MORE FEAR MONGERING

This should tell us all we need to know about Aaron L. Friedman:

From June 2003 to June 2005 he served as a Deputy Assistant for National Security Affairs in the Office of the Vice President.  In November 2006 he was named to the Secretary of State's Advisory Committee on Democracy Promotion.

He's obviously another neo-con genius who can only think in terms of armed conflict:

China’s Challenge at Sea
By AARON L. FRIEDBERG
Published: September 4, 2011
NY Times

AMERICA’S fiscal woes are placing the country on a path of growing strategic risk in Asia. ... To justify the necessary spending in an era of austerity, our leaders will have to be clearer in explaining the nation’s interests and commitments in Asia and blunter in describing the challenge posed by China’s relentless military buildup.

UPDATE: Even more (h/t James Traub):

But should Americans regard China as a national security threat and not merely an economic one? 

The authors of "Asian Alliances in the 21st Century," a report published by the Project 2049 Institute, a conservative think tank that focuses on East Asia, insist that we must. (The lead author is American Enterprise Institute scholar Dan Blumenthal of Foreign Policy's Shadow Government blog.) The report concludes that "China's military ambitions threaten America's Asian allies, raise questions about the credibility of U.S. alliance pledges, and imperil the U.S. military strategy that underpins its global primacy."