|
|
|
|
Cornering the
dragon
By Conn Hallinan
(Posted with permission from Foreign Policy in Focus)
When newly appointed Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA) director Porter Goss recently warned
that China's modernization of its military posed a
direct threat to the United States, was it
standard budget time scare tactics, or did it
signal the growing influence of hardliners in the
administration of President Bush who want to
"contain" China and reinstitute the Cold War in
Asia?
A day later, Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld delivered a similar message to the
Senate Armed Services Committee. Rumsfeld claimed
that within a decade the Chinese navy could
surpass the US navy, and that China was
"increasingly moving their navy further from
shore".
The 2005 Quadrennial Defense
Review will reportedly take a similarly alarmist
view of China's military.
The CIA and
Pentagon assessments offer nothing particularly
new in their military analysis of China. However,
both specifically excluded any mention of US-China
cooperation around North Korea or last year's CIA
analysis that growing economic ties between China
and the US made military conflict less likely.
"It is a little surprising," James
Steinberg, former national security advisor in the
(former president) Bill Clinton administration
told the Financial Times, "that it [the CIA
assessment] didn't say anything about the enormous
emphasis China places on a stable international
environment and constructive relations with the
US."
But not so surprising if the long
battle between those in the Republican Party who
favor engagement with China has begun to tip in
favor of those who advocate confrontation and
encirclement.
As Nation defense
correspondent and Hampshire College professor
Michael Klare pointed out in 2001, this division
in the Republican Party goes back to the earliest
days of the Cold War. For some two decades the
hardliners, with their close ties to Chang
Kai-shek on Taiwan, dominated US-China policy. But
lured by the potential of China's markets, and
anxious to widen the Sino-Soviet division, the
engagement wing of the party seized the initiative
with secretary of state Henry Kissinger's trip to
China in 1971, establishing relations with
Beijing.
The old confrontationist "China
lobby" was hardly dead, however. Using the immense
wealth of the Scalife, Olin and Carthage
foundations under the umbrella of the highly
influential American Enterprise Institute (AEI),
the "lobby" recruited a group of well-placed,
powerful political figures.
AEI members
include neo-conservative icons like Lynne Cheney,
Charles Murry, Michael Novak, Irving Kristol, Ben
Wattenberg, Frank Gaffney and Michael Ledeen. The
AEI is closely aligned with the Project for a New
American Century (PNAC), the group that
successfully lobbied for "regime change" in Iraq
and argues that it is a strategic necessity for
the US to control the world's oil supplies.
PNAC, the brainchild of the AEI's Kristol,
includes among its members Vice President Dick
Cheney, Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul
Wolfowitz, former State Department officials
Richard Armitage and John Bolton, and other
leading administration figures like Elliot Abrams,
Richard Perle and Zalmay Khalilzad, presently US
Ambassador to Afghanistan.
The
confrontationists' goals are much the same as they
were in the opening years of the Cold War: ring
China with military bases, support Taiwanese
independence, and, in Kristol's words, "Work for
the fall of the Communist Party oligarchy in
China."
In short, corner the dragon.
Recent events suggest that the
confrontationist wing is back in the driver's
seat.
Containment redux?
Goss'
and Rumsfeld's characterization of China
contradicts last year's conclusions of the
administration's Independent Task Force on Chinese
Military Power headed by former defense secretary
Harold Brown and retired admiral Joseph Prueher.
The panel found that while China is modernizing
its military, it is 20 years behind the US and
that "the balance between the United States and
China, both globally and in Asia, is likely to
remain decisively in America's favor beyond the
next 20 years".
China's military budget is
less than one tenth that of the US and it does not
have a massive arms industry, preferring to
purchase submarines, destroyers, aircraft and high
performance anti-aircraft missiles from Russia and
Israel. In spite of Rumsfeld's grim forecast, the
Chinese navy is designed for defending its
territorial waters, not projecting force
elsewhere. While the US has a dozen aircraft
carriers, China has one, and an old obsolete
Soviet one at that.
While China has
deployed large numbers of intermediate-range
ballistic missiles facing Taiwan, most observers
see this more as an attempt to intimidate the
Taiwanese than as a prelude to invasion or a
threat to US forces in the region. The missiles
are far too inaccurate to pose a military threat,
on top of which Taiwan has become so central to
China's economy that any actual attack on the
island would be an act of economic suicide.
