SecDef Worried About Chinese Military Intentions

SecDef Gates wants China to explain its military intentions (AFP)

US Defense Secretary Robert Gates called on China Thursday to explain its intentions in undertaking a major military buildup that the Pentagon warns is altering the military balance in the region.

"There is no question that the Chinese are building significant capacity," Gates said. "Our concern is over their intent."....

An annual Pentagon report on Chinese military power released last week detailed Beijing's drive to acquire modern warships, aircraft and missiles in what appeared to be part of a longer-term strategy to deny US forces access to the region.

Although Taiwan is the immediate focus of China's overhaul of its military, Beijing appears to be amassing military capabilities to project power well beyond the nationalist-rule island, driven in part by a desire to protect energy supply lines.

It is a reasonable question to ask given its search for means to not only defend its nation but to project power further outside its border. But these increases in Chinese military budget have to understood in context.


First, the increase in the military budget and military sophistication is best understood if one understands that the China is starting from a very low level of military sophistication. The majority of its armed forces are quite old and obsolete so that it will take a long time for purchases and domestic development to get anywhere near the point of threatening US interests.

Second, even the current increase in its military budget means that it has a very low relative spending on the military given its GDP and also that its military budget is still relatively low per soldier. We still dramatically outstrip spending in that area and it must be noted that increasing Chinese sophistication in the next 20 years will not be done in a vacuum. US military will increases as well, and the starting point of sophistication is already relatively much higher than China.


Third, this splurge in Chinese military spending reflects the astronomical rise in the growth of China's economy (and tax base) the past lets say 15 years but by no means is that growth rate a given in the future.

It has some very serious problems it must deal with in the future that possibly hurt the strenght of its economy its state coffers:


It has a LARGE population and aging workforce which will soon increasingly tax the Chinese society, economy and government. This aging population will will be a problem for China by limiting China's workforce, taxing its treasury due to increased spending in social services. Increased social spending means that there is less money for defense spending

China's "One-Child" policy has had the unfortunate side-effect of leading many Chinese (especially in rural areas) to abort and forgo female children in favor of males, and leading to a nation that will have too many boys and too few girls and potential social problems will ensue from that (who knows how that societal factor will effect the politics and economy of China but it stands to reason it will not be positive). At the very least it will be a problem.


Add it together and the point I'm trying to make is that it is not altogether clear (or likely) that the phenomenal growth in China's economy will maintain at such a astounding rate.
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Roundup

And because I still have a bunch of leftover articles.....here's another roundup. Pick and choose to follow what interests you.

Rolling Stones Matt Taibi: "Guiliani: Worse than Bush"

An interesting read that points out disturbing trends found in Guiliani including his increasing similarity in rhetoric to Bush and how Guiliani is surrounding himself with a lot of the same people that Bush does and resorting to the same shameful "Swift-Boat" type character smearers.


Taibi is playing a columnists (to be clear) and not a journalist in this link.

I do see the same rhetorical playbook Bush and Cheney use being used by Rudy though. How if the Democrats win the terrorist win type statements that pissed me off to no end.


Cheney vs. Rice: Foreign Policy Showdown (Newsweek)

She's not being glib: administration officials universally acknowledge that her views are dominant in Washington.

But the rumbling has been getting louder. A NEWSWEEK investigation shows that Cheney's national-security team has been actively challenging Rice's Iran strategy in recent months.

"We hear a completely different story coming out of Cheney's office, even now, than what we hear from Rice on Iran," says a Western diplomat whose embassy has close dealings with the White House.

Officials from the veep's office have been openly dismissive of the nuclear negotiations in think-tank meetings with Middle East analysts in Washington, according to a high-level administration official who asked for anonymity because of his position.

Since Tehran has defied two U.N. resolutions calling for a suspension of its uranium-enrichment program, "there's a certain amount of schadenfreude among the hard-liners," says a European diplomat who's involved in the talks but would not comment for the record.

And NEWSWEEK has learned that the veep's team seems eager to build a case that Iran is targeting Americans not just in Iraq but along the border of its other neighbor, Afghanistan.

In the last few weeks, Cheney's staff have unexpectedly become more active participants in an interagency group that steers policy on Afghanistan, according to an official familiar with the internal deliberations.

During weekly meetings of the committee, known as the Afghanistan Interagency Operating Group, Cheney staffers have been intensely interested in a single issue: recent intelligence reports alleging that Iran is supplying weapons to Afghanistan's resurgent Islamist militia, the Taliban, according to two administration officials who asked for anonymity when discussing internal meetings.

The dynamic in the White House looks the same as it did before the Iraq War. No, this is not to say a war is imminent. What I mean is that the same dynamic of State Department vs. VP's office and allies is very much present.

The Vice President no doubt maintains considerable influence but I doubt it is on the same level as before. I might add that whereas prior to the Iraq war, the Vice President had a close ideological ally in the person of former SecDef Donald Rumsfeld and in the Dept of Defense, today it is run by a much more moderate and pragmatic person (Robert Gates).

Makes an interesting read....

Lou Dobbs is an unrepentant lying douche:

The thing about Dobbs is that one senses his genuine passion for the plight of middle class America. That enough seems genuine. But he focuses so laser-like on illegal immigration. He is so passionate on this issue that his sense of journalistic ethics and truthtelling go out the window. I just don't understand. He can make a factual case yet he resorts to lies, and often enough relies on the propaganda and words of vehement racists. And when he's called out on this he refuses to admit error and calls people "commies" and "fascists." (I'll put the link to that video later...)

Give it a read.

Bill O'Reilly fears end of 'white Christian power structure'

Did he really just say that!? No code words? just out and out said it?....... This involves immigration again. He's worried - and GOP presidential candidate John McCain doesn't out and out disagree - that bringing more immigrants will threaten the 'white Christian power structure'.

It sounds, I don't know,....a little racist don't you think? Give it a read and see what you think.

Daily Kos: Will Dem Win in 2008 Generate Rightwing Violence?

Just to make clear: The right-wing violence is not typically from mainstream republican groups but from the fringe elements that are usually very quiet during Republican administrations.

Neiwart, who knows this subject forward and backward, took the deepest look. As always, it's impossible to do justice to long pieces with a few excerpts, so I urge you to follow that length to the full post and read it all:

My own sense all along has been that the far right went into a kind of dormancy during the GOP reign because they felt their issues were being addressed; most average militiamen voted for Bush, as near as I can tell.

I've noted previously that many militias dropped off the map after the 2000 election, and the former leader of at least one of them -- Norm Olson of the Michigan Militia -- said it was because most of his troops were happy with Bush's election and felt that their former issues (particularly their hatred of the United Nations and their gun-control paranoia) were being addressed, as in fact they were.

Certainly the trend of the past couple of decades has been that the right-wing extremists tend to ease up more when Republicans rule the roost, and become much more virulently active when Democrats are in charge.

This fits in with a much longer pattern, dating back to the 19th century and even before, of the extremist right acting as a kind of cultural and political wedge to
separate working-class people from the progressives whose interests they actually share, especially in terms of curbing the effects of corporate and rampant capitalist behavior. ...

Abortion clinic bombings, rightwing militia activity etc... usually do resurge during Democratic administrations. Or as Digby notes:

These people are always surprisingly cooperative when the government is run by Republicans and then rediscover their "anti-government" beliefs when Democrats share or dominate the government. I can't imagine why that would be.

Gee, I wonder why too...

Good night folks.