Two recent views on China's military threat: First, Gary Schmitt's article "The Power China is Building" in washingtonpost.com:
... And now, as China adds hundreds of advanced fighters; builds scores of new submarines, frigates and destroyers; modernizes and expands its strategic nuclear arsenal; and fields hundreds of new theater-range missiles, the argument is that China is bent on building up its military capabilities to unprecedented levels because it sees the United States spending more on its military than it has since World War II.
There is some truth in that point, but only some. The fact is that the Chinese military buildup really began after the demise of the Soviet Union -- that is, precisely when China had the least reason to worry about its defense needs. And the buildup continued during a period when the United States was cutting its own defense budget by significant amounts. Moreover, no other Asian regional power was putting forward double-digit defense increases. To the contrary, Taiwan -- presumably China's main military concern -- was slashing its defense budget. And Japan, the only possible regional "great power" competitor to China, was suffering from a decade of economic stagnation, with a static defense budget to match.....
And second, in reply to Schmitt's article, Tom Barnett's post "Criteria for a real conversation:"
... America can't manage a Cold War-like rivalry with China plus a Long War against radical extremism, and frankly, China can't come close to managing either, given its hundreds of millions living on less than a dollar a day and their supremely rapidly rising elder population. Run the numbers down the road and they simply do not compute.
But Schmitt unabashedly wants a far larger U.S. Defense budget and makes no bones about it, so China's "scores" of Russian platforms must impress. But as someone who spent some time studying Soviet military capabilities, especially naval ones, I remain unimpressed.
China's capabilities place it in the same zip code as Britain's in numbers, but hardly in skills (frankly, I'd take India's navy over China's). Ask yourself what Britain can manage right now as an independent global power and what it would take from the Brits to "stand in our way" as a hostile one and you'll get a sense of the huge capabilities gap that still remains.
As China rises, we can choose to shape that rise, or we can try to counter it. What we can't do is prevent it.....
Comments