A response to "How we would fight China"
First, go read Robert Kaplan's article "How We Would Fight China" in the June 2005 issue of the Atlantic Monthly.
Only then read this: (adapted from an e-mail exchange I had on the subject)
Good stuff. 2 immediate priorities I see are: 1) countering China's soft power propaganda & convince Asian governments that a rearmed Japan (firmly allied with the US) is not a threat but an asset, and 2) moving away from a program of new missile development & instead shoring up our conventional forces.
First, China has a viable second strike capability and will increase its arsenal if they see us doing the same, so a missile war can put us in a MAD (or near-MAD) showdown. Not to mention the fact that as horrific as a Chinese strike on a US population center would be, a US strike on a Chinese population center could be at least twice as deadly. Example: Chicago city proper, with a population of ± 3 million, is the 3rd largest city in the US. Chongqing city proper, with a population of ± 3.5 million, is only the *10th* largest city in China. We didn't hear much about Iraqi casualties during the "major combat" phase of OIF, but China's media machine is much, much more sophisticated and will doubtlessly play up the numbers. Any war with China has to stay conventional.
Second, no thanks to past Japanese aggression, China has been able to play victim and sell to Asian powers the line that its own military expansion is benign while anything Tokyo (or even Washington) does is aggressive. This remains our biggest soft power sticking point. Just as France has outgrown its fear of Germany, so too must the Pacific Rim outgrow its fear of Japan. Unfortunately, the only way I see this happening is for Japan to radically outspend the Chinese at their own game. In addition to business and humanitarian investment, Japan needs to prove that its military will be used for good - interdiction of pirates, joint counter-terrorism training, etc. (An adept Japanese PM will be able to sell this domestically by stressing the need to safeguard Japan's oil supply line.)
Tokyo has 1 more ace up its sleeve - its elite universities. Offer the best & brightest college bound Muslim student in, say, Indonesia the choice between no aid (& no mosque) at Xinhua or Peking U. vs. a full ride (& constitutional religious freedom) to Tokyo U. & see which one the kid picks. Australia, NZ, & Singapore can do the same to further dilute the appeal of China. Plus, there is high blowback risk but we could keep repeating the name "East Turkistan" in the Indonesian and Malaysian media.
On the subject of US power projection, specifically with PACCOM, I agree with Kaplan that the Navy needs to expand beyond Hawaii, Guam, & Japan. We should not overlook the fact that Australia & NZ have Oceanic territories as well. While there is the risk of a Turkey-style denial of use if the Navy relies on a Kiwi base in, say, Niue, I think there are also political advantages by confusing China as to the nature & identity of a Niuean target.
I do have a caveat about going down the Bismarckian approach, which is that the very system Bismarck set up, either because of inherent weak points in the system or later incompetent management, or both, directly led to World War I. Agreed, a Bismarckian approach is more feasible with long-term strategic planning by career military officers instead of civilians who may change with every administration. But ultimately control rests with the civilians - SecDef, the President, and Congress. Here, a consistent foreign/national security policy that withstands changes in administrations is critical.
I think Kaplan paints a rosier picture of US/European cooperation in Asia than I would. The arms embargo issue is still unresolved, and is part of a larger issue. So far the Bush administration has not been too enthusiastic about the EU's rapid-reaction force. But this is precisely the kind of major military expenditure that would boost declining defense/technology industries in Europe (in turn lowering unemployment, perhaps Europe's 2nd biggest threat to stability, next to terrorism) - providing them an alternative to selling to China. Though the US role in physically creating such a force is minimal, politically the US can lay the groundwork to hand over to the EU force our current commitments in the Balkans (as well as augment the UN/AU forces in Cote d'Ivoire, Darfur, & Congo). The work of modernizing (& democratizing) the forces of the former Soviet bloc is & should continue to be the work of the OSCE. Meanwhile, I think NATO should reconceptualize itself as a forum for joint US/European missions on a global scale - Afghanistan, Iraq, the tsunami, etc. This arrangement, I believe, would give everyone a role that does not overlap and would prevent the kind of strategic competition between the US and an EU military force that Kaplan fears.
