“China’s New Military Leadership and the Challenges It Faces“
Greg Chaffin
National Bureau of Asian Research
Greg Chaffin interviews Roy Kamphausen, Senior Advisor for Political and Security Affairs at NBR, on what he thinks the new Central Military Commission will mean for the People’s Liberation Army and for China’s defense posture.
U.S. Global Defense Posture, 1783–2011
Stacie L. Pettyjohn
RAND
2012
144 pp.
In a refreshingly thin volume, Stacie Pettyjohn offers us an overview of how the U.S. approach to its national defense evolved from a minimalism that could barely defend the national frontiers to global interventionism.
It is a thoughtful, largely apolitical study that points us to a future where the U.S. treads more lightly overseas, and as such will offer food for thought for all of us who debate U.S. foreign policy.
IAI Heron 1 UAV in flight. Location: NAVAL AIR STATION, FALLON, NEVADA (NV) UNITED STATES OF AMERICA (USA) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Reforming U.S. Drone Strike Policies
Micah Zenko
Council on Foreign Relations
January, 2013
Have drones become the hammer that has turned every U.S. foreign policy challenge into a nail? Micah Zenko isn’t ready to go quite that far, but he does suggest that the lack of a policy framework to regulate their use hurts the U.S., and that we are best served long-term by helping to promulgate a set of international rules and norms to govern their use.
The piece is not directly China related, but given China’s active effort to develop its own unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) force, Zenko’s calls for international norms should bring China immediately to mind.
Crisis and Escalation in Cyberspace
Martin C. Libicki
RAND
2012
198pp
We are starting a new feature of The Peking Review today: our Free eBook of the Day.
While the books featured here will usually have a China hook (and we’ll explain it when it does), the primary purpose of this feature is to simply call your attention to a book we think our readers might find interesting that is available for the effort of a download.
Our first book is Martin Libicki’s examination of what the US Air Force would have to do if it found itself operating in the midst of a cyber-attack. As the most technologically-dependent of the US services, the Air Force makes a superb test-case of the rigors of operating in a hostile electronic environment.
As China is the implicit adversary in a conflict of this nature, it is a compelling read for those of us watching events both immediate and long-term unfold in the western Pacific.
“China’s Navy and Air Force: Advancing Capabilities and Missions“
Greg Chaffin interviews Andrew S. Erickson
National Bureau of Asian Research
September 27, 2012
With the most recent changes in the Central Military Commission, the Chinese Navy and Air Force now have a degree of prominence denied them for the past six decades. With the growing importance of global trade and far-flung interests, these services look to be the focus of defense policy during Xi Jinping’s first term.
Andrew S. Erickson of the U.S. Naval War College and Harvard University offers his perspective on why this is the case and what it will mean for the world in a thoughtful interview with Greg Chaffin of the NBR.
Mr. Ronald O’Rourke (Photo credit: USNavalInstitute)
China Naval Modernization: Implications for U.S. Navy Capabilities–Background and Issues for Congress
Ronald O’Rourke
Congressional Research Service
December 10, 2012
It is a part of Chinese grand strategy to keep its potential enemies, its friends, and even its own people guessing as to the capabilities and intentions of the People’s Liberation Army. While most of the world has discovered through bitter experience that the resulting uncertainty is inherently destabilizing, China remains wedded to opacity at the deepest levels of doctrine.
In U.S. politics, this gives license to hawks of all stripes to rally for greater defense spending even as it permits more cautious voices to claim that China is a paper tiger. The resulting debates ensure that there can be no coherent response until it is too late.
Ronald O’Rourke is one of a handful of experts who can take these politically-charged issues and bring them down to the level of actual operational challenges. His simple recitation of the facts will provide few doves with any degree of comfort, but it is a relief to see the facts stripped of rhetoric.
“Using BRIC to build at sea: The Brazil-China Aircraft Carrier Agreement and Shifting Naval Power”
Kai Thaler
IPRIS Viewpoints #9
IPRIS – Portuguese Institute of International Relations and Security
As the discussion fades over China’s first aircraft carrier, it is worth diving into exactly how China is building its carrier force. As much as China’s politicians and many of China’s people might want to think that the Navy’s renewal is an entirely homegrown project, in reality China is drawing from sources around the world to cobble together its naval aviation arm.
