Like Confucius*, John Bolton is worried, though he’s not quite as blunt, as befits a diplomat.

For years, foreign policy optimists have predicted that China’s rise to superpower status would be peaceful and responsible. But recent Chinese offensives, both domestic and foreign, make this vision look increasingly naive. The Obama administration must decide whether to respond vigorously to Beijing’s hostility or allow its aggressiveness to go unchecked.

China, for example, continues to modernize and expand its nuclear-capable delivery systems, even as President Obama urges Senate ratification of a treaty with Russia that would further reduce U.S. nuclear weapons and long-range conventional delivery systems. Beijing operates under no restraints whatsoever in enhancing its nuclear and ballistic missile options, while also developing new “carrier killer” cruise missiles. …

Nor has the president responded strongly enough to Chinese efforts to keep U.S. warships from transiting and exercising in the Yellow Sea…

American weakness on freedom of the seas is particularly dangerous given confrontational Chinese naval behavior in the South China Sea…

Read the whole thing.

*For those who came in late, Confucius is the Gormogons’ Œcumenical Volgi

Confucius, Œc. Vol.

Don’t ask impertinent questions like that jackass Adept Lu.