【华尔街日报20140101】中国军事冒险下的危险挑衅

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China's Risky Flirtation With Military Adventurism

Soviet officers knew that to act provocatively meant career suicide. Beijing is sending a different signal.

By EDWARD LUTTWAK
Jan. 1, 2014 5:14 p.m. ET
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304591604579288690362026948
On Dec. 5, a Chinese naval vessel deliberately attempted to block a U.S. Navy cruiser in international waters. In a startling revelation, U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel has confirmed to the press that at one point only 100 yards separated the two vessels. That raises an important question: Why did the Chinese commanders think it a good idea to provoke a near-collision with a U.S. warship?

A growing record of encounters suggests that Chinese naval officers have career incentives to act provocatively, even at the risk of deadly incidents. So do their counterparts in the army. Forces under the Lanzhou Military Region, in China's west, thought it smart to seize Indian-controlled terrain in Ladakh this April. They retreated only when the Indians threatened to cancel a state visit. Similarly, the China Coast Guard has been intrusively patrolling the waters around the Japanese-controlled Senkaku Islands, even entering Japanese territorial waters in recent days.

2010日美联合训练演习
The USS Cowpens leads Japanese vessels in a training exercise, December 2010

It was different during the Cold War. In spite of countless encounters between American and Soviet aircraft and warships, as well as the famous set-to between the U.S. and Soviet armies at "Checkpoint Charlie" in the heart of Berlin, there were very few dangerous incidents. Soviet officers knew that "adventurism" was a career-ending offense.

Yet in the Chinese case, Communist Party leaders apparently encourage it. The state media vigorously endorse each act of military adventurism. Why should this be? After all, the risks of escalation are enormous.

With all due respect for the China's first aircraft carrier, the Liaoning—which the USS Cowpens was monitoring from a safe distance when the Dec. 5 incident occurred—today's Chinese navy is a set of easy targets for America's aircraft carriers and attack submarines. The USS Cowpens is a near 10,000-ton missile cruiser.

Likewise, Japan's navy could sweep the seas around the Senkakus of any intruding Chinese coast guard or naval vessels, including the entire Liaoning flotilla. So why is Beijing risking humiliating defeat?

The inescapable conclusion is that since 2008 China's leaders have abandoned the "peaceful rise" policy that Deng Xiaoping launched in 1978 and senior strategist Zheng Bijian spelled out in 2003. To rise economically, China needed a receptive world environment in which its exports, imports and incoming investments would be unimpeded. Deng's policy—threaten nobody, advance no claims and don't attack Taiwan—was brilliantly successful, as the U.S. actively favored China's economic growth and other countries followed suit, to the great benefit of the Chinese people, and us all.

Everything changed after 2008. Interpreting the global financial crisis as a harbinger of collapsing American power, Beijing abruptly revived its long-dormant claim to most of the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh, rebuffed friendly overtures from Japanese politicians and instead demanded the Senkakus, and declared ownership of vast portions of the South China Sea hundreds of miles from any Chinese coast but well within the exclusive economic zones of the Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia, Indonesia and Vietnam.

China's demands are now asserted even on its passports, which are decorated with a map that on close inspection includes South Korean waters. The seven countries under pressure have naturally reacted by coalescing against China, at least diplomatically, and in some cases substantively—as in the informal India-Japan-Vietnam arrangement that is endowing the hard-pressed Vietnamese navy with modern submarines. China's bombastic proclamation last month of an Air Defense Identification Zone that overlaps with both Japan's and Korea's, may even improve the fraught relationship between those two countries.

Chinese leaders now complain of being confronted by emerging coalitions from South Korea to India, and they blame the U.S. for it all. But despite Washington's famous "pivot," it wasn't the cunning malevolence of the U.S. State Department that turned China's neighbors against it.

Rather, it was the Chinese government itself—country by country, demand by demand. The latest demand, after the Air Defense Identification Zone affair, is that Japan should not increase its military spending—i.e., that it should refrain from reacting to daily Chinese threats.