The Liaoning itself is, of course, the former Varyag, a Soviet-designed Admiral Kuznetzov class “aircraft-carrying heavy cruiser” around half the size of a U.S. Nimitz-class aircraft carrier. China purchased four carriers – the ex HMAS Melbourne from Australia, and the Varyag, Minsk, and Kiev from the republics of the former Soviet Union. As IPRIS expert Kai Thaler notes, the ships were purchased to introduce aircraft carrier construction and engineering to China’s navy and her shipyards as a part of China’s longstanding plans to build a carrier.
But Thaler’s revelations go further. More than just drawing from foreign sources for hardware, China had also signed an agreement with Brazil to have that country’s navy help train Chinese carrier aviators. The question is what this signals in terms of the Brazil-China relationship. While much attention has been focused on China’s relationships with pariah western hemisphere states like Cuba and Venezuela, the relationship between Brasilia and Beijing clearly deserves further attention as both countries gain in global influence.
Demilitarized Zone, North Korea (Photo credit: yeowatzup)
Strategic Studies Quarterly
Winter 2012
The SSQ for Winter 2012 is out and on the racks. There is nothing specific about China in this edition, but a couple of articles might capture the imagination of China hands.
USAF Colonel Vincent Alcazar offers some thinking about how to counter “anti-access/area denial” strategies pursued by potential adversaries, including China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia. Interesting to note that Russia is back on the boogey-man board.
RAND’s Bruce Bennett offers some ideas on deterring North Korea from using WMD. What is fascinating about the article is its underlying assumption: deterrence depends on the actions of the U.S. and the Republic of Korea. The hint is clear: US planners no longer feel they can count on China’s help in addressing the Korean nuclear threat.
As always, a half dozen excellent reads. It is telling, though, that most of the contributors in this Air Force publication are not serving or former USAF officers. One wonders if there is a brain drain sapping the formerly deep intellectual pool of America’s air service.
“Is America Listening to its East Asian Allies?”
David Kang
PacNet, Number 64
Pacific Forum CSIS
October 18, 2012
In a review of Hugh White’s new book The China Choice, David C. Kang of USC suggests that the U.S. attempt to form a loose coalition of nations to counter China’s growing assertiveness may be entirely wrongheaded. Kang notes that the reason erstwhile US allies are not jumping in to line up behind Washington is that they can less afford to irritate Beijing than they can to irritate Washington.
Both Kang and White make cogent points, and their comments add to a growing corpus of commentary questioning the Obama Asia pivot. What is unclear from the review is a more vital question: is the US effort to create a soft containment field around China doomed to fail? Or are Mr. Obama, Mrs. Clinton, and their teams are simply going about it the wrong way? Are we correct in drawing a thick black line around China in its current borders, implying a Cold War-esque forward-based containment effort? Or should we be thinking more of a realistic approach that accounts for our national will and resources, perhaps stepping back to a line that runs Alaska-Hawaii-Guam-Samoa-Australia?
These are hard, unpleasant questions, not least for the people of Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and the Philippines, all of whom take for granted the iron umbrella provided by the United States. But this is the direction toward which Kang and White are, more subtly than I, driving us.
“Under the shadow of a rising great power”
Szu-yin Ho
American Enterprise Institute
September 26, 2012
As China undergoes its internal changes and begins extending its ambitions beyond economic expansion, the entire Asia-Pacific region needs to adjust its foreign policies accordingly.
Professor Ho argues that just as America is shifting its attention to China, so must Taiwan undergo a shift in its own thinking and policies as a result of the changes underway in the mainland. She analyzes the current administration’s policies, which have led to a significant easing of cross-straits tension, and suggests what the future might look like.
As I’ve noted elsewhere, the uproar over the South China Sea and the Senkakus does not mean that Taiwan is off the table for Beijing’s irredentists. On the contrary – any settlement of territorial claims to the south and north of the Green Island have wider implications for Taiwan.
The Taiwan issue is in a latent stage. How much longer that continues is a matter for soothsayers. It will end at some point, and Ho makes a gentle case that it is better not be lulled by the current calm.
