"The United States should sustain and selectively enhance its force posture in East Asia, ensuring it has capabilities commensurate with the region's growing importance to the U.S. economy and other vital national interests," the report by a task force of the Council on Foreign Relations stated.Will China be a global peer competitor to us in a generation?
The task force, whose report was made public yesterday, was led by retired Pacific Command chief Adm. Dennis Blair and former U.S. Trade Representative Carla Hills.
The task force disagrees with part of the Pentagon's four-year strategy, stating that it does not think China will become a "peer competitor" of the U.S. military in the near future.
"We don't see it becoming a peer competitor, but we think the United States needs to maintain its capability that it's had," Adm. Blair said.
Richard Fisher, a specialist on China's military, said he disagrees strongly with that assessment. "By 2010, most of China's anti-access forces will be in place, making it very difficult to use Pacific forces to help Taiwan," Mr. Fisher said. "Unless we double the number of our aircraft carriers and triple our bomber fleet, China is going to be a peer competitor by 2030."
Fisher, I assume, is speaking of doubling our carriers in the Pacific and tripling our aircraft based there rather than saying our total inventories must double and triple. Plus, he is confusing things saying if we don't increase those forces that China will become a peer competitor. China will become a peer competitor or not based on the level of their power. Our level of power will determine if we can attempt to block their power projection.
But as to the basic question, I don't know if China will become a global peer competitor. But the question is moot. China will be a huge threat if they are a peer competitor--able to project power globally as we do today. No doubt about that.
But I feel no need to debate precisely when or even whether China will become a peer competitor. China will be a threat ot our interests even if it is just a regional peer able to project force out to a thousand miles from the mainland out to sea or even just 500 miles.
Remember that neither Japan nor Germany were global peer competitors in World War II. But they managed to be quite the enemies even with their regional limitations on projecting power.
China may or may not emerge as a threat. They could be a friend or even a democracy one day. But if China does not disintegrate, China will have the latent power to be a threat to us should their leadership decide to be our enemy. And that will be true whether they are a regional or global peer power.
Just in case, it wouldn't hurt to beef up our air and naval power in the region and shore up alliances as well. Which we are doing, I might add.
