By: David B. Larter
The former head of all U.S. forces in the Pacific said the pessimistic attitude vis-a-vis the growing Chinese threat is bad for the Navy, and leaders need to step up and figure out how to defeat the Chinese threat if it came to blows.
The former head of all U.S. forces in the Pacific said the pessimistic attitude vis-a-vis the growing Chinese threat is bad for the Navy, and leaders need to step up and figure out how to defeat the Chinese threat if it came to blows.
Retired Adm. Dennis Blair, who commanded PACOM from 1999-2002 and who later served as Director of National Intelligence in the Obama administration, told an audience of military and defense contractors that China has not yet gained a strategic advantage over the U.S. Navy in the region, but if the U.S. sits around and mopes about its growing capability, it might.
"Right now they have not developed the maritime and air superiority that would undermine American deterrence and our treaty commitments, they've not developed the capability to take and hold Taiwan, the Senkakus, or the South China Sea," Blair said. "But if the U.S. Navy does not develop new concepts of operations — new ways of operating and new capabilities — China might be able to attain those goals. And if they were to do that, the consequences would be grave and the damage to our interests would be enormous. "
Blair pointed to a litany of recent reports from think tanks saying that China will gain ascendancy in the region in the coming decades. But what's more troubling, Blair continued, is that the analysts who compiled the reports tell him that some of the pessimism in the reports is reflective of attitudes within the Pentagon.
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