PLAN Marines based in Zhanjiang stand at attention. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
“China’s Overstretched Military Strategy”
Andrew Scobell and Andrew J. Nathan
The Washington Quarterly
Fall 2012
Scobell and Nathan, like them or not, are two of the most respected analysts of China’s foreign and security policy. What they offer in this article an argument that the PLA is being called upon by Beijing to do much more than it is capable of doing, a case that will surely land in the laps of Pentagon Panda-Punchers like a pot of spilled coffee.
Which is a shame, because it shouldn’t. What the two jaded China watchers are doing with their article is hinting at a wider U.S. grand strategy. Rather than immolate our political capital in Asia trying to contain the Dragon, perhaps the better move is to step back and let China overextend.
As always with these two, a superb read that will color our debates for the coming six months.
US Navy (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
High Seas Buffer: The Taiwan Patrol Force, 1950–1979
Bruce A. Elleman
Naval War College Press
June, 2o12
Recent events in the South China Sea and the Senkaku (Diaoyu) Islands, timed with a continued warming in relations between Taiwan and the Mainland, have temporarily displaced the six-decade international focus on the Taiwan Straits. Yet the strategic significance of that strip of water has not declined in the wake of recent events. If anything, the PRC’s claims to the south and immediate north of Taiwan can be seen as an oblique effort to bolster Beijing’s territorial claim on the Green Island itself.
That this is all taking place as China bestows overdue attention and budget on its navy and on maritime strategy is likely no coincidence. For these reasons, now is a good time for China watchers and naval planners to learn more about why China is so focused on controlling its “near seas.”
Bruce Elleman of the U.S. Naval War College offers us an oft overlooked piece of that puzzle. While history, Chinese irredentism, and geopolitics have set Beijing and Taipei at loggerheads, China’s grand strategy – and the doctrine of the People’s Liberation Army – Navy (PLAN) are also a response to decades during which the China coast was an uncontested highway of American naval might. Those decades formed the thinking of today’s PLAN leaders, and their doctrine and ambitions are tempered by the humiliating fact that the PLA, strong enough to challenge the U.N. on land in Korea, has been a dull instrument on anything wetter than a shallow river.
Elleman recounts the formative years of the PLA and its nearest sea from an American point of view, thus his study offers serves as a mirror for the PLAN, and deep background for what motivates China to dominate the waters within the “first island chain.”
“Europe’s involvement in East Asian Security: how to engage China“
Sebastien Peyrouse
FRIDE
May 9, 2012
The powers of the Pacific are all considering whether and how to change their defense postures to address China’s growing assertiveness. Obama has given us the “pivot.” Australia, too, is trying to determine whether it needs to rethink its doctrine and forces to more openly address the China “threat.” And now, Sebastien Peyrouse, a senior research fellow at the US-Swedish Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies program, wonders whether it is time for Europe to follow suit.
The question may seem frivolous, given Europe’s relative remove from East Asia (at least Australia and the U.S. share a lake with China), and given that the continent’s economic crisis is more likely to send it to China with hats in hand. But Peyrouse offers a series of recommendations that would make Europe an appropriate player in European security.
“Prospects for Establishing a U.S.-Australia-Singapore Security Arrangement: The Australian Perspective”
Ryo Hinata-Yamaguchi
German Marshall Fund of the United States
May 29, 2012
Australia is in a hard place. To its west, India is rising as a power in the Indian Ocean, and to its north, China is beginning to assert an aggressive geopolitical stance unlike any seen in the region since Japan’s rise in the early 20th century, and Indonesia remains restive in an era of Muslim fundamentalism. While Australia is hardly subject to “yellow peril” fever, the situation is disconcertingly familiar for Canberra.
Yet even as the rise of Asia’s emerging nations seems to push for a closer relationship with the United States and other regional partners, Australia remains hesitant to join even loose alliances for fear of annoying its most important trading partner, China.
Ryo Hinata-Yamaguchi at the Australian Defence Force Academy suggests that Australia needs to prepare now for the possibility that it may have to choose sides in the Pacific, given that its own forces, even if expanded significantly, would be insufficient to address the growing threats in the region.
