Posted on 01/11/2006 8:05:58 PM PST by Jeff Head
However, even if China is "free" and democratic, do you really think they'll let Taiwan to be independent? That's the key issue. I don't think so. Would we let Texas to be independent if Texans voted for it? I don't think so either (and the same situation has happened - Civil War, where states independently voted for independence, in overwhelming majorities).
The biggest issue for China is Taiwan. Whether it occurs before 2008 or after, if Taiwan declares independence, regardless of teh form of the Chinese government, it will act. It will, or the government would fall because the Chinese will view their government as again, being weak to foreign powers. So whetherit's the CCP, another totalitarian regime, or a democratic one, it will have to act with force to prevent independence.
Mullen Promises Stable Shipbuilding Plan
By CHRISTOPHER P. CAVAS, Defense News, January 17, 2006
The U.S. Navy’s top officer promised again last week to stabilize the U.S. Navy’s shipbuilding plans and protect funds for new ships.
“The practice around town has been, for far too long, to pay other bills by robbing the shipbuilding accounts,” Adm. Mike Mullen, chief of naval operations, said Jan. 11. “We’re not going to do that any more.”
“We’re going to stabilize the whole process,” he said. But he cautioned industry would have to do its part.
“I’m going to give them a plan they can build to,” he said. “But then I am going to expect them to help me keep [the ships] affordable.”
Mullen spoke on the first day of the Surface Navy Association’s annual three-day conference of surface warfare officers, Pentagon executives and industry representatives. During his keynote address, he reiterated his support for DD(X), the Navy’s cutting-edge technology destroyer that, at an estimated $3.3 billion cost for the first ships, has been a controversial football in Congress.
“We need DD(X),” he said, and highlighted the stealth ship’s ability to expand the areas in which it can operate.
“I’ve seen lots of press reports about how it’s in trouble,” he said. “The critics are wrong. DD(X) is well-supported in the halls of Congress, the Navy and in the Department of Defense.”
New Fleet Plan
The first two DD(X) ships are expected to appear in the fiscal 2007 budget request, due to be publicly unveiled Feb. 6 along with the Quadrennial Defense Review, which includes Mullen’s new plan for a 313-ship fleet. Mullen declined to discuss details of the plan.
But several naval budget analysts who spoke Jan. 11 cautioned that the new fleet plan is unaffordable.
Eric Labs of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), citing press reports of the plan, noted that the Navy’s reported estimate of $13.4 billion per year to build the fleet raises “questions about the viability and executability of the 313-ship fleet.” That price, he noted, would be a one-third increase in annual funding from recent years.
CBO’s analysis, he said, “shows a more grim outlook.” Labs estimated the real cost at $18.3 billion per year over 30 years.
Even more, Labs said, the plan doesn’t appear to satisfy the requirements for certain ship types, such as attack submarines or large surface combatants. Factoring in those requirements, he said, would raise the annual cost to $20.9 billion per year in new ship construction.
Ron O’Rourke of the Congressional Research Service — who, like Labs, cautioned he was speaking on his own behalf and not for his organization — noted similar deficiencies in the plan’s ability to satisfy the required numbers of DD(X) destroyers and CG(X) cruisers, as well as DDG(X), a follow-on design planned to replace Arleigh Burke-class destroyers in the late 2020s.
O’Rourke noted that the Navy plans to begin acquiring one DD(X) and one CG(X) in the same year beginning in 2011. But if affordability issues slide those numbers to one per year, a shortfall in those types of ships will occur.
The Navy’s plan, he said, “depends on a lot of things working out the way the Navy hopes, with few or no bad surprises. But things don’t always work out the way you hope, and unforeseen budget shocks do occur.” Such a scenario, he said, “appears very possible.”
A serious problem, he added, may not develop for several years, “at which point it will be someone else’s problem to fix.”
Interservice Relations
Mullen spoke more forcefully than in past addresses about the need for better Navy-Coast Guard cooperation. He has been criticized by Coast Guard supporters for not paying enough attention to the smaller sea service.
“Next to the Marine Corps,” he said, “I view our relationship with the Coast Guard as the single most critical relationship” in securing the seas.
Citing the need for better interservice cooperation, Mullen said he wanted to coordinate research and development efforts, acquisition, logistics, exercises and deployments with the Coast Guard.
“I want to better understand how they work,” he said, “and I want them to know more about us.”
