Chinese threats

The near term:

...the focus is squarely on China. Just as the Pentagon once published annual reports on "Soviet Military Power" and "Soviet Space Power," it now issues annual reports on Chinese military capabilities; they are far better than the old analyses of Soviet power, but the analysis remains spotty. For instance, the recent congressionally mandated report, "Military Power of the People's Republic of China 2006," from the defense secretary's office, covers many Chinese military innovations — including a new doctrine of modern warfare and the purchase of more advanced weapons systems — but failed to predict a "hit to kill" anti-satellite test...

The longer term:

China advances and we decline because, among other things, its vision is disciplined and clear, while ours is burdened by fear, decadence and officials who understand neither Chinese grand strategy nor its nuclear component.

This has led the United States unwittingly to encourage China to move toward nuclear parity. In the next five years, as we reduce our arsenal from 10,000 strategic warheads to 1,700 [or up to 2,200 actually, emphasis added - MC], China's MIRV'd silo-based missiles and imminent generations of MIRV'd mobile and sea-based ICBMs will easily allow a breakout from warhead numbers now variously estimated to range from 80 to 1,800.

[...]

[The Chinese] know that every facet of America's economy, military and society depends on individual and networked electronic devices. Were these to fail all at once and irreparably, the nation would seize up, perhaps for years.

Faced with victory, or with loss, they might choose to -- and who would venture to guarantee that they would not? -- detonate half a dozen high-megatonnage nuclear charges in the mesosphere, in an electro-magnetic pulse (EMP) strike perhaps not even in American airspace, cooking almost every circuit and semiconductor, rendering the American government blind, deaf and dumber than it is already and the country unable to resist the inroads that would surely follow...

The long run:

...Mann argues...foreign critics of China's human rights abuses are told not to be so outspoken. After all, there is no point in hurting Chinese feelings or making the Chinese authorities dig in their heels. Mann is particularly scathing about what he describes as the "Lexicon of Dismissal." Criticism of China is dismissed as "bashing," "provocative" or "anti-China" (a favorite of the Chinese themselves), and any such censure always runs the risk of turning China into an enemy.

In his anger over this muzzling trend, Mann comes close to seeing a conspiracy by well-meaning but self-serving American elites -- with, of course, the happy acquiescence of the Chinese communists -- to keep the United States investing in and trading with China.

[...]

...What would it mean for the United States -- and, indeed, the world -- if 20 or 30 years from now a much richer and more powerful China proved to be every bit as authoritarian a state as it is today? What if that China were one in which the middle classes decided, much as they did in Hitler's Germany, to opt for stability and prosperity over democracy?

Mann thinks that scenario highly likely, even if he does not share the alarmist view now taking root in some Washington circles that China is going to challenge the United States militarily...[?]

Indeed. As the case of Nazi Germany clearly indicates, there is no necessary correlation between an advanced economy and good domestic or international behaviour--to put it mildly. One might note also that many these days see Bush's America as an almost equally "rogue state".

Mark C.

Update: There are lies, damn lies, and statistics:

China will boost defence spending by 17.8% in 2007...

...international experts have estimated that China's true military spending may be three or more times the official figure, with much money involving weapons development and purchases, secret programs and businesses, and paramilitary forces not shown in the public books...

Posted by markc at March 4, 2007 07:38 PM