The fault line embodying the current geopolitical rift between China and the United States can be traced to Barack Obama’s tenure as US commander-in-chief. Just ask the US Navy’s former chief of naval operations, Jonathan W Greenert.
The navy’s former most senior officer has written a commanding exposé detailing how Obama’s dithering actually emboldened China’s behavior. The National Bureau of Asian Research released Greenert’s report in August, which demonstrates how Obama’s enfeebled presidency openly shaped a belligerent China.
Throughout the report, Greenert reveals that Asia-Pacific proper isn’t a homogenized socio-political landscape, but exceedingly fractured in scope, in effect diffusing US power. According to Greenert, the varying impact of US power abroad throughout the Pacific is textured by “different levels of national power, approaches to strategic culture, and understandings of national-security strategies” (Executive Summary).
Simply put, the actual formation and execution of national power are highly differentiated throughout the Pacific region. This means that US policymakers and combatant commanders have considerable scope in fielding a containment policy toward China. It also means that the current administration of US President Donald Trump must reconsider its previous rejection of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) or some reiteration of alliance management, if only to secure redundancy of effort while closing the tyranny of distance that is the Pacific and synchronizing industrial bases abroad.
The recent work of synchronizing US diplomatic and military portfolios (termed 2+2) aimed at shaping India as a base for US maritime operations coalescing throughout the Asia-Pacific region remains premature, for the core of US foreign policy is domestic. Without economic growth exceeding 4% annually, the US cannot hope to begin managing more conflicts. It must redirect its core mission from the Eurasian littoral (Afghanistan, Pakistan) and begin openly managing a contested commons with nation-state rivals. In effect, team Trump’s need to build indigenous institutions abroad exposes the myth of a US pivot to Asia.
What team Trump inherited from his exceedingly demure predecessor is on display throughout the South China Sea, namely a brazen belligerency that damages Chinese soft power that often characterizes its preferred framework abroad. A return to that configuration means acknowledging Sun Tzu’s dictum “an enemy goaded and guided in his reaction is your strength.”
A Chinese soldier stands guard at the Monument to the People’s Heroes during a ceremony in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, on the eve of National Day on September 30, 2018.
"…combatant commanders have considerable scope in fielding a containment policy toward China."
It is not difficult to see why the empire is peeing and shitting all over the world when the military is allowed to formulate and execute their own "foreign policies". If not for Obama, all lives on planet earth would have ended on september 2016 when the empire sent two CBGs into the SCS to try to enforce the mickey mouse award to the Aquino III running dog by the equally cartoonish PCA tribunal. XJP decided to sent detachments of north, east and south sea fleets to confront the two CBGs. They quietly scooted with their tails between their legs.
And now they are trying it again this coming november in the SCS and the Taiwan strait.
The empire is OUT OF CONTROL!
"…combatant commanders have considerable scope in fielding a containment policy toward China."
It is not difficult to see why the empire is peeing and shitting all over the world when the military is allowed to formulate and execute their own "foreign policies". If not for Obama, all lives on planet earth would have ended on september 2016 when the empire sent two CBGs into the SCS to try to enforce the mickey mouse award to the Aquino III running dog by the equally cartoonish PCA tribunal. XJP decided to sent detachments of north, east and south sea fleets to confront the two CBGs. They quietly scooted with their tails between their legs.
And now they are trying it again this coming november in the SCS and the Taiwan strait.
The empire is OUT OF CONTROL!
Not only shallow, the quote at the end is not Sun Tzu. It’s Saul Alinsky.
This article is shallowly written with little supporting evidence to back its main premise. Glorified click-bait. Get better writers.
obama is a turd and the blacks dont know shit about political matters.
It is easy for you to talk and blame Obama because you are not the President of the US. You don’t have the information needed to make sound judgements like he had. Which ever way, sooner or later as China act as it is acting now, taking after the US.