Recommended Reading – China Special Edition
Top Billing! Steve Clemons – If You Could See America Through China’s Eyes
Clemons sheds light on a hardheaded, quasi-official, Chinese analysis of the strategic direction of American power. A must read piece.
Several years ago, I met with the Deputy Director of the Policy Planning staff of China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and I asked him what he was working on — and what China’s grand strategy was.
His reply: “We are trying to figure out how to keep you Americans distracted in small Middle Eastern countries.”
It’s pretty memorable when one can joke and be truthful at the same time. China has had opportunities throughout the world open up to it easily — mostly because of systemic American inattention to much else beyond its war slogs. The Obama administration, which in its first year in office, has managed high level presidential and cabinet level face time with leaders around Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East has done a lot to correct the impression from the G.W. Bush years that America has completely checked out from the rest of the world — but there still is a sense that American pretensions in the world are more veneer than real.
Now read in full (on the extended page) a short, brilliantly written report titled “Strategic Contraction Replaces Arrogance: Chinese Analysis of the Quadrennial Defense Review” by Li Shuisheng at China’s Academy of Military Science on the Pentagon’s recently released Quadrennial Defense Review.
This is a very sobering “offshore perspective” on American power.
openSecurity (Aziz Hakimi) – Af-Pak: what strategic depth?
This is the sole exception to the topical focus on China today. A brutally frank examination of our core problem with Pakistan’s elite.
….General Kayani admitted that Pakistan’s objective of supporting the former Taliban regime in Afghanistan was to gain a ‘strategic depth’ in Afghanistan, which he hoped that now ‘a peaceful and friend Afghanistan’ would provide it. His comments indicate that Pakistan’s policy makers are still interested in the old policy of gaining strategic depth in Afghanistan, which may influence their approach to Afghanistan and related issues such as fighting the Taliban and participating in regional cooperation.
….Meanwhile, Serajuddin Haqqani, the leader of the network, in an interview with Aljazeera TV claimed the responsibility for the attacks on the heart of Kabul on 18 January. Afghan Police investigations and arrests following the attack also confirm that the Haqqani network was behind the raid which left 5 killed and 17 injured.
It is also important to note that General Parvez Musharraf as well as General Ashfaq Kayani had described Haqqani network leaders as Pakistan’s “strategic assests”.
Thomas P.M. Barnett – A Bad Time to Wreck Our Relationship with China
Dr. Barnett puts the geoeconomics into the geopolitics and security of the Sino-American relationship….
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