Yesterday in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, the Director Of National Intelligence, James Clapper, made a series of blunt statements which perturbed the senators massively. The remarks regarding the possibility of Gaddafi prevailing in the current insurgency were bad enough apparently. Even worse was Clapper's contention that Russia and China presented the greatest "mortal threats" to the US.
The Clapper testimony coming as it did on top of his earlier contention that the Muslim Brotherhood had become a primarily secular organization sent at least one powerful Republican senator, Lindsey Graham (SC), into high Earth orbit level dudgeon. The Chairman of the Armed Services Committee, the antediluvian Democrat from Michigan, Carl Levin, confessed himself nonplussed, saying that Iran and North Korea came to mind far ahead of Russia and China. With its usual courage and eagerness to defend honestly held and expressed conclusions, the White House dispatched National Security Advisor Tom Donilon to declare Clapper off the reservation and damn his interpretation of events in Libya as too static and having failed to take into account the fluid, dynamics of the situation.
A less impassioned view of the Clapper comments shows that the DNI was not being overly pessimistic. Nor does it show the man to be somehow demented or terminally out to lunch. Rather, the larger context indicates that Clapper, a man with nearly a half century in the intelligence racket, was providing an assessment based on capacities without regard to intentions.
The Geek has never been a fan of the Office of National Intelligence. He saw it (and sees it) as an unnecessary complication in the already overly complex US intelligence community. The ONI arguably is an artifact of Congress, a disfiguring carbuncle created by poorly informed politicians in response to an overly rapid and superficial analysis undertaken in the panic ridden aftermath of 9/11. The gestation of ONI was the consequence not so much of a documented need for such an addition but rather the result of the usual politician's need to appear to able to take charge and move out, to do something, anything, so as to reassure We the People that someone, somewhere, is taking care of the store.
The ONI and its Director are presumably the tip of the Great American Intelligence Community Pyramid. It is to be presumed that the DNI has the best analyses available predicated upon the totality of the best catch. So, what is wrong? Why are the senators--and some representatives--so torqued off with Clapper that they want his head detached from the rest of his body? Is Clapper's view so out of touch with the facts and the analyses that his comments merit only contempt?
Or does the retired Air Force general simply have a problem with words? Does he choose to speak too bluntly? Would he be better off if he were to have shaded his assessments, qualified them with appropriate covers of vagueness, and expressed them with well nuanced euphemisms?
Well, let's step back and take a closer look at what Clapper said and what predicates support his views.
The Muslim Brotherhood is a many faceted creature. As testimony before Representative King's subcommittee brought forth yesterday, the vast majority of Muslim terror plots in the US can be traced in one way or another to some faction or personality in the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. Homegrown terror appears to develop best if provided with foreign fertilizer.
At the same time, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood has had to learn to deal with the real world's real problems in realistic ways during its years of operating an impressive array of social and educational services throughout the country. It is not surprising that the Brotherhood has discovered the strictures and duties of the Koran do not provide all, or even most, of the solutions which must be constructed to meet the real and pressing needs of Egypt's massive impoverished population. This has provided a significant impetus to adopting secular answers to the challenges confronting the Egyptians.
The tension between these two poles of the Brotherhood has existed for some years. It has grown in recent months and weeks. The uprising in Egypt and the consequent removal of Hosni Mubarak have accelerated the growth of the tension.
This implies strongly that Clapper was not wrong in his assessment but did not express it in a way which properly noted that while tensions exist, it is too early to say with certainty that the Brotherhood would tilt more and more to the secular side of the continuum as the outflow from the Mubarak overthrow continues. He would have been far better off to have noted the foundations of the tensions, the results to date, and the range of most probable outcomes over the next few months.
In short, Clapper wasn't so much wrong as he was inarticulate.
In his assessment of Gaddafi's potential for success in the insurgency, Clapper was on solid ground. Gaddafi has billions of dollars worth of cash stashed in and around Tripoli. He has sufficient money to keep his mercenaries well paid. He has sufficient cash on hand to hire more. He has more than enough of the old vigorish to pay off his indigenous supporters. He even has enough bread to get more weapons and munitions on the black market where cash is king and ethics totally situational.
Given that Gaddafi has no safe harbor (other than, perhaps, Venezuela) as well as a world class case of megalomania, it is certain that he has the political will to continue the war. The US and the rest of the West have stiffened this political will by the threats of criminal prosecution. (Way to go, guys!)
At the same time, the insurgents have a number of very serious problems. Compared to the "elite" battalions of the Libyan army commanded by Gaddafi's kids, the rebels are untrained, poorly armed, badly organized, and overstretched in the logistics area. While they have many reasons to keep on fighting, the coherent political will required for protracted insurgency has not had time enough to develop. Also, compared to Gaddafi, the insurgents lack financial resources. This, in and of itself, is a major, major disadvantage.
