Reply: If India were the aggressor, I think the answer is no one. If China were the aggressor, my guess would be – depending on the circumstances – the United States. But it’s hard to imagine realistic circumstances under which China in this day and age would suddenly attack India. Rather than drawing up worst-case scenarios and military postures to back them up, both countries are better off focusing their efforts on building a lasting relationship that makes war less and less likely. HK

Reply: The ISAB report only discussed US policy, thus my focus on that aspect. As for India’s situation, it has been a probable target for Chinese nuclear weapons since the 1960s, with only modest effect on India’s sense of security for most of that time. It is not just India that is “facing a threat;” Pakistan and China also believe they’re are facing a threat: India. Now that India is developing nuclear weapons that appear intended for use against China (Agni III and Agni IV), the dynamic between the two countries will likely evolve too. The security of both countries will suffer if that dynamic evolves into an arms race or capability race. HK

“Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice should denounce the ISAB report to make it clear that the core of US policy toward China is not containment and Cold War posturing.”

How can you assert that our long-term policy is not one of containment and posturing in light of our balance-shifting pacts with China’s regional competitors? For example: “Senate gives final OK to US-India nuclear deal”

Reply: Although the US policy/posture toward China can appear to include both containment and Cold War posturing, it is – so far – very different from the posture that was applied toward the Soviet Union. The key word that you left out was “Cold War,” which I used to underscore the difference. That said, I agree that our policy/posture certainly contain elements that look similar. But China is a different adversary; it doesn’t have the kind of global expansionist ambitions that the Soviet Union did – Taiwan seems to be the only such territorial claim – one that the US one-China policy supports if it can be accomplished peacefully. The Spratly Islands dispute appears to be about access to resources, as does China’s venturing into the India Ocean and Africa. Regardless, for a State Department report to be so void of policy recommendations other than military posturing is problematic. HK

Reply: Not bad for inter-state marriage counseling. Only, when mom and dad fight, the strife doesn’t threaten millions of people around the Pacific. HK

How can your realistically expect to have mutual confidence with an unstable, corrupt government like the Chinese government? China has so many problems that if the global economy remains depressed for more than a couple of years then I will start to wonder about the survivability of the government.

One just needs to ask a basic question about China to truly understand its current state. How can a communist government survive with all that capitalism?

Does complaining about transparency work? We can see the results of years of complaining about China’s lack of transparency concerning its military buildup. China has only recently made a token attempt at transparency.

Why won’t China clearly explain to us why they are building up their military? Two Chinese generals provided the answer when they threatened the nuclear destruction of American cities over Taiwan. So the reason for their buildup is to confront America. China can’t very well say that, now can they?

Also, I wonder why China is building underground bunkers under many of its large cities? That’s rather odd unless one expects to initiate a nuclear war at some point in the future.

China builds vast bunker complex ‘in case of attack’

Chinese Naval Bunker, Dumb Idea?

Beijing Expands Strategic Underground City

“Around the same time, Chinese authorities disclosed the existence of other underground cities and the roles they might play in case of a nuclear attack. According to a report released from the Research Office of the State Council, Shanghai, Nanjing, Hangzhou, Jinan, and other major cities were addressed.”

You do know that China is building many submarines? Some of these contain ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads. I wonder where those warheads are targeted?

I think your attitude is more likely to get Americans killed because by the time you have figured out that you’re wrong, it will be too late to do anything about it.

Reply: You speak of the situation as if China is about to attack us and our military has somehow withered away. I don’t agree with the conclusion that “the reason for their buildup is to confront America.” The US threat, that they see, is certainly part of the motivation, but it is also driven by Russia, which they almost went to war with in the 1980s, and India, which they did go to war with in the 1960s, and by Japan and other countries in the region that are modernizing their military forces. That said, they certainly have the United States on their radar screen and see when our carrier battle groups sail up and down their coast, when we forward deploy B-2 bombers, F-22 fighters, and attack submarines to Guam, and when we shift the majority of our strategic submarines, aircraft carriers, and attack submarines into the Pacific.

For the Chinese to spend vast amounts of money on building underground bunkers doesn’t necessarily signals that Beijing plans to initiative a nuclear war. China has been digging tunnels and bunkers since the 1980s, and anyone who spends just a few hours on Google Earth can see how prevailing the use of underground facilities is at Chinese military sites. It shows that China feels both threatened and vulnerable and has done so for a long time. Is it possible, just possible, that a too strong US military posture in the Pacific can also have a counterproductive effect by giving hardliners and Cold Warriors in China the argument they need to get money for a buildup?

No matter what one might think about China’s military modernization – and I’m certainly no fan of it nor advocating turning a blind eye, I’m interested in smart and visionary people coming up with ideas that can help fix the problem, not lamenting about how bad the Chinese are. My “attitude” with the ISAB paper is that it appears to recycle Cold War posturing while failing to offer anything that can steer the relationship in another direction. That ought to be a priority of a State Department advisory committee.

If I were a Chinese planner and thought the ISAB paper represented US policy – or indicated what will be the trend, I would certainly be worried about what’s to come next and recommend to my superiors that they prepare for it. The ball is not just in China’s court; the ball is in both of our courts. HK

She’s no friend to the USA, meanwhile inside China the People’s Armed Police is working hard to keep the 800 million Chinese who don’t have the access to basic entitlements, under their thumb. The 1400 IRBMs she has aimed at Taiwan are more than enough to turn the island into a burial pyre for 23 million Taiwanese. Her two “island defense chains” are meant specifically to keep the US well away from her mainland in the event of a conflict. By current accounts, 2040 is the target date for China to have equal military status with the USA….

Her ongoing cyber attacks against the US companies and the US government are part of her strategy to gain the upper hand over the US. Space is her newest frontier….China a friend to the US….Hardly. Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes.

Reply: The point is not to pile on ever more reasons for why the Chinese government is bad, but how to create a foreign policy that tries to improve relations and avoid the confrontation that military modernization and counter-modernization on all sides will inevitably lead to. The question the ISAB was asked, but in my assessment didn’t answer: How to “move the US-China security relationship toward greater transparency and mutual confidence, enhance cooperation, and reduce the likelihood of misunderstanding or miscalculation that can contribute to competition or conflict.” HK