The World
Is China a Friend, a Foe, or Both?
With China on its way to becoming an economic superpower, evidence suggests that Beijing is also on its way to becoming a more formidable Pacific military power as well. A Pentagon report last week pegged Beijing's military spending at two to three times the officially reported $35 billion. That figure (even if adjusted for relative purchasing power) still is dwarfed by U.S. military spending, which tops $400 billion a year. But the Pentagon says that China's spending already is shifting regional military balances. "Long-term trends in China's strategic nuclear forces modernization, land- and sea-based access denial capabilities, and emerging precision-strike weapons," the report says, "have the potential to pose credible threats to modern militaries operating in the region."
In response, Beijing said its buildup is "defensive in nature." Analysts note that China takes "defensive" to include possible military intervention to stop an independence movement by Taiwan, which Beijing regards as a renegade province. The Pentagon says that China now has deployed 710 to 790 short-range ballistic missiles across the strait from Taiwan, roughly 100 more than a year ago, and is expanding its air and sea forces. From a Chinese perspective, those forces are both a deterrent to Taiwanese independence and, if that fails, to American intervention in a cross-strait military conflict.
Still, shared U.S.-Chinese economic interests mitigate the military competition, and John Chapman, head of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, said last week that it is "somewhat encouraging" to see stepped-up contacts between American and Chinese military leaders. "Yet," he said, "these contacts have been more ceremonial than substantive."
In the Line of Fire: The Civilian Toll
An attack on insurgent fighters in southern Afghanistan by U.S. warplanes, which reportedly killed some 16 civilians along with 20 to 80 Taliban fighters, drew a rare public rebuke last week from the nation's U.S.-backed president. Hamid Karzai called on coalition forces to make "every effort" to avoid civilian casualties while fighting militants. In this instance, U.S. Air Force A-10 Warthog aircraft attacked a religious school in the village of Azizi, thought to be sheltering militants, and then hit nearby homes as insurgents scattered. Fighting is increasing across southern Afghanistan. Reportedly, more than 300 people--most of them insurgents--have been killed since mid-May, and some 3,000 people have fled their homes in Kandahar province. A U.S. military spokesman, Col. Tom Collins, acknowledged that the Taliban recently has grown in "strength and influence" in some areas.
More problematic are U.S. military investigations into two incidents in Iraq in which U.S. marines are suspected of carrying out unprovoked killings of civilians (and then covering up the fact). Gen. Michael Hagee, the Marine Corps commandant, briefed congressional leaders on what is known about the cases, which could turn out to be more serious than even the Abu Ghraib prison abuses. One incident involved marines who allegedly shot dead as many as 24 civilians, including women and children, in the town of Haditha last November (first reported by Time magazine). Another case, in April, concerned the death of an Iraqi civilian in Hamandiyah.
Tiny Montenegro Decides to Go Solo
Europe is getting a new nation, another fragment of what was Yugoslavia, and it won't be the last. Montenegro, with a population of just 620,000, voted by a slim majority of 55.4 percent to sever itself from Serbia (population 7.5 million)--after nearly a century together--and turned its hopes toward economic ties with the European Union. One of the poorest parts of former Yugoslavia, it has little industry, around $1,000 per capita income, and 30 percent unemployment. But it also has a spectacular Adriatic coastline, which could provide a basis for a growing tourism industry. And it already uses the euro as its currency, rather than the Serbian dinar.
Next up: Kosovo, the predominantly Albanian province of Serbia. Kosovo has been under United Nations administration since 1999, when NATO airstrikes drove out Serbian forces accused of ethnic cleansing in a two-year war with ethnic Albanian separatists. Montenegro's independence vote is adding to pressure for a similar vote in Kosovo, which Serbs cling to as their historic heartland even though it is now 90 percent Albanian.
Singapore Makes a Bet on Gambling
Tiny Singapore has been derided at times as a nanny state, enforcing a culture that punishes even infractions like spitting. With tourism down, Singapore has chosen the Las Vegas Sands Corp. to build its first casino, part of a $3.2 billion resort complex. Still, the government wants to keep locals out by charging them a $63 daily entrance fee.
With Associated Press
This story appears in the June 5, 2006 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.