Michael T Klare

Slowly but surely, the grand strategy of the Bush administration is being revealed. It is not aimed primarily at the defeat of global terrorism, the incapacitation of rogue states, or the spread of democracy in the Middle East. These may dominate the rhetorical arena and be the focus of immediate concern, but they do not govern key decisions regarding the allocation of long-term military resources. The truly commanding objective - the underlying basis for budgets and troop deployments - is the containment of China.

This objective governed White House planning during the administration's first seven months in office, only to be set aside by the perceived obligation to highlight anti-terrorism after

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September 11, 2001; but now, despite President George W Bush's preoccupation with Iraq and Iran, the White House is also reemphasizing its paramount focus on China, risking a new Asian arms race with potentially catastrophic consequences.

Bush and his top aides entered the White House in early 2001 with a clear strategic objective: to resurrect the permanent-dominance doctrine spelled out in the Defense Planning Guidance (DPG) for fiscal years 1994-99, the first formal statement of US strategic goals in the post-Soviet era. According to the initial official draft of this document, as leaked to the press in early 1992, the primary aim of US strategy would be to bar the rise of any future competitor that might challenge America's overwhelming military superiority.

"Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival ... that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly by the Soviet Union," the document stated. Accordingly, "we [must] endeavor to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power".

When initially made public, this doctrine was condemned by America's allies and many domestic leaders as being unacceptably imperial as well as imperious, forcing president George H W Bush to water it down; but the goal of perpetuating America's sole-superpower status has never been rejected by administration strategists. In fact, it initially became the overarching principle for US military policy when the younger Bush assumed the presidency in February 2001.

Target: China
When first enunciated in 1992, the permanent-dominance doctrine did not specify the exact identity of the future challengers whose rise was to be prevented through coercive action. At that time, US strategists worried about a medley of potential rivals, including Russia, Germany, India, Japan and China; any of these, it was thought, might emerge in decades to come as would-be superpowers, and so all would have to be deterred from moving in this direction.

By the time George W Bush came into office, however, the pool of potential rivals had been narrowed in elite thinking to just one: the People's Republic of China. Only China, it was claimed, possessed the economic and military capacity to challenge the United States as an aspiring superpower. Therefore perpetuating US global predominance meant containing Chinese power.

The imperative of containing China was first spelled out in a systematic way by Condoleezza Rice while serving as a foreign-policy adviser to George W Bush, then governor of the state of Texas, during the 2000 presidential campaign. In a much-cited article in Foreign Affairs, she suggested that China, as an ambitious rising power, would inevitably challenge vital US interests. "China is a great power with unresolved vital interests, particularly concerning Taiwan," she wrote. "China also resents the role of the United States in the Asia-Pacific region."

For these reasons, she stated, "China is not a ‘status quo' power but one that would like to alter Asia's balance of power in its own favor. That alone makes it a strategic competitor, not the 'strategic partner' the Clinton administration once called it." It was essential, she argued, to adopt a strategy that would prevent China's rise as regional power. In particular, "the United States must deepen its cooperation with Japan and South Korea and maintain its commitment to a robust military presence in the region". Washington should also "pay closer attention to India's role in the regional balance", and bring that country into an anti-Chinese alliance system.

Looking back, it is striking how this article presaged the very strategy now being implemented by the Bush administration in the Pacific and South Asia. Many of the specific policies advocated in her piece, from strengthened ties with Japan to making overtures to India, are being carried out today.

In the spring and summer of 2001, however, the most significant effect of this strategic focus was to distract Rice and other senior administration officials from the growing threat posed by Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda. During her first months in office as the president's senior adviser for national-security affairs, Rice devoted herself to implementing the plan she had spelled out in Foreign Affairs. By all accounts, her top priorities in that early period were dissolving the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia and linking Japan, South Korea and Taiwan into a joint missile-defense system, which, it was hoped, would ultimately evolve into a Pentagon-anchored anti-Chinese alliance.

Richard Clarke, the senior White House adviser on counter-terrorism, later charged that because of her preoccupation with Russia, China and great power politics, Rice overlooked warnings of a possible al-Qaeda attack on the United States and thus failed to initiate defensive actions that might have prevented the attack. Although Rice survived tough questioning on this matter by the 9-11 Commission without acknowledging the accuracy of Clarke's charges, any careful historian, seeking answers for the Bush administration's inexcusable failure to heed warnings of a potential terrorist strike on the US, must begin with its overarching focus on containing China during this critical period.

China on the back burner
After September 11, it would have been unseemly for Bush, Rice and other top administration officials to push their China agenda - and in any case they quickly shifted focus to a long-term neo-con objective, the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and the projection of US power throughout the Middle East. So the "global war on terror" (or GWOT, in Pentagon-speak) became their major talking point and the invasion of Iraq their major focus.

But the administration never completely lost sight of its strategic focus on China, even when it could do little on the subject. Indeed, the lightning war on Iraq and the further projection of US power into the Middle East was intended, at least in part, as a warning to China of the overwhelming might of the US military and the futility of challenging US supremacy.

For the next two years, when so much effort was devoted to rebuilding Iraq in America's image and crushing an unexpectedly potent Iraqi insurgency, China was distinctly on the back burner. In the meantime, however, China's increased investment in modern military capabilities and its growing economic reach in Southeast Asia, Africa and Latin America - much of it tied to the procurement of oil and other vital commodities - could not be ignored.

