{"id":16151,"date":"2012-08-17T08:21:56","date_gmt":"2012-08-17T16:21:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=16151"},"modified":"2012-08-17T12:51:33","modified_gmt":"2012-08-17T20:51:33","slug":"inventing-the-chinese-threat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2012\/08\/17\/inventing-the-chinese-threat\/","title":{"rendered":"Inventing the Chinese Threat"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Since the disappearance of the Soviet Union,” writes<\/a> James Dobbins at RAND Corp., “China has become America’s default adversary, the power against which the United States measures itself militarily, at least when there is no more proximate enemy in sight.”<\/p>\n

I know what you’re thinking: What has China ever done to us? What villainous offense have they committed to our well-being or our interests? It can’t possibly be the case that China is our “default adversary” just because the Soviet Union is gone, can it?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Well, yes it can. As Colin Powell, former Secretary of State and retired four-star general, said<\/a> about the fall of the Soviet Union, Washington was\u00a0remorseful that we “lost our best enemy.” The system \u2013 the \u201cwhole structure,\u201d Powell explained, “depended on there being a Soviet Union that might attack us.”\u00a0He said Mikhail Gorbachev sat across the table from him at the time and said apologetically “Ah, General, I’m sorry, you’ll have to find a new enemy.”<\/p>\n

When people in Washington and their surrogates in the mass media punditry crow about our other trumped up threat, they at least have a laundry list of alleged transgressions. You know the list: they support terrorism, they want to wipe Israel off the map, they’re secretly building nuclear weapons, they killed US soldiers invading and occupying neighboring Iraq, etc. With China, there is no such list. China’s mere existence as anything other than a vassal state is the major transgression. As James Holmes has written<\/a> in the National Interest<\/em>, China “presents the sternest ‘anti-access’ challenge of any prospective antagonist.” In other words, they resist US interventionism and military presence.\u00a0China is gaining power and influence, which ought to be solely American prerogatives, as far as Washington is concerned.<\/p>\n

This is the reasoning behind President Obama’s strategic shift into Asia-Pacific, announced by the administration last year. This so-called \u2018Asia pivot\u2019 is\u00a0an aggressive policy that involves surging American military presence<\/a>\u00a0throughout the region<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 in the Philippines, Japan, Australia, Guam, South Korea, Singapore, etc. \u2013 and backing basically all of China\u2019s rivals.<\/p>\n

More than that, the Pentagon is drawing up\u00a0new plans<\/a>\u00a0to prepare for an air and sea war\u00a0in Asia.\u00a0\u201cAs part of the\u00a0Air-Sea Battle<\/a>\u00a0concept,\u201d\u00a0reports Military.com<\/a>, the US is\u00a0refurbishing<\/a>\u00a0old WWII bases,\u00a0looking<\/a>\u00a0\u201cto disperse its air forces stationed at its handful of major bases in the western Pacific in the event of a major conflict with China.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Source: BBC<\/p><\/div>\n

The idea is to have enough US bases peppered throughout the region so that China would be too surrounded to safely attack. \u201cDoing so would make it more difficult for China to wipe out entire squadrons sitting on the ground with surprise attacks from its long range ballistic missiles.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chinese officials have not appreciated this unprovoked bellicosity. In May the Chinese Defense Ministry\u00a0accused the Pentagon<\/a>\u00a0of hyping a Chinese military threat out of thin air. Others have said these Pentagon moves could start an arms race. “If the U.S. military develops Air-Sea Battle to deal with the [People\u2019s Liberation Army], the PLA will be forced to develop anti-Air-Sea Battle,\u201d one officer, Col.\u00a0Gaoyue Fan, said last year in a debate sponsored by the Center for Strategic and International Studies.<\/p>\n

“Some Asia analysts worry that conventional strikes aimed at China could spark a nuclear war,\u201d according to the Washington Post<\/em><\/a>. Other \u201ccritics see a dangerous tendency toward alarmism that is exaggerating the China threat to drive up defense spending.\u201d<\/p>\n

“While China’s overall military capabilities will not equal those of the United States anytime soon,” Dobbins puzzlingly warns, “it will more quickly achieve local superiority in its immediate neighborhood, first in and around Taiwan and then at somewhat greater distances.”<\/p>\n

In consequence, the direct defense of contested assets in that region will become progressively more difficult, eventually approaching impossible. The United States will therefore become increasingly dependent on escalatory options for defense and retaliatory capabilities for deterrence. American nuclear superiority is not likely to be much help in this regard, both because China will retain a second-strike capability and because the issues at stake in most potential crises are not of vital consequence to the United States.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So, even though China’s “local superiority” has effects that “are not of vital consequence to the United States,” it’s important that we rely on “escalatory” military options to prevent it from happening? Dobbins then suggests strategies, which are already being carried out:<\/p>\n

One means of improving the prospects for direct defense and reducing the risk of escalation is for the United States to enable the capabilities and buttress the resolve of China’s neighbors. Such a strategy should not be\u2014or be seen\u2014as a U.S. attempt to encircle or align the region against China, lest it produce greater Chinese hostility.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Except that it is\u00a0<\/em>producing greater hostility from China.\u00a0A\u00a0recent report from the CSIS<\/a>\u00a0predicted that\u00a0next year \u201ccould see a shift in Chinese foreign policy based on the new leadership\u2019s judgment that it must respond to a US strategy that seeks to prevent China\u2019s reemergence as a great power.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSigns of a potential harsh reaction are already detectable,\u201d the report said. \u201cThe US Asia pivot has triggered an outpouring of anti-American sentiment in China that will increase pressure on China\u2019s incoming leadership to stand up to the United States. Nationalistic voices are calling for military countermeasures to the bolstering of America\u2019s military posture in the region and the new US defense strategic guidelines.\u201d<\/p>\n

There is no reason to pick a fight with China, whether it induces conventional warfare or a new Cold War. China hasn’t harmed our interests or our security. Washington just wants to flex its muscles and prove that it still represents the greatest mafia<\/a> among all the world’s mafias<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Since the disappearance of the Soviet Union,” writes James Dobbins at RAND Corp., “China has become America’s default adversary, the power against which the United States measures itself militarily, at least when there is no more proximate enemy in sight.” I know what you’re thinking: What has China ever done to us? What villainous offense […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":86,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-16151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16151","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/86"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16151"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16151\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16169,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16151\/revisions\/16169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16151"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=16151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}