U.S. must be ready to face threats from China: Rumsfeld

By Sridhar Krishnaswami

WASHINGTON, JULY 25. The United States must have a strong military presence in Asia to deter future threats from China; and that ``weakness'' should never be a ``first choice'', says the Defence Secretary, Mr. Donald Rumsfeld, in an interview to The Washington Times.

Mr. Rumsfeld, a hawk in the Bush administration, argued that China faces an uncertain future, perhaps even unstable given the fact that it strives to move to the path of capitalism at the same time retaining a tight fisted political control. ``My view of China is that its future is not written and it is being written.''

The Defence Secretary is a known hardliner on China but has chosen to pass off his perceptions as something as old fashioned realism. ``I never believed that weakness was your first choice. I have always felt that weakness is provocative, that it kind of invites people to do things that they otherwise wouldn't think about doing,'' says Mr. Rumsfeld in the interview.

For a person who has some strong views on both conventional and non-conventional military force and posturings, Mr. Rumsfeld has made it plain that while the Pentagon may be getting ready for a new strategy for Asia, it did not mean that other regions of the world such as the Persian Gulf and Europe were being written off.

The new strategy for Asia is pinned on the thinking that that part of the world ``is different from Europe in terms of distances, in terms of the kind of countries that are there and the nature of the political and economic systems'', Mr. Rumsfeld argued.

The Pentagon, in his view, has to have different capabilities to deal with the different challenges of Asia. ``... in the first instance for the purpose of deterring, and in the second instance, for the purpose of prevailing'' in the event of a conflict, he said.

There have been quiet and yet serious discussions within the Bush administration on this new strategy for Asia that seeks to factor in both the short term and the longer term threats. One view is that the U.S. may have to move more air and naval units closer to the region to deal with potential conflict spots in North Korea and Taiwan.

But the emphasis has also been on the longer term where the U.S. is keen on building and developing capabilities to meet threats. And the Bush administration has been making the point that Beijing has not only been involved in the area of missiles but is also investing in such areas as intelligence activities and information warfare technologies.

``They are looking at things that are not being looked at by a lot of other countries in the world,'' Mr. Rumsfeld has told The Times. That said the top Bush administration official also made it clear that there were limits to what it was that the United States could do to influence the scheme of things in China, or have any impact at all. ``We as a country are not unimportant, but it takes an awful lot of countries behaving in a way that can conceivably moderate or affect the behaviour of a country of that nature, that size, that location, that history, that view of themselves,'' Mr. Rumsfeld pointed out.

Mr. Rumsfeld has not minced words on the 1972 ABM Treaty but has chosen to make the point in the interview that it is not that simple to walk away from the agreement. ``... these things are complicated. Everyone has multiple audiences that they have to deal with and I am sure that they do there (Russia) and we do here...'', Mr. Rumsfeld remarked.

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Section  : International
Previous : Focus on confidence-building steps
Next     : Row over leaked plan to save Ulster pact