A New Type of Great Power Relationship between the United States and China: The Military Dimension

8/20/2019 A New Type of Great Power Relationship between the United States and China: The Military Dimension

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Strategic Studies Instituteand

U.S. Army War College Press

A NEW TYPE OF GREAT POWER RELATIONSHIPBETWEEN THE UNITED STATES AND CHINA:

THE MILITARY DIMENSION

Geoffrey Till

September 2014

The views expressed in this report are those of the author anddo not necessarily reect the ofcial policy or position of theDepartment of the Army, the Department of Defense, or the U.S.Government. Authors of Strategic Studies Institute (SSI) andU.S. Army War College (USAWC) Press publications enjoy fullacademic freedom, provided they do not disclose classiedinformation, jeopardize operations security, or misrepresentofcial U.S. policy. Such academic freedom empowers them tooffer new and sometimes controversial perspectives in the inter-est of furthering debate on key issues. This report is cleared forpublic release; distribution is unlimited.

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FOREWORD

For the United States and its allies and partnersaround the world, the debate about the pivot or re-balancing of American interests toward the Asia-Pa-cic Region is crucial. The United States has to ensurethat allies and partners in other areas do not feel ne-glected or disadvantaged by the possible consequenc-es of this initiative. To a large extent, this will dependnot merely on how that initiative is presented, but alsoon the nature of the relationship between the UnitedStates and China. The more tense that relationship,and the more competitive rather than cooperative it is,the greater the likelihood of strategic distraction fromother important areas of the world. China under Presi-dent Xi Jinping is working out what it wishes that re-lationship to be, since it too recognizes that its nature

will, in part, determine the peace and prosperity of theregion. China also realizes that its nature will affect toa signicant extent, the regime’s capacity to ensure thecontinued economic development on which the Com-munist party’s continued dominance depends.

For both countries, then, the stakes are high. Presi-dent Xi has recently urged that China and the UnitedStates develop a new relationship between the twogreat powers. In this monograph, Dr Geoffrey Till ex-plores what form that relationship may take, what itsconsequences are likely to be, and what options areavailable to the United States.

The manner in which the Armed Forces of theUnited States deployed into the Asia-Pacic are usedto convey messages of reassurance and deterrence to-

ward China will be a critical part of the package of nec-essary strategic policies toward the region. Althoughthe region is overwhelmingly maritime in nature, the


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U.S. Army has a number of essential roles to play incontributing toward this new relationship.

DOUGLAS C. LOVELACE, JR. Director Strategic Studies Institute and U.S. Army War College Press


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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

GEOFFREY TILL, Dean of Academic Studies at theUnited Kingdom Command and Staff College from1997-2006, is now Emeritus Professor of MaritimeStudies at King’s College London and Chairman ofthe Corbett Centre for Maritime Policy Studies. Since2009, he has also been a Visiting Professor at the Ra- jaratnam School of International Studies, Singapore.He is also Adjunct Research Professor at the NationalInstitute for the Study of the South China Sea, Haikou,Hainan, China. In addition to many articles and chap-ters on various aspects of maritime strategy and poli-cy defense, Professor Till is the author of a number ofbooks. His most recent is Seapower: A Guide for the 21stCentury, Third Ed., January 2013, for Routledge. Heedited, with Patrick Bratton, The Triumph of Neptune?

Seapower and the Asia-Pacic: Adjusting to New Realities;and an Adelphi Book for the International Institutefor Strategic Studies, Naval Expansion in Asia: An ArmsRace in the Making? Both were published by Routledgeas paperbacks in 2013 and 2014. In 2013, with JaneChan, he edited Naval Modernisation in South-East Asia:Nature, Causes and Consequences. His UnderstandingVictory: Naval Operations from Trafalgar to the Falklandsis to be published by ABC-Clio in 2014. Professor Tillis currently working on a number of other projectson maritime security in the Indo-Pacic region. Hisworks have been translated into 12 languages.


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SUMMARY

The relative rise of China is likely to lead a majorshift in the world’s strategic architecture, which theUnited States will need to accommodate. For the out-come to be generally benecial, China needs to be dis-suaded from hegemonic aspirations and retained asa cooperative partner in the world system. This willrequire a range of potentially conicting thrusts inU.S. policy.

Since the Asia-Pacic Region is primarily a mari-time theater, the U.S. Navy, Marines, and Air Forcewill need to play a leading role. The U.S. Army,nonetheless, will have a substantial supporting andfacilitating role.