The problem, of course, is that US commitments elsewhere combine with Australian budget constraints to make the ANZUS alliance inadequate to the task. Hinata-Yamaguchi suggests bringing Singapore into the loop. With its strategic location and crack armed forces, Singapore would be an important addition to the alliance.
The Next Arms Race
Henry D. Sokolski, Ed.
Strategic Studies Institute
July, 2012
While it is gratifying to see the United States and Russia continuing the effort to reduce the nuclear weapons on the planet, the elephant in the room is the rise of other nuclear powers and the extent to which they undermine the New START agreement.
In this comprehensive volume, Henry Sokolski, the Executive Director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, brings together a range of expert perspectives on the looming nuclear standoffs, touching on South Asia, Northeast Asia, and the Mideast. The question implicit in the volume is whether we need to rethink arms control in the face of creeping proliferation and the growing number of regional conflicts that might go nuclear. The answer, unsurprisingly, is “yes.”
Which leaves the world with a question: which way do we turn? The book offers some answers for people who are either worried about a world with more bombs and less control, or for those in denial. Both will find not only analysis, but the beginnings of some very smart solution.
U.S. Army War College Guide to National Security Issues, Vol. 1: Theory of War and Strategy, 5th Ed.
Dr. J. Boone Bartholomees, Jr., ed.
Strategic Studies Institute
Carlisle, PA
June 2012
359 Pages
U.S. Army War College Guide to National Security Issues, Vol. 2: National Security Policy and Strategy, 5th Ed.
Dr. J. Boone Bartholomees, Jr., ed.
Strategic Studies Institute
Carlisle, PA
June 2012
I have a bookshelf full of books on strategy, and I probably paid an average of $12 plus overseas shipping for each of them. To say I appreciate a bargain would be an understatement.
This two-volume set, offered as a free download, is a jewel. These are the textbooks of two of the core strategy courses of the United States Army War College, used to train the future leaders of the United States how to formulate grand strategy. At the very least they offer both insights to U.S. defense thought and a fascinating primer on American grand strategy.
English: This is the latest, authorised version of the RUSI logo. RUSI, the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Forging UK-China Consensus on a Strengthened NPT Regime
Andrea Berger and Malcolm Chalmers, eds.
Royal United Services Institute
March 2012
As a nuclear power new to global leadership, China should play a key role in stopping the proliferation of nuclear weapons. The question is what role it will play: team player or enabler of the legion of nuclear wannabees.
At the moment, China is something of a disruptive influence, in part because it sees the issue of non-proliferation through a different cultural and political prism than does the west. But a group of Chinese and British scholars have assembled a study that lays out areas where China and the west agree, and areas where there is actually more common ground than either side realizes.
This is an admirable work and an important one, and given that two of the authors, Shi Yongming and Guo Xiaobing, are members of influential think-tanks in Beijing, there is a chance that these ideas may well take hold in parts of the Chinese government.
We should not be too Pollyannish. In this year of transition, when the PLA is apparently pushing hard for a greater role in foreign affairs, getting China to commit to international norms of behavior is a long shot. But the effort has to start someplace, and the RUSI has done a service by creating a trans-national forum where the discussions on “how” might take place.
New Zealand has been something less than a full US ally since its government took a principled stand to deny visiting rights to nuclear-powered or nuclear-armed US ships in 1984.
The country’s distance from the Soviet Union and its isolation in the South Pacific probably gave the Kiwis a deep sense of security, as did, I am sure, the confidence that if anything untoward ever did happen with security in the region, New Zealand would continue to thrive under the umbrella provided by other Pacific nations.
It is getting more difficult to be a free-rider these days, especially as the shrinking U.S. and Australian navies find their ships drawn elsewhere, and China builds a blue water navy in search of resources. The security situation in the Pacific is more in flux than it has been for over six decades.
In the face of growing uncertainty, New Zealand has apparently woken to find itself uncomfortably close to isolation. Two diplomatic instruments have been concluded between the U.S. and New Zealand in the past two years that have begun to rebuild a security framework in the South Pacific: The Wellington Declaration, signed in November 2010, and, on June 19, the announcement of The Washington Declaration on U.S.-New Zealand Defense Cooperation.
