Chinese military threat skyrockets just as Gates previews his defense cuts! Eta nye slyuchaina!
Thursday, January 6, 2011 at 9:46AM 
Gates announces his force structure cuts today on the Hill, culminating the burst of "sudden revelations" covered in the MSM about Chinese naval developments.
The PLAN submits a plan to build a carrier over the decade, but the WSJ describes it's "imminent deployment" (imminent apparently being in the latter years of this decade).
The Chinese "carrier killer" missile is deployed and operational, claims PACOM, except it admits that it won't have the capacity to hit any moving ship until after "several years" of testing, so it's "operational" and "deployed" but not "fully operational." The WSJ dutifully reports that the DF-21D is likewise looking at its "imminent deployment" -- again, correct if "imminent" means . . . oh . . 5 or 6 years from now.
In yesterday's WSJ we see on page one the first images of China's 5th gen stealth fighter making a "taxi test." I can only assume it will be "operational" and "deployed" any minute now, despite being in testing for the next several years.
All of these announcements are meant to blow us away with the Chinese build-up, and we're getting this feed now because of the Gates' announcement on cuts and the initial presentation of the budget to Congress. This is very similar to the drumbeat of stories about cyberwarfare that led up to the standing up of USCYBERCOM. You could call it "defense porn" or just plain propaganda and you'd be right.
But when we step back from the hype, you have to ask yourself what exactly do we expect to accomplish here?
Do we expect to somehow scare the Chinese into NOT building up their military as their economy expands so rapidly? Is there any history that says this build-up is weird or provocative given China's rise? We have several hundred military facilities around the world and regional commands that cover the world. Does China have anything like that? Are they outspending us or spending somewhere in the range of 1/6th of our budget? Are they intervening around the world with their forces or is the exact opposite true and they're actually free-riding on all of our efforts?
More narrowly: Can we expect to maintain a confident supremacy over the Chinese military WRT to a small island just off its coast? Is that a realistic and practical force-sizing principle? Or is it open-ended in the extreme?
China's military is going to keep building up. We can continue to encourage its focus on a big-war force by matching it in its neighborhood, but then we rule out enlisting Chinese help to protect China's ever-expanding global resourcing network, meaning we're effectively providing China a global security umbrella and allowing it focus on building a big-war force that we are determined to counter and remain supreme over in the single most stressing scenario imaginable (instantly reversing an invasion of a small island nation off their coast).
Anybody think we're going to be able to pay for such go-it-alone-ism globally while standing down the Chinese build-up in East Asia given our current and growing insolvency? Sense any "realism" in this path or just full-specturm fear-mongering?
We were told by Team Obama that America would no longer seek to play unilateral global hegemon ("Primacy" as Paul Wolfowitz dubbed it), but the truth is, our national security establishment is crammed full of experts who believe in exactly that, even as few would identify themselves as neocons. America must, in their opinion, dominate all domains of warfare and all players in all domains of warfare, because ANYTHING less means we've lost our grip on the world--the WORLD I tell you!
This is classic America being unable to handle the success of its multidecade globalization process. We built a world in which multiple rising great powers could be accommodated peacefully, and yet now, as they display the temerity of actually moving in the direction of having militaries commensurate with their status, we're stunned to contemplate no longer dominating the planet militarily as we have over the past two, truly anomalous decades.
And so our answer is to freak out and demonize China, who just happens to be our huge trade and financial partner in the global economy--the same country which must help us "rebalance" both OUR economy and the world economy.
Spot a disconnect there?
Watch, just watch this sort of hype be used by Congress to fight Gates' reduction plan tooth and nail. Their true intentions will be about jobs in their home districts, but the effect will be the same.
America is not handling this moment in history very well, and Obama is proving to be anything BUT transformational. The GOP is no help whatsoever. There is far more business-as-usual here than real change.
So get used to being very afraid about the world, because that is what everybody is selling right now in Washington.
Yes, the real and serious adjustments will eventually be forced upon us by circumstances. I was just hoping we could meet them head-on thanks to real leadership. But we have no real leaders today--just followers and "good soldiers" and party "stalwarts."
Reader Comments (3)
Again, the folly of believing that China desires an offensive Military to be capable of attacking the US is just that . . Folly . .
As I continue to assert, if China wanted to attack the US, all they'd need is a lawyer with a foreclosure document . .
Currently the largest Economy in the world has the largest Military in the world . . Perhaps the upcoming "Largest Economy in the world" might need a better or at least equal defense, 'spose?
We're held hostage by a small island off the coast of China and a small country in the eastern Med. Great Britain went to war over small group of islands off the coast of Argentina. Overly simplistic parallel? Perhaps, but perhaps not.
Well deconstructed, Tom. Almost reminiscent of a '60s "missile gap," no?