Paul Pillar has a great piece up at The National Interest that illuminates just how nutty the present debate about war with Iran really is. And it got me thinking.

If a sensible Martian came down to Earth and looked at the sabre-rattling about Iran, I suspect he/she/it would be completely flummoxed. For our Martian visitor would observe two very capable states -- the United States and Israel -- threatening to attack a country that hardly seems worth the effort. The U.S. and Israel together spend more than $700 billion each year on their national security establishments; Iran spends about $10 billion. The U.S. and Israel have the most advanced military hardware in the world; Iran's weapons are mostly outdated and lack spare parts. The U.S. and Israeli militaries are well-educated and very well-trained; not true of Iran. The United States has thousands of nuclear weapons and Israel has several hundred, while Iran has a vast arsenal of … zero. Iran does have a nuclear enrichment program (which is the reason for all the war talk), but the most recent National Intelligence Estimates have concluded that Iran does not presently have an active nuclear weapons program. The United States has several dozen military bases in Iran's immediate vicinity; Iran has exactly none in the Western hemisphere. The United States has powerful allies in every corner of the world; Iran's friends include a handful of minor nonstate actors like Hezbollah or minor-league potentates like Bashar al Assad (who's not looking like an asset these days) or Hugo Chávez.

Moreover, the United States has fought four wars since 1990. It has bombed, invaded or occupied a half dozen countries in that period, leading to the deaths of thousands of people. Israel has been colonizing the West Bank since 1967, it invaded and occupied much of Lebanon from 1982 to 1999, and its armed forces pummeled Lebanon again in 2006 and Gaza in 2008-09. Prominent U.S. politicians have repeatedly called for "regime change" in Iran, and U.S. government officials now report that Israel has been murdering civilian scientists in Iran, in cahoots with the MEK, a terrorist organization that is still on the State Department's terrorist "watchlist." Iran's past conduct is far from pure, but it has done nothing remotely similar in recent years.

In fact, given the various threats now facing Tehran, our Martian friend might have trouble explaining why Iran's leaders hadn't gone all-out to get themselves some sort of WMD, merely as a deterrent. And yet it is the United States and Israel that profess themselves to be terribly, terribly worried about the supposed "threat" from Iran, and who are contemplating a preventive war that most observers realize would strengthen Iran's nuclear ambitions and could only delay its program for a couple of years.

Let's be clear: There's nothing to like about the current Iranian regime -- to include its clerical rulers, its buffoonish president, and the various thugs that keep the regime in power -- and I for one am very glad I live here and not there. Nonetheless, our Martian observer might have a lot of trouble figuring out why politicians in Washington and Jerusalem were so scared. In fact, he might very reasonably conclude that both states were losing all sense of perspective, and allowing the worst sort of worst-case analysis to cloud their thinking and cut off useful avenues of diplomatic engagement. And given that the United States likes to think of itself as the "leader of the free world" and is normally expected to exercise sound judgment on a host of complex issues, that possibility is not reassuring.

In another corner of the vast FP media empire, David Bosco wants to know if "in some secret chamber of [my] heart, [I am] a believer in international law and institutions." He was writing in response to my post earlier this week, where I argued that NATO's decision to conduct "regime change" in Libya under the auspices of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1973, even though the resolution did not authorize this act, may have contributed to Russia and China's decision to veto a proposed resolution on Syria. He finds it surprising that a realist such as myself could take the niceties of international law -- and in this case, the text of a Security Council resolution -- so seriously.

In fact, Bosco's query betrays a common misconception about realism, as well as a misunderstanding of my original position. Of course realists "believe in" international law and institutions": they exist, and we'd have to be blind to deny that basic fact. Moreover, realists have long acknowledged that international law and international institutions can be useful tools of statecraft, which states can use to achieve their national interests. In particular, law and institutions can help states coordinate their behavior so as to reap greater gains or avoid various problems (think of the rules that regulate air traffic, some forms of pollution, or global communications), and they can also provide mechanisms to facilitate international trade and to resolve various disputes. Where realists part company with some (but not all) liberal idealists is in their emphasis on the limits of institutions: they cannot force powerful states to act against their own interests and they usually reflect the underlying balance of power in important ways.