By the spring of 2005, the White House was already turning back to Rice's global grand strategy. On June 4, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld gave a much-publicized speech at a conference in Singapore, signaling what was to be a new emphasis in White House policymaking, in which he decried China's ongoing military buildup and warned of the threat it posed to regional peace and stability.

China, he claimed, was "expanding its missile forces, allowing them to reach targets in many areas of the world" and "improving its ability to project power" in the Asia-Pacific region. Then, with sublime disingenuousness, he added, "Since no nation threatens China, one must wonder: Why this growing investment? Why these continuing and expanding arms purchases? Why these continuing robust deployments?" Although Rumsfeld did not answer his questions, the implication was obvious: China was now embarked on a course that would make it a regional power, thus threatening one day to present a challenge to the United States in Asia on unacceptably equal terms.

More at Asia Times On Line

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Do you not realize this administration sees everyone as a threat? The nuclear deal in India must have raised the antennas in China. Chinese and Japanese relations are at best tenuous and the United States encourages disharmony by supporting Japan. That’s not to say the United States shouldn’t support an ally, but once in a while, they could examine the history of why these two countries are in conflict with each other.

For this foreign leader to come to the United States and have it degraded to something other than a state visit wouldn't be lost on the Chinese. The Taiwan episode with the national anthem was unforgivable.

The trip is a diplomatic failure. Another opportunity lost to form any kind of co-operation with what is emerging as the next superpower.

Bush and his bumbling cabal are undoubtedly the most incompetent leaders the world has seen.

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Your President's visit to Canada was marred by George Bush stabbing our Prime Minister in the back by publically making comments about the Missile Treaty. He's a buffoon who doesn't have a clue about diplomacy! The treaty never was adopted, but I'm sure Bush will have better luck with Stephen Harper who's a fawning sycophant!

Containment

To be accomplished at it, they must have the hides of a rhinoceros. And be able to lie like a rug. :-)

Chinese Media Avoid White House Gaffes

Friday April 21, 2006 4:01 PM
AP Photo NYET605
By JOE McDONALD

BEIJING (AP) - Chinese news reports made no mention Friday of the protester who interrupted President Hu Jintao's visit with President Bush or a White House announcer flubbing China's official name. But ordinary Chinese commenting on Web sites accused President Bush of insulting Hu.

``You can see from Bush's lack of respect for foreign leaders just how lacking he is in class,'' said a posting on a bulletin board run by the People's Daily, the main Communist Party newspaper.

State television devoted half of its 30-minute noon news Friday to Hu's White House visit, showing him making a speech and chatting with Bush.

While U.S. media featured the protester, who had obtained temporary press credentials as a reporter for a Falun Gong newspaper and pleaded with Bush to stop Hu from persecuting the banned spiritual movement, the incident was absent from official Chinese reports.

China also blacked out CNN and the British Broadcasting Corp.'s BBC World, which are available in some hotels and Western housing.

Neither was there any government or state media comment on a White House announcer who referred to China as the ``Republic of China,'' the official name of rival Taiwan, instead of the People's Republic of China.

The gaffes were unlikely to sour Chinese leaders on the visit, which looked successful, said Shi Yinhong, director of the Center for American Studies at Beijing's Renmin University.

``The Chinese government and the Chinese public will think this kind of event is unfortunate, and think the U.S. government should take some responsibility for security arrangements and letting the protester in,'' Shi said.

``But generally, these are just individual incidents, and the Chinese government won't think too much of it.''

The Chinese government billed Hu's trip as a chance to talk directly with Bush about trade and political disputes. It also was a chance to press Beijing's views on Taiwan, the self-ruled island that it claims as its own territory.

Shanghai-based Dragon Television carried Hu's White House appearance live but cut away when the protester appeared. So did Phoenix Satellite Television, a Chinese-language broadcaster in Hong Kong with close ties to the Beijing government. The main state channel, China Central Television, didn't carry the event live.

Broadcasts in China by CNN and the British Broadcasting Corp.'s BBC World were blacked out repeatedly Friday by censors, apparently to prevent Chinese viewers from seeing the protester.

Despite such measures, at least some Chinese were clearly aware of Thursday's missteps.

``Announcing the 'Republic of China' ... is an insult to the People's Republic and its government,'' said a posting on the People's Daily site.

On washeng.net, a Chinese-language Web site hosted overseas, postings accused the White House of intentionally allowing in the protester.

``This was absolutely planned and directed by America. Given America's anxiety over the war on terror, that person should have been shot otherwise,'' said an unsigned comment.

``The only explanation,'' it said, ``is that this happened with the knowledge of the Secret Service.''

Said another: ``It's a tragic and insulting image for international relations.''

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-5770920,00.html

It is entirely appropriate that someone who enters a White House event as a credentialled member of the press corps be arrested if they attempt to use that access as a basis for protest or political demonstration. If you're a member of the press, asking questions no matter how pointed or impertinent is just fine, but they're simply not members of the public with unfettered First Amendment rights.

"We declared war on terror, it's not even a noun, so, good luck. After we defeat it, I'm sure we'll take on that bastard ennui." - Jon Stewart.

She wasn't acting in her capacity as a reporter, she just used those credentials to gain access to protest. She probably has liability for that act. Also, noise levels can't be excessive. IMHO, the police could lay a charge for, "Disturbance of the Peace."

Usually protesters have to get a permit to be in a designated area. The area is not of their choosing, it's where they're assigned and they cannot harass the general public.

Protesters can become a public nuisance. They don't have the right to impede traffic or stop the movement of others right of way. Very similar to picketers on picket lines--there are limits that are against the law if infringed.