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Book Reviews
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China: The Gathering Threat
by Constantine Menges
(Nelson Current. 554 pages, 2005)
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While the Bush Administration focuses on the Middle East, many international experts believe the challenges posed by a rising China eclipse the threats posed by al-Qaida.
“The supreme excellence is not winning battles,” wrote the political philosopher Sun Tzu, “but breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting.” Pearls of strategic wisdom like this, alas, don’t appear to be part of our commander-in-chief’s intellectual repertoire. This could prove unfortunate, for while the administration tries to keep the lid on a boiling insurgency in Iraq, China is quietly pursuing a far-sighted strategy that seeks to displace the United States as the world’s reigning economic and military superpower.
The Rise of China
Most historians now believe the rise of China will prove to be the most significant political challenge the United States faces in the first half of the 21st century. According to the late Dr. Constantine Menges, a professor of International Relations at George Washington University, China is pursuing a multi-phase plan that if successful would leave China the undisputed master of Asia and ultimately the world. In the initial phase, Menges contends, China is seeking to use normalized relations with the United States to gain the economic and technological resources it needs to emerge as a modern industrial and military power.
At this stage, the goal is to leverage China’s huge trade surplus with the U.S. into colossal cash reserves. Dick “deficits don’t matter” Cheney is one of the chief advocates of the administration’s policy of allowing China to control more than $200 billion dollars of U.S. debt.
Borrowing money from China so American consumers can continue to spend money on a flood of cheap Chinese imports keeps Chinese factories humming and American consumers happy, but an ever widening trade imbalance is hardly sustainable. And in a crisis, China might be tempted to precipitate a run on the dollar by dumping its U.S. Treasury holdings.
China: Master of the Pacific
Which brings us to phase two of China’s long-range plans, namely, China’s determination to absorb Taiwan, either through political coercion or pre-emptive measures. The rationale for gaining control of Taiwan is simple: Taiwan manufactures 85 percent of the world’s advanced computer chips, and control of this vital commodity would give China enormous economic clout and political leverage. If China succeeded in removing Taiwan from America’s security umbrella without an effective U.S. military response, it would be interpreted as a sign of American decline, and virtually overnight China could emerge as the master of the Pacific.
During previous conflicts with China over Taiwan, the United States has dispatched naval carrier groups within miles of the Straits of Taiwan. On these occasions, China has vowed to sink any American naval vessels that actually entered the Straits, which China claims as its territorial waters.
To back up their threat in the event of future incidents, the Chinese have been procuring a variety of anti-ship weapons, including the Soviet-built SS-N-22 “Sunburn” cruise missile, a weapon that “skims on the surface of the ocean at...over twice the speed of sound and can be armed with nuclear and conventional explosives.” Chinese leaders believe once the American leadership appreciates how vulnerable their carriers are, they will also recognize that geography dictates that the United States cannot prevail in Asia without risking a nuclear conflagration.
The Chinese leadership is determined to absorb Taiwan, but they would almost certainly prefer to do so through political coercion rather than military force; after all why risk damaging Taiwan’s infrastructure? Their philosophy in this regard is, “intimidate with force and seduce with money.” Given China’s determination to absorb Taiwan and America’s interest in maintaining the status quo, a U.S.-Chinese confrontation is seen by many observers as inevitable. But this is not the only point of potential conflict.
China is embroiled in a number of territorial clashes with its neighbors, including disputes over several island groups in the South China Sea, in order to lay claim to the entire South China Sea as part of China’s territorial waters. The South China Sea, as it happens, is among the most important sea-lanes in the world, accounting for roughly 40 percent of the world’s ocean-based traffic. Control of this vital region would allow China to put the United States in a stranglehold in the event of a crisis.
All About Oil: The Great Game
China and the United States are also under increasing competition to secure strategic oil reserves necessary to fuel economic growth. One reason the Bush Administration is so intent on tapping the oil reserves in the Alaskan Artic Wildlife Preserve has to do with the potential for the United States to become a key energy supplier to China. And invading Iraq, a country with the world’s second largest known oil reserves, could effectively precluding Chinese ambitions in the region.
China is, however, quietly courting South American countries like oil-rich Venezuela. Striking a bargain with an anti-American like Hugo Chavez could pay dividends for the Chinese in the event of an oil crisis. Recent revelations, also, that a Chinese company was attempting to acquire an American oil company (Unocal) are likely part of a high stakes game of cat and mouse as the U.S. and China seek ways to garner control of a natural resource that appears to be dwindling even as demand is expected to soar. Who succeeds in this great game may decide whether the 21st century belongs to China or the United States.
Bush: The Manchurian Candidate
China’s long-term strategy includes isolating the United States from its traditional allies in Europe and replacing the dollar with the euro or the yuan as the world’s reserve currency.
In creating a quagmire in Iraq, Bush has arguably played into Osama’s hands as well as China’s, giving him the dubious distinction of being a Manchurian Candidate and al-Qaida’s top recruiter all in one. Invading Iraq has created a terrorist safe haven, and quelling a tenacious insurgency is likely to take decades and cost America a fortune in blood and treasure.
The longer America is preoccupied by Iraq, the more likely it is China can use America’s misadventure to drive a wedge between the United States and the rest of the world, and the more likely it is that international investors could lose faith in the United States, given the massive expansion of the deficit under the Bush Administration.
Deficits Don’t Matter?
China’s bid to buy an American oil company, coupled with America’s invasion of Iraq is perversely ironic. Normally it is the capitalistic country that seeks to buy out its adversaries and the communist country that commits territorial aggression to secure vital natural resources. The role reversal may be something of an indication of things to come. China is awash in hard currency and U.S. Treasury bonds. If current trends continue, its just possible China will prove Marx and Lenin right after all: that capitalists would sell the hangman the rope necessary for their own execution.
Menges makes a strong case that China has a subtle and well thought-out strategy for accomplishing its foreign policy aims and securing its place as major world power by the first half of the 21st century. At the moment, the Bush administration seems to be counting on luck to tip the scales in Iraq and on the goodwill of foreign lenders, particularly the Chinese, to maintain America’s economic fortunes. But as one of America’s sages recognized, “luck is the residue of design.”
Scott D. O’Reilly is an independent writer with degrees in Philosophy and Psychology who has been published in The Humanist, Philosophy Now, Think, and The Philosopher’s Magazine. You can email Scott at neuroscott@aol.com.
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