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A NEW TYPE OF GREAT POWER RELATIONSHIPBETWEEN THE UNITED STATES AND CHINA:

THE MILITARY DIMENSION

THE ISSUE

Power is the ability to inuence through thestrength of a country’s armed forces, the wealth of itseconomy, or the hold it has over public opinion or thepopular imagination.1 Power is best understood asthe relative capacity to inuence the environment andhuman behavior. The instrumentalities of inuencerange across a spectrum from “soft power” (the socio-cultural dimension) through what some have called“sticky power” (the economic-industrial dimension)to “hard power” (the military-strategic dimension).Major shifts in relative power determined by dramatic

changes in these three very closely related catego-ries of inuence have been a central characteristic ofhuman history.

Nowadays the focus of attention is on a notionalshift in relative power from “West” to “East.” Conten-tions that “we are living through the end of 500 yearsof Western ascendancy”2 and that Asia “is poised toincrease its geopolitical and economic inuence rap-idly in the decades to come”3 have become common-place. To some, this is simply part of a historic pat-tern of continuous change and tectonic historic swingsbackward and forward from one to the other.4 At themoment, the East is generally regarded as being in theascendant, signicantly rising relative to the West.5

Recently, this debate has narrowed from grand

matters of the relative power of East and West, to themore specic issue of the future power relationship ofChina and the United States. This has led to vibrant


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debate in China, the rest of the Asia-Pacic region,and in the United States about both the extent of the

anticipated transformation in this bilateral strategicrelationship and its projected consequences.6

The United States has announced its intention toresume paying the level of attention to the Asia-Pacicregion that its strategic importance warrants. In Presi-dent Barack Obama’s words, “As a Pacic nation, theUnited States will play a larger and long-term role inshaping this region and its future, by upholding coreprinciples and in close partnership with our allies andfriends.”7

In the wake of the American “rebalance” towardthe Asia-Pacic, the requirement for the establish-ment of a new and positive strategic relationship be-tween China and the United States seems the mostfundamental of these consequences. Building such a

relationship is key to the enduring national securityobjective of ensuring a safe, stable, and prosperous in-ternational environment.8 This has been characterizedby President Xi as “a new type of great power rela-tionship” and by Washington as the “central, sort of,organizing principle” of international relations.9 Thechief characteristics of this new relationship—and theextent to which they will be shaped and illustrated byshifts in the soft, sticky, and hard aspects of relativenational power and the implications of this for therole of the U.S. military in the region—demand closerconsideration.

Soft Power: The Socio-cultural Dimension.

In the socio-cultural dimension, the Chinese lan-guage and Chinese concepts are clearly becomingmore visible as the country’s increasing wealth in-


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creases their geographic spread and depth. To someextent, this is a natural consequence of China’s rise.

But it is also the effect of deliberate state policy. The“Confucian Institutes,” for example, which were estab-lished to win over public opinion in the outside world(something that historically was rarely of concern tothe Chinese before the modern era) have proved suc-cessful. As many as 325 such institutes already existaround the world, and most have major developmentplans to be nalized before 2020.10 The so-called “Pan-nikar tradition,” in which, under the surface, mostAsian countries resent the presence of outsiders intheir region, provides a fruitful basis for the country’scompetitive “charm offensives” in Southeast Asia andelsewhere.11 China’s vision of a harmonized worldbased on traditional Chinese values has proved aneffective, if not decisive, counter to what Beijing re-

fers to as “the China threat theory” peddled by itsadversaries.12

The perceived policy paralysis in Washington’sability to manage its economic difculties and re-gional concerns about the reality of the U.S. pivot/rebalance toward Asia has at least temporarily de-creased the credibility of the Western liberal narrative,while increasing the relative effectiveness of China’ssoft power. Some analysts in China urge the leader-ship to compete in the sphere of economic ideas bypushing the case for a Beijing consensus against theWestern narrative of economic and social develop-ment based on liberal democracy.13

These analysts argue that opinion polls suggestmajor distinctions between the perceived trustwor-

thiness of the U.S. Government and the attractions of“the American Dream,” and that many are skepticalthat the United States will, in fact, still be the leadingpower in 20 years. Even so, the U.S. image is still glob-


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ally better than China’s.14 Nonetheless, norms aboutthe freedom of the press, religion, and speech increas-

ingly are being accepted as universal, not just Westernones, even in China itself. The United States seeks totake careful advantage of this.

