President Bush and his top aides entered the White House in early 2001 with
a clear strategic objective: to resurrect the permanent-dominance doctrine
spelled out in the Defense Planning Guidance (DPG) for fiscal years 1994-99,
the first formal statement of U.S. strategic goals in the post-Soviet era.
According to the initial official draft of this document, as leaked to the
press in early 1992, the primary aim of U.S. strategy would be to bar the rise
of any future competitor that might challenge America's overwhelming military
superiority.
"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."
When initially made public, this doctrine was condemned by America's allies
and many domestic leaders as being unacceptably imperial as well as imperious,
forcing the first President Bush to water it down; but the goal of perpetuating
America's sole-superpower status has never been rejected by administration
strategists. In fact, it initially became the overarching principle for U.S.
military policy when the younger Bush assumed the presidency in February 2001.
Target: China
When first enunciated in 1992, the permanent-dominancy doctrine was non-specific
as to the identity of the future challengers whose rise was to be prevented
through coercive action. At that time, U.S. strategists worried about a medley
of potential rivals, including Russia, Germany, India, Japan, and China; any
of these, it was thought, might emerge in decades to come as would-be superpowers,
and so all would have to be deterred from moving in this direction. By the
time the second Bush administration came into office, however, the pool of
potential rivals had been narrowed in elite thinking to just one: the People's
Republic of China. Only China, it was claimed, possessed the economic and military
capacity to challenge the United States as an aspiring superpower; and so perpetuating
U.S. global predominance meant containing Chinese power.
The imperative of containing China was first spelled out in a systematic
way by Condoleezza Rice while serving as a foreign policy adviser to then Governor
George W. Bush during the 2000 presidential campaign. In a much-cited article
in Foreign Affairs, she suggested that the PRC, as an ambitious rising power,
would inevitably challenge vital U.S. interests. "China is a great power
with unresolved vital interests, particularly concerning Taiwan," she
wrote. "China also resents the role of the United States in the Asia-Pacific
region."
For these reasons, she stated, "China is not a ‘status quo' power
but one that would like to alter Asia's balance of power in its own favor.
That alone makes it a strategic competitor, not the ‘strategic partner'
the Clinton administration once called it." It was essential, she argued,
to adopt a strategy that would prevent China's rise as regional power. In particular, "The
United States must deepen its cooperation with Japan and South Korea and maintain
its commitment to a robust military presence in the region." Washington
should also "pay closer attention to India's role in the regional balance," and
bring that country into an anti-Chinese alliance system.
Looking back, it is striking how this article developed the allow-no-competitors
doctrine of the 1992 DPG into the very strategy now being implemented by the
Bush administration in the Pacific and South Asia. Many of the specific policies
advocated in her piece, from strengthened ties with Japan to making overtures
to India, are being carried out today.
In the spring and summer of 2001, however, the most significant effect of
this strategic focus was to distract Rice and other senior administration officials
from the growing threat posed by Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda. During her first
months in office as the president's senior adviser for national security affairs,
Rice devoted herself to implementing the plan she had spelled out in Foreign
Affairs. By all accounts, her top priorities in that early period were dissolving
the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia and linking Japan, South Korea,
and Taiwan into a joint missile defense system, which, it was hoped, would
ultimately evolve into a Pentagon-anchored anti-Chinese alliance.
Richard A. Clarke, the senior White House adviser on counter-terrorism, later
charged that, because of her preoccupation with Russia, China, and great power
politics, Rice overlooked warnings of a possible Al Qaeda attack on the United
States and thus failed to initiate defensive actions that might have prevented
9/11. Although Rice survived tough questioning on this matter by the 9/11 Commission
without acknowledging the accuracy of Clarke's charges, any careful historian,
seeking answers for the Bush administration's inexcusable failure to heed warnings
of a potential terrorist strike on this country, must begin with its overarching
focus on containing China during this critical period.
China on the Back Burner
After September 11th, it would have been unseemly for Bush, Rice, and other
top administration officials to push their China agenda -- and in any case
they quickly shifted focus to a long-term neocon objective, the overthrow of
Saddam Hussein and the projection of American power throughout the Middle East.
