Dan drezner jennifer rubin biography

The scope of this post is U.S.-Chinese military relations. I realize that details of the reported call between the generals in charge of the two forces—Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Li Zuocheng, head of the People’s Liberation Army—are disputed and still emerging, and even when understood will raise other questions. A few first-day assessments I’ve read: from Fred Kaplan, Daniel Drezner, Jennifer Rubin, Lara Seligman and Daniel Lippman.

For now, let’s talk just about the PLA, and why it has mattered that U.S. military officials have tried to maintain personal contacts with its leaders. These contacts—like General Milley’s, with General Li—can make a worsening relationship less volatile.

The real version of an often-bungled Winston Churchill quote is, “Meeting jaw-to-jaw is better than war.” It particularly applies to today’s U.S.-China tensions. Here is why:

The most under-appreciated fact about the Chinese military is that it contains practically no combat veterans.

The PLA commander, General Li Zuocheng, is an exception illustrating the rule. He is in his late 60s and was wounded in action during China’s border war with Vietnam more than 40 years ago. (China’s Vietnam war was much shorter than America’s, and roughly as

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Dan Drezner noticed one of the more glaring flaws in Jennifer Rubin’s list of supposed mistakes by the Obama administration:

Rubin, Romney et al want the Obama administration to be blunt about its desire to depose the current Iranian regime. This kind of policy statement does have the virtue of simplicity: it ends the negotiation track and leaves only military force as a viable option. Of course, such an approach would also spur Tehran into accelerating its nuclear program. And, again — short of a ground campaign — Iran’s regime ain’t going anywhere.

GOP foreign policy advocates want to argue that Obama screwed up in 2009. Understand, however, that when they argue that the United States should have taken more forceful action three years ago, the only forceful action that would have mattered was another ground war.

That’s right. One thing I would add to this is that the idea that Obama missed a major “opportunity” to topple the Iranian government in 2009-2010 is revisionism that started shortly after the protests petered out in 2010. It has been a recurringthemein Republican arguments on Iran policy. Since they can’t articulate any real disagreements with most of Obama’s Iran policy since mid-2009, they keep com