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Over the next decade, the United States will have to rethink its grand strategy as it addresses the challenge of maintaining its primacy as a global power in an increasingly multipolar world whose center of gravity has shifted to Asia. The task will be all the more daunting because significant fiscal and economic constraints imposed by a federal government debt that has mushroomed to nearly $16 trillion or about 100 percent of GDP, and a continuing economic slowdown that has been the deepest and longest since the Great Depression will force difficult tradeoffs as the United States seeks to realign and streamline vital national interests with limited resources.1 The overarching national security objective of the United States must be crystal clear: to counterbalance and contain a rising China determined to be the dominant economic, political, and military power in Asia.
While China's rise will not be a straight line, its trajectory to great power status is obvious.2 A twenty-first century version of a Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere with China at the epicenter is emerging.3 China is the biggest economy in Asia, having surpassed Japan in 2010.4 China is the largest trading partner of Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Australia, India, and the ten countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Unquestionably, China is the economic engine of Asia, displacing both Japan and the United States. According to US government projections, China is expected to be the world's largest economy by 2019 in terms of purchasing power parity (which adjusts for cost of living) with a forecasted gross domestic product (GDP) of $17.2 trillion compared to an expected US GDP of $17 trillion.5
From a strategic perspective, the "Achilles heel" of China is its overwhelming dependence on Persian Gulf energy imports to fuel its rapidly growing economy. The sea lines of communication (SLOCs) over which these vital oil and gas imports are transported by tanker-from the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf to the Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean, continuing on to the Bay of Bengal and through the Malacca Straits into the South China Sea-is China's jugular vein. Virtually all Persian Gulf energy exports destined for China (as well as for Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan) flow through this route. Two important...