Overall, the correlation of forces is such as to favor Gaddafi greatly over the longer term. The rebels failed to take the country by assault. Now the war is rather like a siege. There are serious reasons to doubt the capacity of the insurgents to maintain coherence and will as the siege drags on.
Neither the Senate nor the White House might have liked to hear Clapper's contentions. That does not make the DNI wrong. He would have been better off had he been vague, superficial, and hewed to the official White House line. Of course, this ignores the reality that intelligence officers are presumed to have the intellectual and moral courage necessary to tell it as they see it regardless of the reaction up the chain of command. In short, Clapper did his job.
Russia and China, "mortal threats" or not? James Clapper was asked to rate threats. He concluded, after having touched on Iran, North Korea, and violent political Islam, that Russia and China constituted the only "mortal threats" to the US. This assessment sent Graham into his high Earth orbit. This position nonplussed Levin. Clapper's words will also disturb the Boys in the Kremlin and the Trolls of Beijing, who will use the characterization as being "Cold War rhetoric" and similar shopworn slogans.
Clapper based his contention on perceptions of capability. This is a well established and conservative way to measure threats. There can be no doubt but in current and near term potential capabilities, only Russia and China present a genuine threat to the US as well as its national and strategic interests. Both countries have impressive conventional and nuclear forces today. Both are committed to major upgrades in both the conventional and nuclear areas. In either case, but more so with respect to China than Russia, the proposed procurement plans will result in forces far in excess of those necessary for purely defensive measures.
Both countries, again China more than Russia, are current threats with the capacity to deal a mortal blow to CONUS. Given the upgrades both are undertaking, each will be even more of a potentially "mortal threat" in a very few years.
It is true that the US has requested "clarification" from the Trolls of Beijing and the Boys in the Kremlin regarding current and future intentions. Neither have responded in unambiguous fashion. This is how it should be. No self-respecting nation-state would believe itself to be obligated to justify its military expenditures to another nation-state. (It boggles the mind that the Obama administration actually believed it had the right to ask let alone expect an honest answer from either county.)
Historically, intelligence agencies, military services, and governments have used perceptions of capability to equate with perceptions of intent. While Clapper did not directly address intent, his accurate assessment of capabilities demands close attention be paid to probable intents in both the Kremlin and Forbidden City. No one in Congress or the White House wants to do this.
If one takes Clapper's assessment to its logical conclusion, the US would have no choice but to assume the intentions of either or both the Boys in the Kremlin and the Trolls of Beijing are not beneficent toward the US. One would have no choice but to conclude that at the least either or both governments want to challenge US national and strategic interests. This would require the US to invest more in its own military capabilities both conventional and nuclear (as well as newer critical arenas such as space and cyberwarfare.)
Spending more on defense (to use the polite euphemism) is not a popular notion today. Ideology and fiscal constraints conspire to put defense on the slow track.
This is a tough matter. On the one hand, there is a strong impetus not to spend more on the military. On the other, the DNI honestly and too bluntly identified the "mortal threats" facing the US. So, the best answer is to do the equivalent of shooting the messenger. Denial is cheaper and ideologically more satisfying than facing a highly unpleasant and most inconvenient truth.
And, when the balloon does go up, when the US wakes up to find itself outclassed by one or two countries that have an agenda opposing our own, the politicians of both parties have an easy out. They will point fingers and claim with one united voice, "Intelligence failure!" Then they will create yet one more senior intelligence office.
Showing posts with label Chinese Military. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Chinese Military. Show all posts
Friday, March 11, 2011
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Back To Playing The Human Rights Card
The Obama administration in the person of Secretary of State Hilary Clinton has moved human rights back into play in the Great Game with China. This, of course, is a reversal of the earlier stance underscored by Ms Clinton in her remark early on in the Obama years that human rights would not be allowed to "interfere" in our relations with the Trolls of Beijing.
There is no doubt that the new emphasis on human rights pleases the folks on the Left. In addition to the domestic benefits of rediscovering that the Trolls are willing to repress any and all dissent, raising the issue of how the Chinese regime treats its citizens allows the US to attempt the insertion of a wedge between the more or less reform minded Trolls such as prime minister Wen Jiabao and the high command of the Peoples Liberation Army (PLA.) Such a wedge may prove beneficial to American interests next year when the five year term of the rather weak and pathetic President Hu comes to an end.
While that possibility exists it is too slight a reed to support any significant US policy regarding China. To put it bluntly but not inaccurately, the leadership of the Han tribe is not overly concerned with the views of the US or any other barbarian state in the amorphous area of human rights.
