China’s Rising Military: Now for the Hard Part
JUN 5, 2015 10:12 AM EDT
By Thomas J. Christensen
China isn’t an enemy of the U.S. But coercive diplomacy with China
today is arguably more complicated than it was with the Soviet Union in
the Cold War, at least after the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.
One reason for this is that no consensus exists in East Asia on the
territorial status quo, as there did between the two Cold War camps in
most regions of the world.
The
People’s Republic of China, in the center of a region of great
importance, has maritime sovereignty disputes with several of its
neighbors, including two formal U.S. allies (Japan and the Philippines) and one security partner (Taiwan).
Laboratory research on prospect theory, a psychological exploration
of risk-based decision-making, demonstrates that most actors accept much
bigger risks and are willing to pay larger costs to defend what they
believe is rightfully theirs than to obtain new gains at others’
expense. In a world in which conventional conflict could conceivably
escalate to nuclear war, this human tendency is a force for stability;
attacks across recognized boundaries by either side would be risky, and
deterrence against such attacks is relatively credible.
But in East Asia today, governments draw competing maps about the maritime domain.
There
are significant differences between mainland China and Taiwan about the
sovereign status of the government on the island, and between China and
Japan over who owns the islands known as Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in
China. There is also disagreement among China, Taiwan, the
Philippines, Vietnam, Brunei and Malaysia over ownership of islands,
rocks and reefs in the South China Sea.
We should take no comfort in the apparent sincerity of all the
claimants. If all actors truly feel they are defending rightful claims
against the revisionism of others, the chicken game of international
security politics is more likely to lead to a deadly collision.
These disputes are fueled by historical victimhood narratives and
postcolonial nationalism. For the countries involved, defending
sovereignty claims and recovering allegedly stolen territories are core
missions. China is no exception.
Since the 2008 financial crisis, China has been more confident abroad
and more afraid at home. The country’s elite and its citizens feel that
its power position on the international stage has improved drastically.
But the foundations of its export-led and investment-fueled growth
model were shaken at the same time. Top leaders worry about rising
social discontent. It isn’t a good time for Chinese leaders to look weak
on defense.
And China doesn’t have to be the actor that sparks a dispute for tensions to escalate. In 2010, for example,
China often reacted sharply to events initiated by others,
such as Japan’s arrest of a Chinese fishing boat captain and crew near
the Senkaku Islands. Since then we have seen a mix of Chinese
assertiveness — such as its placement and then removal last year of an
oil rig in waters disputed with Vietnam and its continuing land
reclamation projects on South China Sea reefs — and its abrasive
reactions to others’ actions, such as an upgraded Chinese maritime
presence near the Senkakus since the Japanese central government
purchased some of the islands from a private Japanese family in 2012.
The Chinese leadership could
use its conventional military power to threaten U.S. partners and to
impose high costs on U.S. forces if they intervened to assist their
allies. The ability to conduct such asymmetric warfare against the
U.S. can potentially affect how disputes are managed in peacetime and
who might prevail politically if a fight were to occur.
The U.S. has ways to reduce a threat posed by China’s ability to wage
asymmetric warfare. But a future U.S. president might be reluctant to
use some of the more effective methods the American military has at its
disposal — such as destroying or disabling military targets on the
Chinese mainland — especially early in a conflict when such measures
would be most effective.
For example, attacking
China’s potent ballistic missiles,
their launchers and their command-and-control systems before the
missiles strike U.S. bases and surface ships would be an efficient way
to reduce the threat. Chinese submarines, which can fire torpedoes and
cruise missiles or lay sea mines, pose another potential threat. The
U.S., all things being equal, might be tempted to attack submarine ports
and naval command-and-control systems on Chinese soil.
But all things are not equal. No U.S. president has ever launched
robust conventional attacks against the homeland of a nation with
nuclear retaliatory capability. Moreover,
the conventional mobile ballistic missiles and submarines China has developed to counter superior U.S. forces
overlap dangerously with the land-based missiles and submarines that
China is developing to provide a secure nuclear retaliatory capability.
If the U.S. were to attack missile systems and submarines for the
purpose of protecting against conventional attack early in a conflict,
Washington could unintentionally compromise portions of China’s nuclear
arsenal as well. Chinese leaders could mistakenly view this as an
attempt to eliminate China’s nuclear deterrent, risking escalation.
China adheres publicly to a no-first-use doctrine on nuclear weapons,
a position that would seem to mean that no amount of conventional
firepower leveled against it would cause it to resort to a nuclear
response.
But internal Chinese military writings suggest that no-first-use is more of a guideline than a rule and
doesn’t necessarily apply under conditions in which a technologically
superior foe attacks crucial targets with conventional weapons.
Even without this risk, the regional partners the U.S. relies on
would likely oppose provocative early conventional strikes against the
Chinese mainland. Those countries are in range of China’s conventional
weapons and economically dependent on the transnational production
system that has China as its fulcrum.
If the situation sounds hopeless, it’s not. It helps mightily that
China and the U.S. aren’t enemies and that both would be severely harmed
by a conflict across the Pacific.
For Americans, it is important to fixate less on China’s potential to
catch up to the U.S. in total military power and more on analyzing
which U.S. and allied strategies since the end of the Cold War have been
effective in specific geographic and political contexts.
For example, the George W. Bush administration successfully mixed the
credibility of the American commitment to the security of Taiwan (by
selling it large tranches of weapons and warning mainland China against
aggression across the Taiwan Strait) with reassurances to Beijing that
the purpose of the U.S. defense relationship with the island was not to
support permanent Taiwan independence from the Chinese nation. (For
example, the U.S. publicly opposed a 2008 referendum that called for
seeking United Nations membership for the island under the name
Taiwan.)
The Obama administration has successfully signaled to the Chinese
that the U.S. supports Japan’s administrative control of the Senkaku
Islands (for example, when the president reiterated in Tokyo in 2014
that the U.S. defense treaty with Japan covers the disputed islands).
But his administration also has reportedly called for restraint from
Japan as well, and even criticized Tokyo publicly for actions that seem
to whitewash Imperial Japan’s actions in World War II.
Both of these examples show how a combination of U.S. power and
resolve on the one hand, and diplomatic assurances on the other, can
calm potentially volatile situations involving emotional sovereignty
claims and a rising China. These episodes also demonstrate that
U.S.-China relations are not a zero-sum game — and that it’s dangerous
to act as if they are.
