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China
It is easy to feel a sense of cognitive dissonance visiting Tiananmen Square. I went there because it was the site of one of the great, albeit unsuccessful, popular protests of the modern era. While large, the square itself is rather plain, except for the gigantic flat screen displays that continually
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Date:
5/10/2013
There is no question that the pace of military modernization by the People’s Republic of China is increasing. Investments are being made in all the areas that would support military actions against its neighbors. These include a massive increase in theater ballistic missiles targeted against Taiwan,
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Date:
5/8/2013
My colleague Dan Goure posted a commentary yesterday that captured the core weakness of China's economy. Although Beijing can stimulate high levels of growth through subsidies and other market interventions, it can't create the kind of agile, innovative business culture that will be required to
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Date:
5/8/2013
Those who wish for a new “Chinese model of capitalism” fail to appreciate that Beijing already has an economic system that its leadership likes quite well. It is a mixture of the classic command system developed by the Soviet Union and the collaborative public-private approach employed by authoritarian
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Date:
5/7/2013
There are many observers who see China as the economic, military and even political juggernaut of the 21st Century. China’s economy has weathered the recent global economic downturn better than most and its GDP appears on course to grow by more than seven percent in 2013. Beijing continues to provide
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Date:
5/6/2013
If ever there was an individual who seemed prepared to hold a senior government position it is Secretary of State John Kerry. The combination of war hero and long-serving chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee would seem to be a good background for someone thrown into the current crisis
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Date:
4/16/2013
It takes a crisis to concentrate the mind. Faced with unusually bellicose rhetoric from the regime in Pyongyang, the Obama Administration reversed course on National Missile Defense (NMD) and is rapidly bolstering its theater air and missile defenses in the region. The Department of Defense will
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Date:
4/5/2013
China and North Korea’s seemingly unwavering friendship goes back many years. In the Korean War it is estimated that China lost 110,000 soldiers on the battlefield and another 35,000 died from wounds and disease. The friendship did not stop there. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, China has
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Date:
3/22/2013
A report by the cyber security firm Mandiant reprised in the New York Times appears to confirm what everyone with even a passing familiarity with cyber issues knows: we are at war with China. This report is but the latest in a series that makes it clear that China is engaged in a massive,
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Date:
2/19/2013
Trade with China was an issue that got a lot of attention during the recent presidential campaign. Each of the candidates claimed that he would be the one to “stand up” to China, prevent U.S. jobs and know-how from being shipped across the Pacific, protect critical technologies and improve the terms
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Date:
11/7/2012
The future of American manufacturing is in Asia and the Middle East. These two regions, followed by Latin America, will account for more than two-thirds of global economic growth over the next several decades. The demand in these regions for manufactured goods such as commercial aircraft, power
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Date:
9/25/2012
For more than four years, the United States, along with some allies, has been at war with Iran. It is not the kind of war we have come to expect in this region. There was no official declaration of hostilities, U.N. resolution or act of Congress. The war doesn’t involve the use of the armed forces
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Date:
6/1/2012
April was an unusually active month for foreign missile tests, with India, Pakistan and North Korea all launching their latest, longest-range ballistic missiles. The Indian and Pakistani missiles worked fine, the North Korean one did not. North Korea has now failed three times in a row to demonstrate
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Date:
5/1/2012
Josh Rogin of The Cable recently reported that the Obama Administration may be about to reverse its decision not to sell new F-16s to Taiwan. Last fall, the administration, responding to repeated requests by the Taiwanese government asking for approval to acquire more advanced F-16 C/Ds to
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Date:
4/30/2012
There's an arcane debate unfolding in Congress right now that helps explain why America -- the world's leading proponent of free trade -- is headed towards a $600 billion trade deficit this year. Arcane, but not academic: when a country runs a trade deficit equal to four percent of its gross domestic
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Date:
3/14/2012
On November 14, Defense News ran an interesting story by Asia correspondent Wendell Minnick about how the General Staff of China's People’s Liberation Army (PLA) manages cyber warfare activities. Minnick quoted Australian security expert Desmond Ball as speculating that the General Staff
