Admittedly, I was too lazy to look up any actual example of someone making the argument I was trying to contradict, which at its foundation is a basic neoliberal "the economic ties between the US, China, and Taiwan will prevent war" case.
Nevertheless, I am confidant there are people making the argument that I wanted to argue against...
This is hardly breaking news. The best scholars of Chinese strategy, like Tom Christensen and Bob Ross, have been arguing for a long time that the Chinese strategy is not to try and match the US--aircraf carrier for aircraft carrier or submarine for submarine. The Chinese don't need literally to be a peer to compete with the US. They just need to be able to compete where Chinese interests are at stake.
Even though I am a student of yours, I didn't realize you had such a great blog. I just found it and I feel like I have found gold!
I will be a regular here. I wish I had so much to say on my blog.
Dahlia
Since the Chinese evolved away from militant Communism, it has become increasingly hard to portray them as bent on world conquest--the only universal ideologies currently on the march are Jihadism among a minority of Muslims and the Crusade for democracy™ that animates the American government and a handful of its supporters abroad. That won't keep certain of our military philosophers from projecting their own apocalyptic ambitions on people whose actual aims are rather limited. Against all the evidence, including the limited goals of the Chinese military build-up, we're going to hear about how the Chinese leader of the hour is a would-be Hitler, the latest in the long line of would-be Hitlers stretching back to, well, Hitler.
Some folks have claimed that American rightists have bought into Carl Schmitt's notion that every nation absolutely must have an enemy. Schmitt didn't invent the need for a enemy, however. He simply made a competent case for an idea that has been discovered and rediscovered many, many times by authoritarian politicians.
Aren’t we, perhaps, being a little bit Ameri-centric here.
Three of China’s neighbors have demonstrated the ability to launch satellites and several others have the ability to develop or purchase satellite capability, or just purchase the data from any of several commercial operations. I know “asymmetric war” is the buzz phrase of the decade, but any war (symmetric, asymmetric, or other) involving large powers is likely to include attempts to disable the others satlites. Such activites as testing lasers agaisnt saltites could be purdence rather or in addition to planning for war with the US. A demonstartion of capability not intent.
China since about 1990 finally has political and military leadership that does not believe that preparing for the Second Long March is the epitome of military preparedness. With kicks and fits, the Chinese armed forces have been improving many of the improvements coming from just doing things better. This not proof of hostile intent so much as organizational self-respect.
Every one of China’s neighbors is a potentially hostile, a buffer to potentially hostile neighbor, or a humanitarian intervention waiting to happen. That the Chinese would make an effort to have the best regional military is to be expected.
Other than interanal problems or “peacekeeping” on their borders the biggest threat to China currently is a cut off oil supplies that would cripple economic development. From their perspective the Singapore Straights is the critical spot. There is one active and one (hopefully) settled civil war, Thailand just had coup, and both Malaysia and Indonesia have serious internal problems. A military problem that would use the same sort of assets as a operation against Taiwan
Yes the Taiwan-China is a serious problem, but lets not fixate.
This may be a trivial point, but I don't see the Chinese response as asymmetric. They are trying to devlope a counter to our technology; a counter that directly reduces the benefits we get from that technology. Countering our advantages is a symmetric response.
An asymmetric response would be to develop technology or organization (and associated doctrine) that allowed us our satelites, but made them irrelevant (or, at least, they wouldn't see anything that would help us understand Chinese capabilities or actions).
Why don't the chinese wait till their economy is so large that the Taiwanese come beging to join the empire? No army or navy required.
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