The Pentagon hosted a conference call today with bloggers in order to promote the Defense Department's latest report to Congress on the military power of China. When the DoD first started this outreach program, there was a great deal of criticism--the Pentagon was spoon feeding administration talking points to conservative bloggers, they said. Well, that was never quite the case, the Pentagon has allowed any and all bloggers to participate in these calls. The effect: today's call was dominated by lefty bloggers explaining to the Pentagon why the United States shouldn't concern itself with China's build-up, and why Beijing's bulking-up is entirely reasonable. Take my friend David Axe, for example:
Axe: Can I follow up on that? It seems that it might be possible that the increase in China's defense investment is actually perfectly consistent with their economic growth, in that what we're seeing is not anything that's unreasonable or out of proportion to China's means, especially in light of just how impoverished, in a sense, China's military was for so long. Couldn't we see this as just reasonable investment to somewhat modernize a vast, creaky, out of date military?
DoD: [silence]...that's a good question. In fact, if you look at the Xinhua press reports today on their announcing the 17.6 percent increase in their defense budget, that is something that we do hear...
Translation: yeah, that is the Chinese government's talking point.
But the most remarkable moment came in this exchange between Defense officials and Atlantic correspondent James Fallows, who was calling in from Beijing:
Fallows: I have two question about the transparency theme of your report, which I have not yet seen myself. One involves a comment one of you made a few minutes ago saying there needs to be more explanation from the Chinese about why they are increasing their budget so much when there was no threat to their territory. I just wanted to raise a question about that because, of course, from the Chinese point of view, Taiwan is their territory. And so I'm just wondering how you deal with that part of their perspective that they view Taiwan as part of their territory. More broadly, is there a way that you've been able to assess or interpret some of the more disturbing and non-transparent moves of the last few months, that is the antisatellite test and the problems with naval port calls?
DoD: Yes we do address both of those issues, we talk specifically to the Taiwan Strait situation in Chapter 6 of the report. That continues to be--preparing for potential conflict in the Taiwan Strait continues to be one of the primary drivers of China's military build-up. China continues to deploy some of the most advanced equipment to the three military regions opposite Taiwan. They continue to increase the numbers of short range ballistic missiles deployed to garrisons opposite Taiwan. So from that perspective, we do see the PLA focusing on really developing the capacity to use military force in the Taiwan Strait, if they're called upon by the senior party leadership in Beijing.
Fallows: I wonder if I could interrupt. I may have explained myself poorly. I'm just [inaudible] the premise of the question, which is why are they spending more money when there's no threat to their territory; from their point view, there is a threat to their territory.
DoD: Okay. I understand that's their position....I can articulate what U.S. policy is, and I understand what Beijing's argument is...
It was sort of stunning to listen to, and the response from the Defense official was not unlike Tony Snow's famous quip to Helen Thomas, "Well, thank you for the Hezbollah view." Whatever angst the left once had about these calls, they can rest assured that the propaganda isn't going from the Pentagon to the bloggers, but vice versa.
