09 September 2005
Who is the real threat today?
When Dear Old Dubya first took office in 2000, one of his first pronouncements was that he viewed China as a strategic competitor to the US. Later, various members of Team Neo-Con made repeated references to China being a direct military threat to the nation.
In its 2005 Quadrennial Defence Review, the Financial Times reported the Pentagon increased its assessment of the threat posed by China's military. Well, the Pentagon and the Bush administration would claim this wouldn't they? If there wasn't some bogeyman to work up a good old paranoid scare, how would the Pentagon justify growth of the defence budget? By the way, the budget as a percentage of GDP is the largest it has ever been since the dark days of WW2. As usual, the Pentagon's self-serving claims went unchallenged.
Let's see if we can use some real facts to test these claims.
In a meticulously referenced book, "The Sorrows of Empire", Professor Chalmers Johnson reports that the US Department of Defence maintains 725 military bases in 38 countries around the world - as published in their Base Structure Report. The Pentagon's Manpower Report discloses that as at September 2001, the US had 254,788 military personnel in 153 countries. Obviously this number has increased dramatically since the invasion and occupation of Iraq. In contrast, China has precisely zero military bases outside its present borders and exactly zero military personnel stationed permanently or semi-permanently on foreign soil.
Now, I grant you that being a victor of WW2 would have automatically entailed the presence of US forces on foreign soil. But you know, WW2 ended sixty years ago, and the Cold War ended with the implosion of the USSR in 1990 - that's fifteen years ago. Neither Germany nor Japan for example, have been in the so-called frontline of whatever new country the Pentagon claims poses a threat to national security. So why is Okinawa still an island commandeered by the US military? Why is Ramstein still a US military air base?
Let's look at nuclear arsenals as another example.
As at 2002, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists reported that the US held 10,600 physical warheads to China's 400. A ratio of 26.5 to 1. Put another way, China has a warhead for every 739,250 Americans while the US has one warhead for every 123,208 Chinese. Note that the average destructive yield of US warheads is greater than that of China's warheads. So the ratio of destructive yields is skewed even more in favour of the US! Even more self-serving is the Pentagon's claim of China "building up" its nuclear arsenal. As an article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists reports, this is not truthful.
Offshore power projection is quaint technical term referring to one country's ability to intimidate another country by deploying military forces to or near the second country.
For naval forces, aircraft carriers are the prime assets of intimidation. The US Navy has twelve carrier battle groups built around twelve aircraft carriers on duty around the world. The PLA Navy has exactly none. I should also add that the US maintains a fleet of eighteen fleet ballistic missile submarines; tasked to launch nuclear ballistic missiles when so ordered by the president. China has two submarines of 1970s vintage; the equivalent of which were long since retired by the US Navy.
In the air forces sweepstakes, the US has a total of 130 B-1, B-2 and B-52 transcontinental strategic bombers compared to the PLA Air Force's non-existent fleet. The PLA does have 2.3 million uniformed personnel on establishment compared to the US' 1.25 million uniformed personnel. But the Pentagon admits that more than half of the PLA personnel are simply not combat ready to an equivalent standard. Not only that, the Chinese have a major problem. They even lack the ability to transport troops across the 130 kms to Taiwan! If they can't get to Taiwan, how can they get to the world's second largest economy - Japan, let alone the continental US?
So much for China being a strategic military threat to the US! It's now time to turn the picture around to look at the US from China's perspective.
Imagine you are sitting in Beijing looking at a world map like the one below. What do you see and what conclusions would you draw?
Does the word "encirclement" come to mind? It should. Since the formation of the People's Republic of China in October 1949, it has been a key strategy of the Pentagon to build an iron ring of bases around its enemies (real or perceived) to contain them.
Despite ample evidence to the contrary, militarists in the uniformed services and in the civilian legislature call for ever higher military expenditures year after year. Small wonder. After all, 725 foreign bases, carrier battle groups, strategic bomber fleets, ballistic missile submarine fleets etc don't come cheaply. Nor do wars around the world.