Thus, a realist like me isn't surprised when a powerful country like the United States ignores the fine details of a U.N. resolution, and proceeds to undertake unauthorized regime change. Nor are we surprised when the U.S. and some of its allies invaded Iraq without any U.N. authorization at all. It was a surprising decision because it was so stupid, but it was apparent by late 2002 that U.S. foreign policy was in the hands of serial blunderers. Sadly, there was nothing international law or the U.N. could do about that fact.

The central point in my post, however, was not that Russia and China were necessarily upset by the fact that the U.S. and its allies had trod all over the text of Resolution 1973. Rather, they were upset because they didn't like the United States and its allies saying one thing and doing another, and they were upset by the precedent that the Libya case appeared to set. Put differently, they think they got snookered over Libya, and they weren't about to get snookered again. Realists understand that institutions are weak constraints on state behavior (which is why the U.S. could act as it did), but realists also understand that when you take advantage of others, they are going to take notice and make it harder for you to exploit them again. And that appears to be part of the tragic story that is unfolding in Syria.

In short, the puzzle isn't why a realist might point out that we are now paying a price for our earlier high-handedness. The real puzzle is why advocates of intervention are so fond of invoking multilateralism, institutions, and the importance of international law, and then so quick to ignore it when it gets in the way of today's pet project. Realists aren't always right, but at least we're not hypocrites.

The family of former President Dwight D. Eisenhower is now weighing in against renowned architect Frank Gehry's proposed design for an Eisenhower Memorial on the mall in Washington, D.C. Good for them. Their main objection is that the main representation of the former president in Gehry's proposed design is a statue of Eisenhower as a young Kansas farm-boy. The rest of the four-acre memorial is an elaborate and soulless structure whose paved walkways also celebrate -- are you ready for this? -- the interstate highway system.  Just the sort of message one ought to highlight in an era of climate change, right?

I'm with the Eisenhower family on this one, and the brouhaha has reaffirmed my belief that Gehry is one of the more overrated architects of the modern era. (OK, his Bilbao museum was visually arresting--if you like chaos--but you should thank your lucky stars you don't have an office in this building).  This incident may also mark the only moment in recorded history when I've agreed with something published in the National Review.

What's the real problem? Let's start with Gehry's witless decision to depict one of the architects of victory in World War II, as well as a two-term president whose standing has risen steadily over time, as a barefoot farm-boy.  The other presidential memorials on the mall are either majestic in their simplicity (e.g., the Washington Monument), or they pay homage to past leaders like Lincoln in their maturity, portraying them as they were when they made their singular contributions to our common heritage.  To portray Eisenhower as a boy immediately diminishes him, and give us no sense of his unique qualities as a leader or the achievements that we treasure.  Instead, it invites us to see him as an untutored naïf, which is precisely what some of his political opponents mistakenly thought he was.

I should confess that I'm not a huge fan of presidential monuments anyway, because they reinforce popular deference to executive authority and strengthen the growing tendency to view our presidents as akin to monarchs but with term limits. But I'll concede that a handful of presidents have performed acts of leadership, wisdom and courage that can provide enduring inspiration for subsequent generations, and that memorials on the Mall to a very few might be in order.

When it comes to Eisenhower, therefore, I'd like to see a memorial that underscored his singular contribution to our understanding of post-World War II security problems: namely, his eloquent warnings about the danger of the "military-industrial complex" and his consistent efforts to advance the cause of peace.  Think about it: here is a West Point graduate and five-star general, who had seen as much of war as any American, and who had presided over a significant expansion of America's strategic nuclear arsenal in the 1950s.  Nonetheless, he ends his second term with a message to his countrymen about the dangers of unchecked military/industrial power.

And can anyone doubt that his warnings were prescient, when we realize that the United States still spends more than the next ten or twenty nations combined, when its National Security Mandarins feel little or no compunction about ordering drones to kill suspected terrorists (and sometimes innocent bystanders) while refusing to reveal to the voters who fund these activities exactly what their government are doing (or even the legal basis being used to justify it), and when our post-9/11 panic has led to a massive expansion of secret agencies and contractors whose full extent is not known or understood by the politicians who are supposedly overseeing them?