The reason for this is simple. The cohesion of the Han tribe is the absolute centrality of Chinese society, polity, and economy. For centuries the structural integrity of the Han has been seen as the cause of Chinese success and, conversely, any cracks in that integrity have been held responsible for Chinese failures. The social and political compact between rulers and ruled hinges on the capacity of the rulers to insist upon cohesion and the willingness of the ruled to accept cheerfully and fully the imposed collective integrity.
A member of the Han tribe who rejects or demurs from the requirements of cohesiveness has placed himself outside the tribe if not in opposition to it. The non-Han who happens to live in China, who perforce is a subject of the Han, has no voice in the matter. The role of the non-Han (roughly ten percent of the population) is to accept his lot in silence, grateful for whatever crumbs fall from the master's table while showing always a willingness to obey his betters. (Perhaps the non-Han can take some comfort from the fact that he lives within the Central Empire and not among the denizens of the outer darkness, the assorted barbarians of the world.)
The Han view is not one of recent origin. It has typified Chinese thinking for a long, long while. The notion of the Han as superior, of China as the Central Empire, was well developed back when the British were painting themselves blue and burning captives in wickerwork cages, since the days when Rome was a hick village on only one hill. The idea of the Han tribe, of the cohesion of the Han as central to the success or failure of China, has a long and honored history.
It is not surprising that the constellation of ideas which comprise the concept of the Han tribe and its necessary cohesion based on a compact binding rulers and ruled in a web of collective obligations has brought in its wake a large measure of xenophobia, a larger measure of supremacist ideology, and a hefty amount of indifference to the human rights of non-Han or the Han so ill-advised as to dissent from the imperatives of the tribe.
More than any other institution in China, the PLA is the custodian of the most robust expressions of Han supremacy. This means that the PLA is the most nationalistic as well as the most militaristic component of the Chinese state. As is the case with all continental powers, the army is the ultimate guarantor of both nationhood and statehood. But, this dynamic is magnified in China. Mao recognized this in his famed dictum that "political power comes from the muzzle of a gun."
In an ideal world cohesion comes from consensus. In the less than ideal world called reality, consensus is not always enough. Consensus must be reinforced by coercion from time to time. The military, today the PLA, is the instrument of coercion. Over the two dozen centuries of China's existence as an organized polity, the fate of the Han and their ruler have depended upon the capacity of the army to coerce effectively. The fate of the nation, the fate of the state, have waxed and wained according to the capacity of the army not only to defend borders, but, more importantly and often, to coerce effectively--to suppress dissent and force non-Han to accept subordination.
The current system of Chinese political organization came to pass because the PLA was more effective in coercing acceptance of Mao's version of Communism than was the army commanded by the Nationalists. China exists as it does today not because the PLA outfought its armed opponents, although it did so. China exists as it does primarily due to the efficiency with which the PLA suppressed dissent, forced consensus, and restored cohesion.
The PLA was the midwife of the Revolution. Since then it has been the ultimate protector and custodian of both nation and state. Had it not been for the effectiveness of the PLA in its internal security role, the wheels would have come off Mao's state during the Great Famine following the Great Leap Forward or as a result of the bloody consensus destroying excesses of the Cultural Revolution. And, it should never be forgotten that it was the tanks and bayonets of the PLA which in 1989 crushed the pro-democracy movement and bought the regime the time it needed to pursue economic liberalization with the results we are so well acquainted today.
The PLA at the senior levels knows perfectly well that the ambitions of the Trolls for regional hegemon status as well as its lofty plans for securing a Great Power role equivalent to if not surpassing that of the US depends upon its capacities. Likewise, the PLA command structure is well aware that the Trolls depend upon it to suppress the non-Han and squash any Han dissenters.
This implies that the level of civilian supremacy in China is not so high as Secretary of Defense Gates has pretended in public. The actual relation between civilian government and military high command is more like a co-dominion with Trolls and military chiefs being essentially equal.
From this one can draw a necessary inference: While both President Hu and Prime Minister Wen may genuflect before the totems of reform, democracy, and other warm fuzzies, when and if push comes to shove, the PLA is secure in its belief that it can impose and enforce the necessary degree of Han cohesiveness. As a result, the American hectoring about human rights can be ignored with impunity.
To a degree which surpasses the civilian Trolls, the commanders of the PLA are realpolitikers. They are also ideologues. This is a very dangerous combination. The high command of the PLA is of the view that China is entitled to be regional hegemon. It has a right to Taiwan. China is the Central Empire. These axioms mean that China must accept the probability of conflict with the US. The set of "givens" means the PLA must be prepared for war with the US.
The massive modernization of the PLA (fueled in large part by money from US consumers) is plainly aimed at the US. The continued acquisition of evermore sophisticated weaponry and other military equipment (some of which is the result of poorly considered co-production and similar agreements) is also aimed at the US. There is not a single aspect of Chinese military procurement or reorganization which is not far in excess of any realistic defensive need. Rather, each and every aspect of China's military reorientation and enhancement effort is offensive in nature. The only credible target of an offensively oriented Chinese military is the US.
