China needs to grow up on Taiwan ... and so do we. Or so says U.S. grand-strategist Thomas P.M. Barnett talking sense on the Chinese/U.S. strategic posturing over Taiwan.
Bottom line: the U.S. will decimate the Chinese military is things go hot, but the U.S. will gain what exactly? In fact the U.S. loses out because, as he puts it:
I believe it kills our soldiers day-in and day-out by restricting the resource shift in this Long War from the Big War to the Small Wars. If we're not going to accept the reality of that shift, then we shouldn't engage in the Long War and just stay home and plot our brilliant, high-tech war against the Chinese.
A similar conclusion (vis-a-vis Sino-Australian relations) is arrived at by Richard Fernandez at The Belmont Club with some brilliant critiquing of a series of talks given by "China experts" this last week in Australia:
China's prosperity is now dependent on its participation in the Global Economy, a contraption which evolved like the Internet, and whose de facto system administrator, like the Internet, is the United States. Australia's involvement in the Middle East and Central Asia, far from being irrelevant, is an instance of the key strategic problem facing Australia. How to keep the world system going; how to create new methods and institutions for dealing with instability that threatens to wreck the principle source of energy not only for the world, but for China. One might even be tempted to say that the key diplomatic challenge of Australia is to help find ways to put the system administration of the Global Economy on a broader footing than mere reliance on the United States in an era where the United Nations has become irrelevant to the problem. The challenges of regional security are intimately linked to the problems of global security. We are one world in much more than the superficial sense.
It seems to me that despite Chinese sabre rattling, their main concern is to maintain a booming economy that will support their growing middle class. This requires stable energy supplies. To this end, I would like to see the U.S. develop efficient methods of extracting oil shale from its huge deposits in Utah and Colorado. This would have the following kill-two-birds-with-one-stone effects:
- Constrict the money pipeline going to jihadist groups from cashed-up Saudi princes
- Supply its allies (read: Europe and S.E. Asia + Japan) with its oil supplies. The Chinese should be provided this same treatment.
However, with the Chinese, it should be provided with strings attached: energy supplies in return for their support to combat jihadism rampant through the Middle East - beginning with Iran (solving one strategic problem TPMB notes - ending the carnage in Darfur and more broadly seek to bring Africa into the 21st century. The U.S. and China are already economic allies. It would not be a huge step to bring them closer militarily.
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