How We Talk War When We Talk With China Now

Admiral Mike Mullen, outgoing Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, sounded a worried note in his New York Times op-ed on Tuesday on the state of Chinese-American military relations. It was a typically one-sided presentation of the situation: those spying, secretive, bullying, and increasingly well-armed Chinese versus a U.S. that's only trying to keep the regional peace... while selling arms at a record pace to every neighboring state, conducting joint naval exercises right off China's coast, and, you know, openly planning to bomb the breadth and length of the Middle Kingdom.

Details!

But these are the same old gripes that have bedeviled the bilateral military relationship for years now, keeping it frighteningly stillborn — at least relative to the immense buildup of economic connectivity between our countries in just the last decade. Admiral Mullen is right to be depressed about this uneven state of affairs, because typically it's the military-to-military relationship that's steadier than the financial one. Usually, it's the "glue" that survives the petty political flare-ups and nagging economic disagreements, but here it's the frequent victim of such squabbles and that should make both sides nervous.

Why? Besides all those trillions of U.S. dollars sitting in Beijing's coffers, there's the historic argument about how the international system always has a hard time integrating a rising global power — especially when the longtime "sole superpower" is in relative decline. (And we'll see how relative that is come default D-day.) But since America and its military actually are the force for good around this planet, we want to continue doing the right thing while asking China to step up and help — instead of just "free riding" on our global policing efforts. But because we're a rather nervous Number One right now, we want to keep a wary eye on everything China does with its military, while keeping our big-war powder dry.

In short, Washington can't make up its our mind on China — the "threat" version, anyway — and so it seeks to have it both ways by brandishing sticks and carrots. Unsurprisingly, single-party-state China returns the favor, and for some reason, that perplexes our leadership! The Pentagon finds Beijing oddly schizophrenic in the generals-to-generals realm, when, of course, Washington itself consistently presents any number of contradictory strategic personalities, talking out of all sides of its mouth at once.

Here's my rundown of the six major approaches that America currently employs to deal with Chinese military might. See if you can spot the internal inconsistencies....

Source: http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/us-china-military-relations-6159815?src=rss

The Power of Politics Election day Republican Democrat Governor