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  Japan and China continued to engage in periodic skirmishes and battles, but despite China’s huge advantage in population, it lagged well behind Japan industrially. Further, the Chinese did not share a comparable sense of nationalism. Even after the founding of the Republic of China in 1912, it was still no match for Japan’s modern military.

  Japan had long harbored a vision of dominating China and securing the use of its abundant natural resources. In 1937, Japan launched an invasion of the mainland, attacking Beijing and commencing a war that would last more than eight years. It may not figure prominently in our history textbooks, but it should; it was a conflict of unbelievable horror. The Japanese used chemical and biological weapons against the Chinese, which China maintains included fleas infested with plague dropped from aircraft. Chinese women were forced to provide sex for Japanese soldiers. The anger over the forced servitude of these so-called comfort women continues to this day. By the time the Sino-Japanese war was finally brought to a close by Japan’s 1945 surrender to the Allies, the Chinese had suffered at least fifteen million casualties. Japanese losses in the conflict totaled about two million.

  China’s war effort had been both helped and hurt during the conflict by the emergence of Mao Zedong and his Communist Party. Mao’s soldiers proved to be motivated and effective in fighting the Japanese army. But the civil war Mao instigated against Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist Chinese army required the Nationalists to fight two enemies at once.

  In 1949, Mao defeated the Nationalists, driving Chiang and his followers to Taiwan. But Mao’s military was not a modern war machine; it was simply a cadre of zealots who had become highly sophisticated in the battlefield tactics of ground warfare. When the United States came to the aid of South Korea in 1950, it was unimaginable to many of our commanders that China would enter the fray, as Mao had neither an air force nor a modern navy. But fearing that a new foreign invader was at their southern doorstep, China did indeed join the conflict, and the chairman’s forces proved to be highly effective once more, eventually forcing the United Nations’ troops, led by the United States, into a costly stalemate.

  Yet Mao never really took to modernity and technology, and his military continued to reflect that prejudice, maintaining a massive four-million-soldier army as only a weak compensation for the nation’s obsolete or nonexistent weapons systems and logistical support. It wasn’t until approximately twenty years ago that China decided to build a modern world-class military. Since the mid-1980s, the People’s Liberation Army has been reduced by two million soldiers, cutting its size in half even as military spending was doubled time and again. The new funds went to programs designed to professionalize and train Chinese soldiers as well as toward the purchase of modern arms from Russia: fighter aircraft, helicopters, destroyers, submarines, and antiship missiles.

  China also expanded its own defense industrial capacity, developing an F-10 fighter aircraft that can challenge our F-16, as well as an extremely effective armada of ships and submarines, and advanced missile systems. China’s military buildup over the last two decades has been nothing short of stunning. In 2009, China boasted approximately 1,900 combat aircraft, 200 more than Russia. And even with its armed forces cut in size, China still maintains nearly a million more armed troops than the United States.

  The country’s investment in submarines is particularly ominous for the United States, dependent as we have always been on our sea power. Since the mid-1990s, China has commissioned more than thirty new submarines and now has an estimated sixty-two subs, only a few of which are nuclear-powered. In comparison, the United States has seventy-one all-nuclear submarines. China clearly intends to catch up; it is on track to deploy five classes of subs, more than any other nation.

  The threat posed by China’s submarines was brought home in 2006, when one of its conventional submarines tailed the USS Kitty Hawk off the coast of Japan—completely undetected by our navy. U.S. commanders only became aware of its presence when it surfaced well within the firing range of its torpedoes, and our chagrined crew could do nothing but imagine the smiles on the faces of the Chinese crew.

  China has completed a massive new naval base on Hainan Island, one capable of projecting power into the South China Sea and Indian Ocean. The facility includes underwater caves for docking submarines, making it much more difficult for us to know when those subs have been deployed.

  Perhaps most sobering of all, Defense Secretary Robert Gates reported to Congress in 2008 that China has the most active ballistic missile program in the world. China is developing new submarine-launched missiles and anti-ship missiles, modernizing its intercontinental missiles, purchasing state-of-the-art cruise missiles, and adding 150 ballistic missiles a year, approximately a thousand of which are currently deployed along the Taiwan Strait.

  China’s aggressive pursuit of space-warfare and cyber-warfare capabilities is part of this high-tech transformation of the People’s Republic of China’s military might. In 2007, China successfully shot down an orbiting satellite. Official Western computer systems are frequently attacked by China, whose government is the most active cyber-combatant in the world. According to China’s Colonel Yuan Zelu, these technologies will shake the structure of the opponent’s operational system of organization.

  China has come a very long way since Mao, yet it remains far behind the United States in military power—in a head-to-head matchup, China is not in the same league. Despite reductions made under the Moscow Treaty Agreement, the United States still has 2,200 operationally deployed warheads while the Chinese have less than 200. We have twelve aircraft-carrier battle groups, they have none. We have more than twice as many combat-ready aircraft, and ours are more modern.

  But note two important points.

  First, China is catching up.

