Feb. 25—almost four months ago, at the conclusion of the APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) summit, Chinese President Xi Jinping publicly invited the United States and others to join China in the Asian International Infrastructure Bank, and its drive for global development. Yet leading elements of the U.S. security establishment not only refuse to admit that China is eschewing geopolitics in favor of cooperation, but are also gunning for a military confrontation.
The latest example comes from Andrew Krepinevich, one of the leading members of the Andy Marshall kindergarten at the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment (ONA, which dreamed up Donald Rumsfeld’s misbegotten “Revolution in Military Affairs”). He authored a piece in the March/April issue of the Council on Foreign Relations’ Foreign Affairs magazine, titled “How to Deter China—The Case for Archipelagic Defense.” The article is a call for a massive build-up of U.S. and allied land, air, and sea military forces along the “first island chain” around China (the Kuril Islands, Japan, the Ryukyu Islands, Taiwan, the Philippines, and Borneo, running from the Kamchatka Peninsula to the Malay Peninsula). Krepinevich, who now heads an ONA spin-off, the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA)—the current Deputy Secretary of Defense Bob Work was previously a senior fellow there—declares China to be preparing to drive the United States out of the western Pacific altogether.
by Michael Billington
posted by: Rhea Razon
