Whose Preoccupation?

Chinese rhetoric has been, if anything, more tempered during the Bush years, in part because the Chinese have seen September 11 and American preoccupation with terrorism as a welcome distraction from America’s other preoccupation, the “China threat.” ~Robert Kagan

China certainly does welcome the prospect of an America distracted by terrorism, and they have to be fairly excited at the prospect of an America bogged down in Iraq for the foreseeable future, but the “China threat” is not “America’s” preoccupation.  It is largely the preoccupation of the same people who advocated most loudly for invading Iraq.  Much like their calls for intervention in the Near East, their sabre-rattling against China is unwise and dangerous.