China- US: CJCS Admiral Mullen said today that China's high-tech military capabilities, including the radar-evading stealth J-20 fighter, focus on America.
China has every right to develop military capabilities, Mullen said, adding that he cannot understand why many appear to target the United States despite North Korea's being an evolving threat to the region and to the United States. If Pyongyang obtains long-range nuclear missile capabilities, its provocations may become more catastrophic, Mullen stated, adding that China must pressure North Korean leadership to cease development of intercontinental ballistic missiles and expansion of nuclear weapons capability.
Comment: It is difficult to accept at face value that Admiral Mullen does not understand the Chinese obsession with the threat from the United States.
Taking the statement at face value – and not as an act of political manipulation – it implies that the J2 and J5 staffs have failed to brief him about the origins of Chinese national defense strategy since the death of Deng Xiao Ping. If the Chairman's statement is genuine and not posturing, it is astonishing.
NIGHTWATCH Extract China-US: Special comment. International news services broadcast video and translations of Chinese Minister of Defense Liang insulting and hectoring the US, represented by the Secretary of Defense. The Chinese tasked Secretary Gates to defend and to explain to the Chinese why the US sells weapons to Taiwan and conducts naval training in the Yellow Sea. China demanded they stop. Instead of rejecting the Chinese demands and leaving, Gates tried to defend what needs not defense in Asia – US national policy.
A couple of points are worth noting. The tongue lashing Gates endured at a Singapore conference last year by a Chinese general clearly was no accident. That insult focused on the same issues as the latest. Gates should have walked out of the Singapore meeting last year and should have walked out of today's session. It remains unclear what the US hoped to gain that merited humiliation.
China is not ready to be a cooperative partner in international security affairs as some analysts contend; resents and resists the tutelage or guidance that some analysts think the US must offer; and has no intention of becoming more open in response to US requests if only because the US wants it so badly.
Phi Beta Iota: See our Memorandum on Chinese Irregular Warfare. The US Government has hit bottom in terms of lacking legitimacy at home and credibility abroad. Ideology is not a substitute for intelligence, and civility is not a substitute for cultural understanding.
The unscheduled visit by United States Vice President Joe Biden to Islamabad this week underscores Washington's embarrassment and anxiety that it stands excluded from a regional initiative on Afghan peace process that could be about to take off. The rapid sequence of events over the past fortnight has taken Washington by surprise.
DefDog Comment: Most insurgencies last past 10 years it almost always requires a political settlement….thus we are seeing what could have been accomplished at the beginning by understanding the Pashtun and sitting down, Jirga style, and asking for UBL, who was granted sanctuary under the Pasthun Honor Code, Pasthunwali…..no cultural understanding has resulted in a 10 year waste…
Phi Beta Iota: The US Government is suffering from multiple disconnects–from its public, from reality, from strategic analytics, from cultural intelligence–from ANY intelligence relevant to all challenges at all levels–and finally, from integrity. Integrity is what allows well-intentioned people to cope with ambiguity. When they give up their integrity, they yield the field to those with political, ideological, and financial ambitions, and the public interest suffers–as does the welfare of our Armed Forces in harm's way.
China-Indonesia: Representatives from nine Chinese companies will visit Indonesia on 5 January to consider investment in transportation infrastructure in the Papua and West Papua Provinces of Indonesian New Guinea, according to Indonesian Transportation Minister Freddy Numberi. The companies' representatives, accompanied by Chinese officials, are on a fact finding trip for constructing airports and seaports, and will consider upgrading airports in Manokwari, Timika, Biak and Sorong into international airports. The governors of Papua and West Papua Provinces will also present investment opportunities during the visit.
China is seizing on Europe's debt problems to expand its influence on the
continent with large-scale investments and purchases of government bonds
issued by highly-indebted states. The strategy could push Europe into the
same financial dependency on China that is posing a dilemma for the US.