So the "global war on terror" (or GWOT, in Pentagon-speak) became
their major talking point and the invasion of Iraq their major focus. But the
administration never completely lost sight of its strategic focus on China,
even when it could do little on the subject. Indeed, the lightning war on Iraq
and the further projection of American power into the Middle East was intended,
at least in part, as a warning to China of the overwhelming might of the American
military and the futility of challenging U.S. supremacy.
For the next two years, when so much effort was devoted to rebuilding Iraq
in America's image and crushing an unexpected and potent Iraqi insurgency,
China was distinctly on the back-burner. In the meantime, however, China's
increased investment in modern military capabilities and its growing economic
reach in Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America -- much of it tied to the
procurement of oil and other vital commodities -- could not be ignored.
By the spring of 2005, the White House was already turning back to Rice's
global grand strategy. On June 4, 2005, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld
gave a much-publicized
speech at a conference in Singapore, signaling what was to be a new emphasis
in White House policymaking, in which he decried China's ongoing military buildup
and warned of the threat it posed to regional peace and stability.
China, he claimed, was "expanding its missile forces, allowing them
to reach targets in many areas of the world" and "improving its ability
to project power" in the Asia-Pacific region. Then, with sublime disingenuousness,
he added, "Since no nation threatens China, one must wonder: Why this
growing investment? Why these continuing and expanding arms purchases? Why
these continuing robust deployments?" Although Rumsfeld did not answer
his questions, the implication was obvious: China was now embarked on a course
that would make it a regional power, thus threatening one day to present a
challenge to the United States in Asia on unacceptably equal terms.
This early sign of the ratcheting up of anti-Chinese rhetoric was accompanied
by acts of a more concrete nature. In February 2005, Rice and Rumsfeld hosted
a meeting in Washington with top Japanese officials at which an agreement was
signed to improve cooperation in military affairs between the two countries.
Known as the "Joint Statement of the U.S.-Japan Security Consultative
Committee," the agreement called for greater collaboration between American
and Japanese forces in the conduct of military operations in an area stretching
from Northeast Asia to the South China Sea. It also called for close consultation
on policies regarding Taiwan, an implicit hint that Japan was prepared to assist
the United States in the event of a military clash with China precipitated
by Taiwan's declaring its independence.
This came at a time when Beijing was already expressing considerable alarm
over pro-independence moves in Taiwan and what the Chinese saw as a revival
of militarism in Japan -- thus evoking painful memories of World War II, when
Japan invaded China and committed massive atrocities against Chinese civilians.
Understandably then, the agreement could only be interpreted by the Chinese
leadership as an expression of the Bush administration's determination to bolster
an anti-Chinese alliance system.
The New Grand Chessboard
Why did the White House choose this particular moment to revive its drive
to contain China? Many factors no doubt contributed to this turnaround, but
surely the most significant was a perception that China had finally emerged
as a major regional power in its own right and was beginning to contest America's
long-term dominance of the Asia-Pacific region. To some degree this was manifested
-- so the Pentagon claimed -- in military terms, as Beijing began to replace
Soviet-type, Korean War-vintage weapons with more modern (though hardly cutting-edge)
Russian designs.
It was not China's military moves, however, that truly alarmed American policymakers
-- most professional analysts are well aware of the continuing inferiority
of Chinese weaponry -- but rather Beijing's success in using its enormous purchasing
power and hunger for resources to establish friendly ties with such long-standing
U.S. allies as Thailand, Indonesia, and Australia. Because the Bush administration
had done little to contest this trend while focusing on the war in Iraq, China's
rapid gains in Southeast Asia finally began to ring alarm bells in Washington.
At the same time, Republican strategists were becoming increasingly concerned
by growing Chinese involvement in the Persian Gulf and Central Asia -- areas
considered of vital geopolitical importance to the United States because of
the vast reserves of oil and natural gas buried there. Much influenced by Zbigniew
Brzezinski, whose 1997 book The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Geostrategic
Imperatives first highlighted the critical importance of Central Asia, these
strategists sought to counter Chinese inroads. Although Brzezinski himself
has largely been excluded from elite Republican circles because of his association
with the much-despised Carter administration, his call for a coordinated U.S.
drive to dominate both the eastern and western rimlands of China has been embraced
by senior administration strategists.
In this way, Washington's concern over growing Chinese influence in Southeast
Asia has come to be intertwined with the U.S. drive for hegemony in the Persian
Gulf and Central Asia. This has given China policy an even more elevated significance
in Washington -- and helps explain its return with a passion despite the seemingly
all-consuming preoccupations of the war in Iraq.
