By Michael Mazza
The Department of Defense recently released its long-overdue annual report on China’s military power. The document tells us much about how the Democratic Congress and the Obama administration would like to approach relations with China, and not nearly enough about China’s military modernization. It suggests we have a Congress that does not take the China challenge seriously and a White House that is uncertain how to tackle it.
The problems started with the 2010 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which revised the 2000 NDAA — the law that requires an annual DOD report to Congress on China’s military power — in a number of ways. Most noticeably, the 2010 NDAA changed the report’s title from “Military Power of the People’s Republic of China” to “Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China,” which obscures the report’s purpose by framing China as a passive actor. China’s development of an anti-satellite (ASAT) capability, for example, is not a military development involving China; it is a decision by China to enhance its military power.
Also, before the 2010 NDAA, the report’s scope included “the tenets and probable development of Chinese grand strategy”; now, Congress has stripped away every mention of “grand strategy.” DOD had in the past been instructed to provide analysis of “trends in Chinese strategy that would be designed to establish [China] as the leading political power in the Asia-Pacific region and as a political and military presence in other regions of the world.” Now, DOD must report on “trends in Chinese security and military behavior that would be designed to achieve, or that are inconsistent with,” “the goals . . . shaping Chinese security strategy and military strategy.”
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