Preparing for the inevitable in China

"In China, Troubling Signs Of an Overheating Economy," by Keith Bradsher, New York Times, 14 April, p. C1.

Yes, China's economy is overheating. Yes, the bubble will eventually be punctured and China will slow down or even contract a bit for some period. And yes, this will be a painful period for China that brings on a significant economic and political rule-set reset.

China is growing so fast and integrating with the global economy so quickly that all this must be expected. The question isn't: will it happen? The question is: how can we help move China down better pathways when the inevitable rule-set reset is triggered?

What we need to avoid most of all is scaring them needlessly down some path of withdrawal from the world or military confrontation with either Taiwan or the U.S. Are we doing enough in this regard? If you listen to U.S. Pacific Command (whose strategic planning documents routinely cite "Barnett's Gap"), I see a U.S. military keenly aware of its enabling role in China's progressive integration into the Functioning Core. But if you check out the Pentagon's long-range threat planning, it is all China! China! China!

There are actually intell analysts in my neck of the woods who openly voice the opinion that China "is looking ten-feet tall"ócode for "completely replacing the old Red Army threat!" This is complete nonsense, of course, but it shows how desperate some within Pentagon planning circles are to find the great power enemy worth plotting against.

Guess who will be yelling "I told you so" about the "scary situation" in China come the crash? Security experts hell-bent on building some fabulous and hugely expensive force to wage war with China in the Taiwan Straits somewhere around 2025. Most don't know their ass from their elbows on what China's really all about right now. They just know they like their "near-peer competitors" big, bad and communist.

I just hope more peopleósmarter peopleóinside the U.S. Government are planning better long-term strategies vis-‡-vis China. I fear this is not the case, because only the Pentagon really engages in such long-term strategizing, and that is a shame given their tendencies to myopically focus only on worst-case scenarios. It leaves us with a military that spends the vast majority of its resources betting on the complete failure of U.S. national security strategy instead of aggressively working to see that strategy succeed.

This is why the Pentagon needs a new map.