Is China Trying to Bankrupt US?

June 09, 2011

Does a cash-strapped US face a Cold War redux as China encourages it to ramp up defence spending? Boosting alliances is the way to respond, says Brad Glosserman.

One popular narrative credits the end of the Cold War to a US strategy to bankrupt the Soviet Union. Well aware of the advantage conferred by its superior economic performance, Washington pushed Moscow into a military competition that drained the USSR of its resources. In this narrative, US President Ronald Reagan’s push to create a missile defence system – realistic or not – was the straw that broke the Soviet back.

Are Chinese strategists pursuing a similar approach to the United States? Is Beijing pushing US buttons, forcing it to spend increasingly scarce resources on defence assets and diverting them from other more productive uses? Far-fetched though it may seem – and the reasons to be sceptical are pretty compelling – there is evidence that China is doing just that: ringing American alarm bells, forcing the US to respond, and compounding fiscal dilemmas within the United States. Call it Cold War redux....

China is trying to shape that strategy – not just by playing down its potential to threaten the United States but by playing up some of its capabilities. That’s one way to read China’s January 2007 anti-satellite test or the test of the stealth fighter in January of this year just as Gates was visiting China. China is trying to make its capabilities, no matter how nascent or premature, the focus of US planning and forcing the US to respond.

While this theory – that China would highlight its own threat to force a US response – sounds far-fetched, it seems to be working. There’s mounting concern in the defence community over China’s deployment of an aircraft carrier and its anti-access area denial strategy. That’s reasonable: hysteria and dire warnings about a transformation of the regional balance of power are not....................

Most important, the United States must better leverage its strengths, in particular its relationships with allies, friends and partners.

Alliances and relationships are force multipliers. The more tightly integrated the US and its allies, the more convincing the signal to potential adversaries that the United States is committed to the defence of those partners – in other words, it strengthens our deterrent. And that is the most important element of our security strategy in the Asia Pacific.
http://the-diplomat.com/2011/06/09/i...o-bankrupt-us/


The Chinese modernisation of its armed forces and it growing economic clout indeed places China in a comfortable position.

The provocations in the South China Seas maybe for genuine economic reasons, as also to send alarm bells ringing with its consequences.

The current economic state of the US does not encourage a 'race' and yet the US interests has to remain shored up.

Alliances and relationships have to be organised so that the responsibility is shared, but such alliances and relationship should have a sound footing and not be applicable on merits on a 'case by case' basis.