First of all, this is just offensive:
Every day and night, hundreds of Air Force generals and Navy admirals must thank their lucky stars for China. Without the specter of a rising Chinese military, there would be no rationale for such a large fleet of American nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers, or for a new generation of stealth combat fighters—no rationale for about a quarter of the Pentagon's budget.
So America's military commanders wouldn't be happy if we had no threats and as a result our military was smaller?
Yeah, and doctors love people dying of AIDS because they get more work. And environmentalists must love carbon dioxide since they can get research money. And of course, the Left must love poor people because then they can create bureaucracies to spend money. We could go on in this offensive nature, but few will. But malign our officer corps by saying they want a mortal threat to justify weapons? Kaplan has no problem with that.
But most fundamentally, Kaplan is just wrong in his conclusions that China cannot pose a threat to us. What was Japan's economic strength compared to us in December 1941? An eighth? One-ninth of ours? The proper question is what can China do with their quite clearly inferior military to win in specific scenarios. Let me just point to three of my past posts to answer Kaplan:
Short Punch. Long Reach.
Neither Midgets Nor Giants.
And Don't Underestimate the Threat.
I am further perplexed by his statement that somehow the Pentagon is dishonest in saying the balance of power in the Taiwan Strait is shifting in China's favor lately:
More to the point, let's look at what the Chinese have bought. It's a surprise to read that the balance of power with Taiwan is now "shifting in the mainland's favor." For decades, the widespread calculation has been that China could overwhelm Taiwan if it wanted to—just as the Soviet Union could have overwhelmed West Berlin or North Korea could have captured Seoul—but that it's been deterred from doing so out of a reluctance to spark a large-scale war.
I certainly do not recall the widespread opinion that China could have conquered Taiwan whenever it wanted to. Recall the "million-man swim" insult. I had assumed that given China's weaknesses, our forward-deployed forces prevented China from even trying an invasion. But the fact is, China's growing strength means that China might be able to overcome our forward forces long enough to conquer Taiwan at some point in the very near future.
We are stronger than China. But the proper comparison isn't whether we could invade China or China could invade America. Neither country could accomplish the conquest of the other. So are we equal despite our power superiority? Certainly not.
We must compare our capabilities in individual scenarios. And most of those scenarios are close to China where China can mass their inferior power for local superiority for a short time period. The question then becomes can we or we and our allies rush enough of our superior power to the region to reverse a temporary Chinese advantage. And what can China do with their temporary advantage?
So a little nuance should be in order when assessing Chinese power.
And perhaps an apology to the flag officers of our military who have sworn an oath to defend our country.
