The Pentagon should quit its habit of issuing an annual report about the military capabilities of the People’s Republic of China, said former Undersecretary of Defense Jacques Gansler.
That report sends a clear message that the United States is anticipating a future armed confrontation with China, Gansler lamented during an industry conference in Washington, D.C.
In the context of what is happening in the world today, the United States and China should be teammates, not rivals, said Gansler. Both nations have problems — environmental pollution, access to energy supplies, terrorism — that they should be tackling together, he added. “We should work with them to share solutions rather than putting out an annual report that says, ‘The Chinese are coming; we’ve got to prepare for them,’ which is what we have been doing.”
Gansler recalled that when he gave a talk to a group of Chinese government officials earlier this year, the first question he was asked was, “Do you publish an annual report about every country or just about us?” he said. “That tells you something … Why are we trying to make them into an enemy?”