China’s
Strategy Shocking the System
by Dr George Friedman, Founder and Chairman of STRATFOR.
April 7, 2001
Download power point show (70K)
|
INTRODUCTION: This map was drawn from an article written by Dr Freidman on April 5, 2001. You can read the full article at www.stratfor.com. Dr Friedman is also a best-selling author and STRATFOR’s founder and chairman. As Financial Voyage only capture key relationships and drivers, in order to get the full flavor of his analysis, we recommend that you read it from their site. We map his views here because they are extremely useful for helping us create the likely scenarios of how this drama will play out.
(Fig 1) The Chinese practices collective leadership. Given that there are hawks and doves among them, such an incident was bound to cause sharp divisions on how to respond to the mid air collision (box 1). This can only delay the release of both crew and plane (box 2), and potentially aggravate the situation. The Chinese also seize this opportunity to examine the inside of this super secret spy plane (box 3), itself an irresistible temptation. |
Maps
|
|
(Fig 2) This incident show US inability to secure the respect and protection of its military secrets, and the embarrassing impotence of a super power to assert its will (box 4). US prestige and confidence in successfully dealing with China would be less convincing in future (box 5) The Chinese gained tremendously (box 6), confirming it as a tertiary power. China cannot be pressured or pushed around. (Not in the article, but by applying our technique, we draw a dotted line from Box 6 to Box 1). This will play to the advantage of the Chinese hawks, which eventually with their gains from this unfortunate incident will then release the crew and perhaps the plane. This will weaken the hand of the liberals.
|
|
|
(Fig 3) Dr Friedman mentioned the option of a commando operation to free the plane’s crew of a strike on some Chinese military assets (box 1). However he reckoned that this would probably turn out to be counter productive. On the other hand, if nothing substantial is done, it would weaken US credibility in Asia. What a dilemma.
|
|
