Former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter, in a commentary published in RT, yesterday, said the Pentagon China military report was the product not of any threat represented by China but of “Washington’s nervous psychological state.” Missing from the assessment of China’s military power, Ritter writes, “is any reflection on the role played by the U.S. in triggering this Chinese military buildup.” He cites as two examples, the U.S. withdrawal from the INF Treaty and the insistence that China participate in three-way arms control talks with the U.S. and Russia. Then there’s the constant provocations in the South China Sea and around Taiwan.
Ritter argues that the U.S. is in fact in decline, a decline marked by among other things, the disastrous military interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan which demonstrate that U.S. leadership is in decline and has been for at least two decades (in other words, it began long before Trump arrived at the White House).
“The gloomy assessment contained in the ‘Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China’ report is causally linked to this decline,” Ritter writes. “There is a psychological disorder known as ‘projection', which refers to the unconscious act of taking emotions or traits one finds disagreeable about themselves, and attributing them to someone else. The Department of Defense is guilty of this psychological projection when it comes to its assessment of China.
