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Is China Trying to Bankrupt US? | ||||||
2011-06-10 | ||||||
One popular narrative credits the end of the Cold War to a US strategy to bankrupt the Soviet Union. Well aware of the advantage conferred by its superior economic performance, Washington pushed Moscow into a military competition that drained the USSR of its resources. In this narrative, US President Ronald Reagan's push to create a missile defence system -- realistic or not -- was the straw that broke the Soviet back. Are Chinese strategists pursuing a similar approach to the United States? Is Beijing pushing US buttons, forcing it to spend increasingly scarce resources on defence assets and diverting them from other more productive uses? Far-fetched though it may seem -- and the reasons to be sceptical are pretty compelling -- there is evidence that China is doing just that: ringing American alarm bells, forcing the US to respond, and compounding fiscal dilemmas within the United States. Call it Cold War redux.
Money is tight. In this era of new austerity, the United States has to make increasingly difficult choices about spending priorities. Both economic rationality and military purpose have to guide procurement. Defence Secretary Robert Gates tried to get in front of this process with a budget that cuts $100 billion in defence spending. He isn't trying to gut the military as some allege, but instead seeks to strengthen it with a long-term spending plan. His fear is that in the absence of such a proposal, ad hoc decisions (decisions not guided by a long-term strategy) will damage US capabilities. China is trying to shape that strategy -- not just by playing down its potential to threaten the United States but by playing up some of its capabilities. That's one way to read China's January 2007 anti-satellite test or the test of the stealth fighter in January of this year just as Gates was visiting China. China is trying to make its capabilities, no matter how nascent or premature, the focus of US planning and forcing the US to respond. While this theory -- that China would highlight its own threat to force a US response -- sounds far-fetched, it seems to be working. There's mounting concern in the defence community over China's deployment of an aircraft carrier and its anti-access area denial strategy. That's reasonable: hysteria and dire warnings about a transformation of the regional balance of power are not. Some Chinese strategists offer an explanation for the tests that have so inflamed US sensitivities that fits this grand design. One expert argues that China is hedging -- the tests both maintain Chinese capabilities and signal the United States that it can't hope to make 'a technological breakout' that China will not match. Beijing won't let the US monopolize high-tech capabilities. The flip side of that logic is that China will do enough to keep the United States on alert, if not hypersensitive to Chinese actions, and that will drive US decision-making. On the other hand, Henry Kissinger's recent tome notwithstanding, most observers don't credit the Chinese with the ability to be that strategic or far sighted, nor do they have a monolithic foreign policy establishment. In this context, the ASAT and fighter provocations could just as easily be explained as being the result of bureaucracies behaving badly, i.e., ministries failing to coordinate.
Some historians challenge the Cold War narrative upon which this 'strategy' is based, arguing that the Soviet Union collapsed from within with little help from the United States. That doesn't mean that the dangers of US implosion aren't real, however.
Most important, the United States must better leverage its strengths, in particular its relationships with allies, friends and partners. Alliances and relationships are force multipliers. The more tightly integrated the US and its allies, the more convincing the signal to potential adversaries that the United States is committed to the defence of those partners -- in other words, it strengthens our deterrent. And that is the most important element of our security strategy in the Asia Pacific.
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Posted by:Steve White |
#20 yes we can screw it up without the help of the Chinese, but they can come in and clean up after weÂ’re through; i.e., marginalize us to the point where we are as relevant as the fellow arguing with the TitanicÂ’s bartender over the bill. |
Posted by: Jack Salami 2011-06-10 21:50 |
#19 Morale is to material as is the ratio of three to one. |
Posted by: N. Buonaparte 2011-06-10 21:00 |
#18 This State Department scribbler has been plagiarizing Paul Kennedy - he hits us with a blizzard of words when a few simple facts would suffice - the relative sizes of the US and Soviet economies during the Cold War, and defense expenditures as a % of GDP. Do the same for China vis-a-vis the US, and you have some basis for comparison. Instead, the guy puts up a whole bunch of irrelevant facts and speeds to his pre-determined conclusion, a la Paul Kennedy, that the US is about to be buried by a Communist behemoth. His motto appears to be "Who are you going to believe, me or your lyin' eyes?" |
Posted by: Zhang Fei 2011-06-10 20:37 |
#17 May not be free anymore, Snowy, but thanks to the 2nd Amendment, we do still have the means to reclaim freedom (if not the will - yet.) |
Posted by: Lampedusa Sforza4564 2011-06-10 16:58 |
#16 Problem is, if every government-dependent out there is going to claim that you must make good every lie that's ever been told to them from FDR through LBJ and RMN on forward to WJC and BHO, well, YOU'RE NOT FREE. |
Posted by: Thing From Snowy Mountain 2011-06-10 14:53 |
#15 We're not going to implode. We have something the Soviets never had -- freedom. That means we're free to recognize our mistakes, and fix them. Current evidence suggests that we are... and that we can't anymore. |
Posted by: Secret Master 2011-06-10 14:16 |