As for China itself, I don't know if I'm an optimist or pessimist. Best case scenario that I can see, within the next 10 years, is the bursting of China's economic bubble. Beijing has so far been very good at reacting to potential economic crisis, but what it's doing is like the carnival game of hitting pop-up bunnies with a rubber mallet. Jiang Zemin struggled to define a market-friendly socialist ideology for the next century, and all he could come up with was the nearly incomprehensible "3 Represents". I don't think it can be done. There's just so much unsustainability due to the lack of transparent business & governmental auditing, open civil society lobbying, and judicial independence (not to mention still-endemic levels of rural poverty). An all out economic crisis will be messy (which is what the CCP doesn't want), but so is chemo - and some economic chemo is what China needs.
Most, if not all, of the US' (and Taiwan's) geo-strategic pickles in east Asia would be solved by some kind regime change in China that breaks the CCP's chokehold on power. We can start by buying back that (growing) portion of the national debt held by Chinese banks. We can start by passing legislation (in the spirit of SOX) requiring US companies investing in China to demand more transparent auditing from their Chinese partners (or better yet, use the WTO to do this). By switching domestically to alternative fuels, any rise in oil prices due to Chinese demand will serve to cool them off instead of dampening us. But I'm afraid these are 3 things that the Bush administration lacks the vision and the courage to do.
Call me a constructivist, but I've never believed in discrete spheres of domestic & foreign policy. What we need is a unified strategy toward China, instead of the schizophrenic mess we've got now. We want them to pull their own weight on UN peacekeeping, but we're worried about their expanding blue water navy. We want them to bully North Korea into disarming but we sit back and let Koizumi & Singh dream big about Security Council seats. We rap their knuckles in State Department human rights reports but we give them permanent MFN status. We talk of limiting outsourcing but Wal-Mart still buys billions in imports. None of this can end well, it can only end less badly.
Comments/corrections welcome.
Only then read this: (adapted from an e-mail exchange I had on the subject)
Good stuff. 2 immediate priorities I see are: 1) countering China's soft power propaganda & convince Asian governments that a rearmed Japan (firmly allied with the US) is not a threat but an asset, and 2) moving away from a program of new missile development & instead shoring up our conventional forces.
First, China has a viable second strike capability and will increase its arsenal if they see us doing the same, so a missile war can put us in a MAD (or near-MAD) showdown. Not to mention the fact that as horrific as a Chinese strike on a US population center would be, a US strike on a Chinese population center could be at least twice as deadly. Example: Chicago city proper, with a population of ± 3 million, is the 3rd largest city in the US. Chongqing city proper, with a population of ± 3.5 million, is only the *10th* largest city in China. We didn't hear much about Iraqi casualties during the "major combat" phase of OIF, but China's media machine is much, much more sophisticated and will doubtlessly play up the numbers. Any war with China has to stay conventional.
Second, no thanks to past Japanese aggression, China has been able to play victim and sell to Asian powers the line that its own military expansion is benign while anything Tokyo (or even Washington) does is aggressive. This remains our biggest soft power sticking point. Just as France has outgrown its fear of Germany, so too must the Pacific Rim outgrow its fear of Japan. Unfortunately, the only way I see this happening is for Japan to radically outspend the Chinese at their own game. In addition to business and humanitarian investment, Japan needs to prove that its military will be used for good - interdiction of pirates, joint counter-terrorism training, etc. (An adept Japanese PM will be able to sell this domestically by stressing the need to safeguard Japan's oil supply line.)
Tokyo has 1 more ace up its sleeve - its elite universities. Offer the best & brightest college bound Muslim student in, say, Indonesia the choice between no aid (& no mosque) at Xinhua or Peking U. vs. a full ride (& constitutional religious freedom) to Tokyo U. & see which one the kid picks. Australia, NZ, & Singapore can do the same to further dilute the appeal of China. Plus, there is high blowback risk but we could keep repeating the name "East Turkistan" in the Indonesian and Malaysian media.
On the subject of US power projection, specifically with PACCOM, I agree with Kaplan that the Navy needs to expand beyond Hawaii, Guam, & Japan. We should not overlook the fact that Australia & NZ have Oceanic territories as well. While there is the risk of a Turkey-style denial of use if the Navy relies on a Kiwi base in, say, Niue, I think there are also political advantages by confusing China as to the nature & identity of a Niuean target.
