An Urban's Rural View

To most Americans a "boomer" is a member of the baby-boom generation, someone born between 1945 and 1964. To military analysts, a boomer is a nuclear submarine that carries fully armed nuclear missiles. Stand by for some big and unsettling news about this kind of boomer.

Only two countries have boomers today -- the U.S. and Russia. But the Wall Street Journal (http://tiny.cc/…) says China is about to join the boomer club. Atop its report, which quoted senior U.S. Navy officials by name, the Journal placed an ominous headline: "Deep Threat: China's Submarines Add Nuclear-Strike Capability, Altering Strategic Balance."

China, to be sure, has had both nuclear-powered submarines and nuclear weapons for decades. But the submarines mostly stayed close to home and they weren't armed with ballistic missiles. Now they're starting to ply the high seas, and from the mid-Pacific they'll be able to hit the continental U.S with nukes.

"This," the Journal quoted China's navy chief, "is a trump card that makes our motherland proud and our adversaries terrified."

Should we be terrified? Sobered, certainly. As the Journal headline indicates, China's boomers will alter the strategic balance. They will make it more difficult for the U.S. to defend its allies in Asia, many of whom are embroiled in territorial disputes with China.

But there are reasons not to quake. The U.S. will still have the stronger navy -- more and better submarines, and much greater ability to figure out who is doing what beneath the waves while hiding what we're doing there.

China's leaders are tough and nationalistic, but they also tend to be cautious, pragmatic, patient realists. If any foreign leader has the potential to terrify, it's the megalomaniacal Vladimir Putin.

While China's boomer boom could lead to a rerun of the Cold War submarine cat-and-mouse games we played with the Soviets, that is far from inevitable. What is certain is something American farmers know well: China has become a great power. The country's slightest tremors, economic or political, can cause earthquakes in other countries.

As a great power, China's interests, ambitions and activities are no longer limited to East Asia. They're global. Last year, for example, China joined the international effort to remove chemical weapons from Syria (http://tiny.cc/…), providing ambulances, surveillance cameras and a naval escort.

The other day, China announced (http://tiny.cc/…) plans to send 1,000 aid workers to Ebola trouble spots in Africa and build a 100-bed Ebola hospital in Liberia.

Like any great power, China sometimes plays by its own rules. If, after accepting a genetically engineered corn trait for a couple years, it tires of importing corn -- well, tough luck for the overseas corn growers.

If, on a state visit to Tanzania, Chinese officials ship back so many poached tusks in their diplomatic bags that the price of ivory doubles (http://tiny.cc/…) -- well, tough luck for the elephants. (For the record, China denies this, but not very convincingly.)

And, again like any great power, China wants a voice in writing the rules. At the summit meeting of Pacific Rim nations in Beijing, China pushed for adoption of its own trade deal for the region in an effort to undermine the U.S.-backed Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP, from which China is so far excluded (http://tiny.cc/…).

With our alliances in the Western Pacific, we are, in some respects, among the "adversaries" the Chinese admiral thinks should be terrified. But the relationship isn't wholly adversarial; trade between the two countries keeps growing. We are China's biggest foreign market, with imports of $440 billion (http://tiny.cc/…) in 2013. China is our top ag-export market -- $26 billion last year (http://tiny.cc/…).

Thanks to its trade surpluses, China holds more than $1 trillion of Uncle Sam's $18 trillion in debt. That sounds alarming, but remember the old adage: Owe the bank a little, the bank owns you; owe the bank a lot, you own the bank. Economic interdependence, like nuclear weapons, works as a deterrent, a form of mutually assured destruction. If China uses its economic leverage to do us in, it does in itself.

So, terrified? No. Worried? Yes. The increasingly truculent tone in China's diplomacy, the way its leaders use nationalism to build political legitimacy, its strengthening ties to Russia -- these were reasons enough for worry.

And now, Chinese boomers on the open ocean? At the very least, a U.S.-China relationship that was already difficult to manage is about to become more difficult.

Urban Lehner

urbanity@hotmail.com

(CZ)