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(回答先: イランとの1,000億ドル石油商談調印を急ぐ中国。アメリカーヨーロッパのイランへの外交政策は混迷化 投稿者 Sun Shine 日時 2006 年 2 月 19 日 10:25:55)
前投稿の「Iran Mania」と同文の「ワシントン・ポスト」の記事。
China Rushes Toward Oil Pact With Iran
By Peter S. Goodman
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, February 18, 2006; Page D01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/17/AR2006021702146.html
同じく「ワシントン・ポスト」に掲載されたのNational and Homeland Security（国家安全保障会議？）のWilliam M. Arkiの記事。
これによるとペンタゴンが発表した新防衛白書（4年ごとに見直される）は、今回初めて正式に中国を「アメリカの最大の敵」と指定する最初のステップを踏み出しているとのこと。
http://blogs.washingtonpost.com/earlywarning/2006/02/is_china_the_ne.html
William M. Arkin on National and Homeland Security
Is China the New Threat?
The Pentagon's new Quadrennial Defense Review takes the first formal step in designating China this country's number one enemy.
Most coverage of the QDR has focused on the planned growth of special operations forces, its hardware decisions and its articulation of a "long war" strategy against terrorism.
But buried in the hard-to-penetrate bureaucratize is a clear message: The United States will seek to ensure that "no foreign power" will develop "regional hegemony" or "disruptive" capabilities -- and China is the only nation with the capacity to do both.
The war on terrorism and homeland security may be the articulated priorities of the latest review. Iran and North Korea may be the Iraq's of the future. China, nonetheless, is the future "competitor."
The QDR takes us on a tour of the world as seen from the Pentagon, describing virtually every country that is not a member of a military alliance with the United States as being at a "strategic crossroads."
China, Russia, India, the entire Middle East, most of Latin America. They are all there.
But the report calls India a "key strategic partner" with shared values, and Russia, while worrisome, is a "country in transition" without the means to pose a military threat to the United States.
That leaves China. More space is spent on China then on any other single nation in the 113 page report.
China has "the greatest potential to compete militarily with the United States and field disruptive military technologies that could, over time, offset U.S. military advantages absent U.S. counter strategies."
Four years ago, the 2001 QDR mentioned "a military competitor with a formidable resource base" that could emerge, without naming names. In the 1997 QDR, China was a "potential strategic competitor" grouped with Russia.
The evidence against China? According to the report:
China continues to invest heavily in its military, particularly in its strategic arsenal and capabilities designed to improve its ability to project power beyond its borders. Since 1996, China has increased its defense spending by more than 10% in real terms in every year except 2003. … Chinese military modernization has accelerated since the mid-to-late 1990s … The pace and scope of China’s military build-up already puts regional military balances at risk. China is likely to continue making large investments in high-end, asymmetric military capabilities, emphasizing electronic and cyber-warfare; counter-space operations; ballistic and cruise missiles; advanced integrated air defense systems; next generation torpedoes; advanced submarines; strategic nuclear strike from modern, sophisticated land and sea-based systems; and theater unmanned aerial vehicles …
The Pentagon is even employing a population "gap" to show the danger from China. In one of many studies prepared for the QDR last year (see PowerPoint slide on China demographics), China was shown to have a population with a lower average age than the United Stats, thus suggesting that it could invest more in defense in the mid-term.
Is that it? For all of the advances made in precision weapons and network-centric warfare and American military acumen, we are back to counting tanks, fighters and missiles, using the archaic language of "military balances" -- and to worrying about a population gap?
We could, of course, count troops and equipment and argue 'til World War IV about what the numbers really mean and the nature of the "threat."
A joint NRDC/FAS study of Chinese nuclear capabilities and U.S. nuclear war planning against China provides a comprehensive critique of the Chinese nuclear threat. The new report, tentatively called "China, China, China," uses declassified documents to describe China's leisurely nuclear modernization in comparison with its potential.
China, for its part, has already protested any characterization of its military modernization as either irregular or threatening.
The United States, in the QDR, "encourages China to take actions to make its intentions clear and clarify its military plans."
Here is a case where the United States is master of its own destiny. It can invent and thus create a reality where China is stuffed into the old threat box. Or it can indeed recognize that the world has changed and behave accordingly.
By William M. Arkin | February 8, 2006; 09:15 AM ET
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