China’s aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, during military drills in the Pacific.
Type 075 class of amphibious assault ship.
Every yuan China devotes to projects of questionable worth
in South and Central Asia is one less yuan Beijing has to spend on threatening
implements of maritime and aerospace power for the western Pacific. The
diversionary effects of China’s ambitious and potentially quixotic Eurasian
quest could benefit the United States and its allies along the first island
chain over the long run. In the meantime Washington and Asian capitals must
deter and shape the worst elements of Chinese behavior in maritime Asia.
In practical terms, a U.S. strategy aimed at curbing China’s
worst excesses would display an outward semblance of containment—and China’s
leadership would doubtless interpret it as such. For decades Beijing has
accused the United States of harboring a “Cold War mentality” and of conniving with
Asian allies to stunt China’s rise. For instance, arming the Ryukyu Islands
with antiship and antiair missiles to constrain Chinese sea and air access to
the western Pacific would dredge up bad memories in Beijing.
That being the case, diplomatic dexterity is at a premium in
Washington and friendly capitals. Political and military leaders must explain
how they intend to marshal power to advance clearly stated political purposes
while at the same time reassuring their Chinese counterparts that America has
no desire to thwart the beneficent rise to economic and diplomatic eminence
that China claims to be pursuing. Plainspoken diplomacy is best. American
emissaries must neither bluster nor dissemble.
Yet policy makers must also be ready to accept that their
reassurances, no matter how sincere, may never convince Beijing that the United
States neither bears ill will toward China nor seeks to thwart its rise. As
preceding chapters have demonstrated, unpleasant historical memories predispose
Beijing to view the world as a dark place where only the fittest survive. At
the same time, China’s elemental sense of its place and purpose in Asia may
render unacceptable to the Chinese state and society any Asian future except
their own dominance. Unshakable beliefs could convince Chinese leaders that a
struggle for mastery over Asia is probable if not inevitable.
Washington must do what it can to avoid a showdown, but it
must do so without abdicating its leadership and the military predominance that
has underwritten American primacy. It must also prepare itself to wage a new
Cold War in Asia should one come. Given that the central theater for such a
rivalry would be a nautical theater, framing a coherent maritime strategy now
is indispensable to strategic success.
Some may blanch at the prospect of another Cold War. Few
savor the idea. But the alternative—if China displaced the United States as the
regional hegemon—would prove far worse. Imagine a future Asia where a
domineering China dictated events while demanding deference from its neighbors
and where the principle that might makes right ruled. China’s track record in
word and deed over the past decade suggests that this imagined future is no
stretch.
Others may protest, reprising the familiar rejoinder noted
in the previous chapter that we are engaging in a self-fulfilling prophecy. If
we treat China like an enemy, they say, it will surely become one. But China is
a strategic actor in its own right, not some passive mass that merely responds
to stimuli from outside. China sees its destiny and is determined to fulfill
it. It has acted on its ambitions for at least a decade, long before anyone
opposed it. If a prophecy impels China, it is the prophecy conveyed by Xi
Jinping’s Chinese Dream—not one imposed from outside.
Policy makers, then, must reject straw-man arguments that
reduce China to an inert object and see it for what it is: a living force with
an iron will to power. And we must see that America and China have embarked on
an inherently interactive, reciprocal competition. Only by discerning the true
nature of the relationship can Washington act expediently to mold China’s
behavior, impose costs on it where necessary, and coerce or fight it if we
must. If we falsely assume the relationship is a one-way affair in which China
perpetually defends itself against U.S. actions, then we risk talking ourselves
into inaction. Doing nothing is always an option in strategic competition. It
would be an unworkable one after years of Chinese strategic advances at sea.
This brings us back to U.S. maritime strategy. Apart from
urging naval officialdom to study the facets of Chinese strategy set forth in
this volume, we offer four parting recommendations.
First, U.S. strategists and practitioners should be more
Chinese in some respects. Or rather, they should emulate China’s approach to
reading, filtering, and applying Mahan’s writings and amalgamating them with
other fonts of strategic wisdom. In effect China takes a joint, interagency,
and public-private outlook on maritime strategy, conscripting any ship,
aircraft, or weapon able to shape events at sea. Such an outlook would benefit
U.S. strategists as well. Sea power is not—or should not be—solely the province
of the U.S. Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard.