This paper by Robert Ayson and David Caple of the Victoria University of Wellington explains in detail how the Yanks and Kiwis are working more closely on mutual defense than they have in a generation. It would be fair to say that the authors view this as a positive development.
What is unspoken, however, is that the U.S. to which New Zealand has allied itself is an ally with very different capabilities now than thirty years ago. While Mrs. Clinton’s work in building a diplomatic framework to address China’s rise is commendable, the capabilities of the U.S. armed forces to sustain those commitments has fallen to its lowest level since World War II despite record defense budgets.
New Zealand and the U.S. may be allies again, but as much as ever, the Kiwis need to be ready to defend themselves.
HMS Tireless, North Pole 2004 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Arctic Opening: Opportunity and Risk in the High North
Charles Emmerson and Glada Lahn
Chatham House and Lloyd’s
April 2012
For a long time, issues with regards to sovereignty over the Arctic have been the province of Russia, Northern European Nations, the United States, and Canada. No more. As the polar ice cap recedes, opening up new shipping routes, making resources more accessible, and threatening to change the distribution of global population, Asia – and specifically China – is trying to claim the Arctic as a “global” territory, not just one to be shared by nations bordering on the Arctic Sea.
There is some precedent for such an approach, specifically the way interests have divided up Antarctica. But the situation with the North Pole is different for enough qualitative reasons: it involves the seabed rather than land; the issue arises in the face of a shift in global power and demand for resources; and there were never any major world powers plopped on the edge of Antarctica. The opening of the Arctic is liable to be problematic.
In this report, two British institutions reknowned for their insights on international affairs combine to weigh in on the Arctic question. The report is comprehensive but makes a potentially dry subject highly readable, and in the process leaves one with a deep sense of urgency. Questions need to be answered now, or even more of the Arctic environment will be lost to international indecision.
China is in the midst of a push to be allowed observer status on the Arctic Commission, a matter to be decided in 2013. The authors appear to believe that China will be admitted as an observer, and once that happens they can be depended upon to push for full membership. At that point, a set of priorities divorced completely from environmental stewardship will likely dominate the forum.
Regardless of your stance on climate change, the world must begin mitigating the effects of what appears to be an unstoppable process of climatic warming. Dealing with the Arctic will be one of those issues that depends most on global cooperation. How we go from here will determine whether the Arctic will become a preserve, a gold mine, or a battlefield. Emmerson and Lahn do us all a great service by giving us a road map to start that discussion.
The Swiss Institute of Technology in Zürich (ETH) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Strategic Trends 2012
Andreas Wegner and Daniel Möckli, eds.
Center for Security Studies, ETH Zurich, 126pp.
Each year, the Center for Security Studies at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology takes an unselfconsciously Eurocentric look at the major issues in international affairs. For those of us fed on American and Australian security analyses, it is a help to get an occasional viewpoint-check from a transatlantic source.
This year is of particular interest, as China is front-and-center. The first chapter of the work is “China’s Uncertain Peaceful Rise,” written by CSS scholar Prem Mahadevan. While Dr. Mahadevan does not specialize in China, there is some brain-tickling thinking happening here. Specifically, he describes China as being divided betwen the “Core” and the “Frontiers,” and the way he divides the nation is fascinating. According to his analysis, less than half of China – the traditionally Han regions – are part of the nation’s core. There are profound implications of his analysis, and it is worth understanding and debating.
Other issues covered are Europe’s “strategic weakening” (a fascinating read after the NATO success in Libya), regional conflicts in the Horn of Africa, the shifting geopolitics of energy (with a heavy focus on China, naturally), and a fascinating look at how the world of cybersecurity is being taken over by the military.
In all, a superb read with fewer pages than your average issue of Foreign Affairs. Download at the link above.
Commander, U.S. Marine Corps Forces, Pacific, greets People’s Liberation Army (Photo credit: #PACOM)
In “Embracing the Moon in the Sky or Fishing the Moon in the Water” in the July-August 2012 issue of Air & Space Power Journal, Senior Colonel Xu Weidi at the PLA‘s National Defense University Institute of Strategic Studies offers his thoughts on the effectiveness and limitations of deterrence.
