A notable but modest milestone, says Gordon. Damn straight.ARTICLE: "To Build Trust, U.S. Navy Holds a Drill With China," by Michael R. Gordon, New York Times, 23 September 2006, p. A5.
One Chinese ship off the coast of California. It's a start: "the first time that ships from the two navies have worked directly with each other in a search and rescue training session."
This show always starts with things like pass ex's or SARs. Modest, simple, but it gets the ball rolling.
This is all Fox Fallon's doing, and he's gotten no support and some significant pushback from Rummy's Pentagon on the subject (please, no PACOM disclaimers are required--let me stipulate "we're all on the same page here" when everyone knows we're not).
Fallon admits as much:
Frankly, from the military side we have not been very engaged with these folks in the last five years. We are attempting to build a new relationship to try to establish a foundation and hopefully at some level of trust.Later in the piece, Fallon gets more blunt:
It isn't a clone of the Soviet Union. However, there are institutions of our government that seem to act in a manner that has just transferred whatever we thought the Soviet Union was, and we have moved it into China and we kind of do things in the same manner, which I think is incorrect.The real hawks want nothing to do with China, and the careful ones, like an expert on the Chinese military quoted in the piece, will tell you that no real cooperation with the Chinese is possible during crisis because our militaries are structured differently. The former are the real roadblocks Fallon is working against, while the latter view simply discounts the reality that China is working hard to modernize its military on our model (many analysts see this as a dangerous catch-up attempt), thus our historic opportunity for influence. Plus, I don't want to cooperate only with China during crises. I want alliance from stem to stern.
Fallon's a great and courageous guy. I wish him all the best. He's doing God's work.