There's no question that the United States will remain the world's dominant military power for the foreseeable future, if not into the next century. It has a capacity that extends far beyond that of any other country in the world. The U.S. is a global military power; that needs to be recognized. China is developing into a stronger regional military power. We need to recognize that difference.
The Chinese are interested in boosting their defence expenditures in order to protect and pursue their interests in the Asia Pacific. They have neither the capacity nor, it would seem, the intent to become a global military power of that level of reach. Therefore, of course the United States is preoccupied with that, as it would be with any peer competitor, but we need to be very clear that China represents a peer competitor to the United States in the Asia Pacific and not globally at this point. That does not seem to be its intention. I remain confident, as you pointed out, that the true, sheer size of the United States military power at this moment is not threatened by China.
The question becomes more in the specific area of the Asia Pacific whether the United States should be concerned about the rise of China's power. I would be very careful in trying to attribute any clear intention to the Chinese government at this point as to why they're building these forces and what they hope to do with them. I hope sincerely that we do not re-create a situation, as the one we saw leading up to the First World War, in which Great Britain was unable to accommodate the aspirations and intentions of Germany, and therefore we found ourselves in a greater confrontation, which we could have avoided if we had taken the time to allow diplomacy to run its course and had been more accommodating of the other power. I really hope that through economic relations and the building of large diplomatic relations we can avoid this type of confrontation.
We should, to the extent we can, try to recognize that it's entirely legitimate for China to build up its forces in that region, given the threat it faces from India, Japan, and others. So this isn't just about the U.S. and China. This is also about China having to recognize its own regional realities.