And let's not forget Ike ended the Korean War faster than Obama got us out of Iraq or Afghanistan, declined to get ensnared in France's debacle in Indochina, quashed the boneheaded Anglo-French-Israeli invasion of Egypt in 1956, and generally avoided costly military entanglements afterwards. His foreign policy record wasn't perfect by any means, but he compares quite favorably to virtually all of his successors.

A proper memorial to President Eisenhower would highlight not his boyhood -- iconic and stereotypical though it might be -- but his maturity, and his wise concerns about the trajectory our nation was on. Such a memorial would bring into fierce relief his final presidential speech, as well as some of his other remarks, where these words could help reverse our robotic tendency to assume our greatness is measured primarily by how much we can destroy, rather than by how much we can provide.

So how about a memorial where quotations such as the following were carved in stone, for each new generation to read and ponder:

 From 1960:

"This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together."

Or this, from 1953, his first year in office:

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.

The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities.

It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population.

It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete highway.

We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat.

We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.

This, I repeat, is the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking.

This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron."

Now that's a memorial I'd like to see us build. Back to the drawing board, Frank.

Did last year's triumph in Libya help stymie efforts to forge an international consensus on Syria?

Some of you will have already seen FP colleagues Marc and Colum Lynch's excellent posts bemoaning the U.N. Security Council's inability to pass a resolution addressing the continuing violence on Syria. The proximate cause was a joint Russian and Chinese veto of the proposed resolution, ostensibly on the grounds that it was one-sided.

I think Marc is right to say that this lapse weakens the authority and legitimacy of the Security Council (SC). I place less weight on the SC than some commentators do, but even I don't think a weak and discredited SC is a good thing. I also agree that this development increases the danger of a prolonged conflict in Syria, and maybe even an internationalized civil war there.

There are a number of reasons why the U.N. effort has failed thus far, but part of the blame lies with the liberal interventionists who abused the Security Council's mandate during last year's intervention in Libya.

You'll recall that UN Security Council Resolution 1973 authorized military action in Libya to protect civilians. The resolution was directly inspired by the fear that Qaddafi loyalists laying siege to the rebel town of Benghazi were about to conduct some sort of massacre there. In response, Res. 1973 authorized member states "take all necessary measures…to protect civilians and civilian populated areas under threat of attack in the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, including Benghazi, while excluding a foreign occupation force of any form on any part of Libyan territory." France, the United States and other foreign powers quickly went beyond this mandate, using airpower and other forms of assistance to help the rebels defeat Muammar Qaddafi's forces and oust him from power.

One can argue that this was the right course of action anyway, because getting rid of a thug like Qaddafi was worth it. That's a debate for another day, although I would note in passing that post-Qaddafi Libya remains deeply troubled and the collapse of the regime seems to be fueling conflicts elsewhere. But what if the Libyan precedent is one of the reasons why Russia and China aren't playing ball today? They supported Resolution 1973 back in 2011, and then watched NATO and a few others make a mockery of multilateralism in the quest to topple Qaddafi. The Syrian tragedy is pay-back time, and neither Beijing nor Moscow want to be party to another effort at Western-sponsored "regime change." It is hardly surprising that Russian U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin condemned the failed resolution on precisely these grounds. In short, our high-handed manipulation of the SC process in the case of Libya may have made it harder to gain a consensus on Syria, which is arguably a far more important and dangerous situation.

Don't get me wrong: I shed no tears for Qaddafi or his family and I'd be delighted to see Bashar al-Assad gone in Syria. The Libya precedent is not the only reason why China and Russia dug in their heels, and I think their decision to veto the resolution could be costly for them. But it is both ironic and tragic that some of the most enthusiastic defenders of multilateralism and international law seem all too willing to ignore them when they get in the way of other things they want to do, however laudable the latter goal might be. But a commitment to multilateralism and international law is not something you can invoke when it suits you and ignore when it doesn't, at least not without paying a price. Powerful states like the United States can (and do) act with impunity on occasion, but they shouldn't be surprised when such behavior backfires later on.