#14 But it is peculiar that the inter-bank markets seized up just 2 months before the election as McCain was gaining ground on the Won. Most peculiar indeed. One theory I heard is that it was Chuck Schumer running his mouth about Indymac bank. The timing doesn't seem to be exactly right there but I still wouldn't put it past the likes of Schumer. Our relationship with China certainly doesn't seem to be very healthy. They sell us computers and then they devote an entire division of the PLA to hacking those computers. Will they get me for having the nerve to say so? I gotta say it anyway. The most disturbing part of the whole deal is the way our political and business leaders kowtow to the commie bastards. Sickening and scary. |
Posted by: Ebbang Uluque6305 2011-06-10 11:40 |
#13 The normalistic thinking is that the PRC are incrementalists. Their holdings of US debt and US security are far too important for them to want the US to implode. What they want are such things as: - an end to discussion of human rights in the PRC - decrease in sales of weapons to Taiwan - suppressing any thoughts of Japan getting nuclear weapons - an end to some tariff problems - no investigations of various Chinese biz practices, including the indirect bribery of Chinese by US firms doing biz in the PRC - a decrease in efforts to foil intellectual property theft in the PRC |
Posted by: Lord Garth 2011-06-10 11:28 |
#12 I think if I was China, holding all that US debt, I would be trading that debt for ownership of lots of teetering small banks that hold farm mortgages in the weather-ravaged breadbasket - then they can foreclose when the farms can't make their payments. (Assuming any banks still actually hold mortgages.) |
Posted by: Glenmore 2011-06-10 11:16 |
#11 Of course they are. They are handing us all the rope we need as we make a noose for ourselves. |
Posted by: DarthVader 2011-06-10 10:00 |
#10 no mo, Absolutely no proof. But it is peculiar that the inter-bank markets seized up just 2 months before the election as McCain was gaining ground on the Won. While the markets had become too fragile, it takes a lot to make them seize up. Markets seize up because of fear. Why the fear then? Coincidence? I'm still skeptical. It would take something more than Soros to generate that level of fear and I don't think he could keep his activities quiet this long. There has never been any real investigation of what happened. Why not? The government has not been forthcoming about who's behind all the cyber attacks, though it's pretty clear. It all puts one in a conspiratorial mind. And like the cyber attacks, it might not be the Chinese government directly. But China is a big place, not a monolith, and there a plenty of folks there who could be doing it for their own enrichment or other reason. That is why it was such a mistake to let them in the WTO. |
Posted by: Nimble Spemble 2011-06-10 09:30 |
#9 I had a friend growing up who had been captured by the Chinese during the Korean war. He escaped, the rest of his crew (who were being held separately) didn't and were never released after the end of the war. The average leftist's freedom to spew mindless snark about the communist/fascist threat was temporarily bought with a lot of sacrifice by by other people, whose names we don't even deign to acknowledge. |
Posted by: Thing From Snowy Mountain 2011-06-10 09:20 |
#8 of course China is out to phuque us, hello wake up people!! these people are lying cheating pigs who will stoop to ANY low to achieve their aims, study chinese history and get a grip, we need to phuque them before they phuque us. |
Posted by: 746 2011-06-10 09:17 |
#7 Yalu Peril IV, more dangerous than Japan, Russia, England. new song, same dance. |
Posted by: Black Bart Shick7973 2011-06-10 08:56 |
#6 Nimble Spemble wrote: "China was behind 9/15/08 and will give us a reprise for the 2012 election if we are not electing the preferred candidate. Though this time it might backfire." NS, this is a theory I haven't seen before, and it is intriguing. Most of the stuff I've seen relating to 9/15 relates to Soros and other wealthy socialist aristocrats in conjunction with union retirement fund managers. Not being a smartass here, Im truly interested - what evidence do you have of the Chicoms engineering that, either alone or in combo with the groups I mentioned? |
Posted by: no mo uro 2011-06-10 07:32 |
#5 I keep hearing that China has the most to loose from US faltering. Please could someone explain to me why this would be the case. In a static analysis, they would lose their $$$ in debt and their market. But they could see this a sunk cost. Look what they would then stand to gain. Clinton and the WSJ gave them the keys to hegemony on a silver platter when they allowed China in the WTO without it having become a democracy. China was behind 9/15/08 and will give us a reprise for the 2012 election if we are not electing the preferred candidate. Though this time it might backfire. The writer imagines the Chinese to be four feet tall and the Americans shrinking to two feet. And we are living down to those expectations. The Chinese would have to be greater fools not to take advantage of our foolishness. But it is we who have decided to be the fool, they have not forced us. Whether we can change our minds in time is the question. |
Posted by: Nimble Spemble 2011-06-10 07:16 |
#4 I keep hearing that China has the most to loose from US faltering. Please could someone explain to me why this would be the case. |
Posted by: Kojack 2011-06-10 07:00 |
#3 Nah, they just doing that comes natural: exporting a lot and importing a little. |
Posted by: gr(o)mgoru 2011-06-10 06:21 |
#2 Broadhead6 Exactly! China has the most to lose if the U.S. does decide to default... |
Posted by: Bright Pebbles 2011-06-10 04:56 |
#1 "Is China Trying to Bankrupt US?" Why would they need to try...our politicos are doing that well enough on their own... |
Posted by: Broadhead6 2011-06-10 03:10 |