Chinese Military Reasonableness

Thomas P. Barnett: "The NYT reports that the U.S. military is alarmed at the rising anti-American tone and sentiment of younger Chinese military officers. This is the same U.S. military that assembles multinational war games in China's front yard and sells advanced weaponry to a small island nation off its coast--in addition to anyone else who will buy it in the region (and yes, business is very good right now, as weapons purchases are up 100% over the past half decade).


The U.S. military, which found its network-centric warfare roots in the seminal shell game known as the Taiwan Straits crises of 1995-1996, now takes inspiration from China's response since then (a build-up of anti-access/area denial assets that rely heavily on ballistic missile attacks to keep our carriers at bay) to launch its own AirSea Battle Concept--a new high-tech warfighting doctrine that makes no bones about specifically targeting the Chinese military.


And we wonder why the Chinese military seem to think we're their number one enemy? Are we honestly that clueless or has our disingenuity broken through to some higher, slightly irrational plane?"


Barnett goes on to imagine a reversed scenario, where the actions we have taken in Chinese waters are taken by the Chinese in US waters, and its quite stunning. No wonder the Chinese are pondering our threat level to them. 


I've been following this guy's blog since I read his excellent book Great Powers: America and the World after Bush; and he makes a lot of sense. If you like geopolitics, you'll like him.