I do have a caveat about going down the Bismarckian approach, which is that the very system Bismarck set up, either because of inherent weak points in the system or later incompetent management, or both, directly led to World War I. Agreed, a Bismarckian approach is more feasible with long-term strategic planning by career military officers instead of civilians who may change with every administration. But ultimately control rests with the civilians - SecDef, the President, and Congress. Here, a consistent foreign/national security policy that withstands changes in administrations is critical.
I think Kaplan paints a rosier picture of US/European cooperation in Asia than I would. The arms embargo issue is still unresolved, and is part of a larger issue. So far the Bush administration has not been too enthusiastic about the EU's rapid-reaction force. But this is precisely the kind of major military expenditure that would boost declining defense/technology industries in Europe (in turn lowering unemployment, perhaps Europe's 2nd biggest threat to stability, next to terrorism) - providing them an alternative to selling to China. Though the US role in physically creating such a force is minimal, politically the US can lay the groundwork to hand over to the EU force our current commitments in the Balkans (as well as augment the UN/AU forces in Cote d'Ivoire, Darfur, & Congo). The work of modernizing (& democratizing) the forces of the former Soviet bloc is & should continue to be the work of the OSCE. Meanwhile, I think NATO should reconceptualize itself as a forum for joint US/European missions on a global scale - Afghanistan, Iraq, the tsunami, etc. This arrangement, I believe, would give everyone a role that does not overlap and would prevent the kind of strategic competition between the US and an EU military force that Kaplan fears.
As for China itself, I don't know if I'm an optimist or pessimist. Best case scenario that I can see, within the next 10 years, is the bursting of China's economic bubble. Beijing has so far been very good at reacting to potential economic crisis, but what it's doing is like the carnival game of hitting pop-up bunnies with a rubber mallet. Jiang Zemin struggled to define a market-friendly socialist ideology for the next century, and all he could come up with was the nearly incomprehensible "3 Represents". I don't think it can be done. There's just so much unsustainability due to the lack of transparent business & governmental auditing, open civil society lobbying, and judicial independence (not to mention still-endemic levels of rural poverty). An all out economic crisis will be messy (which is what the CCP doesn't want), but so is chemo - and some economic chemo is what China needs.
Most, if not all, of the US' (and Taiwan's) geo-strategic pickles in east Asia would be solved by some kind regime change in China that breaks the CCP's chokehold on power. We can start by buying back that (growing) portion of the national debt held by Chinese banks. We can start by passing legislation (in the spirit of SOX) requiring US companies investing in China to demand more transparent auditing from their Chinese partners (or better yet, use the WTO to do this). By switching domestically to alternative fuels, any rise in oil prices due to Chinese demand will serve to cool them off instead of dampening us. But I'm afraid these are 3 things that the Bush administration lacks the vision and the courage to do.
Call me a constructivist, but I've never believed in discrete spheres of domestic & foreign policy. What we need is a unified strategy toward China, instead of the schizophrenic mess we've got now. We want them to pull their own weight on UN peacekeeping, but we're worried about their expanding blue water navy. We want them to bully North Korea into disarming but we sit back and let Koizumi & Singh dream big about Security Council seats. We rap their knuckles in State Department human rights reports but we give them permanent MFN status. We talk of limiting outsourcing but Wal-Mart still buys billions in imports. None of this can end well, it can only end less badly.
Comments/corrections welcome.