  Second, they have not yet built their military to challenge us head-to-head around the globe. Instead, they have shaped it to deter us, to match us, or even to defeat us in the specific theaters and missions that are most important to them. China has very little interest today in constructing a military capable of fighting us in Africa, Europe, the Americas, or the Middle East. They don’t yet have the aircraft carriers needed to launch fighters—although one is now under development. Nor do they have the airlift capacity required to deploy troops in distant lands. They lack the necessary combat helicopters: We outnumber them 5,700 to 160. But they build submarines capable of checkmating our carrier battle groups and they invest in cyber- and space-warfare that can blind or at least blinker our navy and air force. And if they become capable of declawing America’s military in Asia, they will gain freedom of action to do whatever they choose in the Pacific and Indian Oceans.

  There are those, of course, who take comfort in our overall military lead over China and the projections that we will retain that advantage for decades to come. The Council on Foreign Relations reports that at least until 2030, there is no evidence to support the notion that China will become a peer military competitor of the United States. On the other hand, Afghanistan fighters were certainly not a peer military with the Soviet Union, yet they defeated the Soviets—not globally, of course, but certainly in Afghanistan. What is most relevant in China’s case is its quest for the asymmetric capacity to neutralize the United States in specific potential conflicts involving Taiwan, North Korea, or even South Korea or Japan. China is fast developing the capability of doing precisely that.

  Some see China’s military buildup as being driven foremost by a desire to reunite parts of the country’s ancestral homeland, territories that the Chinese people have long been taught were taken from them by foreign aggressors. In 2006, former U.S. ambassador to China Clark Randt, Jr.—someone who knows the Chinese people intimately after having lived in China for many years—reminded me of their belief that holistic energy flows throughout each person’s body, and that when that energy is blocked, illness is the result. In the minds of many Chinese, he explained, the nation itself possesses energy, and that energy i
s greatest when the territory and people of China are united, whole. When foreigners cut off Tibet, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, this theory holds, they weakened China, preventing it from regaining its past greatness. This, Ambassador Randt continued, explains in part the vigorous and almost hysterical reaction the Chinese bring to any discussion of an independent Taiwan. Given this cultural context, one may be tempted to ask whether it is really so bad if China wants to put itself back together. In my view, yes, it is.

  Taiwan is not China. It is an independent democratic country of 23 million people—more than Australia and more than four times the population of Israel. Taiwan holds free and fair elections, guards its citizens’ civil rights and political liberties, and is also a model of free enterprise, having the twentieth largest economy in the world. If the people of Taiwan were to choose to unite with China, that would be their right, but that has never been the choice of a modern, free Taiwan.

  And can we be certain that China’s interest is only in Taiwan? China once oversaw Korea. It could conceivably decide to end any possible future threat from Japan. And it is almost certainly intent on projecting power throughout Eastern Asia and beyond, despite the fact that the Chinese vigorously protest any suggestion of that inclination. Yet their protests may well simply follow the counsel of Deng Xiaoping, the visionary leader of China’s military modernization: Observe calmly; secure our position; cope with affairs calmly; hide our capacities and bide our time; be good maintaining a low profile; and never claim leadership.

  Whenever I hear a Chinese demurrer of ambition, I am reminded of Deng’s counsel.

  In virtually every meeting I have held with Chinese officials, I’ve been assured that they intend to build a positive relationship with the United States. In fact, there are good reasons for them to do so: Russia is becoming more militarily assertive and the Chinese economy depends heavily on trade with the West. Former president George W. Bush recounted a private conversation with Chinese president Hu Jintao during which Bush explained that his number one concern was a terrorist attack against American citizens. President Hu replied that his greatest concern was whether the 20 million rural Chinese who move to the cities each year will be able to find work. China desperately needs our trade and goodwill. The economic growth that the People’s Republic of China needs for its domestic stability provides us with the opportunity to build a more collaborative relationship and to make China a lasting partner.

  It is in our best interest to draw China into the circle of responsible nations and, at the same time, to strengthen our capacity to intervene in Asia, if necessary, to prevent China from imposing its will on independent nations. We must also reach out to the Chinese people through all the means that modern technology provides. With millions upon millions of Chinese connecting to the virtual world every year, we should greatly expand our nation’s capacity to communicate in Chinese.

  These steps are important for freedom, for humankind, and for America. As American Enterprise Institute scholar Dan Blumenthal wrote in Newsweek, devoting more military resources to the region and strengthening U.S. allies in order to reassure them and send Beijing the message that the United States is committed to the regional status quo—which means the maintenance of free markets and free governments across the Pacific . . . would be in everyone’s interests.

  The Great Bear Roars Again

  Russia has once again changed course. Twenty years ago, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev did what President Reagan had asked him to do and let the East Germans tear down the Berlin Wall. Inside the Soviet Union, he inaugurated the perestroika and glasnost reforms that paved the way for the USSR’s dissolution. His successor, Boris Yeltsin, delivered his courageous defense of democracy standing on the turret of a tank. Yeltsin went so far as to suggest that Russia should join NATO, and Vladimir Putin, his successor, appeared to agree that Russia now shared common interests with free nations. When he was once asked whether Russia might join, he replied, Why not?