Phi Beta Iota: Half of strategy is being smart at home–little things like assuring liberty and nurturing innovation, planning for resilience, being self-sustaining where it matters. The contrast between the US shrinking balloon and the expanding Chinese dominance of the world through measured export of males, measures investments, and presidential-level delegations that the US cannot fathom, all bode well for China and ill for the US. The Republic is no longer–whether it can be brought back in a Second American Revolution is the question that we older folk must address–but now we can do so confident that the younger generation–the 12-18 generation specifically, has woken up to both the crisis facing them and the ineptitude of their respective governments. Their informed anger is heartening.
India: The Japanese trading house Toyota Tsusho Corporation announced that it will begin construction of a rare earth processing plant in India in 2011 in an effort to secure suppliers beyond China, Kyodo reported.
The group company of Toyota Motor Corp. will build the plant in Orison State with plans to launch by the end of 2011. The plant will be constructed in collaboration with Indian Rare Earths Ltd., an affiliate of state-owned Nuclear Power Corp. of India, and with Japan's Shin-Etsu Chemical Co. Japan hopes the plant will produce and export 3,000 to 4,000 tons of rare earth elements each year beginning in 2012.
Bolivia: Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan and Bolivian President Eva Morales agreed during a meeting in Tokyo to cooperate on the development of commercial lithium extraction in Bolivia. Japan would like to help Bolivia develop its resources, Kan said.
Japanese Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Akihiro Oat said Japan was prepared to supply technology and infrastructure. Tokyo is also ready to contribute to the development of Bolivia's human resources, Oat said. Morales, who arrived in Tokyo on the 7th and Kan also confirmed their cooperation on a geothermal power plant project in Bolivia. Japan will extend loans to fund that project, Kyodo reported.
NIGHTWATCH Comment: Japan is taking long term action to reduce its dependence on Chinese supplies of rare earth elements, which China chose to manipulate for political purposes during the Senkaku Islands dispute. Japan is implementing its own version of economic colonialism in India and Bolivia to ensure secure supplies in the long run.
Phi Beta Iota: While India is an obvious location poised to compete for Central Asian rare earths as well as help accelerate India's own discoveries, Bolivia is even more interesting because of its closeness to Chile, which is the only country we know of that is immediately capable of achieving infinite free energy. For Chile (and Brazil) to fail to see the importance of leveraging near-by sources of rare earths is a strategic error of substantial import.
China does not want to “replace” the United States from its dominant role in the world, and the world should not fear China's rise, the country's top diplomat wrote in an essay.
State Councillor Dai Bingguo said that China would not engage in an arms race, as the country's resources were better spent on development and ensuring its people had enough to eat.
“The notion that China wants to replace the United States and dominate the world is a myth,” Dai wrote in the essay carried on the Foreign Ministry's website (www.mfa.gov.cn) late on Monday.
“Politically, we … respect the social systems and development path of the different peoples of the world,” he added.
NIGHTWATCH Comments: Dai's essay has a defensive tone that suggests the international community expects too much of China. If that is the case, the Chinese nurtured those expectations by their world-wide economic offensive, infrastructure projects in central, south and southeast Asia, port developments in the Indian Ocean and aggressive actions to assert Chinese territorial sea claims in East and Southeast Asia. In promising to be a “responsible participant” in the international system Dai is trying to lower expectations. He is disavowing any pretense to leadership with respect to North Korea and Iran, both of whom are Chinese clients and beneficiaries. Chinese actions, arms sales and investments contradict the self-effacing theme. Nonetheless, the modern successor to the Central Kingdom appears to be trying to tutor the rest of the world on how to look on and behave towards China.
Phi Beta Iota: Colin Gray, in Modern Strategy, reminds us that time is the one strategic variable that can not be replaced nor purchased. China understands this, the USA does not. China has made some very serious mistakes, notably with respect to water and energy, but on balance, on a per capita basis, it has been much more intelligent than the USA, and absent a radical change in how the USA is governed, we expect that to continue. Similarly, Brazil, India and Indonesia, the demographic powers of the future, appear to be less corrupt in their strategic leadership, more thoughtful in their operational campaigns, and less likely to self-destruct as the USA is doing.