Americans too must think jointly and inventively. U.S. Army
forces, for example, could play a pivotal part in U.S. maritime strategy. They
have done it before, staging amphibious operations in the South Pacific on an
epic scale to beat Imperial Japan. Soldiers could mount an anti-access strategy
in miniature if ground units were emplaced along the first island chain. China
can exact a heavy price for steaming into its environs. Missile-armed U.S.
ground forces can reciprocate by taking their own toll on PLA Navy or Air Force
units trying to exit or reenter the China seas. Furthermore, U.S. troops can
supply fire support for allied naval and air forces. Like the PLA, they could
stage a “fortress-fleet” strategy, sweeping hostile units from nearby waters
and skies while hoisting an aegis under which fleet operations can proceed.
Turnabout is fair play in strategy.
More important, such implements of anti-access possess
intrinsic political value. Ground-based missile units would express America’s
commitment to its allies in physical form. When deployed to friendly soil, U.S.
forces become concrete tokens of America’s resolve. An attack on them would
invite a powerful riposte. That very prospect might deter China from making a
move in the first place.
Consider a hair-raising scenario in which the PLA is
readying itself to unleash a massive missile campaign against the Ryukyu
Islands during an escalating crisis with Japan. Deploying a U.S. rapid-response
battalion armed with truck-mounted antiship and air-defense missiles to the
southwest islands could alter the Chinese strategic calculus while disrupting
the associated military plans. While a powerful Chinese first strike might wipe
out both Japanese and American island defenders, PLA commanders and their
political masters would be compelled to weigh the operational benefit of doing
so against the certainty that the United States would now enter the fray in
force on its ally’s behalf. In all likelihood Beijing would think twice before
pulling the trigger. If the Chinese did back away from their military option,
the allies would have successfully upheld deterrence—winning a strategic
victory by any measure.
This hypothetical scenario suggests that policy makers must
reacquaint themselves with the idea of “tripwire” forces, token military units
planted in an opponent’s way to provide a first line of defense. An attack on
these frontline defenders triggers intervention by larger forces. Recall that
U.S. Army tripwire forces were stationed in West Berlin—a city that was never
defensible in any meaningful way—throughout the Cold War. No one meant them to
stop, much less defeat, the Warsaw Pact onslaught if deterrence failed. NATO
fully accepted that they would be destroyed should World War III break out. Yet
their destruction would guarantee U.S. involvement in any East-West
conflagration—automatically shoring up deterrence. U.S. ground forces along and
near the demilitarized zone on the Korean Peninsula likewise perform a tripwire
function to deter Pyongyang.
It may be time for Washington to strew tripwires in
Beijing’s path. China’s surging might has emboldened Beijing to advance its
regional designs, confident that its smaller neighbors are too intimidated to
resist. China’s strategic importance to Asia and beyond also affords Chinese
leaders ample margin of error to absorb blowback from their adventurism.
Witness Beijing’s dismissive attitude toward the PCA at The Hague in 2016 after
jurors rendered a stinging legal judgment against China’s claims to sovereignty
in the South China Sea. In that instance Chinese leaders calculated correctly
that they could withstand the damage to China’s reputation from defying
international law.
Emboldened by such precedents, Beijing may one day conclude
that it is time to roll the iron dice. If the Chinese believe their moves will
encounter negligible or nonexistent resistance, they will continue to seek
incremental gains or may even make a sudden move that presents the region with
a fait accompli. The notion of a “short, sharp war” against Japan—an option the
PLA reportedly entertained in 2014—represents one variant of a fait accompli
strategy.
To discourage such moves policy makers should introduce
tripwire forces to the western Pacific theater, some deployed along the front
lines and some held in reserve, to prompt Chinese leaders to rethink plans for
aggression. As the scenario postulated above suggests, such forces would (1)
awaken Chinese decision makers to the risks and costs of actions they may be
contemplating and thus induce them to pause and reflect before they pass the
point of no return; (2) slow the momentum toward conflict, allowing all sides
the time to cool down and seek an exit from the confrontation before it is too
late; (3) reassure allies that the United States remains steadfastly committed
to their cause in times of crisis or hostilities, and thereby discourage allies
from reactions or overreactions that could worsen tensions; (4) impose
operational costs, however minor they may be, should deterrence fail; (5) buy
time for reinforcements to arrive in the theater should a shooting war break
out; and, above all, (6) fundamentally change the political dynamics of the
crisis by showing that America has a vital stake in the western Pacific and
will act accordingly.
Consequently, it behooves U.S. policy makers to relearn
elements of the Cold War playbook. Accepting and taking risks will likely
become a routine part of the great-power competition between the United States
and China. This is no less true at sea. The politics of anti-access reinforces
our argument that executors of U.S. maritime strategy must view the instruments
of sea power entrusted to them in holistic, grand-strategic terms. These are
elements that senior commanders and civilian policy makers must forge into a
weapon of national policy in order to discourage misbehavior.
