Posted on 09/07/2010 8:12:18 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
China’s young officers and the 1930s syndrome
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard Economics Last updated: September 7th, 2010
Vietnam and the United States staged a demonstration of their military ties last month amid mounting tensions with China over the South China Sea.
I try to remain optimistic that the US and China will work out a more or less amicable way to run the world for the next half century, a “Chimerica” of interwoven superpowers.
But it was slightly disturbing to hear the warnings of a distinguished China-watcher at a closed-door session of the annual Ambrosetti conference on Lake Como.
(This gathering of the global policy elites at Villa D’Este is a hardship assignment for Telegraph hacks. It fell to me again this year, but somebody has to do it.)
“China’s military spending is growing so fast that it has overtaken strategy,” said Professor Huang Jing from the Lee Kwan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore. (He kindly let me quote his remarks.)
“The young officers are taking control of strategy and it is like young officers in Japan in the 1930s. They are thinking what they can do, not what they should do. This is very dangerous.
“They are on a collision course with a US-dominated system”.
Harvard Professor Niall Ferguson rattled me even further with a talk warning that the Chimerica marriage of the last generation is “on the rocks”.
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.telegraph.co.uk ...
When did the world agree that they wanted to be bullied by Communist China?
I think they wore out their welcome.
I trust the author does know that prior to 1940 Nazi Germany's #1 trading partner was France doesn't he?
y'spose they'll attack pearl harbor?
Last time they went into Viet Nam was the 1970s. Got their asses whipped, courteousy of all the equipment the NVA policed up after we left and they took the South.
Attack Taiwan and Okinawa, while trying to occupy N. Korea.
Admiral Yamamoto was the strategic planner for Pearl Harbor and he was no young officer.
It is the duty of the young to plan for the future. Planning for growth does not equate to planning world domination.
More importantly NVA were battle hardened
veterans used to hard lives, Chinese not
so much. They would have put an asswhup on
them even if all they had were bamboo staves.
Yamamoto was also sent out to sea for several months in 1939-1940 to remove him as a target for the young firebrands, especially in the Army, who were furious at him for advocating not going to war with the USA. When the path to war was decided he insisted upon the Pearl Harbor attack as the only way to get a temporary advantage over the US and maybe force us into a negotiated end. He had absolutely no hope of winning a long war, and by long he meant more than 6 months.
Any risk to Hawaii or Alaska?
Red China wants the Middle East Oil Fields ... the heck with Alaska ...
Here we are 18 years after the implementation of a plan that would gift China with a half century worth of technology, and an income stream with which to utilize it.
Now folks are beginning to see a problem with it.
I and others saw a problem with it 18 years ago.
I said then that our young men and women would die as a result of our short-sightedness.
In time they will. All the folks who got rich during the process will be just fine, where-ever they decide to relocate to avoid the mess.
Naval rivalry is passe. Cyberwarfare is the future. Riiiight!
Tell that to the Taiwanese, the Filipinos, the Singaporeans....
Yes. After he was ordered by the “boy emperor” and his “Spirit Warriors” who ran the Japanese military at the time of the attack.
They were all young, flushed with success after the their stunning success in the Russo-Japanese war and the murdering and raping 10s of millions in China and they bought the Japanese to the point of extinction.
Seriously, read the Book “Flyboys.”
It gives an extensive history of the contemporary Japanese officer corps at that time, the massive crimes that they perpetrated, and how they rose to power.
"In the early years of the 20th century Japan's first generation army underwent a shift to the 2nd generation, which had its own ideas about leadership.
These new military leaders were not former Samurai, but common men who had fought in the front lines in Asia.
These simple men were not strategists & valued mainly “glory.”
They forgot, or did not know, that Japan had not the strength to press home victory against Russia and did not appreciate the strategic wisdom with which their predecessors had sought Roosevelt's timely intervention.
These new military leaders believed that it was “Yamato damashii” (spirit - balls to you & me) that had provided the victories, and were convinced that this was Japan's “secret weapon” that would defeat America & her allies...”
- Flyboys
Thank you for your post
imho the picture that northeast asian guys need to have of the pla
is that it is not a complementary bureaucracy with the
cpc.
The CPC and the PLA are rather competitive bureaucracies.
Why? Why because the ultimate legitimacy and power of the CPC rests
on the PLA. Why? Because China is not a democracy.
What does this mean?
It means that China is very much like Japan after the Meji
restoration. Civilian and military bureacracies in Japan
were competitive and not complementary.
What happened.
The Japanese military scored a lot of successes before they were defeated. They won the RussoJapanes war. they were on the winning side of the World War One. They took Korea.
And this was all before the 1930’s.
The successes of Japanese military bureaucracy in the 1930’s finally overcame the Japanese
civilian bureaucracy.
The same will happen in China if the PLA is handed victories.
Therefor the most important thing that east asia can do is
prevent the PLA from gaining even minor successes.
The PLA should not be allowed to bring home the bacon. The consequences for asia would be grim in any case.
Any western diplomat can walk into Beijing today and rightly point out that its better to be the enemy of the PLA
than the friend of the PLA.
Why?
Just look at the two countries in asia that are wholly owned subsidiaries of the PLA. North Korea and Burma. They are basket cases.
Therefor all of east and south asia might be best served if they coordinate their policies and military strategies such that the PLA does not score any victories. But rather is a constant source of embarrassment to the Chinese.
Meanwhile, the orient should encourage the CPC to further
encourage voting and a multiparty system so that their legitimacy and power rests on the people— and not the military.
I was rather impressed by the chinese policy turn hillary enunciated out of Hanoi a couple weeks back. it showed that all the players in south asia were keeping their eye on the ball.
If he had sent in the third wave, he would have conquered Hawaii and had a toehold in the US. But I wonder, how long would he have held Hawaii without the Japanese military being exterminated? Or would they have launched a temporarily successful invasion of the mainland of the US?
I think the Chinese are not going to use their military except as a defense. Considering colonization and Nanjing, I don’t blame them. The only time they will likely mobilize will be when they are threatened with military confrontation from another country.
I think that China is now a country that has logic, instead of an artistic temperment running their nation. When they had artists who held the soldier in low esteem, they go colonized easily by the other powers. After the revolution, people with scientific (and none to compassionate) personalities run things. Soldiers are the top of the heap and with the US becoming run by artists, well, go figure we’re becoming low on the totem pole.
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