Wordfall, by Kaleem Omar

There is hardly any area where the US government’s penchant for double standards does not apply. The latest example of this came on Tuesday when the US Defence Department, headed by Donald (“Weapons of Mass Destruction”) Rumsfeld, in its annual report to Congress warned that the pace and scope of China’s modernisation of its strategic forces and other surprising military developments could pose a credible long-term threat to the United States.

The report said that China’s ability to sustain military power at a distance – known in military parlance as power-projection capability – is limited but it has the greatest potential of any nation to compete militarily with the United States.

Warming to its theme, the report said: “Long-term trends in China’s strategic military forces, modernisation of land- and sea-based access denial capabilities, and emerging precision-strike weapons have the potential to pose credible threats to modern militaries operating in the region.”

An executive summary of the report said: “Several aspects of China’s military developments have surprised US analysts, including the pace and scope of its strategic forces modernisation. China’s military expansion is already such as to alter regional military balances.”

As the AFP news agency noted in a story published on Wednesday, “The annual China military power report is a closely watched barometer of military relations between the Asian power and the United States, the dominant military power in the Asia-Pacific region. The report made waves last year by calling attention to big unacknowledged increases in Chinese military spending on a major military build-up that it said put at risk the military balance in the region.”

The latest report expanded on that these and said that China had still not adequately explained “the purposes or desired end-status of their military expansion.”

The report added: “Absent greater transparency, international reactions to China’s military growth will understandably hedge against these unknowns…In the near-term, China’s military build-up appeared focused on preparing for contingencies in the Taiwan Straits, including the possibility of US intervention.” China now has an estimated 710 to 790 short-range missiles opposite Taiwan, according to the report.

“However, analysis of China’s military acquisitions suggests it is also generating capabilities that could apply to other regional contingencies, such as conflicts over resources or territory,” the report said.

It said China has “developed a new doctrine for modern warfare, reformed military institutions and personnel systems, improved exercises and training, and acquired advanced foreign and domestic weapons systems.”

In this connection, the report discusses China’s acquisition of Russian transport and air-refueling aircraft and its interest in acquiring the SU-33, a Russian-made maritime strike aircraft capable of operating from aircraft carriers.

If ever there was a case of the pot calling the kettle black, the Pentagon’s report is it. For one thing, the US is hardly in a position to criticise increases in China’s military spending when the US’s own military spending, under the Bush administration, has risen to record levels and now accounts for more than 50 per cent of the world’s total military spending.

In 2000, the last year of the Clinton administration’s term in office, US military spending, at $ 301 billion, accounted for 41.7 per cent of world military spending. Under President George W. Bush, US military spending rose to $ 335 billion in 2002, accounting for 42.8 per cent of world military spending.

In 2003, US military spending accounted for half the world total of $ 956 billion, driven up by Bush’s doctrine of pre-emptive strikes” in response to the 9/11 attacks on the United States.

But the term “pre-emptive strikes” is a misnomer in this case because it implies attacking someone to prevent them attacking you, whereas the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon had already taken place 18 months before the US invaded Iraq in an unprovoked war of aggression in violation of all canons of international law and in flagrant defiance of world public opinion. To make matters worse, it was admitted even by US intelligence agencies months before the US invasion of Iraq that Iraq had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks on the US and that the Saddam Hussein regime had no links whatsoever with al-Qaeda.

In 2004, world military spending topped $ 1 trillion on the back of massive US budgetary allocations for Bush’s “war on terror, with US military spending, at $ 455 billion, accounting for almost half the global figure, more than the combined total of the next 32 most powerful nations.

“The major determinant of the world trend in military expenditure is the change in the United States, with its 47 per cent of the world total,” said the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) in its annual yearbook. US military spending increased to 3.9 per cent of its gross domestic product in 2004 from 3.0 per cent in 1999.

According to SIPRI, China’s military spending in 2004 was $ 35 billion, only 7.69 per cent of the US figure.

