PLA Senior Colonel: 'The China Dream' Means US Defeat

On the path to 9/11, many of us National Security wonks were intensely studying and tracking China and its activities before the al-Qaeda attacks of 9/11. Just as so many had our eyes too focused on a single ball then, it is a necessary exercise of experience and wisdom to ensure the same mistake is not made again, simply in the reverse.

We cannot afford to be – neither as a National Security community nor as a society – so critically focused on our terrorist enemies as to lose sight of an equally determined if even more patient strategic competitor. Though the Chinese are much less overt than our terrorist enemies, their grand strategies and ambitions are hardly invisible. One need simply look for them and recognize them when seen.

In a Reuters article, “China PLA officer urges challenging U.S. dominance,” there is a wake-up call for those perhaps needing it.

From the Reuters article:

The call for China to abandon modesty about its global goals and “sprint to become world number one” comes from a People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Senior Colonel, Liu Mingfu, who warns that his nation’s ascent will alarm Washington, risking war despite Beijing’s hopes for a “peaceful rise.”

“China’s big goal in the 21st century is to become world number one, the top power,” Liu writes in his newly published Chinese-language book, “The China Dream.”

“If China in the 21st century cannot become world number one, cannot become the top power, then inevitably it will become a straggler that is cast aside,” writes Liu, a professor at the elite National Defense University, which trains rising officers.

His 303-page book stands out for its boldness even in a recent chorus of strident Chinese voices demanding a hard shove back against Washington over trade, Tibet, human rights, and arms sales to Taiwan, the self-ruled island Beijing claims as its own.

“As long as China seeks to rise to become world number one … then even if China is even more capitalist than the U.S., the U.S. will still be determined to contain it,” writes Liu.

This new book, written by a Peoples Liberation Army senior colonel, is the next logical progression (and strategic expression) from an earlier book from PLA colonels, Unrestricted Warfare, from the early 1990’s. It was written by two officers in China’s People’s Liberation Army and was the Chinese strategic reaction to the effortless and highly technical American obliteration of the world’s fourth largest standing army, Saddam’s Iraqi army in the Gulf War. The world – even including most Americans – was stunned at the alacrity with which America swatted a massive but technologically inferior foe. In many respects, the Iraqi army resembled China’s own PLA: Massive yet inferior. American dominance was undeniable.

For the terrorist enemies we are focused on today, their reaction then was similar to China’s. Terrorist groups and their state sponsors reacted to the humiliation of the world’s largest Arab and Muslim army by convening emergency meetings in Sudan, hosted by Sudanese President Hassan al-Turabi. Good friend Tom Joscelyn aptly called al-Turabi “The Pope of Terrorism,” as the Sudanese leader urged attendees following Saddam’s American drubbing to lay down their Islamic ideological differences and unite to fight the greater common enemy: America.

In attendance to these regular strategy sessions were both Sunni and Shi’a terrorist groups – and their state sponsors. Hizballah, Hamas, Osama bin Laden (who resided in Sudan at the time) and what would eventually become al-Qaeda, Iran, Iraq, Syria and others. They recognized that they must adjust in order to defeat a dominant America. And defeating America was the primary shared mission. Disparate groups with their own internal rivalries and differences determined to cooperate and focus on America. With 9/11 less than a decade away, the cooperation among terrorist rivals commenced.

Likewise, China’s Unrestricted Warfare explained to Chinese military and civilian leadership after the shock of the Gulf War that in order to compete and defeat the unrivaled American military machine, it must defeat America on all fronts – including economic, legal, social and international relations. It must do all things necessary to blunt the American edge, including corporate espionage and stealing American technology (especially nuclear) through exploiting military and technological exchange & cooperation programs.

The PLA officer’s book laid the path to Chinese parity with and eventual dominance over America: Warfare on all fronts with a level of patience and foresight foreign to most Americans.

This latest book, The China Dream, is the next logical strategic progression. It appears to put attainable goals and means directly ahead for China – affirming the long term strategic vision while targeting immediate gains and victories that can and must be attained from and against America in the shorter term. Meaning now.

America would do well to pay attention to this strategic expression of “the Dragon,” which supports our enemies (ie, Iran and many others) while holding massive, critical amounts of influence-wielding American debt in the form of bonds. It’s expansion of international influence into areas largely ceded by America in comparison (Africa, South America and anywhere energy can be found) must be challenged. We also must not be diverted away from a dominant conventional force while counterinsurgency dominates the immediate needs and landscape of American military needs and structure.

To recover losses ceded to an ever-patient China, as it grows with a goal of rivaling and then defeating America, requires a robust economy. Investments must be made on all fronts. Whether convenient to recognize or not, war has been both declared and prosecuted on all fronts – except for the front America currently dominates: militarily. A floundering and shrinking economy cripples the ability for an already pre-occupied America to react effectively. And the Chinese can be counted on to make economic moves in the future to ensure America’s economic distress is at a level that best serves China’s long-term strategic vision. It holds enough of our debt to do that in many ways.

It is time to pay closer attention to China’s actions – and do so through the Chinese lens of Unrestricted Warfare, not a lens most comfortable for American eyes. It serves no American security purpose to view China and her actions in a light other than the light she herself uses to guide her own path. Colonel Liu’s The Chinese Dream is itself the logical progression of the Unrestricted Warfare view.

Many were asleep to al-Qaeda while focusing almost singularly on the very real rising threat of China on 9/11. That was a mistake then, and the inverse is a mistake now. While we prosecute our war against international terrorism on all possible fronts, we must not become so singularly focused as to miss the warning signs now coming from China as we likewise did with al-Qaeda and others on the path to 9/11.