Jonathan Pollack, director of the
Strategic Research Department of the US Naval War
College, told The New York Times that while China
did have the largest standing army in the world
and was in the process of modernizing, "I don't
see these capabilities as the leading edge of a
more comprehensive, long-term plan to either
supplement US military power in the Western
Pacific or challenge US power on a global scale,"
adding, "Let's not make them out to be 10 feet
tall."
The Bush administration has always
had a somewhat schizophrenic approach to China,
with one faction preaching engagement, the other
confrontation. Early in his first term, Bush
warned that the US would do "whatever it took" to
defend Taiwan, changed the designation of China
from "strategic partner" to "strategic
competitor", and initiated a campaign of
aggressive military surveillance which ultimately
led to the downing of a US Navy EP-3E spy plane on
Hainan Island.
On the other hand, the
administration has encouraged trade, welcomed
China to the World Trade Organization, and up to
recently, muted its rhetoric on Taiwan. Late last
year, then secretary of state Colin Powell warned
Taiwan not to seek independence and said that US
policy favored its "peaceful reunification" with
China.
Trade and Powell notwithstanding,
however, any close examination of the
administration's actions vis-a-vis China suggests
the engagement wing is in eclipse.
A
central goal of the confrontationists has been to
deploy an anti-ballistic missile shield (ABM) in
Asia, which the administration is now in the
process of doing. So far it has enlisted Japan and
Australia in this effort, and it is wooing India
as well. While the rationale for the ABM is
alleged to be North Korea, the real target is
China's 20 intercontinental ballistic missiles
(ICBMs).
The strategy of ringing China
with US military bases is also well underway.
Besides its traditional bases in Japan and South
Korea, Guam has become, according to Pacific
Commander Admiral William Fargo, a "power
projection hub", that will play an increasing role
in Asia, with "geo-strategic importance". The
island already hosts B-52s, fighter planes,
nuclear attack submarines, and the high-altitude
spy drone, the Global Hawk. Since Guam is a US
colony acquired during the Spanish American war,
the military does not need permission for the
buildup, as it would in Japan or Korea.
The US is also attempting to build bases
in Southeast and South Asia. While Indonesian
authorities deny the story, the Singapore Times
reports that the US is presently negotiating to
open a naval base on Sulawesi Island. It is also
strengthening military ties to Thailand,
Singapore, India, Sri Lanka, and Malaysia.
The encirclement has also spread to
Central Asia, an important source of oil and gas
for China. The US presently has bases in
Kyrgyzstan, Afghanistan and Tajikistan, and
military ties with Uzbekistan, which, according to
Rumsfeld, are "growing stronger by the month".
Several of these countries border China.
The Chinese response has been to increase
their military budget, particularly in response to
the US ABM system. "Once the United States
believes it has a strong spear and a strong
shield," Sha Zukang, a leading Chinese arms expert
told The New York Times, "it could lead them to
conclude that no one can hurt the United States
and they can harm anyone they like anywhere in the
world."
The Chinese currently have 20
CSS-4 ICBMs, but appear to be increasing that
force to between 75 and 100 missiles, as well as
upgrading the CSS-4's guidance systems. It is also
only a matter of time before China puts multiple
warheads (MIRVs) on their missiles, a deeply
destabilizing move. MIRVing is a cost-effective
way to overwhelm an ABM system, but one that can
also tempt an adversary to launch a first-strike
attack.
China is also deploying
missile-firing submarines to offset the US buildup
in the Taiwan Strait.
The "containment"
policies of the hawks have not damaged the growing
Chinese economy - now the world's third largest -
or shaken the grip of the Chinese Communist Party.
But they have accelerated an arms race in the
region, fueled growing nationalist movements in
both China and Japan, and raised the stakes of any
potential clash over Taiwan.
The last time
the "China Lobby" tried to contain China, it was a
country devastated by World War II and its own
civil war. Today it is a nuclear-armed giant,
whose economic growth has lifted economies from
Tokyo to Rio de Janeiro. Americans need to ask
themselves: is it really a good idea to push that
dragon into a corner?
Conn
Hallinan is a foreign policy analyst for
Foreign Policy In Focus and a lecturer in
journalism at the University of California, Santa
Cruz.
(Posted with permission from Foreign Policy in
Focus) |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
All material on this
website is copyright and may not be republished in any form without written
permission.
© Copyright 1999 - 2005 Asia Times
Online Ltd.
|
|
Head
Office: Rm 202, Hau Fook Mansion, No. 8 Hau Fook St., Kowloon, Hong
Kong
Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
|
Asian Sex Gazette China Sex News
|
|
|