So who really poses the greatest threat to world stability today?
In its 2005 Quadrennial Defence Review, the Financial Times reported the Pentagon increased its assessment of the threat posed by China's military. Well, the Pentagon and the Bush administration would claim this wouldn't they? If there wasn't some bogeyman to work up a good old paranoid scare, how would the Pentagon justify growth of the defence budget? By the way, the budget as a percentage of GDP is the largest it has ever been since the dark days of WW2. As usual, the Pentagon's self-serving claims went unchallenged.
Let's see if we can use some real facts to test these claims.
In a meticulously referenced book, "The Sorrows of Empire", Professor Chalmers Johnson reports that the US Department of Defence maintains 725 military bases in 38 countries around the world - as published in their Base Structure Report. The Pentagon's Manpower Report discloses that as at September 2001, the US had 254,788 military personnel in 153 countries. Obviously this number has increased dramatically since the invasion and occupation of Iraq. In contrast, China has precisely zero military bases outside its present borders and exactly zero military personnel stationed permanently or semi-permanently on foreign soil.
Now, I grant you that being a victor of WW2 would have automatically entailed the presence of US forces on foreign soil. But you know, WW2 ended sixty years ago, and the Cold War ended with the implosion of the USSR in 1990 - that's fifteen years ago. Neither Germany nor Japan for example, have been in the so-called frontline of whatever new country the Pentagon claims poses a threat to national security. So why is Okinawa still an island commandeered by the US military? Why is Ramstein still a US military air base?
Let's look at nuclear arsenals as another example.
As at 2002, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists reported that the US held 10,600 physical warheads to China's 400. A ratio of 26.5 to 1. Put another way, China has a warhead for every 739,250 Americans while the US has one warhead for every 123,208 Chinese. Note that the average destructive yield of US warheads is greater than that of China's warheads. So the ratio of destructive yields is skewed even more in favour of the US! Even more self-serving is the Pentagon's claim of China "building up" its nuclear arsenal. As an article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists reports, this is not truthful.
Offshore power projection is quaint technical term referring to one country's ability to intimidate another country by deploying military forces to or near the second country.
For naval forces, aircraft carriers are the prime assets of intimidation. The US Navy has twelve carrier battle groups built around twelve aircraft carriers on duty around the world. The PLA Navy has exactly none. I should also add that the US maintains a fleet of eighteen fleet ballistic missile submarines; tasked to launch nuclear ballistic missiles when so ordered by the president. China has two submarines of 1970s vintage; the equivalent of which were long since retired by the US Navy.
In the air forces sweepstakes, the US has a total of 130 B-1, B-2 and B-52 transcontinental strategic bombers compared to the PLA Air Force's non-existent fleet. The PLA does have 2.3 million uniformed personnel on establishment compared to the US' 1.25 million uniformed personnel. But the Pentagon admits that more than half of the PLA personnel are simply not combat ready to an equivalent standard. Not only that, the Chinese have a major problem. They even lack the ability to transport troops across the 130 kms to Taiwan! If they can't get to Taiwan, how can they get to the world's second largest economy - Japan, let alone the continental US?
So much for China being a strategic military threat to the US! It's now time to turn the picture around to look at the US from China's perspective.
Imagine you are sitting in Beijing looking at a world map like the one below. What do you see and what conclusions would you draw?
Does the word "encirclement" come to mind? It should. Since the formation of the People's Republic of China in October 1949, it has been a key strategy of the Pentagon to build an iron ring of bases around its enemies (real or perceived) to contain them.
Despite ample evidence to the contrary, militarists in the uniformed services and in the civilian legislature call for ever higher military expenditures year after year. Small wonder. After all, 725 foreign bases, carrier battle groups, strategic bomber fleets, ballistic missile submarine fleets etc don't come cheaply. Nor do wars around the world.
So who really poses the greatest threat to world stability today?