Strategists must think in interagency terms, especially as
they strive to counteract China’s “gray-zone” offensive. As we observed before,
Beijing deploys China Coast Guard cutters in tandem with the fishing fleet.
These two elements constitute China’s “small stick,” the vanguard of its
gray-zone strategy in the East and South China Seas. Washington might follow
suit, dispatching U.S. Coast Guard cutters and sailors to help Asian allies
guard their EEZs. It could form combined coast guard units with regional
partners; it could buy small craft in large numbers, paint them white, relabel
them cutters, let fly the Stars and Stripes, and station them in the region.
This represents one option among many. Contemplating such offbeat courses of
action is a must.
And what about public-private ventures in maritime strategy?
Pressing merchantmen into service as strategic implements is a lost art among
American mariners. They should cultivate it afresh. Commercial vessels could
supplement the efforts of military and law enforcement forces. For instance,
freighters converted for military use could serve as logistics assets helping
refuel, restock, and rearm U.S. expeditionary forces on station in the western
Pacific. Using them in this way would help offset the extreme leanness of the
U.S. combat-logistics fleet. Such vessels could act as mother ships for U.S.
Coast Guard small craft or for special-operations units. It behooves
strategists to think ahead about such options. Imagination is a
virtue—orthodoxy, not so much.
Second, we beseech the sea services not to neglect the human
dimension of strategy while tending to the material dimension. Colonel John
Boyd maintains that people, ideas, and hardware—in that order—represent the
crucial determinants of human competition and strife. Naval leaders must be
prepared to entertain once-unthinkable ideas about strategy and operations
rather than dismissing them reflexively. To name one: if China is building
toward a five-hundred-ship PLA Navy by 2030, as reputable analysts foretell,
how big a U.S. Navy will it take to answer that challenge? Naval leaders must
agitate for a fleet larger than any under consideration today if that is the
tool they need to accomplish the job.
The leadership, moreover, may need to reconsider habitual
deployment patterns. Under the Obama administration’s “pivot” to Asia, the sea
services reapportioned forces from the traditional fifty-fifty split between
Pacific and Atlantic to a sixty-forty split in favor of the Pacific theater.
The Trump administration has evidently made the pivot its own while dispensing
with the metaphor. But if the U.S. Navy still has its hands full with the PLA
Navy, it must reallocate assets more lopsidedly to the Pacific Ocean. It could
transfer a bigger share of the fleet as measured by raw numbers of hulls. Or it
could shift high-end platforms to the Pacific while reserving light forces for
the relatively sedate Atlantic and prevailing on NATO for help policing that
expanse against the Russian Navy and other menaces. Naval leaders should reject
no idea out of hand—no matter how outlandish it may seem.
Third, sea-service leaders must renovate American naval
culture. To start, they must resolve never again to declare an end to naval
history. Even smashing triumphs—a World War II or a Cold War—do not repeal such
basic naval functions as fighting for maritime command. Nor does victory
obviate others’ capacity to contest U.S. marine supremacy. In short, there will
always be a next contender, just as there always has been. Service chieftains
should encode that axiom in the sea services’ institutional DNA, making it the
starting point for debates about strategy, operations, and fleet design. Never
again should naval leaders declare never again.
Even should the sea services surmount China’s maritime
challenge, the leadership must instill an inquisitive spirit within naval
culture. If the next challenger awaits somewhere over the horizon—and it
does—mariners and defense manufacturers cannot rest. They must apply themselves
constantly to devise new hardware and methods for sea combat. Numbers of
fighting ships and aircraft might contract if U.S.-China strategic competition
goes America’s way. They probably will. But if high-end armaments already exist
in modest numbers when the next challenge takes shape, it will be easier to
scale up the force structure than to compel the naval-industrial complex to
improvise new systems under the duress of strategic competition or armed
strife. Hence the need to innovate before the reason why becomes plain.
And last, the naval leadership should make American naval
culture a restless culture like the one Wolfgang Wegener saw impelling the
Royal Navy during the epoch when Britannia ruled the waves. Longshoreman
philosopher Eric Hoffer observes that creative ages are buoyant ages. They are
ages when whimsy prevails—when any crank can formulate a zany idea, put it to
the test, discard it if it fails, and move on to the next oddball hypothesis.
Some experiments will pay off even though most do not. A playful organizational
culture is apt to be a culture favoring enterprise and derring-do—in other
words, a culture able to handle all tests and come out stronger for it. Meeting
the seaborne challenge manifest in China’s dream, it seems, demands far more
than upgrading weapons or sensors. It demands wholesale material and cultural
reform. Let’s take inspiration from a longshoreman and a German admiral and
make it so.