posted by WL at 2:21 PM
9 Comments:
Yeah, it's quite a quandry. Iraq unfortunately might end up being nothing but a blip in history compared to things to come. This is why I stress that we should have a serious committment to ties with India- how much more of a perfect situation could there be? It has almost as much population as China, plus it is a democracy, has a large diaspora comfortably integrated into the US population, and has an incredibly strategic location. Perhaps we should invite it into NATO. Also, we should take steps to halt China's growing influence in Latin America by forming an economic union and a defense pact (or letting them into NATO, but then we might have to change the name of NATO- maybe drop the "N") with the large democracies of Brazil and Argentina, and increace legal immigration from South America to boost our economy and tax base to sustain our military superiority. If we truly integrated India and South America, along with Mexico, into the existing NATO framework, that would be an alliance containing about half the world's population and would encompass a military and economic power that China and Russia would never able to hold a candle to. Coupled that with the power of common democratic ideals (which helped win the cold war and explains why our closest European allies are now behind what was the Iron Curtain), the hegemonay of democratic power would be secured forat least the next century. But if China starts to "pick off" countries in South America, as is making inroads into doing, and it wins the competition for India's affection (as is is trying to make inroads) and is able to use soft power to coerce Europe into neutrality, we could be seriously fucked. The next American president's top priority has to be to secure real, unbreakable ties with the democratic nations of the globe.
And of course, if we could continue to use the free market to encourage China's baby steps towards democracy and hope a Chinese version of Gorbachev emerges, then the whole cold-war-part-deux could be avoided and we might even have world peace... assuming there isn't a huge war over natural resources and the effects of global warming, which there probably will be anyway.
Closer integration (at least between the NAFTA 3) was the goal recently at the Bush/Martin/Fox summit in March. We're already moving forward with a southern economic union (CAFTA, FTAA), but these measures can only succeed if the countries of Latin America are convinced that they're actually gonna benefit. Free trade can't be a 1 way street southbound from Washington.
I hesitate to advocate the NATO model, though. NATO was formed at a unique moment in history when America was the military savior of Europe and a new threat loomed in the east. More precisely, NATO was formed in response to a common perceived *immediate* threat. No such immediacy exists vis-a-vis China and South America. India maybe. Following the end of the Warsaw Pact, and to this day, NATO is an alliance trying to define a mission for itself. Expanding NATO to the South Atlantic would further dilute the alliance while a new Americas alliance would face no immediate external threat. On the contrary, such a southern alliance would be inextricably drawn into the misadventures of Hugo Chavez. Not cool.
So what can be done? Here I want to echo what I wrote earlier about Japan outspending China to buy goodwill among the ASEAN states. In many parts of Latin America, the US faces a similar unpopularity problem that I don't think (Kennedy-round notwithstanding) we ever fully solved. We need to do real dollar diplomacy that includes both the economic, military, and yes, immigration aspects.
As for a Chinese Gorby? Like I wrote before, best case scenario isn't anything we overtly do but rather an internal folding of China's dangerous economic house of cards.
Yeah, maybe expanding NATO to that extent isn't the best idea- and if it were, I would obviusly exclude a Chavez-led Venezuela. Perhapt it should become a SATO, and a lot more than a NAFTA- it should be like the EU in terms of having democrtic, human rights, labor, and environmental requirements to get it, but not a monetary union or allowing unlimited immigration. But I do think there should be some type of second-level NATO-type organization for all truly democratic governments where we can share defense responsibilities and enjoy trade benefits. And the goals will be very simple: 1) maintaining world security, 2) protecting free and fair international trade, 3) fighting terrorism, 4) helping end regional conflicts in the 3rd world and 5) promoting environmentally sustainable development around the world. Basically, by being in this pact, you will be saying "we're all fundamentally good democratic countries and we will take leadership on the world's problems." Basically, it would be a 180 from the present administration's unwize marginalization of our European and South American allies.
I also think it's disturbing that an official Chinese website has content like this: http://www.china.org.cn/e-America/actives/jiang.htm
I'll be the first to admit that I am nowhere near as astute on military matters as the other posters here, plus I was too lazt\y to read the Atlantic Monthly article, but aren't we already at war China?
Despite what Bush2 may think, this is not an age of conventional warfare. The number of troops sent to an occupying country is irrelevent when one person can kill thousands by poisoning a water supply.
The future of war, and even the wars going on now, are all economic. China has built an economy with a lot of smoke and mirrors (much like the current US financial situation)but they are still kicking our as.
How would we fight China? Force the pullout of every US/Allied based corporation and watch them squirm.