But even this relatively low level of Chinese military spending came in for criticism from US Defence Secretary Rumsfeld. Speaking at a conference of Asian defence ministers in Singapore on June 6, 2005, Rumsfeld posed several questions about China’s military upgrade.

“China appears to be expanding its missile forces, allowing them to reach targets in many areas of the world, not just the Pacific region, while also expanding its missile capabilities here in the region,” Rumsfeld said. “Since no nation threatens China, one must wonder: Why this growing investment?” he added.

In saying this, however, Rumsfeld was, of course, conveniently glossing over the fact that the US’s own nuclear arsenal and missile forces are the biggest in the world – enough to wipe out humanity several times over. US missile forces have long possessed the capability of reaching every part of the world, including China.

Rumsfeld’s remarks brought an immediate response from the most senior Chinese official at the Singapore conference, Ciu Tiankai, director of the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s Asia bureau.

“Do you truly believe that China is under no threat whatsoever from any part of the world?” Ciu asked. “And do you truly believe that the United States feels threatened by the so-called emergence of China?”

Rumsfeld replied that he knew of no nation that menaced China, and that the United States did not feel threatened by China’s rising power.

Yet only a year after Rumsfeld made that statement, the US Defence Department, in its latest annual report to Congress, has come out with the assertion that China’s military build-up and modernisation of its strategic forces could pose a credible long-term threat to the United States.

But what about the US’s own continuing massive military build-up and its continuing modernisation of its own forces? Don’t they pose a threat to other nations, including China? Or are we expected to believe that the US is spending $ 470 billion dollars on its military this year (excluding over $ 100 billion allocated for the war against Iraq and Afghanistan) just for the heck of it, and that this massive military expenditure poses no threat to anybody? If that’s the case, why is it spending that kind of money?

Compared with the world’s average level of military spending at 3 per cent of GDP, China’s defence expenditure is still at a fairly low level, said Ding Jiye, head of finances for the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s General Logistics Department, in an interview with the Chinese news agency Xinhua.

According to Ding, China’s military expenditure only makes up about 8 per cent of the country’s total government spending (not to be confused with military spending as a percentage of GDP), which is only about half the world’s average level of 15 per cent of government spending.

US military spending works out to nearly $ 300,000 per soldier, and Britain’s and Japan’s to nearly $ 200,000 per soldier, as against China’s $ 10,000 per soldier.

Rumsfeld and other American officials, however, contend that Chinese military spending is “understated” and that its actual spending is much more – a contention that China denies. But even if we were, for argument’s sake, to accept the US contention as being true, China’s military spending, according to the US’s own figures, is still only a fraction of US military spending.

The American CIA’s “World Fact Book 2003,” for example, says that China’s military spending in 2002 amounted to $ 55.9 billion. By contrast, US military spending in 2002 amounted to $ 328.7 billion. In 2003, US military spending rose to $ 379.3 billion, in 2004 to $ 379.9 billion, in 2005 to $ 400.1 billion. In 2006, it is projected to rise to $ 419 billion, excluding the money being spent on the war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Rand Corporation is the US’s leading think tank on military matters. A Rand Corporation report issued on May 19, 2005 estimated that China’s defence spending is substantially lower than many previous outside estimates of the share of GDP that China devotes to defence.

The study estimated that the purchasing power of current Chinese military spending (that is, what a dollar spent in China will buy) runs between “$ 69 billion and $ 78 billion in 2001 dollars, and could reach $185 billion in 2001 dollars in 2025.” Even this estimate, however, amounts to only about 40 per cent of current US military spending (again, excluding spending on the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, which has already cost US taxpayers more than $ 300 billion).

By comparison, said the Rand study, US military spending was 3.9 per cent of its GDP in 2004, “amounting to nearly $ 430 billion in 2001 dollars.”

So which country’s military spending is actually a source of worry to the rest of the world, China’s or the US’s? The answer to that question is the US’s, of course. Unlike the United States, China has no doctrine of “pre-emptive” strikes. It was the US that invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, and it is again the US that now seems to have Iran in its gun-sight as its next target.