Col. Xu points out (correctly, I think) that the deterrence implicit in the strategic arms race conducted between the USSR and the US between 1945 and 1989 way have prevented nuclear war, but at great cost. Further, Xu reads the history through Sun Tzu’s lenses and finds our current understanding of deterrence as a strategic concept needs more nuance.
While anything published internationally by Chinese military officers is suspect (the notion of “academic independence” is, to say the least, rather underdeveloped under the Party’s watchful eye), there is at the end a veiled question aimed straight at the PLA: “how, to whom, and under what circumstances should a developing nation [i.e., China] demonstrate its deterring might?”
A fascinating read indeed.
“Taking Mines Seriously: Mine Warfare in China’s Near Seas”
Scott C. Truver
U.S. Naval War College Review
Spring 2012
Strategists focus heavily on the aerospace aspects of China’s “access denial” strategy, thinking about how ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and attack aircraft could effectively seal the US Navy out of the Western Pacific. But another weapon remains that could have a similar effect in a much lower intensity conflict: sea mines.
Drop a few dozen cheap and low-technology magnetic mines around the Paracels or Spratleys, sit back, and watch the fireworks. It is an illustration that China has plenty of arrows in its quiver that could prove costly for Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei, and the U.S. to address, one that demands an equally asymmetric strategy.
Flags of the home nations of the students of the Naval Command College (Photo credit: U.S. Naval War College RI)
“Networking the Global Maritime Partnership” – Stephanie Hszieh, George Galdorisi, Terry McKearney, and Darren Sutton, via U.S. Naval War College | 2012 – Spring.
This is a fascinating article that picks up on the concept first introduced by Chief of Naval Operations (later Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) Admiral Mike Mullen, wherein we no longer see the U.S. Navy as operating in a strategic vacuum, but as a component of a “Thousand Ship Navy,” a multinational maritime force of nations who share the same priorities and can therefore be melded into a single, unified force.
I liked Mullen’s idea when he first introduced it six years ago, and I like it more now that the USN is fumbling its warship procurement efforts and other nations are expanding their naval forces (Look at the UK building two aircraft carriers as a part of a fleet renewal program as just one example.) Mullen may not have taken his ideas directly from Thomas P.M. Barnett‘s thinking about a multi-agency, multi-national response to global security challenges (as outlined in his seminal book The Pentagon’s New Map,) but the direction is the same. The U.S. may be sheriff, but it needs deputies to run the town.
The article offers some detailed ideas about the challenges and opportunities in making it happen.
China Security Report – The National Institute for Defense Studies.
The better-known analyses of China’s defense posture and its implications for the rest of the world tend to come from American, European, and Australian sources, but the developed country with the most immediate and pressing need to understand China’s intentions is Japan.
This year, for the second time, Japan has issued its China Security Report detailing its view of China’s spending, its strategic and military needs, and its near-term intentions. Being a public document and being from Japan, many of the conclusions are couched in language that is diplomatic and polite, framing its conclusions in terms of China’s concerns. This report is worth the read, both because it is pithy and because it offers a viewpoint that compliments the published assessments at the Pentagon.
Image via Wikipedia
Each year, Japan’s National Institute for Defense Studies conducts an exchange program that invites national security scholars from around the world to take a collective look at the Asian security environment and offer their points of view on the issues the region faces. This year they have produced another excellent collection, and it is available at the link above.
What I enjoy about this series is the often unexpected perspectives thes authors offer. My favorites from this collection are H.J.S. Kraft’s chapter on “The Continuing Malaise of National Security in the Philippines,” which strikes me as particularly fascinating given the evolving situation in the South China Sea; You Ji’s perspective on how China’s defense posture is evolving in response to America’s “Strategic Shift” away from Europe, Iraq, and Pakistan and toward the Pacific; and, of course, Andrew Erickson’s superb review of U.S. security concerns in the region.
As we ease into Chinese New Year, this would be an excellent time to peruse this collection. The Year of the Dragon promises much change, but a read through these chapters should minimize the surprises.
