Asynchronous Discussion: Military Capability & Security Strategy
1
What has driven China’s military modernization and why is the United States concerned? And what are the respective security strategies of the United States and China?
Task 1: Read Mahan’s The Influence of Sea Power upon History (Links to an external site.), U.S.’s Security Strategy: From the Cold War to the Present,
and ChinaPower’s analysis on China’s military expenditure: “What does China really spend on its military? (Links to an external site.).”
Take note while reading.
Task 2: Watch the following videos and take notes:
How Did the U.S. Become A Superpower?
China’s largest military parade marking the founding of the Communist Party’s rule on the National Day, October 1, 2019:
Al Jazeera Inside Story analyzing China’s military capability and its 2019 National Defense White Paper (July 24, 2019):
Task 3: Join this discussion thread to answer the following questions:
Reflecting on the required readings for this week, along the expert analysis of China’s 2019 National Defense White Paper and its military power in Al Jazeera’s Inside Story, what do you think has driven China’s military modernization since the 1980s?
In his 2014 book Asia’s Caudron, when comparing China’s current military expansion in East Asia with America’s military expansion in the Caribbean and Asia Pacific in the 19th-20th centuries, Robert Kaplan argues,
Actually, there is nothing unusually aggressive about anything China is doing. China is a great demographic and economic power, enjoying the geography of a vast continent with a long seaboard in the tropics and temperate zone. The fact that it seeks to dominate an adjacent sea crowded with smaller and much weaker powers, where there is possibly a plenitude of oil and gas, is altogether natural. (p. 43)
Kaplan goes on to quote John Mearsheimer’s inquiry: “Why should we expect China to act any differently than the United States did? Are they more principled than we are? More ethical? Less nationalistic?” (p. 44).
Compare and contrast America’s security strategy in the Caribbean and Asia Pacific from the late 19th century to the early 20th century and China’s strategy in the South China Sea today, how would you respond to Robert Kaplan and John Mearsheimer?
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