Now, of course, the DoD has a new boss—Secretary of Defense Ash Carter; and PACCOM has a new commander—Admiral Harry Harris, and the general consensus is that the muscular defense sector has wrestled China policy away from the milquetoastian White House. Interestingly, Admiral Harris was previously the Pentagon’s liaison to to the State Department under Hillary Clinton as well as John Kerry, which reinforces my impression that Hillary Clinton and her foreign policy advisors have pre-loaded China policy with her supporters, and I expect things to get ugly quickly so that the nasty and awkward business of starting the confrontation can be done under Obama before Clinton enters office.
As I put it elsewhere: Hillary wants to inherit her China crisis from Obama, not foment it herself.
Agents Provocateur
What if the former Secretary of State is working behind the scenes to destabilize Asia in order to provoke a crisis between the United States and China? So argues one China hand:
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I think of myself as cynical about my opponents, but I admit, that is only in comparison to the people I meet every day. I try to draw back from it, and give people credit for some good will.
But sometimes these near-paranoid speculations come from those who contemplate such things in the course of earning their daily bread, who spend many more hours than I sifting through the statements and evidence. As with the Cold War, we later found out that the Right-Wing Crazies didn't know the half of it, and underestimated the penetration of the US corridors of power by communist sympathisers. Perhaps so here.
We can gradually become inured to the evil of getting our way in government over time, gradually progressing to greater evils along a road of gradual descent, "with few signposts," as CS Lewis said. Saddam Hussein and Nicolae Ceausescu were not so notably evil at first. So it may be that Hillary and Obama and the rest were real idealists at first, which is why they can still speak the language.
And they may still see themselves as idealists, a rather frightening thought for the rest of us who suppose ourselves to be high-minded as well.
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