Chinese Anti-Satellite test a win for Realism

Beijing's recent foray into long range missile technology threatening to disable the US war machine in a matter of 60 minutes is a product of strategic calculation by increasingly astute cadres in an increasingly assertive PRC.

For years the Chinese have asked Washington to sign a treaty guaranteeing the peaceful use of space yet successive administrations have refused this benign request. Last year, far from quelling increasing global discontent with unbridled US power, Washington's Space Command called for US military domination of space by the year 2020 .

To put it simply, the Chinese have rightly had enough. They have tried engaging Washington through diplomacy and attempted to strengthen international law in the face of the hegemon's outright refusal. In return for pure ideological arrogance and political stubborness, the Bush administration has been rewarded with China's confirmation as a military (and economic), well, superpower.

China has followed the classical Hobbesian maxim that 'life is nasty, brutish and short' and in a bout of the most prudent Machiavellian statecraft , Beijing has sought to guarantee her own survival. The anarchic state of post-911 world politics means that in the absence of benign hegemonic leadership, states are increasingly forced to turn their backs on the international system and fend for themselves. Iran, North Korea and indeed the People's Republic stand out as pertinent reminders of our new, post Cold War, post-911 world order.

However, what separates Beijing from the seemingly tin pot lunatic leadership that coming from Pyongyang and Tehran? China is looking to her imperial traditions - a time when tributary relationships governed China's relations with the world. In November 2006, Beijing hosted a summit of African leaders. This remarkable diplomatic ensemble effectively cemented the PRC's efforts in ensuring the world's most impoverished continent remains a network of states dependent on 'benevolence' from the Middle Kingdom in the form of aid, trade and benefits stemming from China's massive reserve of foreign currency and much hyped economic boom.

A friend of mine in Beijing works for a company that is about to send him off to Sierra Leone to build Chinese funded roads for the wartorn nation. Another friend of mine was recently employed as an interpreter for the Zimbabwean government negotiating a fertilizer contract (of all things) with the Chinese government. This is all arguably hard evidence that Africa specifically, along with Latin America and a whopping chunk of Asia is entangled in the modern equivalent of imperial Chinese tributary networks.

Beijing's recent long range missile test should be seen for what it is - a nice little up yours to the Bush administration for one, and a perfectly logical step for a state such as China to guarantee its survival in the wake of consistent snubs by Washington. This is a victory for Machiavelli, Hobbes, Clausewitz and not to mention Sun Zi. This is a victory for realism and a victory for those seeking an end the very short lived American century.

To see the US Space Command's Vision for 2020 visit http://www.middlepowers.org/gsi/docs/vision_2020.pdf