Whatever the exact balance of factors, the Bush administration is now clearly
engaged in a coordinated, systematic effort to contain Chinese power and influence
in Asia. This effort appears to have three broad objectives: to convert existing
relations with Japan, Australia, and South Korea into a robust, integrated
anti-Chinese alliance system; to bring other nations, especially India, into
this system; and to expand U.S. military capabilities in the Asia-Pacific region.
Since the administration's campaign to bolster ties with Japan commenced
a year ago, the two countries have been meeting continuously to devise protocols
for the implementation of their 2005 strategic agreement. In October, Washington
and Tokyo released the Alliance Transformation and Realignment Report, which
is to guide the further integration of U.S. and Japanese forces in the Pacific
and the simultaneous restructuring of the U.S. basing system in Japan. (Some
of these bases, especially those on Okinawa, have become a source of friction
in U.S.-Japanese relations and so the Pentagon is now considering ways to downsize
the most objectionable installations.) Japanese and American officers are also
engaged in a joint "interoperability" study, aimed at smoothing the "interface" between
U.S. and Japanese combat and communications systems. "Close collaboration
is also ongoing for cooperative missile defense," reports Admiral William
J. Fallon, commander-in-chief of the U.S. Pacific Command (PACOM).
Steps have also been taken in this ongoing campaign to weld South Korea and
Australia more tightly to the U.S.-Japanese alliance system. South Korea has
long been reluctant to work closely with Japan because of that country's brutal
occupation of the Korean peninsula from 1910 to 1945 and lingering fears of
Japanese militarism; now, however, the Bush administration is promoting what
it calls "trilateral military cooperation" between Seoul, Tokyo,
and Washington. As indicated
by Admiral Fallon, this initiative has an explicitly anti-Chinese dimension.
America's ties with South Korea must adapt to "the changing security environment" represented
by "China's military modernization," Fallon told the Senate Armed
Services Committee on March 7. By cooperating with the U.S. and Japan, he continued,
South Korea will move from an overwhelming focus on North Korea to "a
more regional view of security and stability."
Bringing Australia into this emerging anti-Chinese network has been a major
priority of Condoleezza Rice, who spent several days there in mid-March. Although
designed in part to bolster U.S.-Australian ties (largely neglected by Washington
over the past few years), the main purpose of her visit was to host a meeting
of top officials from Australia, the U.S., and Japan to develop a common strategy
for curbing China's rising influence in Asia. No formal results were announced,
but Steven Weisman of the New York Times reported on March 19 that Rice convened
the meeting "to deepen a three-way regional alliance aimed in part at
balancing the spreading presence of China."
An even bigger prize, in Washington's view, would be the integration of India
into this emerging alliance system, a possibility first suggested in Rice's
Foreign Affairs article. Such a move was long frustrated by congressional objections
to India's nuclear weapons program and its refusal to sign on to the Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Under U.S. law, nations like India that refuse
to cooperate in non-proliferation measures can be excluded from various forms
of aid and cooperation. To overcome this problem, President
Bush met with Indian officials in New Delhi in March and negotiated a nuclear
accord that will open India's civilian reactors to International Atomic Energy
Agency inspection, thus providing a thin gloss of non-proliferation cooperation
to India's robust nuclear weapons program. If Congress approves Bush's plan,
the United States will be free to provide nuclear assistance to India and,
in the process, significantly expand already growing military-to-military ties.
In signing the nuclear pact with India, Bush did not allude to the administration's
anti-Chinese agenda, saying only that it would lay the foundation for a "durable
defense relationship." But few have been fooled by this vague characterization.
According to Weisman
of the Times, most U.S. lawmakers view the nuclear accord as an expression
of the administration's desire to convert India into "a counterweight
to China."
The China Build-up Begins
Accompanying all these diplomatic initiatives has been a vigorous, if largely
unheralded, effort by the Department of Defense (DoD) to bolster U.S. military
capabilities in the Asia-Pacific region.
