Theodore Roosevelt talked of “speaking softly, while carrying a big stick,” favoring peaceful negotiations supported by military sufficiency. The idea, he said, was “the exercise of intelligent forethought and of decisive action sufficiently far in advance of any likely crisis.”
For her discussions last week about a rising China’s bullying of smaller neighbors in bilateral relationships, Hillary Clinton is receiving plaudits from the Wall Street Journal, of all places:
Hillary Clinton provoked an uproar last week when she said that a peaceful resolution to the South China Sea territorial dispute is in America’s “national interest.” China’s foreign ministry denounced those remarks as unwarranted American meddling and an attempt to “internationalize” a strictly regional problem. Notwithstanding Beijing’s protests, Mrs. Clinton’s diplomacy marks another step in a positive evolution of the Obama administration’s approach to Asia.
At issue is Beijing’s claim that the bulk of the South China Sea constitutes its territorial waters. China is acting just as one would expect from a rising great power: As it grows more powerful, it desires to change international rules written when it is was weak.
Yet foreign policy experts have spent much time assuring Asians and Americans that China’s rise would be an exception—less disruptive than, say, the rise of the United States, Germany or Japan. That view animated President Obama’s disastrous “strategic reassurance” policy of his first year, in which Washington reassured Beijing that America would not contest its rise to great-power status. China smelled weakness and upped the ante, declaring the South China Sea a “core interest” and defining it as China’s territorial waters.
Well and good, but the “alternative” Quadrennial Defense Review sees some limitations to SecState’s ability to support US allies as they grapple with China’s status as a rising regional hegemon:
Defense Secretary Robert Gates has charged each military service with freeing up between $10 billion and $15 billion annually over the next few years, ordering them to roll the “savings” into hardware modernization efforts, the independent QDR panel doubts that will generate enough new monies to build the kind of force America will need for decades to come.
“We cannot reverse the decline of shipbuilding, buy enough naval aircraft, recapitalize Army equipment, buy the F-35 requirement, purchase a new aerial tanker, increase deep strike capability, and recapitalize the bomber fleet just by saving $10-15 billion dollars that the Department of Defense hopes to save through acquisition reform,” states the summary of the alternative QDR…
“The force structure in the Asia-Pacific area needs to be increased,” states the summary. “A robust U.S. force structure, largely rooted in maritime strategy but including other necessary capabilities, will be essential.
Essential, but not available.
All bark, not enough bite.
Maybe if Congress wasn’t wasting money on entitlements, shipping Billions to Pakistan (who in turn funds the Taliban) and wasting $$$$$$ on stupity like O-Care which will never work, we could have the $$$ we need to make sure the Chinese don’t become the Japan of the 21st Century by dominating the Pacific…..would that be too much to ask or is POTUS still on his World Apology Tour???
Heading back for AFGHN on Thursday…..see you from the dusty side of the world where our military is trying to do the impossible despite the POLS tying one hand & leg behind our backs…Only easy day was yesterday.
Political priorities, sadly, are what they are. We all know Iran is a threat and we also know China is a threat. Like WWII we will likely wait for China to make the first move. By ignoring them we are certainly encouraging them.
This crop did not enact Social Security or Medicare which are the entitlements that are really choking us. Those that did did so out of witnessing things like the dust bowl and The Great Depression and the dying elderly and infirm. Out of decency they created a social safety net. No one could have predicted that the baby boom would occur and that life spans would be extended as far as they have. For lack of a better term its unfortunate that these were structured as or modified into a ponzi scheme.
At the same time the recipients of these programs paid into them for their entire lives and they expect their return. Few companies sell robust private employer type insurance to retirees after they retire because they are higher risk. Those that can afford it find it very expensive. The sad thing about private insurance is they get your money while your young and a lot less likely to use the services. The last month of life is the most expensive health care. Most of us who have private insurance are already footing part of the bill because medicare doesn’t cover it all. Thats why it cost $600 just to draw blood.
If you spend your life as a homemaker without 10 years of social security contributions your left out in the cold from what I understand. Same with medicare unless that persons spouse had 10 years of contributions. In this day and age both parents usually work but in my mom’s generation that was not the case.
It’s a mess. But I have a hard time cutting off the people who paid in.
I understand where you’re coming from Spencer, but bankrupting the country and the military isn’t the answer. I don’t have the answer myself, but I know what we’re doing isn’t it.
On this we all agree. It’s a very, very difficult series of choices that need to be made. I think privatizing social security at the least is a good start. Problem is you’ll have wall street firms lining for control just like the 401k industry. Wherever the funds go they need to be out of the hands of congress. And you have to figure out how to simultaneously pay out the people that have earned that right while simultaneously reforming the system. That will require debt too. These problems were predicted a good 10 years ago. As Lex likes to say; congress prefers to kick the can rather than fix it. We need a balanced budget amendment or something like TABOR that Colorado has.