Some observers see a clever long-term scheme of systematic intimidation at work. Others insist that it cannot be clever to quarrel with seven neighbors at once. Nor does it make sense for a rising China to alarm everybody prematurely, causing them to unite diplomatically and even perhaps commercially against Chinese interests.

China's Communist Party leaders have been competent in managing a vast and dynamic economy, and their repression is also very skillful in minimizing visible brutality (except against minorities). For these reasons, there is an assumption by many outsiders that the leadership is equally proficient in foreign policy.

Unfortunately, the actual evidence so far is that we are witnessing a prolonged outbreak of feckless nationalism and militarism that evokes the sinister precedent of pre-1914 Germany. This was a country that had the world's best universities, the most advanced industries and the strongest banks. It lacked only the strategic wisdom of persisting in its own "peaceful rise."

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http://mil.huanqiu.com/observation/2013-12/4712501.html
参考消息12月31日报道【美国《华尔街日报》网站12月29日文章】题：中国的军事冒险主义不合时宜（作者美国战略与国际问题研究中心高级研究员爱德华 勒特韦克）

　　12月，—艘中国海军舰船故意在国际水域试图阻止美国海军的一艘巡洋舰。美国国防部长查克 哈格尔向媒体证实，两艘船之间一度仅相距100码（1码约合0.91米）。这个消息令人感到震惊。这起事件提出了—个重要问题：为什么中方指挥官认为挑衅美国军舰、甚至差点造成两船相撞是个好主意？

　　越来越多双方遭遇的记录表明，中国海军军官有采取挑衅行为的职业冲动，甚至甘愿冒着引起致命事故的风险。

　　他们在陆军中的同行亦是如此。今年4月，部署在中国西部的部队认为，夺取拉达克的印控领地是个聪明的做法。最终在印度人以取消即将进行的国事访问作为威胁时，他们才撤退。

　　冷战时期的情况不同于今天。虽然美苏飞机和战舰有着无数次相遇，但双方极少发生危险事件。苏联军官知道，军事“冒险主义”会终止他们的职业生涯。

　　尽管我们非常尊重中国的第一艘航母辽宁舰——在12月的事件中，美国“考彭斯”号巡洋舰正在一个安全的距离监视这艘航母——但今天中国的海军对美国航母和攻击潜艇来说无异于一些轻松的靶子。

　　类似的，日本海上自卫队有能力把任何入侵的中国海警或海军舰船赶出尖阁诸岛（即我钓鱼岛及其附属岛屿）周边水域，包括整个辽宁舰编队。那么北京为何冒着惨败的风险采取此种行为？

　　一个不可避免的结论是：自2008年以来，中国领导人已经放弃了“和平崛起”政策。这个政策——它没有威胁到任何人，不推动任何主权要求，不攻击台湾——是个辉煌的成功，因为美国积极看好中国的经济增长而其他国家纷纷效仿。它给中国人民带来了巨大的好处，对我们所有人都有益。

　　2008年后一切都变了。在将全球金融危机解读为美国走向衰落的预兆之后，北京突然恢复了长期停止的对印度阿鲁纳恰尔邦（即我藏南地区）多数地区的主权要求，它回绝了日本政客的友善建议，相反对尖阁诸岛提出主权要求，并宣布对南中国海大部分地区拥有主权。

　　中国领导人现在抱怨自己遭到新型联盟的对抗，他们指责美国策划了这一切。尽管华盛顿提出了著名的重返亚洲策略，但是让中国的邻国来反对它却不是出自美国国务院的诡计和恶行。

　　一些观察人士认为，中国正在采取有计划有步骤地进行威吓的长期计划，这是较聪明的做法。其他人则坚持说，同时和多个邻国反目不是什么聪明的做法。崛起中的中国在时机尚未成熟的条件下向所有人发出警报，导致它们在外交上联合起来，甚至可能在商业上联合起来针对中国的利益，那不是什么明智的做法。

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明明是强盗到你家门口舞刀弄棒，现在还倒打一耙说你在危险挑衅，华尔街日报这样做太混蛋了吧！    

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