The Nov. 30 news article about the Pentagon’s latest report on Chinese military power, “Pentagon warns of China’s goals in Taiwan and beyond,” failed to fully emphasize the extent to which the U.S. military’s global footprint far outpaces China’s, both existing and planned.
Overemphasizing China’s military prowess harms U.S. security
The report references a Chinese base in Djibouti and possible plans to establish logistics hubs — not full-fledged bases — in a handful of other countries. By contrast, the United States maintains more than 750 military bases on foreign soil, sustains more than 170,000 active-duty personnel overseas and has counterterrorism operations in 85 countries. China’s main form of global influence is economic, not military, as evidenced by its Belt and Road Initiative, its creation of an Asian development bank and its growing trade ties on every continent.
A strategy that exaggerates the relative scope of China’s military ambitions while ignoring its nonmilitary sources of power will yield a counterproductive, overly militarized approach to U.S.-China relations, to the detriment of U.S. security.
William D. Hartung, New York
The writer is a senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.
Source: WP