The drumbeats for war with Iran keep pounding, as you can read about here and here.  There are some features of the campaign that are scarily (or maybe comically) reminiscent of 2002-2003 (as Glenn Greenwald documents here), but for now there's one key difference. Back in 2002, the neocon-heavy Bush administration led the charge to sell the invasion of Iraq. Today, by contrast, the case for war is being made primarily by other countries (i.e., Israel), or by assorted think tanks, lobbying groups, and national security commentators in the United States. The Obama administration isn't leading the campaign, having correctly concluded that a war is neither necessary nor wise. In particular, they do not seem to have bought into the rampant threat inflation that forms the core of the hawks' case for war.

But today I want to focus on another remarkable feature of this situation: the absence of any sort of meaningful diplomacy between the United States and the country whose citizens we would be attacking and killing if we were to launch a strike. The United States had diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union from 1933 on, including the period when Joseph Stalin was murdering millions. We never broke relations with Moscow during the Cold War, even though the United States and USSR had thousands of nuclear warheads pointed at each other and were waging bloody proxy wars in Korea, Vietnam, Africa, the Middle East, and Africa. U.S. and Soviet leaders met repeatedly at summit meetings (some of them contentious), and U.S. and Soviet diplomats interacted more-or-less constantly on matters of mutual concern. The purpose of these various exchanges wasn't appeasement or even accommodation; we talked to them so that we could figure out what they thought, and so that we could explain our positions to them. It was important that each side know what the consequences of different courses of action might be, and sometimes that involved spelling it out for each other.

And what was the result? Not only were the two superpowers occasionally able to cooperate in mutually beneficial ways (i.e., managing crises, reducing nuclear risks, ending wars, etc.) but the United States eventually won the Cold War and presided over the Soviet Union's demise without triggering a direct U.S.-Soviet clash. Indeed, U.S. diplomats did a good job of picking Mikhail Gorbachev's pocket as the USSR imploded, in part because they had established a good working relationship with him. Furthermore, contacts between Russians and Americans seem to have helped thaw communist society, in part by teaching younger Soviet elites that the West was doing better and was not irrevocably hostile.

By contrast, the United States hasn't had diplomatic relations with Iran for over three decades. That is a longer hiatus than occurred after either the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 or the communist seizure of power in China in 1949. Only a tiny handful of U.S. officials have direct experience with their Iranian counterparts. Few Americans have extensive dealings with Iranians, save for Iranian exiles who often have their own agendas. We don't have a good sense of where the different Iranian factions are, what they think, or how they might respond to different U.S. policies. Yet we blindly assume that there is no recourse but to sanction and maybe bomb them.

The Obama administration likes to portray itself as having "extended a hand of friendship" to Iran, but it was a half-hearted effort at best. Even now, we seem unable to offer Iran a "yessable" proposition, and we merely repeat our long-standing position it simply comply with our demands. The administration has done a good job of rounding up international support for its position, but isn't it ironic that we've devoted far more time and energy to that task, instead of exploring whether there might be a mutually acceptable solution to the current impasse itself.

The bottom line: I find it bizarre that anyone is seriously contemplating waging war on a country about whom we know so little and with whom we barely engage. And why do we know so little? Because we are too scared, or proud, or politically paralyzed to even talk to them. This is not the behavior one expects of a confident, mature great power: it is the behavior of a government that is either afraid it will get tricked by devious Persians, or that is more worried about domestic criticism than foreign consequences.

Winston Churchill has become something of an iconic figure among U.S. hardliners, including many in the vanguard of the war party. But it was Churchill who famously remarked that "to jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war." Rather than unleashing the U.S. Air Force, in short, how about unleashing our diplomats instead?

Oh, wait. It's an election year. Never mind.

Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta announced yesterday that the U.S. is going to step back from a combat role in Afghanistan by mid-2013, and shift over to an "advise and assist role" instead. Assuming he means it, we'll be ending our combat role about a year before all U.S. troops are supposed to be out.

As regular readers know, I've favored a greatly reduced presence in Afghanistan for a long time, simply because I didn't think a COIN/nation-building campaign there was worth the costs, and because I don't think the outcome in Afghanistan makes much difference in the larger struggle against Al Qaeda. (In other words, I reject the "safe haven" justification for the war, largely because Al Qaeda has havens elsewhere and Afghanistan isn't an especially desirable one from their point of view).

