Tampa Prep 2009-2010 Impact Defense File
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- Ground forces are less well equipped, lack air support and are focused on protecting Chinese borders Rosemont , 2/9/08
- Defense spending is over hyped – not in areas vital to fighting the US and still smaller than our spending in Iraq per year Rosemont , 2/9/08
- The PLA is not a threat – the U.S. military dominates. Howard 10/13/04
Ext #1 – Not a ThreatCHINA DOESN’T HAVE NEARLY ENOUGH NUCLEAR WEAPONS Rosemont, 2/9/08 [Contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus (www.fpif.org), is distinguished professor emeritus at St. Mary's College of Maryland and a visiting scholar in the Religious Studies department at Brown University, http://www.speroforum.com/site/article.asp?id=14304] Finally, China has 100-400 nuclear weapons. But only the 18 in the silos mentioned above are capable of striking the western continental United States and these cannot be launched quickly. Unless fired as a first-strike weapon, they could easily be destroyed. The United States, on the other hand, has almost 10,000 nuclear warheads and sufficient delivery capabilities to obliterate every Chinese city with a population of a half-million or more, and still have more than enough of a stockpile to hold the rest of the world at bay.11 Ground forces are less well equipped, lack air support and are focused on protecting Chinese borders Rosemont, 2/9/08 [Contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus (www.fpif.org), is distinguished professor emeritus at St. Mary's College of Maryland and a visiting scholar in the Religious Studies department at Brown University, http://www.speroforum.com/site/article.asp?id=14304] In terms of ground forces, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has an active duty component of 2.3 million personnel. That’s a lot of soldiers, but the United States has 1.4 million, with less than one-fourth of the population. True, the Chinese have reserve forces of another million plus. But they are responsible, among other things, for patrolling more than 8,000 miles of borders with India and Russia – not always the friendliest of neighbors in the past – functions the U.S. military does not perform at the Canadian and Mexican borders. Moreover, despite the supply breakdown scandal in Iraq, the 1.4 million U.S. troops are much better equipped overall than their Chinese counterparts, few of whom have state-of-the-art support materiel or personal safety equipment.3 Defense spending is over hyped – not in areas vital to fighting the US and still smaller than our spending in Iraq per year Rosemont, 2/9/08 [Contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus (www.fpif.org), is distinguished professor emeritus at St. Mary's College of Maryland and a visiting scholar in the Religious Studies department at Brown University, http://www.speroforum.com/site/article.asp?id=14304] On the military question, the answer is much clearer. China is not a military threat to the United States. Only those who believe that Fu Manchu is alive and well in the Middle Kingdom and fulfilling his dreams of world domination through a large and aggressive army, air force, and navy still subscribe to a notion that China poses a global military threat. Several recent books on the Chinese military perpetuate this myth. Their titles reveal everything: Imagined Enemies: China Prepares for Uncertain War, for instance, or Showdown: Why China Wants War with the United States. These and numerous similar narratives share an alarmist tone combined with a dearth of relevant facts in support of their claims. These books suffer from such flaws for good reason. The facts belie the claims, especially when placed in comparative perspective. When it comes to the putative Chinese military threat, the numbers simply don’t add up. Much has been made of the double-digit increase in Chinese defense spending over the last three years. China has indeed increased its spending. But much of the additional expenditures have been devoted to upgrading information, weapons, and communications systems. At the same, China has cut troop strength to almost half of what it was in 1990.1 Moreover, the estimate of military expenditures for 2006 is $35 billion. That is about 7% of the U.S. defense budget, once the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are factored in. Even before including these latter expenditures the U.S. military budget is now larger than the defense budgets of all other nations combined. Almost surely China’s actual military expenditures are larger than the 2006 estimate. But even if the military budget is twice as large, $70 billion is still less than 15% of the U.S. total and less than what was spent in Iraq and Afghanistan last year alone.2 The PLA is not a threat – the U.S. military dominates. Howard 10/13/04 - Head of Department of Social Sciences, Director of the Combating Terrorism Center [Col. Russ, “The China Threat,” MIT Security Studies Program Seminar, 10/13/04, http://web.mit.edu/ssp/seminars/wed_archives_04fall/howard.htm] Directory: files -> documents documents -> North Mankato Taylor Library documents -> In the Red and Brown Water documents -> - documents -> I. Disaster Summary Sheet II. Tropical Cyclones documents -> Cbp and Trade Automated Interface Requirements Appendix: pga december 22, 2015 documents -> Ace abi catair customs and Trade Automated Interface Requirements documents -> Ace abi catair customs and Trade Automated Interface Requirements documents -> Mobile audio/video recording systems documents -> Cartographic Concepts for Realizing a Location Based umts service documents -> 1/ Background Statistics Human development index rank Download 2.71 Mb. Share with your friends:
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