This story might slip right past you. It’s understandable, considering most Americans have no idea of the context or how it happened that the state-owned China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) is now set for 20 years in Iraq, thanks to a deal just inked between the Iraqi government and Communist China. The Iraqis originally selected America’s Exxon-Mobil. I’ll wager you probably didn’t know that. You’ll want to read on. But brace yourself.

It’s the classic American political tale of self-loathing crafted by the usual suspects. With its government firm and its security at its post-surge best, the Iraqi government needed to quickly bring its oilfields online. It desperately needed the revenues. The summer of 2008 saw oil prices above $100 per barrel and Americans were paying $4 per gallon at the pump.

The best in the business – the best in the world – is Exxon-Mobil. And the government of Iraq turned to America’s Exxon-Mobil to bring undeveloped and underdeveloped fields online to rejuvenate its own revenue sources and ween itself and its people off of American aid.

But three American Senators would have none of it. Senators John Kerry (D-MA), Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Claire McCaskill (D-MO) sent a public letter to the Bush administration’s Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, imploring her to derail the Iraqi deal. (See: ‘In China We Trust’: Senators Closed Door to US Oil Investment In Iraq.) As the Senate troika stated, “It is our fear that this action by the Iraqi government could further deepen political tensions in Iraq and put our service members in even great danger.”

You see, these three American Senators insisted that Iraq shall have no revenues until it passed an oil revenue sharing law that met their distant standards. Or at least, Iraq should have certainly had no additional revenue. Their letter was dismissed out of hand in Washington. But in Iraq, the desired consequences of the letter took hold. The Iraqi government became spooked as the reportage of the letter turned, as one would expect, into wrangling and infighting by those seeking to leverage it to their advantage in the hotly contested revenue sharing process.

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On the path to 9/11, many of us National Security wonks were intensely studying and tracking China and its activities before the al-Qaeda attacks of 9/11. Just as so many had our eyes too focused on a single ball then, it is a necessary exercise of experience and wisdom to ensure the same mistake is not made again, simply in the reverse.

We cannot afford to be – neither as a National Security community nor as a society – so critically focused on our terrorist enemies as to lose sight of an equally determined if even more patient strategic competitor. Though the Chinese are much less overt than our terrorist enemies, their grand strategies and ambitions are hardly invisible. One need simply look for them and recognize them when seen.

In a Reuters article, “China PLA officer urges challenging U.S. dominance,” there is a wake-up call for those perhaps needing it.

From the Reuters article:

The call for China to abandon modesty about its global goals and “sprint to become world number one” comes from a People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Senior Colonel, Liu Mingfu, who warns that his nation’s ascent will alarm Washington, risking war despite Beijing’s hopes for a “peaceful rise.”

“China’s big goal in the 21st century is to become world number one, the top power,” Liu writes in his newly published Chinese-language book, “The China Dream.”

“If China in the 21st century cannot become world number one, cannot become the top power, then inevitably it will become a straggler that is cast aside,” writes Liu, a professor at the elite National Defense University, which trains rising officers.

His 303-page book stands out for its boldness even in a recent chorus of strident Chinese voices demanding a hard shove back against Washington over trade, Tibet, human rights, and arms sales to Taiwan, the self-ruled island Beijing claims as its own.

“As long as China seeks to rise to become world number one … then even if China is even more capitalist than the U.S., the U.S. will still be determined to contain it,” writes Liu.

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