But by a strange coincidence, we were discussing an aspect of this problem in my graduate course the very same day that Panetta made his announcement, in the context of a broader discussion on international cooperation. As some of you know, one of the basic principles of the literature on cooperation is that it is facilitated when there is a lengthy "shadow of the future." States are more likely to cooperate today if they anticipate being able to reap the benefits of cooperation far into the future; they will be leery of stiffing potential partners and foregoing that stream of long-term benefits.

What does this insight have to do with Afghanistan? Although I favor getting out as rapidly as possible, we ought to do so with the full knowledge that announcing a certain date (or even an approximate date) will reduce Afghan incentives to cooperate with us now and in the interim, and their incentive to cooperate will decline more and more as the date of withdrawal nears. Once they know that the stream of benefits is finite, they will be less willing to make adjustments or concessions to us in order to keep us in the fight. So by announcing we're leaving, Panetta was tacitly acknowledging that our leverage over the Afghan government is going to erode pretty quickly. Not that it was ever that great, of course.

Notice: This situation is different than trying to encourage greater Afghan cooperation by threatening to leave if they don't shape up, coupled with a credible promise to stay if they do. In this case, continued U.S. help would be conditional on Afghan cooperation and reform. But that's not what we're saying: Instead, we've made an essentially unconditional pledge to end our combat role (and eventually leave completely). In short: We've had enough of this war and are heading home, if not exactly briskly.

As I said, I think this is the right course of action. But actions have consequences, and we should be under no illusions about what it means for our ability to determine outcomes there. Washington still has a few cards to play (i.e., we can still empower different contenders by providing them with money, arms and training), but our long-term influence over decisions there is going to decline rapidly. But unless you're one of those people who thinks it's a good idea for Americans to try to steer the politics of an impoverished, deeply-divided Islamic country in the middle of Central Asia, this development really isn't so bad.

Having written a fair bit about the pros and cons (mostly the latter) of a war with Iran, I feel compelled to offer a brief comment on Ronan Bergman's alarmist article in yesterday's New York Times Magazine. I say this even though I think the article was essentially worthless. It's a vivid and readable piece of reportage, but it doesn't provide readers with new or interesting information and it tells you almost nothing about the likelihood of an Israeli strike on Iran.

First off, the article is essentially a reprise of Jeffrey Goldberg's September 2010 Atlantic Monthly article on the same subject. The research method is identical: a reporter interviews a lot of big-shots in the Israeli security establishment, writes down what they say, and concludes that that Israel is very likely to attack. Bergman doesn't present new evidence or arguments, pro or con; it's just an updated version of the same old story.

Second, the central flaw in this approach is that there is no way of knowing if the testimony of these various officials reflects their true beliefs or not. There are lots of obvious reasons why Israeli officials might want to exaggerate their willingness to use force against Iran, and this simple fact makes it unwise to take their testimony at face value. Maybe they really mean what they say. Or maybe they just want to keep Tehran off-balance Maybe they want to distract everyone from their continued expansion of West Bank settlements and other brutalities against Palestinians. Maybe they want to encourage Europe to support tougher economic sanctions against Iran, and they know that occasional saber-rattling helps makes sanctions look like an attractive alternative. Maybe it's several of these things at once, depending on who's talking. Who knows?

By the way, I'm not accusing the officials that Bergman interviewed of doing anything wrong. I don't expect top officials of any country to tell the truth all the time, and I'm neither surprised nor upset when foreign officials try to manipulate fears of war in order to advance what they see as their interests. My point is that it is impossible to tell if they mean what they are saying or not, which is why an article based on interviews of this kind just isn't very informative. They might be telling the truth, or they might be lying, and nobody knows for sure.

Lastly, as Gary Sick notes in an excellent post of his own, the Bergman piece ignores the considerable evidence suggesting that Iran is not in fact trying to build a nuclear weapon. Equally important are Sick's reminder that the IAEA still has lots of inspectors keeping a watchful eye on Iran's nuclear activities, and his observation that Israel cannot attack Iran without warning, because doing so would almost certainly kill a bunch of IAEA inspectors.

His conclusion (and mine): until Iran expels the inspectors or Israel warns them that it is time to leave, there isn't going to be a war. And if that is the case, then Bergman's scary essay is just another example of empty alarmism.