In the face of this set of very unpleasant developments, the Obama administration's putting the human rights card into play during President Hu's state visit is less than pathetic. Rather the "new found assertiveness" promised by Secretary Clinton and President Obama is redolent of the tactics of desperation and hints at a strategy utterly lacking intellectual content.
We should consider ourselves fortunate if the Chinese president refrains from laughing.
There is no doubt that the new emphasis on human rights pleases the folks on the Left. In addition to the domestic benefits of rediscovering that the Trolls are willing to repress any and all dissent, raising the issue of how the Chinese regime treats its citizens allows the US to attempt the insertion of a wedge between the more or less reform minded Trolls such as prime minister Wen Jiabao and the high command of the Peoples Liberation Army (PLA.) Such a wedge may prove beneficial to American interests next year when the five year term of the rather weak and pathetic President Hu comes to an end.
While that possibility exists it is too slight a reed to support any significant US policy regarding China. To put it bluntly but not inaccurately, the leadership of the Han tribe is not overly concerned with the views of the US or any other barbarian state in the amorphous area of human rights.
The reason for this is simple. The cohesion of the Han tribe is the absolute centrality of Chinese society, polity, and economy. For centuries the structural integrity of the Han has been seen as the cause of Chinese success and, conversely, any cracks in that integrity have been held responsible for Chinese failures. The social and political compact between rulers and ruled hinges on the capacity of the rulers to insist upon cohesion and the willingness of the ruled to accept cheerfully and fully the imposed collective integrity.
A member of the Han tribe who rejects or demurs from the requirements of cohesiveness has placed himself outside the tribe if not in opposition to it. The non-Han who happens to live in China, who perforce is a subject of the Han, has no voice in the matter. The role of the non-Han (roughly ten percent of the population) is to accept his lot in silence, grateful for whatever crumbs fall from the master's table while showing always a willingness to obey his betters. (Perhaps the non-Han can take some comfort from the fact that he lives within the Central Empire and not among the denizens of the outer darkness, the assorted barbarians of the world.)
The Han view is not one of recent origin. It has typified Chinese thinking for a long, long while. The notion of the Han as superior, of China as the Central Empire, was well developed back when the British were painting themselves blue and burning captives in wickerwork cages, since the days when Rome was a hick village on only one hill. The idea of the Han tribe, of the cohesion of the Han as central to the success or failure of China, has a long and honored history.
It is not surprising that the constellation of ideas which comprise the concept of the Han tribe and its necessary cohesion based on a compact binding rulers and ruled in a web of collective obligations has brought in its wake a large measure of xenophobia, a larger measure of supremacist ideology, and a hefty amount of indifference to the human rights of non-Han or the Han so ill-advised as to dissent from the imperatives of the tribe.
More than any other institution in China, the PLA is the custodian of the most robust expressions of Han supremacy. This means that the PLA is the most nationalistic as well as the most militaristic component of the Chinese state. As is the case with all continental powers, the army is the ultimate guarantor of both nationhood and statehood. But, this dynamic is magnified in China. Mao recognized this in his famed dictum that "political power comes from the muzzle of a gun."
In an ideal world cohesion comes from consensus. In the less than ideal world called reality, consensus is not always enough. Consensus must be reinforced by coercion from time to time. The military, today the PLA, is the instrument of coercion. Over the two dozen centuries of China's existence as an organized polity, the fate of the Han and their ruler have depended upon the capacity of the army to coerce effectively. The fate of the nation, the fate of the state, have waxed and wained according to the capacity of the army not only to defend borders, but, more importantly and often, to coerce effectively--to suppress dissent and force non-Han to accept subordination.
The current system of Chinese political organization came to pass because the PLA was more effective in coercing acceptance of Mao's version of Communism than was the army commanded by the Nationalists. China exists as it does today not because the PLA outfought its armed opponents, although it did so. China exists as it does primarily due to the efficiency with which the PLA suppressed dissent, forced consensus, and restored cohesion.
The PLA was the midwife of the Revolution. Since then it has been the ultimate protector and custodian of both nation and state. Had it not been for the effectiveness of the PLA in its internal security role, the wheels would have come off Mao's state during the Great Famine following the Great Leap Forward or as a result of the bloody consensus destroying excesses of the Cultural Revolution. And, it should never be forgotten that it was the tanks and bayonets of the PLA which in 1989 crushed the pro-democracy movement and bought the regime the time it needed to pursue economic liberalization with the results we are so well acquainted today.
The PLA at the senior levels knows perfectly well that the ambitions of the Trolls for regional hegemon status as well as its lofty plans for securing a Great Power role equivalent to if not surpassing that of the US depends upon its capacities. Likewise, the PLA command structure is well aware that the Trolls depend upon it to suppress the non-Han and squash any Han dissenters.
