"But more likely the Bush administration is near the end of its rope with China, which now looms as a new "peer competitor," against which the United States will have to devise a new Western Pacific strategy."
I'll believe that when GW pushes for formal recognition of Taiwan as a sovereign nation and establishes full diplomatic ties.
Bump.
Agreed. Peer competitor my eye. Heck, they intend our destruction. Some "competition." This is war.
Bush went to Bejing this winter, and was totally humiliated. Every usual compromise or political prisoner courtesy was thrown back in his face. I expected him to have a few of the scales fall off his eyes after that, but he comes back and his State of the Union speech just recycles the same old tired, debunked, and defeated foreign trade rhetoric...and calls for us not to be "protectionist."
It appears he really didn't even apprehend how much he was ridiculed and laughed at behind his back in China.
I conclude his advisors are all yes men...or women as the case may...especially Condileeza. They are not telling the President frankly that the "Emporer has no clothes", and that the phoney free trade...a total PRC manipulated playing field... is the method by which they were stripped off him...and given to the PRC's Communists.