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Date:
2/27/2012
An election year is a bad time to propose dramatic new national security policies. The Obama Administration has just submitted a fiscal year 2013 federal budget to Congress that the White House Chief of Staff admits has no chance of passage even in the Democratically-controlled Senate. The Pentagon’s
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Date:
2/15/2012
Yesterday, the Obama Administration submitted its Fiscal Year 2013 federal budget that proposes spending $525 billion for the Pentagon plus another $88 billion on war costs. Overall, defense spending will decline by six percent relative to last year. More significantly, the FY 2013 budget marks
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Date:
2/14/2012
With America's military posture and strategic focus pivoting to the Western Pacific, it's a good time to ask how vulnerable the centerpiece of our naval force structure is to attacks by China. The centerpiece, of course, is large-deck aircraft carriers. There has been much discussion of late about
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Date:
1/23/2012
Bloomberg News yesterday released a thoughtful analysis of how Persian Gulf developments are impacting global petroleum trade that puts U.S. security operations there in a new light. Reporters Indira A. R. Lakshmanan and Gopal Ratnam found that while America is leading military efforts to keep
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Date:
1/13/2012
The Obama Administration's decision to put more emphasis on East Asia in national security strategy is timely and necessary. After ten years of distraction in Iraq and Afghanistan, Washington needed to reassure allies in the Western Pacific of its commitment to the region. However, the administration's
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Date:
1/5/2012
According to The New York Times, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta is poised to reveal the Pentagon’s new leaner but not meaner defense strategy. As expected,
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Date:
1/3/2012
Even as the scale and intensity of China's cyber-assault on U.S. information networks reaches unprecedented levels, the intelligence community is closing in on which organizations and individuals are the key perpetrators. Forward-thinking officials such as former Deputy Secretary of Defense William
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Date:
12/22/2011
Japan's government announced today that it has decided to buy the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter as its next top-of-the-line tactical aircraft, handing the stealthy plane a key endorsement in its first head-to-head competition with other fighters. The Clinton Administration conceived the F-35 as an
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Date:
12/20/2011
America's environmental movement has become so big and diverse that it is tripping over its own goals -- so much so that the resulting confusion is slowing efforts to deal with global warming. For instance, many environmentalists want to tear down climate-friendly hydro-electric dams because they
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Date:
12/16/2011
When it is not focused on the repetitive crisis in the European Union, Washington’s attention, including that of the Pentagon, is increasingly focused on Asia, in general, and China, in particular. This is understandable for economic, political, demographic and security reasons. China’s march towards
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Date:
11/9/2011
The shift in U.S. national security policy and defense strategy to the Asia-Pacific region is going to put additional pressure on the Navy. Over the past decade there has been a global proliferation of threats to U.S. air and naval forces led by China. The various arms of the People’s Liberation Army
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Date:
10/31/2011
The conventional wisdom in Washington is that defense budgets will have to be slashed. For many, including the outgoing Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, reduced spending is viewed as an important part of the effort to restore U.S. economic strength. To some, particularly in Congress, defense
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Date:
9/28/2011
The debate in Washington today is not whether or not to reduce defense spending but how much to cut. Never mind that defense spending as a share of GDP is at its lowest level since World War II or that as a share of federal spending defense continues to decline. Nor does it seem important to deficit
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Date:
8/8/2011
Many U.S. companies trying to open businesses in China have learned the hard way what it is like to deal with state-sponsored capitalism where the rules constantly change and the only real goal of the Chinese is to gain access to technology, capital and markets. Since Deng Xiaoping opened up his
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Date:
7/26/2011
It has been more than twenty years since the U.S. Navy had a major naval vessel as a target in the event of war. In the 1970s and 1980s the Soviet Navy produced a series of major surface combatants to tempt the U.S. Navy. There were large destroyers, a number of cruiser classes and even the Kirov
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Date:
6/27/2011
