And they call China a threat
... By David Isenberg
WASHINGTON - As threat documents go, the
latest version of the Pentagon's annual report,
"Military Power of the People's Republic of
China", released last month, is actually a fairly
reassuring document.
In contrast with its
now-distant predecessor, "Soviet Military Power",
put out during the administration of the late
president Ronald Reagan to justify increasing US
military expenditures by magnifying the Soviet
military threat, this report presents a picture of
a state that seeks to increase its great-power
status. Insofar as
alarming developments are
concerned, that is not one of them.
As a
global threat, China simply doesn't compare to the
old Soviet Union. The new Pentagon report
acknowledges China's limited military ability:
The People's Liberation Army (is pursuing
comprehensive transformation from a mass army
designed for protracted wars of attrition on its
territory to one capable of fighting and winning
short-duration, high-intensity conflicts against
high-tech adversaries - which China refers to as
"local wars under conditions of informatization".
China's ability to sustain military power
at a distance, at present, remains limited but, as
noted in the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review
Report, it "has the greatest potential to compete
militarily with the United States and field
disruptive military technologies that could over
time offset traditional US military advantage".
Some of what is passed off as potentially
or actually disturbing is laughable. For example,
the report states, "Actual Chinese defense
expenditures remain far above officially disclosed
figures." One could say exactly the same thing
about the United States.
For example, the
US administration's fiscal year 2007 budget
request of US$439 billion marks an increase of
about 27% in real terms since September 11, 2001.
That figure does not include $21.8 billion for
Department of Energy (DOE) spending on
nuclear-weapons activities.
Nor does it
include spending on the wars it is fighting in
Afghanistan and Iraq. When these costs are added
in, military spending for 2007 exceeded $600
billion - a figure that surpasses the spending
heights of both the Reagan military buildup and
the Vietnam War in inflation-adjusted dollars.
The report notes some military
developments in China without giving the full
background. For example, it states that Chinese
nuclear forces are enhancing their "strategic
strike capabilities", as evidenced by the DF-31
intercontinental ballistic missile achieving
"initial threat availability" in 2006.
But
as the Arms Control Wonk website observes, because
of debate over the 1996 National Intelligence
Estimate on ballistic-missile threats, political
pressure on the intelligence community led to the
creation of a designation of "initial threat
availability" to signal a missile that has been
successfully tested but not deployed. So even if a
missile has been tested just once, it can have an
"initial threat availability" status.
Thus
far, the DF-31 has not had an impressive test
record. The US intelligence community confirmed
three DF-31 tests in 1999-2000 but they all
failed. In fact, at the background briefing for
the press on May 25, even a Defense Department
official acknowledged its limitations:
Question: (off mike)
About terminology. Could you explain a little
further with regard to the DF-31 status what you
mean by initial threat availability? And also,
could you say a little bit more about what's
referenced in the report of China developing
methods to counter ballistic-missile defense?
Defense official: I can
address that question. When we say initial
threat availability, what we mean is that the
system is available and could be used if China's
leaders determine that they wanted to. The
distinction between initial threat availability
and initial operational capability is that right
now we assess that DF-31 may not be fully
integrated into the force structure, may not
have all the requisite supporting
personnel/equipment that we believe they would
need to have to be considered fully operational.
So I mean it's a distinction that says that the
system is ready or available now but it's not
necessarily fully operational.
Q:
Kind of like the US missile-defense
system? (Laughter.)
Some things the
report cites as noteworthy seem bizarre, as
threats go. For example, "Reflecting increasing
concerns over energy and resource needs, 2006 saw
the largest annual increase in new energy
contracts signed by China, including new
agreements with Saudi Arabia and several African
countries. China's effort to court African nations
in 2006 culminated with a November summit in
Beijing attended by 40 heads of state and
delegates from 48 of the 53 African nations."
In other words, China behaved like any
other state in terms of securing the resources it
needs to survive.
And, later on, the
report notes that China might have some legitimate
reasons for strengthening its military, as "at
present, China can neither protect its foreign
energy supplies nor the routes on which they
travel, including the Strait of Malacca, through
which some 80% of China's crude-oil imports
transit".
Much of the report contains
carefully hedged language that leaves it to the
reader's imagination to think the worst about what
China might do. For example, after noting that
China's near-term focus is on preparing for
military contingencies in the Taiwan Strait, it
states that "strategic thinking suggests Beijing
is also generating capabilities for other regional
contingencies".
David Isenberg
is a senior research analyst at the British
American Security Information Council, a member of
the Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy, a
research fellow at the Independent Institute, and
an adviser to the Straus Military Reform Project
of the Center for Defense Information, Washington.
These views are his own.
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2007 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved.
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