Riverine Warfare
A discussion of the Navy’s new Naval Expeditionary Combat Command provoked a good deal of interest on Jan. 11. Young naval officers interested in taking part posed numerous questions, and several Vietnam-era veterans of riverine warfare stood up to offer their assistance to the new command, which was commissioned Jan. 13 in Little Creek, Va. Rear Adm. Jay Bowling, the Navy’s deputy director for expeditionary warfare, told at least one veteran he’d accept his offer of help.
Bowling told the audience the new command would “push the fight inland” by carrying out patrol and interdiction duties. “The squadrons are offensive, not defensive,” he said.
The first of three 20-boat, 210-sailor units is set to begin training this summer and deploy to Iraq in March 2007 “to relieve the stress on the Marine Corps” in patrolling inland waterways.
But the riverine effort, Bowling said, is not contingent on the Iraq war. Other possible areas for deployment, he said, are west Africa and northern South America. •
My feeling is that a free and democratic China would be something that the people of Taiwan would want to attach themselves to. It is what their own civil war was all about that resulted in the free Chinese being on that island in the first place...so if the mainland became "free" and based on republican principles, the ROC would naturally join them, figuring that they had finally prevailed in the decades long struggle.
On the other hand...they will fight being grafted into a totalitarian system which is what the CCP is now. That's the real issue. Not whether the people on Taiwan are free and independent or not...they already are. Having spent quite a bit of time over in Taiwan in the late 1990's, IMHO, if the mainland Chinese become free, the issue will settle itself naturally and tensions will reduce dramatically.
But all of that...all of it...presupposes no major ocean conflict. If a major war flares up where we are hurt or seriously challenged on the open seas...then we will make the sacrifices necessary to build those newer vessels and a lot more in order to win. The question is simply whether we will have the capacity and whether whatever enemy can thwart or reduce that capacity and whether they themselves have the naval capability to take on what we already have at sea.
IMHO, the Chinese are driving towards the ability to do these things in the localised region their around the China Seas. They will have to maintain the disparity in numbers of new, modern ships being built for several more years (3-4) before they have any hope of taking on what we can put there in addition to our major allies, the Japanese. the Koreans, and the ROCN. If they somehow politically get the Koreans to stay out of it, and either a demo or rino administration in DC who does not step boldy up to the plate in the face of any future Chinese incidents...then all bets are off and you can bet the PRC knows this and is preparing and planning for the same if they can bring it about.
Your comments on the discussion from post number 40 on?
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Book Review by John Derbyshire |
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| Why We Ought to Fear China Hegemon: China's Plan to Dominate Asia and the World Steven Mosher is a hero to those of us who hate and fear the current Chinese government. He has the honor of having been persona non grata in the People's Republic for twenty years— longer, I think, than any other American scholar. Mosher was the first social scientist from this country invited to do research in rural China after the death of Mao. He witnessed communist population policy— forced abortion, infanticide and sterilization— at first hand, and after leaving China in 1980 wrote about it. This enraged the Chinese government, who warned Mosher's university, Stanford, that no further visas would be issued to their scholars unless he was punished. Stanford caved, of course; Mosher was dismissed from his Ph.D. program. He has subsequently written several books and campaigned against Chinese policies of population control and religious persecution. In Hegemon, Mosher puts forward the argument that China's present leaders have a grand strategic plan for the future of their country: first to get the U.S. out of Asia, then to exert as much influence as they can over as much of the world as they can reach. Mosher gives the historical background to present-day China's outlook on the world before showing how current Chinese government policies, from education to defense, are designed to further Chinese hegemony. Hegemon is particularly good on the great success the Chinese Communist Party has had in re-branding itself from the incarnation of Marxist-Leninist theory to the standard-bearer of Chinese patriotism. "Patriotism" is, in fact, too feeble a word for the attitudes the Chinese authorities have attempted— successfully, to judge by the younger Chinese I meet— to impress on the post-Mao generations. The blood of young Chinese is charged with a heady fascistic mix of racism, grievance, hyper-nationalism and imperialism. They have been taught, and believe, that China is the victim of great historical wrongs that cry out to heaven for vengeance. America is generally hated. Mosher observes that the TianAnMen protests of 1989 were the high tide of agitation for democracy in China. No such movement is conceivable nowadays.