Imagine you were a Chinese leader in Beijing trying to gauge U.S. resolve, and this is what you saw. Despite decades of currency manipulation by China that has destroyed millions of U.S. jobs, Washington declines to label Beijing a currency manipulator. Despite Chinese theft of intellectual property
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Date:
6/9/2011
Many observers expect the incoming Secretary of Defense, Leon Panetta, to be focused on reining in spending and cutting expenses at the Pentagon. However, it is possible that the focus of Secretary Panetta’s time in office may be devoted to an entirely different agenda. In his written responses
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Date:
6/8/2011
The Wall Street Journal reported on March 24 that domestic auto production is being disrupted by a shortage of electronic parts from quake-ravaged Japan. It turns out that Hitachi has 60 percent of the global market for automobile airflow sensors, and another company operating in Japan called
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Date:
3/24/2011
China has been reporting annual growth rates of 8-10 percent for as long as anyone can remember. Those are the highest growth rates in the recorded history of economics, and while they have been met with some skepticism at the Federal Reserve Board and in financial markets, they are duly recorded
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Date:
2/23/2011
The announcement that China has surpassed Japan as the world’s second largest economy is only one reason to pay renewed attention to the Asia-Pacific region. While not unexpected, the rise of China to superpower status economically is still a major event, one with significant implications for the
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Date:
2/14/2011
Defense secretary Robert Gates today unveils his last budget request before departing public service. It's a good time to be going, because as the fiscal 2012 request reflects, increases in the buying power of the military budget are over. The budget proposed by Gates would spend $553 billion
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Date:
2/14/2011
Ten years after China joined the World Trade Organization, the Director of National Intelligence is launching an interagency assessment of what the rapid erosion in U.S. manufacturing capabilities means for the nation's security. The first decade of the new millennium has proven to be a disaster
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Date:
2/9/2011
I argued in a posting here last Friday that recent overseas surprises are likely to shift the vector of demand for defense goods. My reasoning was that unrest in the Middle East will make it harder to sell weapons there, but China's military buildup will force policymakers in Washington to pour
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Date:
2/8/2011
I was flattered to see myself quoted by Nathan Hodge today in a Wall Street Journal survey of defense industry financial results. One of my comments in particular may have reminded some readers of an old debate about the nexus between geography and national strategy. I said, "If China comes
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Date:
1/28/2011
If you're wondering why the Air Force was a big winner in recent budget shifts proposed by defense secretary Robert Gates, it might have something to do with the Pentagon's growing concern about Chinese military breakthroughs. Over the last few years, Beijing has tested its first anti-satellite
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Date:
1/24/2011
The history of status quo powers managing the rise of new competitors is not one marked by lots of success. Whether it was Byzantium with the Ottoman Turks, Austria and Prussia with revolutionary France, France with Prussia or Great Britain and Wilhelmine Germany/post-Meiji Japan, the effort of
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Date:
1/19/2011
Only two years after Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’ decision to end production of the F-22 Raptor at 187 aircraft, the program may be poised to rise like a phoenix from the ashes. When Gates made his decision, it was on the assumption that other countries -- notably Russia and China -- would
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Date:
1/18/2011
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’ recent trip to Asia was intended to restart military-to-military relations between our two countries, reaffirm the U.S.-Japan relationship and send a message to the regime in Pyongyang regarding conditions for resumption of six-party talks. The most important objective
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Date:
1/17/2011
Much has been written over the past few days about how the Chinese military's decision to flight-test its new J-20 fighter during a visit by U.S. defense secretary Robert Gates was an embarrassment for China's civilian leaders. Apparently, nobody in the Peoples Liberation Army had bothered to mention
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Date:
1/13/2011
The United States economy is ending the first decade of the new millennium in much worse shape than experts expected when the decade began. Back then, the United States was generating a third of global output, the federal budget was in surplus, and American information technology was revolutionizing
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Date:
12/17/2010
Defense publications are reporting that Russia is considering selling its newest fighter, the SU-35, to China. The SU-35 has enhanced radar, improved avionics, better flight surfaces, a more powerful engine and larger fuel tanks. Aviation experts characterize the SU-35 as a Generation 4+ aircraft.