This implies that the level of civilian supremacy in China is not so high as Secretary of Defense Gates has pretended in public. The actual relation between civilian government and military high command is more like a co-dominion with Trolls and military chiefs being essentially equal.
From this one can draw a necessary inference: While both President Hu and Prime Minister Wen may genuflect before the totems of reform, democracy, and other warm fuzzies, when and if push comes to shove, the PLA is secure in its belief that it can impose and enforce the necessary degree of Han cohesiveness. As a result, the American hectoring about human rights can be ignored with impunity.
To a degree which surpasses the civilian Trolls, the commanders of the PLA are realpolitikers. They are also ideologues. This is a very dangerous combination. The high command of the PLA is of the view that China is entitled to be regional hegemon. It has a right to Taiwan. China is the Central Empire. These axioms mean that China must accept the probability of conflict with the US. The set of "givens" means the PLA must be prepared for war with the US.
The massive modernization of the PLA (fueled in large part by money from US consumers) is plainly aimed at the US. The continued acquisition of evermore sophisticated weaponry and other military equipment (some of which is the result of poorly considered co-production and similar agreements) is also aimed at the US. There is not a single aspect of Chinese military procurement or reorganization which is not far in excess of any realistic defensive need. Rather, each and every aspect of China's military reorientation and enhancement effort is offensive in nature. The only credible target of an offensively oriented Chinese military is the US.
In the face of this set of very unpleasant developments, the Obama administration's putting the human rights card into play during President Hu's state visit is less than pathetic. Rather the "new found assertiveness" promised by Secretary Clinton and President Obama is redolent of the tactics of desperation and hints at a strategy utterly lacking intellectual content.
We should consider ourselves fortunate if the Chinese president refrains from laughing.
Monday, January 17, 2011
Then There Is China
When neo-liberal Bill Clinton "opened" the door to China, the Geek went into one of his here-there-be-tygers moods. Contrary to the peace, love, and flower power words of the Arkansas Terror, the Geek viewed the normalization of trade and financial relations with the "Central Empire" (to use the most accurate translation of the ancient Chinese term for their country) as a severe self-inflicted injury to the US and its national interests.
The Geek made a set of fearless predictions in those bygone days to assorted military and foreign policy audiences. Among those were a massive hemorrhage of dollars and jobs to the benefit of the Trolls of Beijing. He also warned that the self-same Trolls would use their bushels of bucks to do the following: massively ramp up their military capacities, purchase allies wherever possible, seek exploitable fossil fuels particularly oil and national gas, seek to immunize themselves against crop failures, and, lastly but most importantly, undertake all measures possible to become both the regional hegemon of Asia and a Great Power able to limit the ability of the US to operate on the world stage.
The Geek's credible imitation of Cassandra was pooh-poohed by many who were in the audiences but the Geek serenely assured all, "Just wait fifteen years or so." Well within the time limit, all the dreary forecasts have proven correct as well as other, equally dismal, events not foreseen by the Geek. The Geek missed, for example, the Chinese scarfing up of Uncle Sam's IOU's to say nothing of the extent of the debt which was to come. He also failed to see that the Trolls would pursue crop failure immunization by purchasing farmlands in Africa by the multiples of square miles. He also overlooked Chinese ventures in strategic metals. But, overall he did get the picture correct.
In return for the loss of jobs--even entire industries and cargo ships filled with bucks--the American public got mounds of non-essential but inexpensive consumer expendables courtesy of the big boxes with Walmart at the forefront. More than the biblical character, We the People sold out our heritage for a mess of potage--shoddy pottage at that.
The Han Chinese, courtesy of the differing ideological imperatives of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush abetted by the sheer greed of the American consumer and the bottomline fixation of American businesses, have become the largest, most coherent, and self-confident tribe on the planet's surface. The combination of economic success, personal enrichment, an ever more powerful military, a very self-assured and authoritarian leadership have given the Han tribe both the political will and material capacity to treat the rest of the world, the barbarians, as a pseudo-colonial environment upon which to work their will.
The Central Empire has returned--on steroids.
The Chief Troll, President Hu Jintao, is soon to arrive for a state visit with President Obama. While President Hu is arguably the weakest chief of state since Mao declared the revolution to have succeeded over sixty years ago, his coming to Washington is an imperial procession, the Emperor meets the Chief Barbarian. It will be interesting to see the optics of the visit, to see if the given-to-fawning American president bows and kowtows in appropriately servile fashion.
It is commonplace to assert that the current relations of the US with China are "troubled" or passing through a period of "difficulties." This sort of terminology not only belabors the obvious but masks the fundamental reality.
