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Why does US rev up China threat?
By Michael T. Klare (The Nation)
Updated: 2005-10-08 15:38 The third notable event was the release, in July, of the Pentagon's report on
Chinese combat capabilities, The Military Power of the People's Republic of
China. According to press reports, publication of this unclassified document was
delayed for several weeks in order to remove or soften some of the more
pointedly anti-Chinese comments, to avoid further provoking China before George
W. Bush's November visit there. In many ways the published version is judicious
in tone, stressing the weaknesses as well as the strengths of China's military
establishment. Nevertheless, the main thrust of the report is that China is
expanding its capacity to fight wars beyond its own territory and that this
effort constitutes a dangerous challenge to global order. "The pace and scope of
China's military build-up are, already, such as to put regional military
balances at risk," the report states. "Current trends in China's military
modernization could provide China with a force capable of prosecuting a range of
military operations in Asia — well beyond Taiwan — potentially posing a credible
threat to modern militaries operating in the region."
China's attempt to
purchase American-based Unocal, a business transaction, was
rejected by the US company under US congressional
pressure, unexpectedly setting off rifts in U.S.-China relations.
[CBS/AP] | This annual report, mandated by
Congress in 2000, is intended as a comprehensive analysis, not a policy
document. However, the policy implications of the 2005 report are self-evident:
If China is acquiring a greater capacity to threaten "modern militaries
operating in the region" — presumably including those of the United States and
Japan — then urgent action is needed to offset Chinese military initiatives. For
this very reason the document triggered a firestorm of criticism in China. "This
report ignores fact in order to do everything it can to disseminate the 'China
threat theory,'" a senior foreign ministry official told the American ambassador
at a hastily arranged meeting. "It crudely interferes in China's internal
affairs and is a provocation against China's relations with other countries."
While much of this was going on, the American public and mass media were
preoccupied with another source of tension between the United States and China:
the attempted purchase of the California-based Unocal Corporation by the Chinese
National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC). This attempt received far greater
attention in the media than did the events described above, yet it will have a
far less significant impact on U.S.-Chinese relations than will the Pentagon's
shift to a more belligerent, anti-Chinese stance — one that greatly increases
the likelihood of a debilitating and dangerous military competition between the
United States and China.
What lies behind this momentous shift? At its root is the continuing
influence of conservative strategists who have long championed a policy of
permanent U.S. military supremacy. This outlook was first expressed in 1992 in
the Defense Planning Guidance (DPG) for fiscal years 1994-99, a master blueprint
for U.S. dominance in the post-cold war era. Prepared under the supervision of
then-Under Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and leaked to the press in early
1992, the DPG called for concerted efforts to prevent the rise of a future
military competitor. "Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a
new rival...that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly by the
Soviet Union," the document stated. Accordingly, "we [must] endeavor to prevent
any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under
consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power." This has remained
the guiding principle for U.S. supremacists ever since.
In this new century the injunction to prevent the emergence of a new rival
"that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly by the Soviet Union"
can apply only to China, as no other potential adversary possesses a credible
capacity to "generate global power." Hence the preservation of American
supremacy into "the far realm of the future," as then-Governor George W. Bush
put it in a 1999 campaign speech, required the permanent containment of China —
and this is what Rice, Rumsfeld and their associates set out to do when they
assumed office in early 2001.
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