first time that Chinese warships carry out military operations in the Mediterranean." Chinese Defense Ministry spokesman Geng Yansheng said the Chinese navy would contribute warships currently on anti-piracy patrols off the coast of Somalia, in the Indian Ocean. The nine-ship Russo-Chinese fleet in the Mediterranean will practice refueling, escort and live-fire missions.

“The aim is to deepen both countries’ friendly and practical cooperation, and increase our navies’ ability to jointly deal with maritime security threats,” Geng said at a monthly briefing on Thursday.

Chinese officials implausibly downplayed any suggestion that the exercises were aimed at the United States and its European allies. “What needs saying is that these exercises are not aimed at any third party and have nothing to do with the regional situation,” Geng declared.

A glance at the “regional situation” shows, in fact, that military tensions are escalating between the NATO imperialist powers, Russia, and China—a situation for which NATO’s aggressive policies are mainly responsible. While NATO stages military drills aimed at Russia across Eastern Europe and the Black Sea, war is spreading in the Mediterranean. A US-led proxy war is burning in Syria, as is the civil war that erupted in Libya after the 2011 NATO war destroyed Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s regime.

Russian and Chinese warships already had appeared in the Mediterranean during the Libyan and Syrian wars. Chinese vessels evacuated 30,000 Chinese workers from Libya during the 2011 war, while Russian warships patrolled the Syrian coast in 2013 to dissuade NATO from launching missile strikes on Syria, a Russian ally.

If Moscow and Beijing have taken the extraordinary step of organizing live-fire exercises off the coast of Europe, however, this is to send Washington and its European allies a political signal. US-led policies of strangling Russia’s economy with financial sanctions and seeking to topple Russian President Vladimir Putin, or isolating China through the US “pivot to Asia,” pose the threat of all-out war.

Chinese commentators indicated the Mediterranean exercises were also Chinese President Xi Jinping’s response to US-Japanese military deals in the Asia-Pacific, agreed between Obama and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe during Abe’s visit to Washington this week.

“Russia wants to show the United States it is not isolated and can launch exercises near Eastern Europe. And as a result of Abe’s visit to the United States and the upgraded Japan-American military relationship, Xi wants to show the United States he has good relations with Russia,” said Shi Yinhong, a professor of international relations at Renmin University in Beijing.

James Hardy, Asia-Pacific editor of IHS Jane’s Defense Weekly, said the exercises marked a new stage in the development of the Chinese navy’s fighting capabilities and would be seen as a challenge by ruling elites in the NATO countries.

“The geopolitical significance of its exercising along Russia will not be lost on the US and NATO, although it would be churlish of anyone in the West to complain about it, given the number of joint drills the US and its allies conduct in China’s near seas,” he told the New York Times .