The ground truth is that the US and China are rivals in a zero sum game. Insofar as the Trolls gain an advantage diplomatically, economically, or militarily the US loses. Insofar as the US can maintain the status quo, the Trolls lose. And, should the US miraculously reverse the negative trend of the past decade and more, the Trolls lose big time.
These considerations as well as the nature of the specific game of nations now being played by the US and China imply that the upcoming Hu-Obama confab has powerful subtexts at work below the facade of ruffles, flourishes, and banquets. The stakes are very high. One can be sure President Hu knows this. One cannot be so sure that Mr Obama does.
The reason for uncertainty regarding President Obama stems from the fact that while the Trolls practice a realpolitik of remorseless and ruthless sort, the American does not. Neither Mr Obama nor some senior members of his administration--think Secretary of State Clinton--are given to realpolitik other than on an episodic basis. This puts the Americans at a profound disadvantage when facing men who pursue the national and strategic interests of China all the time.
The American president has shown that he has no clue regarding the essential nature of national interest. He appears unaware that national and strategic interests are both subjective and defined only by the government and associate elite in any given nation-state. He also shows no sensitivity to the role played by history, both objective and subjective, in the formation and pursuit of national interest based goals. This means that Mr Obama and other key players on his "foreign policy team" are both blind and deaf in comparison with their Chinese interlocutors.
Given the profoundly different historical predicates of contemporary national interests as well as the zero sum nature of the game being played, it is arguable that the US and China have very few, if any, coinciding national interests. The gulf between the world views and perceived interests of both countries may be greater than that which existed between the US and the Soviet Union in the Fifties and Sixties.
A good illustration of the differences between the Cold War on the one hand and today's zero sum game with China is seen in the very conservatism of the Soviet leadership. The Soviets never sought to extend their influence as broadly and blatantly as have the Trolls in places far removed from the homeland. China has shown a capacity for "adventurism" in Africa, for example, far surpassing even the most ambitious aspirations of the Soviets during the post-Vietnam decade.
China's lack of cooperation on Iran or North Korea also has been emblematic of the gulf in national interests between the US and Beijing. Quite simply, the Trolls see little if anything threatening about the Iranian nuclear quest. Their intelligence and diplomatic establishments have discounted (correctly) any negatives emerging from the Iranian quarter. They have no interests directly involved in the Gulf states or the Mideast generally. The Chinese interest in Iran is limited to oil and money. As a consequence, leaning in the direction of Tehran suits the Trolls perfectly. The collateral benefit of the Iranian contretemps fostering division and diversion in the West is just a bit of frosting on the cake.
Maintaining the status quo in North Korea is what Beijing focuses on. The matters of nuclear weapons research and development or companion work on missiles is of no interest to the Chinese as the Trolls have the means and will to assure no threats come their way. The Trolls are rightly worried about a disastrous miscalculation in Pyongyang and will take the minimum necessary steps to reduce that potential. They will and are doing the same in the event of governmental collapse in the Hermit Kingdom.
The game moves from non-cooperation to direct confrontation in Southeast Asia. The Trolls are of the view that they are the regional hegemon by right. In short, the Trolls have picked up the mantel once worn by the Imperial Japanese. As a consequence, the countries of Southeast Asia have cozied up to the US. This gravitational movement has set the stage for direct confrontation between the US and China.
In Southeast Asia and the western Pacific littoral, the confrontation must be direct. Unlike the Soviet Union during the Cold War, the Trolls have no credible local proxies to wage the war on their behalf. The various and sundry proxy wars of the Seventies and Eighties gave the US and the Soviet Union an automatic firebreak and thus precluded escalation which, once started, must eventually run the risk of crossing the nuclear threshold. With the possible exception of Burma--a proxy of a proxy--China has no straw men to set up to do their dirty work in the region.
The Chinese awareness of the direct nature of the potential confrontation has been made manifest in their new weaponry and doctrine. The ballistic missile powered "spike from space" is directed against the floating sovereignty of an American aircraft carrier. The recently test flown J-20 is anti-US in its missions. Cyberwar is the hottest game in China--with the US as the main target.
Against this the US is operating in a--to put it mildly--budget constrained environment. The US will be cutting its defense establishment as the Chinese continue to develop theirs. While the Americans enjoy some technological advantages as with the next generation of remotely operated and autonomous unmanned platforms, we should not overvalue the advantages this confers. Nor is the US well advised to do in the future what it has done so often in the past, undervalue the capacities of an Asian adversary.
The Trolls do, fortunately, face some very real challenges at home. Inflation is growing and this may succeed where American importuning has failed, cause the Trolls to appreciate the value of their currency. China is also facing twin crises of farmland degradation and decline in the agricultural water supply. This will put a very real squeeze on the Trolls just as the majority of their citizens have come to appreciate a Western style diet. With the explosive growth in personal motor vehicle ownership, China will need ever greater amounts of oil at a low price lest the population suffer a crisis of rising expectations.
