Chinese military power and America's future in the western Pacific

Just yesterday I read Mike Few's interview in Small Wars Journal of Stephen Glain (pdf), author of the new (and rather unfortunately-titled) book State vs. Defense. I've not yet read the book, but portions of it have been published in adapted form in various places around the internet over the last several weeks. Glain makes a provocative argument, and one that I think has a solid and troubling basis in truth: that American foreign policy is overly militarized and securitized, that this trend is a near-inevitable result of the way our political system produces foreign and defense policies, and that the problem is most clearly manifest in the dramatic disparity in resources devoted to the Pentagon and the State Department.

This is a book that needed to be written and needs to be read, particularly when it's juxtaposed with pollyannaish tracts trumpeting the achievements of the modern cooperative military, like Derek Reveron's dire apologia entitled Exporting Security. But having already seen a very little reaction to Glain's work, I fear that his outsider perspective and occasionally overstated claims may detract from the overall impact of his argument; many military officers and defense analysts who would otherwise be sympathetic to his conclusions will be put off by his aspersions and won't recognize the Manichean struggle he describes.

I bring this up now because I very much enjoyed Glain's insights on China as expressed in the SWJ interview, and I wanted to share them here.

China was not our largest creditor ten years ago and, most significantly, it is unlikely to be our largest creditor in ten years’ time. The Chinese know the U.S. dollar is a diminishing asset and it is likely to continue depreciating along with the credibility of our lawmakers in Washington. No doubt Beijing, like Wall Street, is gaming out ways of reducing its exposure to the dollar without destabilizing the world’s $4 trillion foreign exchange market. If there are only so many Swiss francs China can buy for dollars it can convert its reserves into tangible assets like real estate. Either way, we console ourselves with the MAD theory of Sino-U.S. economic relations at our peril.

Strategically, there is nothing in three thousand years of recorded history to suggest China will assert itself militarily worldwide, particularly given how successful it has been wooing resource-rich developing states through commercial means. China clearly regards itself as the once-and-future overlord of Asia, however, which puts it on a collision course with the Pentagon. Here, Washington and Beijing are talking past each other in a rather ominous way. The Americans say they welcome China’s peaceful ascent while refusing to concede its authority over the Asian littoral, to say nothing of its deep-water seaways. The Chinese, meanwhile, claim dominion over the South China Seas and other disputed waters while implying they expect nothing less than the kind of regional hegemony Washington carved out for itself in the Americas throughout the nineteenth century. Absent a vigorous diplomatic effort to reconcile these discordant positions, I fear some kind of Sino-American conflict is inevitable. [...]

Washington must also know that China, as the world’s second-largest economy with three millennia of history as a regional power, will seek to impose its own Monroe Doctrine in Asia and it must acknowledge its limits in opposing this. Attempts to "contain" China would result in a decidedly asymmetrical contest that would exhaust America’s already depleted accounts but which Beijing could sustain at relatively low cost to itself.

I am more sanguine than Glain about the prospects for peaceful management of the U.S.-China relationship in the future. It seems certain that this is a result of my greater confindence in the U.S. foreign and security policy establishment to think strategically and behave rationally, a confidence that's inexplicable in light of my tendency to offer near-constant criticism of America's strategic failures. But I'd like to believe that we'll develop a somewhat more sophisticated understanding of our economic and security interests in the future, an understanding that will allow us to perceive and react to the legitimate interests of others in cool-headed and even-handed fashion, one that will help us move past the current fad for primacy everywhere and at all times.

A guy can dream, right?

Relatedly, the Defense Department's annual report (pdf) on "the current and probable future course of military-technological development of the People's Liberation Army and the tenets and probable development of Chinese security strategy and military strategy" -- mandated by Congress since the FY 2000 NDAA -- was published today. (In a week, it would've been six months late.) Kate Brannen summarizes and excerpts the report's contents here for Defense News.

Time to end the "Treat Them Mean and Make Them Like It" Doctrine

President Obama has cancelled a trip to Australia, Indonesia, and Guam. Again. Granted, I am not an expert on strategic issues in the Pacific, but this strikes me as a really bad move. Twice now the White House has cancelled this visit to an important ally and a country with whom we've been trying to improve relations because of domestic issues.

I'm not sure why the President has adopted a "treat them mean and make them like it" approach with many of our allies - especially our closest allies with whom we're trying to get support from for a number of missions around the world (mainly Afghanistan). While Obama is still highly popular in Australia, snubbing an ally twice with whom we have a (limited) mutual defense agreement will not help in maintaining Australian support in Afghanistan. Like most U.S. relationships, bilateral relations more important to the other partner and not to the U.S. Australia seems very aware of this fact and concerned that they do much more for us than we do for them - much like what has been happing with the UK as of late.

The consequences of cancelling this trip will probably not include any significant changes to U.S.-Australian relations directly. But it could have an effect on Australian politics - PM Kevin Rudd is getting hammered in the polls because of his own domestic issues and stands to lose his job some time in the fall. I have no idea if it means that Labor gets a new leader or the Liberals actually ascend, but KRudd was hoping for a bump in his numbers by the visit. Well, that's not going to happen now. I'm not saying that it's in the President's interests to ensure continuity of power in other nations, but with yet another Japanese government transition, I don't think a revolving door of governments with our closest allies in the region is in our interests. Who knows what effects that a new Aussie government would have on the Trilateral Security Dialogue when we're still trying to figure out how things are going to work out with Japan. With all the current shenanigans on Korean Peninsula and tensions over Okinawa, etc., helping shore up the current Australian government seems to me to be in the U.S.'s best interests.

I guess this wouldn't rankle me as much if there were a better reason for the cancellation. I thought the first trip was rightfully cancelled as getting the health care bill through required Obama's personal touch. But the oil spill? Unless he intends to go to Louisiana and start scrubbing crude off of birds, I don't see how he couldn't oversee this operation from Air Force One or Canberra like he does from the White House. Especially from a guy who claimed he could walk and chew bubble gum at the same time - the President needs to be better balance his domestic and foreign policies. I think it's time we start treating our allies like we actually like them.