The broad sweep of American strategy was first spelled out in the Pentagon's
most recent policy assessment, the
Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), released on February 5, 2006. In discussing
long-term threats to U.S. security, the QDR begins with a reaffirmation of
the overarching precept first articulated in the DPG of 1992: that the United
States will not allow the rise of a competing superpower. This country "will
attempt to dissuade any military competitor from developing disruptive or other
capabilities that could enable regional hegemony or hostile action against
the United States," the document states. It then identifies China as the
most likely and dangerous competitor of this sort. "Of the major and emerging
powers, China has the greatest potential to compete militarily with the United
States and field disruptive military technologies that could over time offset
traditional U.S. military advantages" -- then adding the kicker, "absent
U.S. counter strategies."
According to the Pentagon, the task of countering future Chinese military
capabilities largely entails the development, and then procurement, of major
weapons systems that would ensure U.S. success in any full-scale military confrontation. "The
United States will develop capabilities that would present any adversary with
complex and multidimensional challenges and complicate its offensive planning
efforts," the QDR explains. These include the steady enhancement of such "enduring
U.S. advantages" as "long-range strike, stealth, operational maneuver
and sustainment of air, sea, and ground forces at strategic distances, air
dominance, and undersea warfare."
Preparing for war with China, in other words, is to be the future cash cow
for the giant U.S. weapons-making corporations in the military-industrial complex.
It will, for instance, be the primary justification for the acquisition of
costly new weapons systems such as the F-22A Raptor air-superiority fighter,
the multi-service Joint Strike Fighter, the DDX destroyer, the Virginia-class
nuclear attack submarine, and a new, intercontinental penetrating bomber --
weapons that would just have utility in an all-out encounter with another great-power
adversary of a sort that only China might someday become.
In addition to these weapons programs, the QDR also calls for a stiffening
of present U.S. combat forces in Asia and the Pacific, with a particular emphasis
on the Navy (the arm of the military least utilized in the ongoing occupation
of and war in Iraq). "The fleet will have greater presence in the Pacific
Ocean," the document notes. To achieve this, "The Navy plans to adjust
its force posture and basing to provide at least six operationally available
and sustainable [aircraft] carriers and 60% of its submarines in the Pacific
to support engagement, presence and deterrence." Since each of these carriers
is, in fact, but the core of a large array of support ships and protective
aircraft, this move is sure to entail a truly vast buildup of U.S. naval capabilities
in the Western Pacific and will certainly necessitate a substantial expansion
of the American basing complex in the region -- a requirement that is already
receiving close attention from Admiral Fallon and his staff at PACOM. To assess
the operational demands of this buildup, moreover, this summer the U.S. Navy
will conduct its most extensive military maneuvers in the Western Pacific since
the end of the Vietnam War, with four
aircraft carrier battle groups and many support ships expected to participate.
Add all of this together, and the resulting strategy cannot be viewed as
anything but a systematic campaign of containment. No high administration official
may say this in so many words, but it is impossible to interpret the recent
moves of Rice and Rumsfeld in any other manner. From Beijing's perspective,
the reality must be unmistakable: a steady buildup of American military power
along China's eastern, southern, and western boundaries.
How will China respond to this threat? For now, it appears to be relying on
charm and the conspicuous blandishment of economic benefits to loosen Australian,
South Korean, and even Indian ties with the United States. To a certain extent,
this strategy is meeting with success, as these countries seek to profit from
the extraordinary economic boom now under way in China – fueled to a
considerable extent by oil, gas, iron, timber, and other materials supplied
by China's neighbors in Asia. A version of this strategy is also being employed
by President Hu Jintao during his current visit to the United States. As China's
money is sprinkled liberally among influential firms like Boeing and Microsoft,
Hu is reminding the corporate wing of the Republican Party that there are vast
economic benefits still to be had by pursuing a non-threatening stance toward
China.
China, however, has always responded to perceived threats of encirclement
in a vigorous and muscular fashion as well, and so we should assume that Beijing
will balance all that charm with a military buildup of its own. Such a drive
will not bring China to the brink of military equality with the United States
-- that is not a condition it can realistically aspire to over the next few
decades. But it will provide further justification for those in the United
States who seek to accelerate the containment of China, and so will produce
a self-fulfilling loop of distrust, competition, and crisis. This will make
the amicable long-term settlement of the Taiwan problem and of North Korea's
nuclear program that much more difficult, and increase the risk of unintended
escalation to full-scale war in Asia. There can be no victors from such a conflagration.
Michael T. Klare is a professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire
College and the author of Blood
and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of America's Growing Dependency on Imported
Petroleum
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