Dan Drezner misunderstands me, and not for the first time. Specifically, in my post on the debate over whether China is overtaking the United States, I neither said nor implied that "developing accurate assessments about the power balance between China and the United States" was not important. My point, rather, was that focusing so heavily on whether China was "catching up" ran the risk of distracting us from equally important issues, such as America's ability to advance its interests more broadly.

In particular, even if everyone agreed that China was not catching up at present, it might still be true that the United States was less able to get its way than it used to be. And even if Michael Beckley is correct that China is not "catching up," it does not necessarily follow that the United States is in great shape, or that it hasn't committed some costly blunders that it ought not to repeat.

Dan is correct to say that the United States is still the world's most powerful country, but of course I never said it wasn't. Indeed, America's enduring assets are a point that I emphasized in my own post and in the National Interest article to which I linked. But the real issue is whether our capacity to "run the world" is more constrained than it used to be. After World War II, the U.S. was able to create a working international trade and monetary order, create new alliance partnerships in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, and pretty much run those partnerships on its own terms for decades. Back in those days, the U.S. could devote fully five percent of its GDP to a single initiative like the Marshall Plan without batting an eye. And then we spent the 1950s subsidizing our allies' recovery. Can anyone imagine our doing something similar today (i.e., spending five percent of GDP (that is, about $700 billion) on economic aid for anyone, in addition to our normal expenditures for defense and foreign affairs? And let's not forget that it has been two decades since the last successful multilateral trade round, which is another indicator of how power has diffused.

But one doesn't have to go all the way back to 1947. I'd argue that U.S. influence was significantly higher in 1999, in part because we enjoyed a budget surplus,but also because we had a reputation for military prowess and idealism that made many states want to be on our side. For lack of a better term, let's call it soft power.

Today, by contrast, we have budget deficits looming as far as the eye can see. We've lost one war (Iraq) and are going to lose another (Afghanistan). Our global image has been tarnished by events like Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, the persistent use of drones, and our decidedly one-sided policies elsewhere in the Middle East. Israel ignores our efforts to foster peace, Saudi Arabia ignored us when it intervened in Bahrain, both Pakistan and Afghanistan routinely lie to us, and we have little influence over the political evolution underway in places like Egypt or Libya. Turkey may be cooperating on some issues, but it is hardly as compliant an ally as it was back in the days of the old military government. And so on.

Again, this situation doesn't mean the U.S. is devoid of all influence or a "pitiful, helpless giant." But at the same time, to conclude that all is well because China is not about to supplant us as the world's number 1 power strikes me as a dangerous misreading of recent trends.

Dan is undoubtedly correct to point out that many states still want to rely on U.S. power to help them deal with local security problems, and that the United States is sometimes able to elicit support from like-minded allies if we work really, really hard at it. It is therefore not surprising that a number of Asian countries are eager for U.S. help to counter the challenges posed by a more powerful China. But as I've argued previously, forming a balancing coalition against a rising China is not going to be a walk in the park, and it will require adroit diplomacy to overcome the inevitable dilemmas of collective action and other incentives to "free-ride" on Uncle Sam.

One can also raise at least two questions about Beckley's optimistic assessment. If China hasn't been "catching up," then why are so many states in Asia worried about it? It's possible that they have fallen for the hype too, but at a minimum it ought to give us some pause to realize how seriously China's neighbors see its growing capabilities. Second, as Tom Christensen and some others have previously noted, China does not have to equal the United States in order to pose a greater challenge for us (which is a point that could also be said, on a far lesser scale, for some other countries).

To see this, just ask yourself the following question: if the U.S. were contemplating a direct test of strength with China, would it be better for the United States for this to have occurred in 1992, 2012, or 2022? I'd argue the former, and I'll bet almost anyone in the U.S. military would agree. That's not to say the United States would not win a direct test of strength both now and well into the future, it's just to say that it would have been easier in the past than it is likely to be in the future. And if that inference is correct, then it tells you something about whether Beckley's optimism is fully warranted.

All of which leads to stand by my original post. Of course we should pay attention to the balance of power between the U.S. and China, and Beckley's original article is an important contribution to that effort. But it would be a mistake to read Beckley's reassuring conclusions as evidence that everything is just hunky-dory with current U.S. foreign and defense policy, and to conclude we hadn't spent a lot of the past decade wasting a lot of blood and treasure on fools' errands.