By Jim Garamone
American Forces Press Service
Aug. 17, 2010 - Resumption of military-to-military contacts between the United States and China is in both countries' best interests, senior defense officials said yesterday.
The officials, speaking on background about a new report delivered to Congress yesterday, also said the Chinese have not been as transparent as they could be about their military transformation program, leaving the Sino-U.S. dialogue open to misunderstanding and miscommunications that could lead to miscalculations.
The congressionally mandated annual report, titled "Military and Security Developments Involving the People's Republic of China 2010," was released on a day when officials announced China has surpassed Japan as the world's second-largest economy. China should have a gross domestic product of just over $5 trillion this year. The United States has the world's largest economy, with just over $15 trillion.
The booming Chinese economy is a good thing for the world, the report says, noting that the Chinese middle class is growing by leaps and bounds. The economic expansion has given the Chinese government the money needed to transform its military.
"We welcome a strong, prosperous and successful China," a senior defense official said, noting that a strong China has played an increasingly important role on the international stage.
"At the same time," the official added, "the Chinese government has embarked on a mission to transform its military into a modern force capable of conducting a growing range of military missions."
A decade ago, China's army issued a new roles and missions statement that goes beyond the country's immediate territorial interests. Some of the growth is good: China is participating in humanitarian relief, peacekeeping, search and rescue and counterpiracy missions. At the same time, "the lack of transparency around China's growing capabilities and its intentions have raised questions about Chinese investments in the military and security sphere," the official said.
This worries planners and strategists in the Pentagon. The Chinese have not been open about anti-access capabilities they are developing, about cyber attacks, or even about the cost of their military effort, officials said.
In March, Chinese army leaders announced a 7.5 percent increase in the country's military budget to about $78.6 billion. "The [Defense Department] estimate of China's total military-related spending for 2009 stands at some $150 billion," the senior defense official said.
"The complexity of the regional and global security environment, as well as the advances in China's military capabilities and its expanding military operations and mission, call for a stable, reliable and continuous dialogue between the armed forces of the United States and China to expand practical cooperation where our national interests converge and to discuss candidly those areas where we have disagreement," the senior defense official said. "Such dialogue is especially important, we believe, during periods when there is friction and turbulence."
The Chinese ended the military-to-military dialogue with the United States after the United States sold $6.4 billion in defensive weapons to Taiwan in accordance with the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979. It was the second such halt in recent years.
Last year -- the year covered by the new report -- Sino-U.S. military-to-military relations were good. But the on-again, off-again nature of China's engagement with the U.S. military ended the period of civility and progress in the military-to-military relationship.
The stop-and-go cycle limits the areas the two militaries can discuss. Even more troubling given China's increasing military capabilities, this cycle increases the risk that miscommunication and misperception could lead to miscalculation, the official said.
"Moreover, we believe that it is in our mutual interests ... that we have a balanced and reciprocal dialogue allowing us to build mutual trust, cooperative capacity, institutional understanding, and develop common views, all of those things on our normal checklist, and that there is a real cost to the absence of military-military relations," the official said.
The United States has tried to restart the contacts. It is now up to China to make the next move and "demonstrate that it is in their interest to stay in that relationship and that they desire to sustain these engagements through periods of turbulence," the official said.
In the near term, the Chinese are preparing for a Taiwan contingency. China also is developing the capability to attack at long range military forces operating in the Western Pacific. The capability still is limited, but it can grow in numbers and accuracy, the official said.
China has the most active ballistic and cruise missile development program in the world. The Chinese are developing new classes of missiles, upgrading others and working on countering ballistic missile defenses.
At sea, China's navy has the largest force of principal combatant submarines and amphibious warfare ships in Asia. China continues to invest heavily in nuclear-powered submarines and diesel electric boats. It's also building an aircraft carrier and other combatant surface ships.
The Chinese are also developing space and cyber capabilities, pursuing the ability to dominate across the spectrum of information in all its dimensions on modern battle space, the official said.
"China's investment in advanced electronic warfare systems, counterspace weapons and computer network operations reflect the emphasis and priority China's leaders place on building capability in these areas," the senior defense official said.
WASHINGTON – At the height of the Iraq war, the Army routinely dismissed hundreds of soldiers for having a personality disorder when they were more likely suffering from the traumatic stresses of war, discharge data suggests.
Under pressure from Congress and the public, the Army later acknowledged the problem and drastically cut the number of soldiers given the designation. But advocates for veterans say an unknown number of troops still unfairly bear the stigma of a personality disorder, making them ineligible for military health care and other benefits.
"We really have an obligation to go back and make sure troops weren't misdiagnosed," said Dr. Barbara Van Dahlen, a clinical psychologist whose nonprofit "Give an Hour" connects troops with volunteer mental health professionals.
The Army denies that any soldier was misdiagnosed before 2008, when it drastically cut the number of discharges due to personality disorders and diagnoses of post-traumatic stress disorders skyrocketed.
