奥巴马本月公布美国新防务战略。事实上，它并非是要防止别国入侵美国——这不可能发生，而是要重塑美军，令其“维护美国全球领导地位，保持军事优势”。
说来奇怪，奥巴马在做出该声明时并未身披兽毛、挥舞石斧，尽管他的逻辑完全出自石器时代。中国并非凭借派遣军队征服其他亚洲国家而发财，而是依靠向别国(包括美国)销售本土廉价生产的产品和服务而致富。
美国的新战略完全是剑指中国，但它针对的是崛起的贸易伙伴中国，还是强大到威胁美国的崛起军事大国中国?事实上，二者兼而有之。从奥巴马的言辞看，他正纠结于新旧思维之间。他称中国军力增长必须伴随更明确的战略意图，以避免地区摩擦。但若中国承诺无意攻击他国——中国已经这么做了——会有帮助吗?不会。“明确战略意图”的意思是，不要发展能挑战美国在亚洲军事存在的军力。
五角大楼曾暗示，人人都知道美国在亚洲的军事存在只是为防御和威慑，永远不会用作侵略。但中国人并不知道这点。他们看到的是：美国与日韩泰印等其周边邻国保持密切军事联系;美国第七舰队仍定期在中国海岸线外游弋。中国人不会对自己说，“没关系，美国人只是在威慑我们。”
若解放军驻扎在加拿大和墨西哥，若中国航母舰队一直游弋在美国西海岸外，美国人会这么说吗?不会，他们只会和中国人一样猜疑。事实上，尽管如今形势已完全不同，他们对中国的崛起仍相当疑神疑鬼。
与一个多世纪前相比，大国间的战争已成为经济上的蠢行，且因为核武的研发而成为十足的自杀行为。尽管如此，大国的军力仍强烈支配着人们的想象力。美国新防务战略认为，为保证美国安全，其他国家的实力都必须要相对弱小。这表明美国对于人类心理的无知——除非这只是为了说服美国公众在“防务”上花大钱。美国军队是最大的既得利益群体。为保持预算足够庞大，将军们必须用似是而非的威胁吓唬纳税人，即便并不存在。
Stone Age defense policy
The United States kept an army of over 100,000 soldiers in Iraq for eight years, at a cost that will probably end up around a trillion dollars. Yet it didn't enslave a single Iraqi (though it killed quite a lot), and throughout the occupation it paid full market price for Iraqi oil. So what American purpose did the entire enterprise serve?
Oh, silly me. I
Curiously, President Obama was not wearing animal skins and wielding a stone ax when he made this announcement, although his logic came straight out of the Stone Age. Back when land was the only thing of value, it made sense to go heavily armed, because somebody else might try to take it away from you.
It doesn't make sense anymore. China is not getting rich by sending armies to conquer other Asian countries. It's getting rich by selling them (and the United States) goods and services that it can produce cheaply at home, and buying things that are made more cheaply elsewhere. It hasn't actually made economic sense to conquer other countries for at least a century now – but old attitudes die hard.
If you analyze Obama's rhetoric, he's clearly torn between the old thinking and the new. The new U.S. strategy is all about China, but is it about China as an emerging trade partner (and rival), or is it about China as the emerging military superpower that threatens the United States just by being strong? A bit of both, actually.
Would it help if China were to promise that it has no intention of attacking anybody? Of course not; it already does that. “Clarity about its strategic intentions” is code for not developing military capabilities that could challenge the very large U.S. military presence in Asia. After all, the Pentagon implicitly argues, everybody knows that the U.S. forces are there solely for defense and deterrence and would never be used aggressively.
Well, actually, the Chinese do not know that. They see the U.S. maintaining close military ties with practically all the countries on China's eastern and southern frontiers, from Japan and South Korea to Thailand and India. They see the U.S. 7th Fleet operating right off the Chinese coast on a regular basis. And they do not say to themselves: “That's OK. The Americans are just deterring us.”
Would Americans say that about China if Chinese troops were based in Canada and Mexico, and if Chinese carrier fleets were operating just off the U.S. West Coast all the time? No. They'd be just as paranoid as the Chinese are. Indeed, they are pretty paranoid about the rise of China even though the shoe is on the other foot.
For the first time in history, no great power is planning to attack any other great power. War between great powers became economic nonsense more than a century ago, and sheer suicide after the invention of nuclear weapons. Yet the military establishments in every major power still have a powerful hold on the popular imagination.
In effect, the new U.S. defense strategy says that for the United States to be safe, everybody else must be weaker. This displays a profound ignorance of human psychology – unless, of course, it is just a cynical device to convince the American public to spend a lot on “defense.”
The armed forces are the biggest single vested interest in the United States and, indeed, in most other countries. To keep their budgets large, the generals must frighten the taxpaying public with plausible threats even if they don't really exist. The Pentagon will accept some cuts in Army and Marine Corps manpower, and even a hundred billion dollars or so off the defense budget for a while, but it will defend its core interests to the death.
Obama goes along with this because it would be political suicide not to. Beijing has its own powerful military lobby, which regularly stresses the American “military threat,” and the Chinese regime goes along with that, too. We left the caves some time ago, but in our imaginations and our fears we still live there.
