Our paper tiger status may have already been solidified in the minds of our enemies as both the Norks and the Red Chinese are jointly warning us to abandon military exercises with out allies in the region.

SEOUL (AFP) – North Korea’s military threatened Sunday to launch the “severest punishment” against South Korea for staging massive joint war games with the United States this week.

The North’s army and people will “deal a merciless counterblow” to the allies “as it had already resolved and declared at home and abroad”, a spokesman for the country’s army General Staff said in a statement published by state media.

“The military counteraction of (North Korea) will be the severest punishment no one has ever met in the world,” he said.

The warning came a day before US and South Korean troops begin the 10-day computerised war games called “Ulchi Freedom Guardian (UFG)”.

[…]

China also issued a warning Friday that a US decision to use a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier in joint drills with the South constitutes a “fresh provocation” to China and its neighbours.

In a commentary published in the official China Daily, Rear Admiral Yang Yi said Washington would “pay a costly price for its muddled decision” to participate in further drills near Chinese territory over Beijing’s objection.

Yang also warned it was “inadvisable” to push a country of 1.3 billion people, noting that there was instead wide scope for US-China naval cooperation should Washington choose the route of caution.

China’s already made moves to collapse our economy, perhaps in preparation for war:

China, whose $2.45 trillion in foreign-exchange reserves are the world’s largest, is turning bullish on Europe and Japan at the expense of the U.S.

The Asian nation has been buying “quite a lot” of European bonds, said Yu Yongding, a former adviser to the People’s Bank of China who was part of a foreign-policy advisory committee that visited France, Spain and Germany from June 20 to July 2. Japan’s Ministry of Finance said Aug. 9 that China bought 1.73 trillion yen ($20.1 billion) more Japanese debt than it sold in the first half of 2010, the fastest pace of purchases in at least five years.

[…]

China’s position may make it harder for the greenback to rebound after falling as much as 10 percent from this year’s peak in June as measured by the trade-weighted Dollar Index. The Asian nation cut its holdings of U.S. government debt by $72.2 billion, or 7.7 percent, through May from last year’s record of $939.9 billion in July 2009, according to the Treasury Department, which releases new data today.

So China is strategically cutting the purchasing power of our currency while allowing the Norks to make some of the most overt threats we’ve seen from them in years, after already sinking a South Korean boat. The Chinese themselves have suddenly become “concerned” with American aircraft carriers after announcing to the world that they have a missile capable of sinking one.

Anyone else think this is ominous?