Sailors from Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) run after unhooking a U.S. Navy UH60 Seahawk as it prepares to take off from the PLA ship Peace Ark during the multi-national military exercise RIMPAC in Honolulu, Hawaii, July 23, 2014. REUTERS/Hugh Gentry
William Johnson, Reuters: How the U.S. is training China’s military – while inching toward conflict
Despite tensions between the United States and China over the South China Sea, the two nations’ militaries train together at a very high level. Current “mil-mil” engagements are robust, with China participating in the world’s largest international maritime exercise, RIMPAC 2014, which is hosted biannually by the U.S. Pacific Command. The drills allowed China to learn a great deal about U.S. tactics, techniques and procedures (in military shorthand, “TTPs”).
But even as the United States provided China with its highest-level access to military drills, the U.S. military leadership consistently ratcheted up the level of confrontation in the South China Sea. Most recently, a top U.S. Navy admiral participated in a surveillance flight in the region. The United States is at once inching closer to armed confrontation, while at the same time training Chinese forces in the American way of war.
WNU Editor: On the one hand we are training with them .... on the other hand we are trying to deter them .... U.S. Navy Prepares To Deploy More Ships And Conduct More Exercises In Asia To Deter China. It makes you wonder if Pentagon and U.S. foreign policy has become schizophrenic.
2 comments:
It makes sense. It is about fostering personal contacts. I am not sure what critical mass of contacts you need between people such that faction one or both countries decide that their national interest can be decided by international law or diplomacy rather than war.
Yamamoto probably liked many Americans, but when push came to shove he went with the war faction in control.
General Lee would rather Virginia did not secede, but when he did, he stuck with Virginia. How much more contacts between 1 people than everyone at know everyone else regardless if they fought for the north or the south?
The Kaiser was cousin with the British nobility. they visited each other. Yet bloodlines, familial social contacts do not over come national interests.
You would have to have a revolt of the Chinese junior officer like what happened in Portugal in 1974 overthrowing the junta to make this work.
china could buy any oil that is produced in the south China sea. It might be a little more expensive. But that is balanced against the overhead of a larger military and lost economic trade opportunities. I think china has strong claims. Not sure if they would hold up in the UN. China was a seafaring nation before the other countries. Vietnam for instance bases their claim on the French one. I think the Chinese saw those islands 1st. further south the Chinese are grabbing Islands for which their claim is very weak if nonexistent.
They would be better off to do what the Americans did not do in 1898 in Phillipines. We wanted a colony, a coaling station/naval base, and we were afraid of Germany or someone annexing it.
We could have got the 2nd with a SOFA. We could have got the 1st with a trade treaty and we could have got the last with a defense treaty. McKinley messed up. America messed up. their were loud prominent voices against it such as Mark Twain and Admiral Dewey but it came to naught.
I will read the article shortly. It seems one could very easily turn this premise around and ask "why is China training America's military - while inching toward conflict?" Presumably in military excersizes these things will go both ways. It may also be equally accurate to ask if China's foreign policy has become schizophrenic.
The idea of trying to build up contacts seems an intriguing one. As the more powerful country, China has less need for such contacts than the US does or so it would seem to me.
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