  That was then.

  Today, Putin is taking Russia in a different and worrisome direction. According to Fyodor Lukyanov, editor of the journal Russia in Global Affairs, Russia is now inclined not only to reject completely a path determined by Western values but actually to deny that such values even exist. Far from celebrating the liberty achieved by the former Soviet republics and the growth of the Russian people’s prosperity and freedom, Putin—who as prime minister retains much of his former power as president—laments the dissolution of the former Soviet Union and Russia’s consequent loss of power. He has opined that the dissolution of the Soviet Union was the greatest political catastrophe of the twentieth century. He is taking steps to rebuild what was lost.

  Lukyanov has written that Putin’s dramatic change of course was driven by the failure of global financial institutions and by the go-it-alone approach taken by the United States in invading Iraq. He reasons that the West’s recognition of Kosovo’s independence and the encroachment of NATO forces toward Russia’s border gave Putin no option but to increase Russia’s might. I disagree.

  Putin is doing a good deal more than strengthening his nation. He has embarked on the authoritarian path traveled by Russia’s past tyrants—complete with the aggregation of personal power for himself, awards of wealth to cronies, suppression of free speech, attempted intimidation of the West, nationalization of key industries, and the invasion of Georgia, an independent nation. The moves are reminiscent of Russia’s Cold War playbook, but this time, they are funded with the wealth generated from Russia’s abundant energy and natural resources.

  During Putin’s presidency, the pro-democracy candidate in Ukraine’s 2004 presidential election, Viktor Yushchenko, was poisoned with dioxin, a dissident former spy was murdered in London, and opposition voices in the media have been silenced by suspicious deaths. Joseph Stalin—father of the gulag and perpetrator of the murder, starvation, and deportation of tens of millions of his own people—is being systematically rehabilitated in state media, textbooks, and schools. Why? Because in Putin’s view, Stalin was a leader who made possible the Soviet Union’s glorious and powerful past, while Gorbachev and Yeltsin were men of weakness. Today, it is the personalities and power of the Soviet era that are celebrated: Thousands of Russian soldiers wear Soviet-era uniforms and wave Soviet flags parade through Red Square to the enthusiastic cheers of their countrymen.

  Just as they were during the decades of the Cold War, Russians once again are subject to an avalanche of vitriolic anti-American propaganda. On a recent anniversary of the attacks of September 11, 2001, Russia’s largest state-owned television station broadcast an utterly specious documentary arguing that the tragedy was actually planned and carried out by the CIA as a way to legitimize our invasion of Iraq.

  The Russian people are exposed to a media barrage that characterizes Russia as a nation besieged on all sides by America and our friends. They were told that their 2008 invasion of Georgia was simply a humanitarian response to American-led genocide committed against ethnic Russians living there. A Russian general even produced the passport of an American that had been found during the Georgia assault. What the Russian people did not hear, however, was that the same passport had been reported missing years earlier, following a flight from Moscow to New York, and that at the time of the Georgia offensive, the holder of that passport was in Texas caring for his ailing father. Every new woe and long-latent fear is portrayed as the product of an American effort to threaten Russia.

  Putin has taken personal control of companies in some of Russia’s most important industries including oil and gas, broadcasting, and journalism. By doing so, he both appropriates their wealth for his geopolitical ambitions and secures his personal political power. Observers estimate that Putin’s personal and political friends serve as board chairmen of companies that represent as much as 80 percent of Russia’s economy. He now leads what is increasingly referred to as a corporatist state.

  Much of what is happening inside Russia is veiled to observers
in the West, but Putin’s foreign policy is in plain view for all to see. He seeks to extend his grip on the world’s energy by blocking neighboring countries’ construction of energy pipelines to Europe, and, apparently, no tactics are off limits in this effort. Intimidation and invasion are acceptable as means to his ends. He is rebuilding alliances among the world’s repressive nations, particularly those that are energy-rich or energy-linked. As a case in point, his support for Serbia has strengthened his hand in preventing Europe from building the Nabucco energy pipeline—one that would be free from Russian control.

  Putin is working tirelessly to recover the geostrategic assets that he believes Russia tragically lost in the dissolution of the Soviet Union. His invasion of Georgia not only advanced his control over energy but captured the nervous attention of political leaders throughout the former Soviet republics and sent them an unmistakable message. The NATO countries’ unwillingness or inability to prevent or repel the invasion sobered those leaders who were moving toward greater cooperation with the West and independence from Russia. These concerns—plus a few billion dollars—were enough early in 2009 to convince Kyrgyzstan to initially retract its agreement to allow NATO aircraft landing rights as they ferried troops and supplies to Afghanistan.

  Putin’s intention to recapture key parts of the former empire is further evidenced by President Dmitry Medvedev’s not-so-veiled threat to protect the life and dignity of Russian citizens throughout the former Soviet republics even as his agents reportedly pass out Russian passports to citizens in those very republics. In the then UN ambassador John Bolton’s words, Russia has returned not to the Cold War but to a thuggish, indeed czarist, approach to former dominions.