Should the U.S. get tough on China?
Instead of more tough talk and increased defense spending, the United States and its allies in Asia need to grasp the malleable nature of Chinaâ??s strategic intentions and shape a â??mixedâ? regional approach focused more on creating incentives to cooperate than on neutralizing every possible Chinese military capability of concern to U.S. defense analysts. In particular, there is a need for a more far-reaching U.S.-China strategic dialogue that focuses on long-term interests and intentions and on what steps each country could take to avert growing security competition.This is not pie-in-the-sky utopian thinking. It is rooted in the realities of Americaâ??s changing economic position in the world, Chinaâ??s own internal problems and debates, and Asiaâ??s increasing openness to cooperative multilateral security approaches. - Michael Swaine
This sounds reasonable and it would certainly be helpful if U.S. defense planners put themselves in the shoes of their Chinese counterparts when thinking about the U.S. posture in Asia. To wit: the very act of bulking up U.S. power in the region is almost certainly going to cause China to accelerate their own defense build-up - which is the thing we find so objectionable in the first place. But that said, I think at this point China's defense build up is baked in - they're a growing economy and even if they enter into a recession, it's not unreasonable to expect that they'll rebound and resume building up their military power. I think Swaine is right to caution that China's strategic intent is still unclear, but as the U.S. demonstrates, the stronger you get, the more prone you are to define your interests in an expansive manner.
On a more mundane point, the U.S. doesn't need to raise its defense spending to compete with China. The U.S. is already well ahead of China in terms of defense spending and even in more austere times can remain a superior military force vis-a-vis the Chinese for decades to come, provided it prioritizes that outcome and jettisons the idea that the entire world is an arena of "vital" U.S. interest.