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Date:
11/19/2010
If you want to understand why China presents a threat to American power and prosperity, don't ask the Pentagon. The Pentagon is populated by people who think constantly about weapons and war, so it will point to indicators of China's growing military prowess, like investment in new submarines and
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Date:
10/18/2010
On October 6 the Heritage Foundation released an issue brief as part of its "Foundry" series that questioned the danger of U.S. dependence on China for so-called "rare earths." Rare earths are exotic materials used in a wide range of military and commercial applications. There are no ready substitutes
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Date:
10/8/2010
The rapid growth of China's state-influenced industrial complex is the big economic success story of the new century. The anemic performance of America's free-enterprise system is a different kind of story. Somehow, the neo-socialists who run China have managed to sustain double-digit growth during
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Date:
10/1/2010
The U.S. economy grew at an annualized rate of 1.6% in the second quarter, far below the pace seen in previous recoveries. Republicans are predictably blaming the Obama Administration's "tax and spend" fiscal policies, which they say are stifling economic activity. But that isn't the real reason
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Date:
9/28/2010
This week's Defense News contains a story by Asian correspondent Wendell Minnick that raises troubling questions about the behavior of former Joint Chiefs Vice Chairman Adm. William Owens. The story suggests that Owens is being used by retired members of the Peoples Liberation Army to help
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Date:
9/8/2010
It is time the United States developed a long-term strategy for the inevitable military competition with China. Competition does not mean conflict. It means a struggle with China for power, influence, security and for the United States, access to East Asia. China is competing with the United States
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Date:
8/24/2010
Last week saw another round of semi-hysterical speculation about China's new Dong Feng missile, which supposedly has the accuracy required to attack U.S. aircraft carriers from 900 miles away. Prof. Toshi Yoshihara of the Naval War College told the Associated Press that the new missile signals
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Date:
8/9/2010
While the U.S. Government and the national security community worry about the outcomes of the current conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, pressing the reset button with Russia and dealing with the threat of proliferation, they are all but oblivious to the largest most significant strategic challenge
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Date:
7/6/2010
China is the great economic success story of the new millennium. Its economic growth has outpaced that of every other industrialized country, and it now routinely out-produces America in such basic commodities as aluminum, steel and cement. Under the watchful eye of a highly interventionist central
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Date:
6/14/2010
Following its success in negotiating a new START Treaty with Russia, the Obama Administration and the Global Zero posse are energized to move forward on their plan for the elimination all nuclear weapons. Those who think that it is a bad idea for the U.S. to pursue further deep reductions in strategic
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Date:
6/1/2010
President Obama has a problem. Well, he has many but this one is his arms sales strategy, particularly in East Asia. On the one hand, the United States has major security interests in the region as well as very clear commitments to friends and allies. In addition, the Obama Administration has made
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Date:
2/18/2010
If you've been following congressional hearings about the near collapse of America's financial system, then perhaps you have already figured out why both political parties were so blind to the danger. They were blind because they did not want to see. Anyone who cared to look could see something
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Date:
2/1/2010
It has become commonplace for analysts to suggest that China offers an alternative economic model to the democratic capitalism espoused by the United States. The Western model is based on the idea that political freedom and economic liberalization go hand-in-hand. The so-called Chinese model is
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Date:
1/26/2010
The federal government released December employment results for the economy last week. The manufacturing sector lost another 27,000 jobs, according to the Wall Street Journal. That may sound bad, but compared with the rest of the decade, it actually was pretty good: total employment in the domestic
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Date:
1/11/2010