That's true, Prince C. But I don't think China would go with unconventional warfare because they also have large population centers. I agree 100% that we should use economic pressure first, which is why the Bush approach is so maddening- we could order every corporation out of China, which would fuck them, but thwn they could demand immediate repayment of our debt to them, or just sell all their dollar reserves and destroy our economy. Hence, this is why Bush's tax cuts have severly jeopardized our national security- they have given too many nations, inluding potential enemies like China, creditor leverage over us, not to mention how they have made it impossible to make the eduational improvements that are necessary to counter the trend of China graduating more engineers than us every year.
I read the Robert Kaplan article on China, and it's basically crap. Kaplan is able to see the world only through the lens of military confrontation; he fails entirely to grasp that interactions among nations now (both competitive and cooperative) are predominantly economic, not military. There's no way China's even going to make a slight feint in the direction of a conventional war-- they're classic Sun Tzu masters, waiting us out until we shoot ourselves in the foot.
BTW Rich, I hate to burst your bubble but your dreams of an anti-China alliance with India are fantasy. As we speak, China and India are rapidly hatching deals with each other right and left, and in fact Chinese leaders are actively working on a baby-steps democratization process for China's own 1.4-1.5 billion people, modeled on... India. India remains very suspicious of Western intentions because of the divide-and-rule politics and bloody massacres and famines the British used to keep India down; almost nobody in India is yearning for a clash with (or containment of) China, and India's more likely to ally with China in a balance-of-power scheme against the current hegemon (the US), than the other way around. A lot of this has been surprising to me as well, but any suggestions about India being used to "encircle" or "contain" China have been met with vitriolic, angry rejoinders about India "never being the USA's pawn" or somesuch. Forget about India in this scheme.
For that matter, forget about Japan in that, too. The latest dust-up over the Japanese textbook was a minor affair at best. China and Japan both need each other economically, and businesspeople on both sides will not stand for geopolitical posturing mucking up the economic ties. Japan is finally pulling out of its nearly decade-long recession, and imports to China have everything to do with that. No way, no how is Japan going to be drawn into some containment field against China.
What Kaplan seems too obtuse to realize is that his apparent bellicosity will attract no one to his cause. The world these days fears the intentions and power of the US far more than China. The oldest rule in geopolitics is that weaker powers will ally together to check the strength of the stronger power, and that means the rest of the world ganging up against us. Europe, India, Russia, the Middle East, and South America are only too happy to see China rising because they see a counterpoint against the USA, of which they're increasingly suspicious.
The only real option we have these days is to engage China and assist them as much as possible in forging a true republic. If that occurs, then this whole damn wet dream that Robert Kaplan seems to have will defuse without the need for a costly, stupid Cold War II to arise in the first place.
Hey Grand Strategist,
If you read all of the comments on this post, you would have noticed that engaging China and helping it continue its baby steps to democracy is my first choice in terms of options. It would obviously be preferrable to avoid a costly second cold war, as I expressly said. Yes, Kaplan's article was solely about military affairs, as was this post, but I don't think it is being irresponsible to at least be prepared to consider what would happen in this possible scenario.
As for India, I have noticed closer ties between them and China, but this still doesn't gloss the centuries of animosity those two giants have had for eachother. But contrary to what you might think, I am not advocating "divide and conquer." As I wrote in one of the comments, I believe that we should unite all countries that should be our natural allies- ie, stable democracies- with common economic and trade ties. India, being the world's biggest democracy, would be a no-brainer to include in this group, as would many other countries who are of less or no strategic importance relating to China. I advocate this even outside of the context of a common potential enemy, just because it's the right thing to do.
At the same time, it is incredibly naive to write off China as only having benign intentions in many areas. For all the improvments of the last 25 years, China is still a repressive government that routinely violates human rights and tries to intimidate its less powerful neighbors. I believe these are moral issues that we shouldn't look the other way on just for the sake of cheap labor.
You are correct in your observations about the rest of the world ganging up on us. This is the true legacy of the Bush foreign policy- he has made American power look like something that should be feared and now everyone is looking for a counterwight, including some of our "Allies" in Europe. While Mr. Bush has set off this reaction, anyone who flocks to China in response is only deluding themselves if they think abuses of any future Chinese power won't be hundreds of times worse.
The way to deal with China is the way one should deal with anything else in life- prepare for the worst and hope for the best.
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