US's real intention is to contain China?
(Jan. 15, 2006)In recent years it's been a vogue in Chinese defence research and academic think tanks to posit that the real strategic intention of the United States is to contain growing Chinese power.
International relations analysts in Beijing and Shanghai used to tell me that " China feels pressure from the sea," a reference to substantial US naval forces in the region.
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After September 11, these same analysts suggested that China might begin “feeling pressure from the west,” indicating concern over growing counter-terrorism forces the US has stationed in Central Asia.
Given additional build up of US forces in places like Guam, and rumours of beefing up Wake Island, it's easy to see how Chinese security analysts can look at the empirical data and come up with the conclusions they do.
Then there is the apparent strengthening of military cooperation and strategic redirection of the US-Japan Alliance. With the on-going tensions between Japan and China it is natural for analysts in China to assume the worst.
So what's really going on? Is the US deliberately - under the guise of fighting terrorists - drawing a strategic noose around China's neck?
For answers we should first look at who is doing the analysing in China. Most of my colleagues in Beijing and Shanghai are academics with little or no military experience, and no practical understanding of the use of military force. They would easily confuse the role of a naval aircraft carrier task force with that of an infantry division. More subtly, it is easy for those who would carry on a secret strategy of their own to impute the same motives and desires to others.
Second, it is helpful to look at the capabilities and intent of US forces stationed around China's periphery.
Take South Korea, for example. US forces are there for one purpose only, and that is to deter aggression against South Korea, and win decisively should aggression occur.
The Eighth Army - the principal US fighting force on the Peninsula - has no capability to project power onto Mainland China. It is almost entirely a ground force and oriented only toward the defence of South Korea.
In Central Asia, US forces are stationed in a number of bases, all with the primary mission to defeat terrorists.
It is ridiculous to think that the US military in Central Asia has any capability to project power against China's western areas. Besides, what would possibly be their objective if they could - the vast, relatively unpopulated, unindustrialised reaches of arid land in China's west?
As for US-Japan partnership, the main reason is to deter aggression and fight successfully if deterrence fails.
During the Cold War this meant being prepared to fight the Soviet Union and North Korea.
Today, increasingly, deterrence is directed toward China should it decide to use force to unite with Taiwan - the only conceivable reason that the US and China would come to blows.
And except for the period of the Vietnam War, US force structure in Asia Pacific has always been less than it was in Europe, and its posture more widely dispersed.
Now that the US is in the process of rebalancing its forces globally to better fight the War On Terrorists, additional force strength has been withdrawn from Asia
Pacific and a larger number will be pulled out of Europe.
Most of these military billets will come back to the US while the remainder will be redistributed to regions closer to hotbeds of terrorists.
To balance diminishing US force strength in Asia Pacific, Japan is being asked to make a slightly greater military commitment to the alliance. There is no doubt Japan can do this, but can this be done in a way that allays the concerns of Chinese analysts?
In the final analysis the worries of my Chinese colleagues fail the test of reasonableness.
The US is not drawing a strategic ring of military bases around China, and except for deterring aggression against Taiwan, has no intention or capability to contain the rising power of China.
The writer is a senior defence analyst in Washington, D.C.and a frequent visitor to Asia. He contributes this article to Lianhe Zaobao.
(boxun.com)
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