Most terrifying of all is the current campaign against corruption in the People's Liberation Army, which actually seems to be succeeding. So long as China was a corrupt, leaky despotism we could hope that the whole rotten edifice might fall in on itself. China as a sleek, efficient despotism does not bear thinking about. It is rather easy to anticipate some of the reactions to Hegemon. Be ready for the smiling assurances that China, following the hoped-for subjugation of Taiwan, has "no further territorial demands". China, her officials and western mouthpieces will purr, has never been an expansionist power. As Mosher points out, this is untrue. China's territory has expanded more than tenfold since proper historical records began in the 8th century B.C. Her current land area is more than twice what it was at the height of the Ming dynasty 500 years ago— an average rate of expansion throughout the modern age of nearly 4,000 square miles per annum. This is even after allowing for the loss of Outer Mongolia in the 1920s, a loss which rankles bitterly: when Khrushchev visited Mao Tse-tung in 1959, the first item on Mao's agenda was a demand for the "return" of Outer Mongolia (by that time a Soviet satellite).Mosher's final chapter, "Containing the Hegemon", gives his prescriptions for countering the growing threat of Chinese imperialism. America must, he says, "shoulder its responsibility". This means military preparedness, stricter export controls, anti-missile defences, a firmer commitment to Asian allies. Though well worth saying, this evades the fundamental problem that always sets a democracy at a disadvantage when dealing with a dictatorship: the problem of wishful thinking. When Hitler and Stalin signed their 1939 pact, Evelyn Waugh exulted that the true nature of the totalitarian regimes was "out in the open, huge and hideous". One day, ten or fifteen years from now, China will perform some similar revelatory act— the invasion of Outer Mongolia, perhaps— leaving her apologists suddenly speechless (oh, come the day!) and opening the eyes of even the most gullible. Until then the China lobbies will continue to hold the field, lulling us with the promise that just one more trade concession, just one tilt further away from Taiwan, will bring down the communists, usher in constitutional government and remove all threats to U.S. interests. This is nonsense, and in their hearts a lot of intelligent people probably know it is nonsense; but unlike Steven Mosher's message it does not require us to do anything arduous or expensive. Is there any way we can help China transform herself into a normal country, with whom we can engage in friendly competition? I have offered my own suggestions, for what they are worth, in another place (The Weekly Standard, 2/14/00). Mosher's principal proposal is that we should preserve Taiwan as an example to the mainland. Unfortunately this takes us back to the problem of appeasement's superior appeal to a self-absorbed, hedonistic electorate. Americans are not willing to wage war to defend Taiwan's democracy; the Chinese are very willing— they are eager!— to wage war to destroy it. Perhaps China just cannot be transformed. Her political history is certainly not encouraging. There are only two autochthonous traditions: Legalism and Confucianism. The first teaches despotism maintained by government terror; the second, despotism facilitated by internalized moral codes. Actual Chinese rulers have employed a blend of the two. True, Taiwan's success suggests that culture is not an insuperable obstacle to political reform; but it is difficult to see how the Taiwan experience might be duplicated on the mainland. The prospects for rational politics in China are, frankly, rather bleak. To find grounds for hope, without succumbing to wishful thinking, is very difficult; but Steven Mosher has done his best, as we all must. Hegemon is a welcome addition to the growing body of monitory books on China— what one of my Chinese friends calls "yellow peril literature". The editing leaves much to be desired, though. The historical errors are particularly disconcerting. It was the QianLong Emperor, not the KangXi Emperor, to whom Lord Macartney refused to kowtow. The period of division into three states did not last from the Han dynasty to the Sui, but only from the Han to the Western Jin— an error of 324 years. And who was "empress Wu of Han"? Presumably either Empress Lü of Han or Empress Wu of Tang is meant. This is not mere pedantic quibbling. In writing a book like this, Steven Mosher is throwing down the gauntlet to huge, rich, powerful interests— universities, corporations, bought politicians and ex-cabinet officers, the entire diplomatic establishment. Every error weakens the force of his argument, and will be seized on by the China shills to help discredit him. That will be a pity, because his message is true and timely, and of the utmost importance to all of us. |
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In Hegemon, Mosher puts forward the argument that China's present leaders have a grand strategic plan for the future of their country: first to get the U.S. out of Asia, then to exert as much influence as they can over as much of the world as they can reach. Mosher gives the historical background to present-day China's outlook on the world before showing how current Chinese government policies, from education to defense, are designed to further Chinese hegemony.Sounds like the in-fact living out and realization of things I project in the build up in fictional Dragon's Fury Series of novels where it all leads to a very dangerous, vicious, and hard fought world war of seven or eight years duration.