Unlike PTSD, which the Army regards as a treatable mental disability caused by the acute stresses of war, the military designation of a personality disorder can have devastating consequences for soldiers.
Defined as a "deeply ingrained maladaptive pattern of behavior," a personality disorder is considered a "pre-existing condition" that relieves the military of its duty to pay for the person's health care or combat-related disability pay.
According to figures provided by the Army, the service discharged about a 1,000 soldiers a year between 2005 and 2007 for having a personality disorder.
But after an article in The Nation magazine exposed the practice, the Defense Department changed its policy and began requiring a top-level review of each case to ensure post-traumatic stress or a brain injury wasn't the underlying cause.
After that, the annual number of personality disorder cases dropped by 75 percent. Only 260 soldiers were discharged on those grounds in 2009.
At the same time, the number of post-traumatic stress disorder cases has soared. By 2008, more than 14,000 soldiers had been diagnosed with PTSD — twice as many as two years before.
The Army attributes the sudden and sharp reduction in personality disorders to its policy change. Yet Army officials deny that soldiers were discharged unfairly, saying they reviewed the paperwork of all deployed soldiers dismissed with a personality disorder between 2001 and 2006.
"We did not find evidence that soldiers with PTSD had been inappropriately discharged with personality disorder," wrote Maria Tolleson, a spokeswoman at the U.S. Army Medical Command, which oversees the health care of soldiers, in an e-mail.
Command officials declined to be interviewed.
Advocates for veterans are skeptical of the Army's claim that it didn't make any mistakes. They say symptoms of PTSD — anger, irritability, anxiety and depression — can easily be confused for the Army's description of a personality disorder.
They also point out that during its review of past cases, the Army never interviewed soldiers or their families, who can often provide evidence of a shift in behavior that occurred after someone was sent into a war zone.
"There's no reason to believe personality discharges would go down so quickly" unless the Army had misdiagnosed hundreds of soldiers each year in the first place, said Bart Stichman, co-director of the National Veterans Legal Services Program.
Stichman's organization is working through a backlog of 130 individual cases of wounded service members who feel they were wrongly denied benefits.
Among those cases is Chuck Luther, who decided to rejoin the Army after the Sept. 11 attacks. He had previously served eight years before being honorably discharged.
"I knew what combat was going to take," he said.
Luther, who lives near Fort Hood, Texas, said throughout his time in the Army, he received eight mental health evaluations from the Army, each clearing him as "fit for duty."
Luther was seven months into his deployment as a reconnaissance scout in Iraq's violent Sunni Triangle in 2007 when he says a mortar shell slammed him to the ground. He later complained of stabbing eye pain and crippling migraines, but was told by a military doctor that he was faking his symptoms to avoid combat duty.
Luther says that he was confined for a month in a 6-by-8 foot room without treatment. At one point, Luther acknowledges, he snapped — biting a guard and spitting in the face of a military chaplain.
After that episode, Luther says, the Army told him he could return home and keep his benefits if he signed papers admitting he had a personality disorder. If he didn't sign, he said, he was told he would be kicked out eventually anyway.
Luther, whose account was first detailed by The Nation, signed the papers.
His case highlights the irony in many personality discharges. A person is screened mentally and physically before joining the military. But upon returning from combat, that same person is told he or she had a serious mental disorder that predated military service.
As in the civilian world, where many insurance companies deny coverage for illnesses that develop before a policy is issued, the government can deny a service member veteran health care benefits and combat-related disability pay for pre-existing ailments.
Despite the Defense Department's reforms, groups such as the National Veterans Legal Services Program say they don't have enough manpower to help all the veterans who believe they were wrongly denied benefits.
Stichman says his organization has more than 60 law firms across the country willing to take on the legal cases of wounded veterans for free. But even with that help, the group doesn't know when it would be able to take on even one new case.
A congressional inquiry is under way to determine whether the Army is relying on a different designation — referred to as an "adjustment disorder" — to dismiss soldiers.
Sen. Kit Bond, a Missouri Republican, wants the Pentagon to explain why the number of these discharges doubled between 2006 and 2009 and how many of those qualified to retain their benefits.
As for Luther, he got lucky. After about a year, he says the Veterans Administration agreed to reevaluate him and decided that he suffers from post-traumatic stress syndrome coupled by traumatic brain injury. The ruling gives him access to a psychologist and psychiatrist every two weeks, despite his discharge status, he said.
But Luther acknowledges that he still struggles. In June, he received word that the Army had turned down his appeal to correct his record, which means he could never return to the service or retire with full benefits.
A week later, he says, he lost his job delivering potato chips because a superior felt threatened by him. Luther says he misses the Army.
"When I was in uniform, that defined me," he said. "It's what made me, me."
___
Online:
U.S. Army Medical Command: http://www.armymedicine.army.mil
Department of Veterans Affairs: http://www.va.gov/
"Give an Hour": http://www.giveanhour.org
National Veterans Legal Services Program: http://www.nvlsp.org/
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