The June issue of the Atlantic (sub required) has two articles about China. From “How We Would Fight China” by Robert D. Kaplan:
For some time now no navy or air force has posed a threat to the United States. Our only competition has been armies, whether conventional forces or guerrilla insurgencies. This will soon change. The Chinese navy is poised to push out into the Pacific”and when it does, it will very quickly encounter a U.S. Navy and Air Force unwilling to budge from the coastal shelf of the Asian mainland. It’s not hard to imagine the result: a replay of the decades-long Cold War, with a center of gravity not in the heart of Europe but, rather, among Pacific atolls that were last in the news when the Marines stormed them in World War II.
In “Managing China’s Rise” Benjamin Schwarz writes:
When President Bush took office, in 2001, the dominant national-security issue for his administration”and for most foreign-policy analysts, whether Republican or Democrat”was not terrorism or even Iraq but China. The issue, specifically, is that China will eventually emerge as what Pentagon planners call a “peer competitor” to the United States in East Asia”that is, a great power with the economic and military muscle to challenge America’s preponderant position in a region that is sure to be the economic pivot of the new century.
When “eventually” may roll around is a matter of intense debate between moderates and hardliners.
