29 November 2006

East of Suez

I was sitting at the bus-stop in front of Big Pink, drinking a Stroh's beer out of a paper bag and watching the evening commute go by and thinking hard. Another retired senior Naval officer was with me, also with time on his hands. Naturally, the talk turned to China.

"The Chinese are everywhere," I said, "working diligently in their national interest. They are busy as beavers in Africa, offering loans and building infrastructure. With lips pursed, they are silent about the peculiarities and peccadilloes of local government."

My friend nodded, his eyes far away. "They don't lecture about human rights. They just reach for their wallets, and they are building up a long list of favors that must be re-paid someday."

"Perhaps soon," I said.

"They are just as active in Latin America. I don't know what happened to he Monroe Doctrine. Beijing is one of the places that strongman Hugo Chavez visited recently, and he would like to diversify his client base."

I nodded, saying America is more than a little like Gulliver, with the Lilliputians all around making a new friend, and wondering when it will be time to throw their tiny ropes around a sleeping colossus. Or maybe it is an emerging strategy of containment very much like the one that George Kennan proposed to provide a bulwark against the Soviets in 1948.

The Soviets were not so foolish as to allow the Americans to hold their national debt, though. They were quite diligent about managing their overseas debt, right up to the end.

That is the most wondrous thing about Uncle Sam's deficit spending. The Chinese are not the largest holders of treasury notes. That position is held by last year's menace, the Japanese. Still, the Chinese are at number two, holding the equivalent of the annual Pentagon budget in their coffers.

The announcement last week that they were going to modify their holdings to better reflect global currencies sent a shudder through the market, and reminded me how fragile this edifice is.

"I am no China hater, nor a xenophobe," said my friend. "I am amazed and cheered by the fact that a proud people have pulled themselves up by their bootstraps. This is not quite what we wanted when we became so entwined in their affairs- the open door, Dr. Sun Yat-Sen and our old buddy Chaing Kai-Check, but we said that we wanted them to be happy, and apparently they are."

Traffic was awful, and I was glad I was not in it. I warmed to the subject like the beer in its paper bag. "It is all a matter of self-interest. I don't blame them for stealing us blind, either That is what my trade was about, after all, stealing other people's secrets. The Justice Department just announced another indictment, charging an Indian-born US citizen named Noshir S. Gowadia with selling the details of the B-2 Stealth Bomber's engine exhaust system."

"The Chinese want it to incorporate into a new version of a cruise missile less susceptible to heat-seeking missiles. Why develop it yourself if you can steal it?"

"Well, shoot. With their massive military build-up, it brings in question the role of the US in Asia, and what it might be in the future."

My friend leaned forward. "So do we ride to the defense of Taiwan? The supply-line challenge is so staggering that it boggles the mind. Suppose it has some resolution sort of invasion, and they ask us to go away. What then?"

We watched the bus-people get on and off their means of conveyance, and talked about how the other pivot-points of Japan and the Koreas change the axis of the turning globe.

"ADM Arleigh Burke had the vision," said my friend, taking a sip of his lukewarm beer. "He charted the course of the Navy in the nuclear age and gave us the Big-Deck super carriers and the ballistic missile submarines. The pygmies that run the Department these days have more Admirals than ships, and they are not interested in where we came from. They are afraid of a future in which there are not enough ships to perform the manifold global missions of the empire."

"Right on," I said. "It reminds me of the "East of Suez" declaration of Her Majesty's government back in 1968. There was one of those  grim Defense White Paper that compared resources and options. No Royal Navy presence east of Suez was the verdict, and that left a vacuum only the US could fill."

"Then we could," said my friend. "When we pull out, or are asked to leave, Japan , we will have come full round to the end of the American Century. Henry Luce came out of China to America to proclaim it, and so it seems completely appropriate that the end should be coming from there, too."

"Shoot," I said, putting my empty beer bottle with the others. I lit up a Lucky and watched the traffic snarl. "I guess the only thing to do is give the Japanese our left-over nuclear weapons, and let them finish sorting out the Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere on their own."

"It doesn't have to be this way. I wonder why they are asleep at the switch downtown?"

"I don't know. It is not like anyone is keeping it a big secret. But even if it is over, you have to admit it was a pretty good run."

"You're right. But who would have figured the American Century would turn out to be measured in internet years?"

Copyright 2006 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

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