Hegemon is particularly good on the great success the Chinese Communist Party has had in re-branding itself from the incarnation of Marxist-Leninist theory to the standard-bearer of Chinese patriotism. "Patriotism" is, in fact, too feeble a word for the attitudes the Chinese authorities have attempted— successfully, to judge by the younger Chinese I meet— to impress on the post-Mao generations. The blood of young Chinese is charged with a heady fascistic mix of racism, grievance, hyper-nationalism and imperialism. They have been taught, and believe, that China is the victim of great historical wrongs that cry out to heaven for vengeance. America is generally hated.
Joanie and Chris...please read the exchanges from about post 40 on. The things Paul has posted a very worthy of considerations regarding topics associated with the PRC that we have discussed amongst ourselves many times in the past.
I have to disagree with you there. I don't think Chen Shui-Bian and his cronies have any intention of reuniting even if China is democratic. Their view is that Taiwan is a separate country and even race of people. They've been doing that in the elementary school systems for years, wanting to remove ROC from the title and change it to ROT (Republic of Taiwan instead of China). Fortunately, Taiwan didn't lose its sense and defeated the DPP's proposals in the last election.
So I don't think that by itself will change the issue. It may reduce tension, but if Taiwan is still unwilling to reunite, then I am almost certain that even a democratic China will use force to prevent independence.
The next move will be on Chen's. If he moves towards independence, then I'd agree with you that war will break out over Taiwan.
The people apparently think differently and would reunite with a free mainland.
I expect if the mainland were to become truly free...that the free people on the island would force their politicians to move towards unification (or elect new ones who would) because they would all benefit tremndously...at least that was the feeling when I was there amongst the managers and executives I consulted with.
If the CCP stays in power and is successful in their moves towards ardent nationalism based on a totalitarian system...then reunification will only occur at the point of a gun IMHO. It is this danger that Chen is buttressing and trying to prepare against IMHO.
We shall have to wait and see...and all pray for the true liberty and freedom of the Chinese people and the attendant avoidance of conflict.
As howling mobs raged in front of the American embassy following the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, I spoke with an American businessman with many years of experience in China. "Ten years ago they were ours," he told me sadly. "Now they are theirs." He meant that the Chinese Communist Party, having successfully waved the bloody shirt of nationalism, had reclaimed its young.
It is telling in a lot of ways. It suggests that there was a kind of plan in the GHWB Administration, but GHWB who was Reagan's point man for China got it bollixed up. He was too easily duped. He was too trusting. He was painfully wrong that the PLA was not going to go peacefully into the night...and he seriously misjudged their enmity. Still does from recent statements he has made expressing astonishing degrees of gullibility...
What do you think of the China/Iran connections?
Hi Jeff,
I agree with your points. I grew up in Taiwan until the age of 11, and while I was there, the KMT was still in charge and the education is mainly a Chinese-history based education + reunification as the ultimate goal. Of course, KMT also talks about freedom (even though de-facto freedom is still prohibited in the KMT as they're the sole party in charge), etc. which sows the seed for the later reforms. In other words, even though KMT was the sole party in charge, it still educated the young with philosphies from Sun Yatsen, the founder of the modern China republic (until 1949).
The problem in Taiwan today is that they're teaching their young that Taiwanese is a separate race (i am not kidding here), and that unification with the mainland is pointless. ONce the DPP got control, they threw out everything that KMT shows. So i am not sure DPP is helping the tension there.
The thing is, I think it's pretty clear that US will intervene if Taiwan is attacked, unprovoked, by the mainland. The real question is that if the DPP/Chen Shui Bian declares independence outright, and that draws military action from China (whether China is democratic or not, a declaration of independence from Taiwan would draw them into a conflict), whether US will still support them. Bush seems to indicate that his support for Taiwan isn't infinite, and that any moves toward independence from Taiwan is not what he wanted, but who knows.
I am hopeful that China will change at least into some form of Singapore-style government, which is really an autocracy (or even dictatorship if you will, because though it has a parlimentary system, a single party is still in charge over 98% of the seats). I am not sure that it can reach this, however, as it will definitely require strengtheninng rule of law (good luck) first of all. Personally, if they change into Singapore or local level democracy (villagers get to elect their own mayor, etc. so that they can better control corruption themselves which is happening 90% in the local level), I think it'll help a lot.
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