ARTICLE: Inside the Ring, By Bill Gertz, Washington Times, August 17, 2007

I would agree with the Air Force general: such a proposal, while quite promising, feels like going all the way on the first date. It's just unrealistic for us to opt out of the Western Pacific (why lose the connectivity?), especially since the Chinese are nowhere near capable of filling our shoes in strategic terms. Simply put, their navy just couldn't pull it off and won't be able to for a significant historical learning curve. We just didn't step into this job one afternoon. It was decades in the learning/making. Then there's just the trust factor: China's rebranding of its military is extremely embryonic at this point (arguably, non-existent). It's just nowhere near being trusted enough by locals to aspire to such a role, especially absent some East Asia NATO-like overlay. So very nice to see as a proposal (to the extent it's not just a cynical ploy of overreaching Chinese military types), but we'd need years of coalition operations before that discussion-leading-to-a-proposal-such-as-this would make any sense. Our response should be to push such coalition ops. So joint patrols, yes. But divvying up the Pacific? No way. Thanks to Greg Lowe for sending this.