Thomas P.M. Barnett :: Weblog

POST: Jeez louise department (China and right-wing bloggers), By James Fallows, 04 Mar 2008

Nice blog post by Fallows, who is drinking deep on all things Chinese with his extensive stay there, so he's rationally articulating an "in their shoes" perspective that's refreshing.

I was offered participation in this bloggers' roundtable but chose to focus on the book. I did see the Pentagon press conference on the study and I found both it and the press coverage of the report to be the same old, same old: China's economy is growing fast and so is its defense budget. This happens everywhere in the universe except for places where America's defeated your regime in the past and helped write your constitution for you--like Germany and Japan. We say, What's up with all this spending? Explain yourself! And China's like, Who TF are you with the request? We don't start wars, you do. We don't run around the planet killing people on foreign soil without telling the locals beforehand, you do. We gotta total hidden budget that doesn't equal your operations, or your R&D, or your acquisition, and you want us to explain our motives?

Okay, so I add a bit to the Chinese voice there, but seriously. There's some real gall to have America release a report each year on somebody else's defense budget and then stand there, waiting for some response like a pissed-off school marm: "Well mister! Do you have anything to say for yourself?"

Do we publish an annual report on anybody else right now? Does anybody else in the world publish such reports on China? On us? On anybody?

There's exceptionalism and there's just plain outrageous--meaning beyond the norm. China's spending hikes aren't beyond the norm. America publishing a report every year about the military of one of our biggest trade partners is beyond the norm. Honestly, it makes us look scared and/or bossy, but it doesn't make us look reasonable or mature or helpful per se. Can such info be collected and dispersed better? You bet. And I realize this is a Congressional mandate so various people can make various points--typically about the program of record that's partially built in their district, but there is a sheer audacity in the way we treat China on this score. I mean, we break the ABM, we don't deign to discuss a treaty on banning space weapons, we do all sorts of stuff and then tell people, "Hey, my call. Doing what's right for America!"

Fine and dandy I say. You get elected, you get to do what you think is right. Don't care for it? Don't elect them.

But everybody else gets to do the same, so these voice-of-God reports from the Pentagon are a bit much when we so transparently buy hardware designed for high-end warfare with China and then act like it's weird when they do the same. What I consider weird is, given the strategic trajectories we're both on, and the world the way it's heading, WTF are either of us wasting bucks (and us, bodies) on this scenario? Cover the capability? Sure. But everybody knows we do more than that, and we don't apologize for it. Expecting China to, or to explain and such. That's just goofy and arrogant on our part. It makes us look weak, actually.

(Thanks: Jarrod Myrick)