Moreover, the fact that doubts about the rebalanceare a matter of concern throughout Asia demonstratesthe limits of China’s soft power, especially when Bei- jing is perceived as being unduly assertive in its claimstoward the South and East China Seas.15 These limits,together with a memory of historic antagonisms (inthe case, for example, of Vietnam and Japan) and lo-cal resentments about the sheer number and the per-sonal styles of mainland Chinese ooding into HongKong, Singapore, and other parts of Southeast Asiaas both tourists and temporary/permanent residents,reinforce the point. China’s leadership must be aware

of such limits to its soft power and of the potentialliabilities that might accompany it.16

Further, a review of the shopping and eating plac-es available in Shanghai and other such locations inChina helps explain the widespread fear among thosethe West would call “hard-liners” about the extent towhich Chinese governance styles and values are beingsubverted by Western cultural inltration.17 This fear,together with rising concern about the uneven effectof rapid industrialization on the domestic popula-tion, accounts for an almost certainly exaggerated fearin governmental and party circles about the surviv-ability of the regime and its values.18

There are, then, obvious social and cultural ten-sions between the United States and China. A key

question for American policymakers in framing theirplan for strategic communications is how competitivethis relationship is and should be, and how best tohandle it. The healthy development of bilateral rela-


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tions arguably will depend in signicant measure on“soft” cultural exchanges.19

Sticky Power: The Economic-Industrial Dimension.

Few would deny the remarkable growth of China’sgross domestic product (GDP) in recent years, whichincreased tenfold between 1978 and 2004, comparedto fourfold for the United Kingdom (UK) between1830 and 1900. As a result, China accumulated a cur-rent account surplus of 10 percent of GDP, while theUnited States, on the other hand, accounted for morethan half the world’s current account decit at 6 per-cent of GDP.20 A highly effective government stimulusprogram and massive credit expansion drawn fromthe world’s biggest accumulated reserves—which isin turn derived from high levels of both savings and

foreign investment—meant China recovered quicklyfrom the crisis of 2007-09, with export levels 17 per-cent higher in 2009 than for 2008.21 In 2000, the U.S.GDP was 8 times larger than China’s; now it is only 4times larger, and, according to Jim O’Neill, GoldmanSachs Chief economist, China’s GDP will overtake thatof the United States in 2027.22 Many analysts, such asProfessor Victor Sit of Hong Kong Baptist University,indeed argue that China’s economic achievementsto date should be seen essentially as providing thefoundation for a Second Global Shift into a more so-phisticated kind of economic prowess—characterizedby high-tech engineering, the development of greenenergy, and a substantial move into the nancialservices.23

This appears to contrast strikingly with the generalangst, for example , about American competitivenessand Washington’s ability to handle systemic economic


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problems.24 This development, if true (and there areplenty of reasons to doubt it25), would pose a substan-

tial potential challenge—whether intended or not—tothe future role of the U.S. dollar and to Washington’scontinued domination of the world economy. It is anew source of Chinese condence and offers a majorchannel for China to shape its international context.26 Reinforced by the obvious implications for defensespending, this development suggests that a signi-cant shift in relative economic power is indeed underway, even if that may not amount to a future Chineseeconomy dominating the American.

But although the relative growth of Chinese eco-nomic power cannot be denied,27 a number of pointscounterbalance this fact. First, as China industrializes,it creates problems for itself. These include weak lo-cal government nances and excessive amounts of

domestic debt, inadequate banking system loans, thefuture costs of an aging population, a probable debt-to-GDP ratio of 65 percent,28 and a low governmentaltax-take relative to the GDP. As incomes rise, Chinawill lose the competitive advantage of low-cost laborand increase the dangers of a middle-income trap. Tothis must be added the often relegated social tensionsremarked on earlier.29 The regime can only hope to re-solve these pressures by the domestic investment of agoodly proportion of its newfound sources of wealth.Nor, according to former premier Wen Jiabao canthere be total condence that such problems are sol-uble in the near future.30 These pressures, he argued,mean that currently the Chinese economy is “unsta-ble, unbalanced, uncoordinated, and unsustainable”

and that accordingly it would be “foolish to postulatethat the 21st century will belong to China.”31 Wen Jia-bao is but one of many Chinese implicitly pointing out


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the unwisdom of confusing the size of an economywith its strength. The 2012 Chinese Defense White Paper

indeed makes the point that the U.S. economic recov-ery will make it harder for China to catch up with theUnited States.

