The threat that blows from China - China as economic and military threat

National Review, March 20, 2000 by Mark Helprin

Whatever China's power and prospects, affording protection to those in its shadow is entirely feasible for the United States if it exploits its strengths. With a population one-fifth the size of China's and ten times the GNP, the U.S. can outpace China discouragingly at any rate it chooses, just as it did the Soviet Union. It is one thing for China to race an opponent that is slowing, but it would be another to compete with one that does not flag, and quite another to race against a United States that effortlessly pulls away. This the U.S. can effect at little cost. Were it not trumpeted by Richard Gephardt as the rape of the Sabine women, raising the percentage of GNP allocated to defense from 3.2 to 4.2, one point short of the 30-year average, would go unnoticed in this country but leave China behind with each passing year by two full years of its current outlays. A painless step worth far more than a point of GNP would be to shut down the major sources of China's defense research simply by instituting reasonable security and counterespionage practices and placing commonsensical controls on exports. And must we continue to serve China's strategic interests by transforming the United States Army into a faddishly light gendarmerie? What might China, not to mention North Korea, think about the careless assumption of our somnolent planners less than a decade after the Gulf War, perhaps the largest single battle in history, that the combat of massive formations will never again occur? Another military reform that would discourage China and others would be to remove our mothers, wives, and daughters from combat. Traditional cultures are not only appalled by this kind of experimentation, they see it as one of the signs that we are undergoing a crisis of will, and they are right.

And then there is Russia. America's triumphalist, dismissive, and careless approach to Moscow is that much more foolish in light of Russia's potential combination with China, the prevention of which should be a major objective of our diplomacy. Russia will arm China only according to its own interests, but how it calculates or miscalculates those interests may change the face of history. Nonetheless, in all respects, Korea, where we face the possibility of large-scale combat on the ground, is the most vulnerable point. For the long term, the best course is to await unification and, when it is achieved, withdraw. Until that time, we may be capable of defending the South even from a Chinese onslaught, if we reconstitute our forces, and as long as we recognize that we may once again be compelled to run up and down the peninsula. If China wants to shock and dislocate the United States, it will attack in Korea, but, then again, if it does it will wake the real giant, which is us.

We want and can have good relations with China, including (upon the satisfaction of certain conditions) a robust nonstrategic trade, but China has been most aggressive in mounting an espionage offensive against us and in its interference in our domestic politics. This requires a response. Apart from merely putting it on notice not to take the Clinton years as gospel, we should firmly set about doing the two things China finds most frustrating-building a strategic defense and increasing military cooperation with Taiwan. (We have already embarked upon the latter, although President Clinton, not surprisingly, promises to veto the legislation that establishes it.) Neither of these is a violation of any agreement we have with China, and both will clarify and check its unwarranted initiatives. One cannot be afraid to provoke where required, but one must also be reluctant to do so while uncertain of a rival's plan or if it may be transformed, lest a cycle of provocation and reaction lead to a war no one wants.