In addition, the Han tribe faces challenges from the ten percent of the population which is non-Han. The inevitable requirement will be for more and more repression. Ramping up repression will cause collateral and potentially destabilizing effects on members of the Han tribe. Balancing the needs for repression of the minority while assuring a minimal but growing amount of freedom for the educated youth of the Han tribe will prove to be a non-trivial problem for the Trolls of Beijing.
Recent polls have shown a disturbing acceptance of American decline and Chinese ascendancy on the part of a large segment of We the People. There is no need for this sort of bland indifference, for this meek agreement to an evermore constricted global role for the US. The worst need not come to pass if the present administration as well as what and whoever comes to the Oval in 2013 plays a realistic game of pursuing American national interest.
It is to be hoped that Obama 2.0 contains a backbone as well as an eye for American supremacy. The test comes off camera during the state visit. It comes not with respect to any American hectoring over Chinese respect for human rights but rather in the blunt or soft speaking on matters military and diplomatic. The test comes with President Obama either saying or avoiding saying, "Here I stand. I can do no other."
The Geek made a set of fearless predictions in those bygone days to assorted military and foreign policy audiences. Among those were a massive hemorrhage of dollars and jobs to the benefit of the Trolls of Beijing. He also warned that the self-same Trolls would use their bushels of bucks to do the following: massively ramp up their military capacities, purchase allies wherever possible, seek exploitable fossil fuels particularly oil and national gas, seek to immunize themselves against crop failures, and, lastly but most importantly, undertake all measures possible to become both the regional hegemon of Asia and a Great Power able to limit the ability of the US to operate on the world stage.
The Geek's credible imitation of Cassandra was pooh-poohed by many who were in the audiences but the Geek serenely assured all, "Just wait fifteen years or so." Well within the time limit, all the dreary forecasts have proven correct as well as other, equally dismal, events not foreseen by the Geek. The Geek missed, for example, the Chinese scarfing up of Uncle Sam's IOU's to say nothing of the extent of the debt which was to come. He also failed to see that the Trolls would pursue crop failure immunization by purchasing farmlands in Africa by the multiples of square miles. He also overlooked Chinese ventures in strategic metals. But, overall he did get the picture correct.
In return for the loss of jobs--even entire industries and cargo ships filled with bucks--the American public got mounds of non-essential but inexpensive consumer expendables courtesy of the big boxes with Walmart at the forefront. More than the biblical character, We the People sold out our heritage for a mess of potage--shoddy pottage at that.
The Han Chinese, courtesy of the differing ideological imperatives of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush abetted by the sheer greed of the American consumer and the bottomline fixation of American businesses, have become the largest, most coherent, and self-confident tribe on the planet's surface. The combination of economic success, personal enrichment, an ever more powerful military, a very self-assured and authoritarian leadership have given the Han tribe both the political will and material capacity to treat the rest of the world, the barbarians, as a pseudo-colonial environment upon which to work their will.
The Central Empire has returned--on steroids.
The Chief Troll, President Hu Jintao, is soon to arrive for a state visit with President Obama. While President Hu is arguably the weakest chief of state since Mao declared the revolution to have succeeded over sixty years ago, his coming to Washington is an imperial procession, the Emperor meets the Chief Barbarian. It will be interesting to see the optics of the visit, to see if the given-to-fawning American president bows and kowtows in appropriately servile fashion.
It is commonplace to assert that the current relations of the US with China are "troubled" or passing through a period of "difficulties." This sort of terminology not only belabors the obvious but masks the fundamental reality.
The ground truth is that the US and China are rivals in a zero sum game. Insofar as the Trolls gain an advantage diplomatically, economically, or militarily the US loses. Insofar as the US can maintain the status quo, the Trolls lose. And, should the US miraculously reverse the negative trend of the past decade and more, the Trolls lose big time.
These considerations as well as the nature of the specific game of nations now being played by the US and China imply that the upcoming Hu-Obama confab has powerful subtexts at work below the facade of ruffles, flourishes, and banquets. The stakes are very high. One can be sure President Hu knows this. One cannot be so sure that Mr Obama does.
The reason for uncertainty regarding President Obama stems from the fact that while the Trolls practice a realpolitik of remorseless and ruthless sort, the American does not. Neither Mr Obama nor some senior members of his administration--think Secretary of State Clinton--are given to realpolitik other than on an episodic basis. This puts the Americans at a profound disadvantage when facing men who pursue the national and strategic interests of China all the time.
The American president has shown that he has no clue regarding the essential nature of national interest. He appears unaware that national and strategic interests are both subjective and defined only by the government and associate elite in any given nation-state. He also shows no sensitivity to the role played by history, both objective and subjective, in the formation and pursuit of national interest based goals. This means that Mr Obama and other key players on his "foreign policy team" are both blind and deaf in comparison with their Chinese interlocutors.
