The United States “is engaging in an increasingly tight encirclement of China and constantly challenging China’s core interests,” Rear Adm. Yang Yi, former head of strategic studies at the Chinese Army’s National Defense University, wrote in August in the People’s Liberation Army Daily, the military newspaper. “Washington will inevitably pay a costly price for its muddled decision.”
Increasingly tight encirclement? No. We're doing what we've been doing for over six decades now:
In truth, little in the American actions is new. Mr. Obama’s predecessors also hosted the Dalai Lama. American arms sales to Taiwan were mandated by Congress in 1979, and have occurred regularly since then. American warships regularly ply the waters off China’s coast and practice with South Korean ships.
As it is with so many things, it isn't about what we are doing to provoke them. So why the complaints? One, the Chinese are no longer worried about a Soviet invasion. Two, China has the military assets to challenge what we've long done just outside their territorial waters:
But Chinese military leaders seem less inclined to tolerate such old practices now that they have the resources and the confidence to say no.
The resources and confidence to do something are what matters. China is overconfident about what they can do to us, but it only matters that they are confident and believe that they can beat us.
And no, I do not believe that military-to-military contacts will teach Chinese officers that we are too tough to fight. With their non-reality based confidence, the Chinese officers will only believe they've figured out the keys to defeating us if we show them our military up close.
And if those officers make decisions based on what they think they can do to us, rather than what is good policy, there will be a war.
The people in Peking wouldn't be the first to believe their troops will be home by Christmas.
