A New `Red Scare’ from Washington

The US Department of Defense warned last week, `China threatens the stability of Asia.’ Defense Secretary Robert Gates criticized the 17.6% increase in China’s 2008 military budget ads dangerous and provocative.

China’s official military budget is $58.8 billion, but the real figure is estimated at around $110 billion. Beijing’s claims its hike in defense spending were solely to boost military pay were believed by no one. Even so, Washington’s warning was pretty rich coming from the sole superpower that spends ten times more on its military than China – a nation with four times the US population.

Secretary Robert Gates unblushingly accused China of `lack of transparency’ in concealing major defense programs. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. Some 25-30% of the Pentagon’s trillion-dollar budget is believed to be hidden in secret `black’ projects, or concealed in other government departments. The US intelligence community’s budget alone is 40% of China’s total military and intelligence spending.

Washington’s constant warnings about Cuba, Syria, Iran, Venezuela and North Korea make it look like a spinster terrified by a mouse. These nation’s combined military sending is a paltry $10 billion. The US and its closest allies account for two thirds of the world’s military spending. Trying to keep up militarily with the west drove the old Soviet Union to bankruptcy.

The US spends more on wars in Afghanistan and Iraq than Russia and China do on defense.

Now, the Bush Administration is trying a re-run of Reagan years by goading Russia into more military spending to justify continued high US military spending, which doubled since late 2001. The relentless expansion of NATO to Russia’s borders, Bush’s proposed anti-missile system in Eastern Europe, and increased US military operations or political machinations around Russia, notably in the Caucasus and Central Asia, have infuriated and alarmed the Kremlin.

Without the `threat’ from China and Russia, how will the Pentagon justify new generation of super expensive F-22 and F-35 fighters it wants, new tankers, heavy bombers, submarines, carriers and other surface warships?

You don’t need any such fancy hardware to fight rag-tag jihadis armed with rifles and home-made bombs.

But there’s a deeper issue with China. The US has yet to come to terms with China’s rise as a major modern military power. The US Navy has dominated South Asia’s littoral since 1944. By 2015-17, perhaps sooner, China will inevitably become the dominant East Asian power. This means US geopolitical influence will be pushed back from the Asian mainland into the Pacific.

This process will be gradual but inevitable. Today, China has only around 350 modern warplanes, a weak navy, and little ability to project power more than 160kms from its coasts. Beijing is following the late, great Deng Xiaoping’s advice to build military power slowly as China’s economy grows.

China is rapidly developing the capability to conquer Taiwan and neutralize US Navy task forces coming to its rescue by barrages of air and sea-launched anti-ship missiles, and electronic warfare. China also threatens to attack America’s Achilles Heel: vulnerable space-based communications and targeting satellites upon which US forces have become dangerously dependant.

But Taiwan aside, military tensions between the US and China are totally avoidable – unless stoked by neocon Republicans longing for war with China. What is even more bizarre, while the Pentagon fulminates against the dangers of China, Iran, etc., the US is helping build the military power of a huge nation that one day could become a serious strategic rival to the United States - India.

The Bush Administration is striving to conclude a deal to supply Delhi nuclear fuel, technology, and billions of high-tech weapons. Meanwhile, India is developing nuclear armed intercontinental ballistic missiles and sea launched strategic missiles that might one day pose a challenge to the United States.

Why, no one in Washington is asking, does India need 7,000-mile range ICBM’s, nuclear-powered missile submarines and powerful anti-ship missiles? Its current medium-range missiles cover all China and large parts of Russia – a close ally of India. Japan will shortly be in range of India’s new generation of more powerful, intermediate range Agni-III ballistic missiles.

India ICBM’s would only be needed to reach Europe, North America or Australia. India has no conceivable conflicts with the EU or Australia and is thus unlikely to target Paris, London or Perth. But India will one day compete heavily with the US for Mideast oil, other resources, and regional influence in the Gulf, Arabian Sea and even East Africa.

China will inevitably join this strategic, three-way rivalry as Beijing and Delhi’s economies and ambitions grow, as I predicted in my book, `War at the Top of the World.’ By aiding India to develop strategic nuclear weapons programs, the US will needlessly antagonize China.

The astoundingly incompetent Bush Administration is thus seeding future conflict in Asia. But that’s tomorrow. Today, by creating a monstrous debt and loan credit bubble, wildly printing money, and recklessly spending, the Bush White House is spreading dangerous inflationary forces throughout the world economy. That’s the real danger to everyone, not China’s moderate-sized defense budget.

Copyright Eric S. Margolis 2008