Given the profoundly different historical predicates of contemporary national interests as well as the zero sum nature of the game being played, it is arguable that the US and China have very few, if any, coinciding national interests. The gulf between the world views and perceived interests of both countries may be greater than that which existed between the US and the Soviet Union in the Fifties and Sixties.
A good illustration of the differences between the Cold War on the one hand and today's zero sum game with China is seen in the very conservatism of the Soviet leadership. The Soviets never sought to extend their influence as broadly and blatantly as have the Trolls in places far removed from the homeland. China has shown a capacity for "adventurism" in Africa, for example, far surpassing even the most ambitious aspirations of the Soviets during the post-Vietnam decade.
China's lack of cooperation on Iran or North Korea also has been emblematic of the gulf in national interests between the US and Beijing. Quite simply, the Trolls see little if anything threatening about the Iranian nuclear quest. Their intelligence and diplomatic establishments have discounted (correctly) any negatives emerging from the Iranian quarter. They have no interests directly involved in the Gulf states or the Mideast generally. The Chinese interest in Iran is limited to oil and money. As a consequence, leaning in the direction of Tehran suits the Trolls perfectly. The collateral benefit of the Iranian contretemps fostering division and diversion in the West is just a bit of frosting on the cake.
Maintaining the status quo in North Korea is what Beijing focuses on. The matters of nuclear weapons research and development or companion work on missiles is of no interest to the Chinese as the Trolls have the means and will to assure no threats come their way. The Trolls are rightly worried about a disastrous miscalculation in Pyongyang and will take the minimum necessary steps to reduce that potential. They will and are doing the same in the event of governmental collapse in the Hermit Kingdom.
The game moves from non-cooperation to direct confrontation in Southeast Asia. The Trolls are of the view that they are the regional hegemon by right. In short, the Trolls have picked up the mantel once worn by the Imperial Japanese. As a consequence, the countries of Southeast Asia have cozied up to the US. This gravitational movement has set the stage for direct confrontation between the US and China.
In Southeast Asia and the western Pacific littoral, the confrontation must be direct. Unlike the Soviet Union during the Cold War, the Trolls have no credible local proxies to wage the war on their behalf. The various and sundry proxy wars of the Seventies and Eighties gave the US and the Soviet Union an automatic firebreak and thus precluded escalation which, once started, must eventually run the risk of crossing the nuclear threshold. With the possible exception of Burma--a proxy of a proxy--China has no straw men to set up to do their dirty work in the region.
The Chinese awareness of the direct nature of the potential confrontation has been made manifest in their new weaponry and doctrine. The ballistic missile powered "spike from space" is directed against the floating sovereignty of an American aircraft carrier. The recently test flown J-20 is anti-US in its missions. Cyberwar is the hottest game in China--with the US as the main target.
Against this the US is operating in a--to put it mildly--budget constrained environment. The US will be cutting its defense establishment as the Chinese continue to develop theirs. While the Americans enjoy some technological advantages as with the next generation of remotely operated and autonomous unmanned platforms, we should not overvalue the advantages this confers. Nor is the US well advised to do in the future what it has done so often in the past, undervalue the capacities of an Asian adversary.
The Trolls do, fortunately, face some very real challenges at home. Inflation is growing and this may succeed where American importuning has failed, cause the Trolls to appreciate the value of their currency. China is also facing twin crises of farmland degradation and decline in the agricultural water supply. This will put a very real squeeze on the Trolls just as the majority of their citizens have come to appreciate a Western style diet. With the explosive growth in personal motor vehicle ownership, China will need ever greater amounts of oil at a low price lest the population suffer a crisis of rising expectations.
In addition, the Han tribe faces challenges from the ten percent of the population which is non-Han. The inevitable requirement will be for more and more repression. Ramping up repression will cause collateral and potentially destabilizing effects on members of the Han tribe. Balancing the needs for repression of the minority while assuring a minimal but growing amount of freedom for the educated youth of the Han tribe will prove to be a non-trivial problem for the Trolls of Beijing.
Recent polls have shown a disturbing acceptance of American decline and Chinese ascendancy on the part of a large segment of We the People. There is no need for this sort of bland indifference, for this meek agreement to an evermore constricted global role for the US. The worst need not come to pass if the present administration as well as what and whoever comes to the Oval in 2013 plays a realistic game of pursuing American national interest.
It is to be hoped that Obama 2.0 contains a backbone as well as an eye for American supremacy. The test comes off camera during the state visit. It comes not with respect to any American hectoring over Chinese respect for human rights but rather in the blunt or soft speaking on matters military and diplomatic. The test comes with President Obama either saying or avoiding saying, "Here I stand. I can do no other."
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