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More weekend reading…kwc Revving up the China
threat How the Bush
administration has gone from confronting China’s economy to full scale
preparation for a new Cold War By Michael Klare, The Nation, Nov. 2005 (special issue on China, From
Mao to Market) Ever since taking office, the Bush
Administration has struggled to define its stance on the most critical
long-term strategic issue facing the United States: whether to view China as a
future military adversary and plan accordingly, or to see it as a rival player
in the global capitalist system. Representatives of both perspectives are
nestled in top Administration circles, and there have been periodic swings of
the pendulum toward one side or the other. But after a four-year period in
which neither outlook appeared dominant, the pendulum has now swung
conspicuously toward the anti-Chinese, prepare-for-war position. Three events
signal this altered stance. The first, on 19 February, was the
adoption of an official declaration calling for enhanced security ties between
the United States and Japan. The very fact that US and Japanese officials were
discussing improved security links was deeply troubling to the Chinese, but
what most angered Beijing was the declaration's call for linked US-Japanese
efforts to ‘encourage the peaceful resolution of issues concerning the Taiwan
Strait through dialogue.’ The second key event was a speech Rumsfeld gave on 4 June at a strategy
conference in Singapore. With consummate disingenuousness, he stated, ‘Since no
nation threatens China, one must wonder: Why this growing investment? Why these
continuing large and expanding arms purchases? Why these continuing robust
deployments?’ Rumsfeld continued to question China's military intentions
when he visited Beijing in October. To Beijing, these comments must have been
astonishing. No one threatens China? What about the US planes and warships that
constantly hover off the Chinese coast, and the
nuclear-armed US missiles aimed at China? What about the delivery over the past
ten years of ever more potent US weapons to Taiwan? What about the US bases
that encircle China on all sides? The third notable event was the release,
in July, of the Pentagon's report on Chinese combat capabilities, The Military Power of the People's Republic of China.
In many ways the published version is judicious in tone. Nevertheless, the main
thrust of the report is that China is expanding its capacity to fight wars
beyond its own territory and that this constitutes a dangerous challenge to
global order. The Pentagon is shifting to a more belligerent,
anti-Chinese stance – one that greatly increases the likelihood of a
debilitating and dangerous military competition between the United States and
China. What lies behind this momentous shift? At its root is the continuing
influence of conservative strategists who have long championed a policy of
permanent US military supremacy. This outlook was first expressed in 1992 in
the first Bush administration’s Defense Planning Guidance (DPG) for fiscal years
1994-99, a master blueprint for US dominance in the post-cold war era. In this new century its injunction to
prevent the emergence of a new rival ‘that poses a threat on the order of that
posed formerly by the Soviet Union’ can apply only to China, as no other
potential adversary possesses a credible capacity to ‘generate global power.’
Hence the preservation of American supremacy into ‘the far realm of the
future,’ as then-Governor George W. Bush put it in a 1999 campaign speech,
required the permanent containment of China – and this is what Rice, Rumsfeld and their associates set out to do
when they assumed office in early 2001. This project was well under way when the
9/11 attacks occurred. Those events gave the neoconservatives a green light to
implement their ambitious plans to extend US power around the world. However,
the shift in emphasis from blocking future rivals to fighting terrorism was
troubling to many in the permanent-supremacy crowd who felt that momentum was
being lost in the grand campaign to constrain China. For at least some US
strategists, not to mention giant military contractors, the ‘war on terror’ was
seen as a distraction that had to be endured until the time was ripe for a
resumption of the anti-Chinese initiatives begun in February 2001. That moment
seems to have arrived. Why now? Several factors explain the
timing of this shift. The first, no doubt, is public fatigue with the ‘war on
terror’ and a growing sense among the US military that the war in Iraq has
ground to a stalemate. So long as public attention is focused on the daily
setbacks and loss of life in Iraq – and, since late August, on the devastation
wrought by Hurricane Katrina – support for the President's military policies
will decline. At the same time, China's vast economic
expansion has finally begun to translate into improvements in its net military
capacity. Although most Chinese weapons are hopelessly obsolete – derived, in
many cases, from Soviet models of the 1950s and '60s – Beijing has used some of
its newfound wealth to purchase relatively modern arms from Russia, including
fighter planes, diesel-electric submarines and destroyers. China has also been
expanding its arsenal of short-range ballistic missiles, many capable of
striking Taiwan and Japan. Initially, discussion of China's
intensifying quest for foreign oil was largely confined to the business press.
But now, for the first time, it is being viewed as a national security matter -
that is, as a key factor in shaping US military policy. This outlook was first
given official _expression_ in the 2005 edition of the Pentagon's report on
Chinese military power. ‘China became the second largest consumer and third
largest importer of oil in 2003,’ the report notes. While none of this is likely to produce an
immediate rupture in US-Chinese relations -the forces favouring economic
cooperation are too strong to allow that - we can expect vigorous calls for an
ambitious US campaign to neutralize China's recent military initiatives. This campaign will take two forms: first, a drive to offset any
future gains in Chinese military strength through permanent US
military-technological superiority; and second, what can only be described as
the encirclement of China through the further acquisition of military bases and
the establishment of American-led, anti-Chinese alliances will continue. Elements of this strategy can be detected,
for example, in the 8 March testimony of Admiral William Fallon, Commander of
the US Pacific Command (PACOM), before the Senate Armed Services Committee. To counter China's latest initiatives,
Fallon called for improvements in US antimissile and antisubmarine warfare
(ASW) capabilities, along with a deepening of military ties with America's old
and new allies in the region. With respect to missile defense, for example, he stated that ‘an effective,
integrated and tiered system against ballistic missiles’ should be ‘a top
priority for development.’ Note that Fallon is not talking about a
conflict that might occur in the central or eastern Pacific, within reach of
America's shores; rather, he is talking about defeating Chinese forces in their
home waters, on the western rim of the Pacific. That US strategy is aimed at containing
China to its home territory is further evident from the plans he described for
enhanced military cooperation with US allies in the region. Typically, the cooperation will include
the delivery of arms and military assistance, joint military manoeuvres,
regular consultation among senior military officials and, in some cases,
expansion (or establishment) of US military bases. Chinese leaders are fully aware of their
glaring military inferiority vis-à-vis the United States, and so can be
expected to avoid a risky confrontation with Washington. But any nation, when confronted with
a major military build-up by a potential adversary off its shores, is bound to
feel threatened and will respond accordingly. For China, which has been
repeatedly invaded and occupied by foreign powers over the past few centuries,
and which clashed with US forces in Korea and Vietnam, the US build-up on its
doorstep must appear especially threatening. This is all bound to add momentum to the pendulum's swing towards a more
hostile US stance on China. But that outcome is not preordained. Future economic
conditions – a sharp rise in US interest rates, for example - could strengthen
the hand of those in Washington who seek to prevent a breach in US-Chinese
relations. The debate over China's military power and
the purported need for a major US build-up to counter China's recent arms
acquisitions will become increasingly heated in the months and years to come.
Questioning inflated Pentagon claims of Chinese strength and resisting the
trend toward a harsher anti-Chinese military stance are essential, therefore,
if we are to avert a costly and dangerous course. Michael T. Klare is defence
correspondent of The Nation. A version of this article
originally appeared in that magazine’s 24 October 2005 edition. http://www.thenation.com/doc/20051024/klare |
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