NOW the light-bulb comes on? NOW at this late date? There is A REASON for the existence of the legend of Cassandra, and it’s all bound in human psychology. (And the part of the legend most people forget? That Cassandra was NEVER WRONG)
As someone said shortly after 9/11: “The nature of the threat and modern technology is such that one simply cannot wait until one can see the whites of Mohammad Attas’ eyes to spring into action.”
We could DOUBLE the Defense Budget and it wouldn’t be enough. And don’t speak to me of ‘waste.’ As George Will once said: “Government is ABOUT waste!” That will ALWAYS be a problem–but no more so than with any other govt agency. True enough,the Navy has–even to the eyes of this zoomie (greatly aided by comments here and at CDR SALS & elsewhere)–stepped all over its foreskin it its wpns acquisition and ship building program, but that is fixable. NOTHING is fixable with no money.
‘Phibian is right about shipbuilding and leadership attitudes (on the whole), but he has a serious cognitive problem with “diveraity,” Women and queers in the military. The military is facing an apocalypse soon if they don’t get a handle on personnel problems nad acquisition policy and adminstration. What many don’t understand is the world faces a power vacuum the likes of which the modern world has never seen if the US is forced out as a player on the world scene. people that have expatriated will never have run far enough in that scenario.
The Navy is force for global good only so long as the US is a player internationally. I can see that ending soon because of the left-wingnut elites doing massively idiotic things economically and socially.
My Daughter’s room mate (up until last week) is studying a ‘to not be named’ Eastern Asian Language, and will soon be living in Hawaii. Sounds like her services will be needed.
If Obama had to rephrase Roosevelt, nowadays it would be “Talk weakly, while gutting your stick.”
I’s substitutte “burning your stick” becase he ain’t gonna have it long the way political winds are blowing. Add economic ignorance to the mix, and it will not end well.
And now the realization strikes…
Seapower has mobility. Land-based forces don’t. Which means that if you have spent your resources buying a large Army and short-ranged Air Force, you have shackled yourself to fighting in one spot. And Heaven help you if you have to go to war elsewhere.
If you have seapower, you can move your forces where they are needed. Need to blast Iranian nukes? Send the Fleet. Want to keep China from turning the East Pacific into their fishpond? Move the Fleet. Easy.
I’m convinced that Goldwater-Nichols has got to go…it hobbles strategic decision-making too much.
A Navy can dash in, do some damage, and get out. But if you want a serious, take it apart brick by brick campaign, you will need a well furnished Army and Air Force. That has been stated here, by Lex, no less.
It’s expensive, but a balanced force is needed. You can not neglect any branch of the military. Alas, Bush, and now Obama, has neglected them all.
Greetings:
“As the twig is bent,” my dear mother used to say, “so grows the tree.” It not like this is the first time down this road for either China or Red China. I don’t quite understand why, but we seem to have great difficulty in evaluation the nationalism impulse in the folks in that part of the world.
I mean even the limited historical part of my brain tells me that China fought the Japanese (or vice versa), and in (North) Korea, an armed border dispute with the USSR, and then with (North) Viet Nam. Oh yeah, I think Tibet and India got some of the treatment, too. But I certainly don’t mean to cast China as an imperialist aggressor; it was just dealing with some of its “internal affairs” within its sphere of influence or some such. I think???
What Sec. Clinton has been doing in Asia is not a unilateral initiative. Regardless of how robust our forces in the far east are, there is still half the pacific between CONUS and China. It was a diplomatic network we established after WWII that allowed all the military moves we made in Europe to counter Russia. We will need the same framework in Asia, it is the State Departments job to establish such a network and that is what the Secretary has been doing. Any voice which takes issue with China’s new claims to hegemony over the South China and Yellow seas with carry much more weight being local, than the US crying fowl from across the Pacific.
Will we need to double our efforts at securing the freedom of navigation in the far east? yes. The alt QDR gives hope that this thinking is taking root in congress and DoD. As does Bryan Mcgraths OPED at Defense News. The thing about this is though, a ship building industry which has few success stories in the last decade plus does not give me much faith in our ability to actually increase the size of the fleet/the size of the stick we carry.
Isn’t there more to the “size of the stick” the US carries than just the number of hulls in the water? I would think the US military forces in Japan and South Korea, in particular the US air force jets, would be a huge deterrent to China taking any form of military action.
I think it’s important not to over-react to China’s official statements. Part of diplomacy is sometimes to talk loud…doesn’t mean the country will follow through on it. China’s conventional forces are still very behind the US, and the US has a much larger stockpile of nuclear weapons. China is effectively a contained country, much like the former USSR and current Russia.