This raises a number of important issues. Settingrelative indicators of raw elements of the economicperformance of China and the United States againsteach other is misleading in two ways. First, the strengthof an economy has to be set not just against that ofother countries, but also against the challenge of itsown commitments. Second, it is by no means clearthat any relative rise in China’s economic strength,when set against that of the United States—and whichmay emerge even from this more sophisticated mea-sure of comparison—is necessarily against Americaninterests. Many would argue the precise reverse, in

fact. In 1971, bilateral trade between the two countriescame to less than $5 million; the United States nowdoes more trade with China in a single hour.32

Such is the level of mutually benecial economicinterdependence between the two countries that amajor failure in China could have catastrophic effectson the global economy, and therefore on the UnitedStates itself. Indeed, some worry that the internal so-cial and economic pressures listed above will requireBeijing to give greater priority to its domestic marketand may make the economy rather more autarchicthan it is now. In turn, this could lower the level ofeconomic interdependence, making it signicantlyless of a bonding mechanism between the two coun-tries. What, in fact, emerges from this review of the

economic dimension of China’s relative rise is that,despite the astounding nature of China’s recent eco-nomic performance, its future trajectory and possible


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consequences remain uncertain and ambiguous, andmay depend in large measure on U.S. policy and the

fortunes of the U.S. economy. What also emerges,however, are the potential tensions between Ameri-can and Chinese conceptions of the global economicsystem and how it should develop.33

Hard Power: The Military Dimension.

Since the health of the economy is fundamental todefense spending, the narrative of the decline of theUnited States relative to China is almost as strong inthe military power dimension as it is in the industrial-economic one. There are major systemic differencesin the defense spending of the two countries (such ascheaper labor costs in China but more social defensespending). This, plus the relative lack of transparency

in Chinese budgeting, makes it difcult to comparethe two budgets. But even according to ofcial gures,Chinese defense spending is increasing, and, by 2025,could easily reach half the American level.34

Again, such raw comparisons based on beancounting (whether those beans are billions of dollars,or naval platforms and systems) are inadequate inthemselves. Calculations of relative military strength as measured by the capacity to decide outcomes haveto include the degree of challenge posed to a countryby the scale and nature of its perceived commitments.In this more nuanced mode of assessment, the U.S.Navy, for example, is challenged by the sheer diver-sity of the scenarios for which it feels it has to pre-pare. This is true whether it’s a question of having to

prepare a wide variety of mission capabilities, both tocope with asymmetric techno-tactical anti-access strat-egies ranging from terrorists on jet skis to the anti-ship


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ballistic missile strategies of the Chinese and the verydifferent conditions pertaining to the Western Pacic,

the Indian Ocean, the Gulf and Red Sea, the Gulf ofAden, the Mediterranean, the Caribbean, and, to someextent, the Atlantic theaters of operation.35 These con-siderations dissipate the U.S. Navy and make it moredifcult for it to assemble that concentration of forcethat Mahan advocated so strongly. Further, “[f]or therst time since 1890 . . . the U.S. Navy is faced withthe prospect of competing against a potentially hos-tile naval power possessing a ship-building capacitythat is equal to if not superior, to its own”36—in somerespects at least.

That is the reason for the concerns in Washingtonabout trends in the correlation of naval, and, indeed,air forces, in the Western Pacic and the possibilitythat the U.S. military may be on the verge of signi-

cant decline relative to China. These concerns wereexacerbated by the administration’s sequestration dif-culties. Thus, the Chief of Naval Operations, Admi-ral Jonathan Greenert, stated: “We’ll have inadequatesurge capacity at the appropriate readiness to be therewhen it matters. . . . We will not be able to respond inthe way the nation has expected and depended (on usto act).” In an open letter to Congress, 45 prominentanalysts concluded that such short- and long-term dif-culties “. . . will degrade our ability to defend ourallies, deter aggression, and promote American eco-nomic interests. . . . It will erode the credibility of ourtreaty commitments abroad.”37

By contrast, China is seen as engaging in a majormodernization of its land and air forces and, most

signicantly, given the maritime nature of the Asia-Pacic region, in a potentially transformational rise inthe level of its naval aspirations. The development ofChina’s naval nuclear power, for example, seems like-


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ly to boost China’s foreign policy condence. Thus, aGlobal Times editorial in October 2013 stated:

China is powerful in possessing a credible second-strike nuclear capability. . . . Some countries haven’ttaken this into serious consideration when constitut-ing their China policy, leading to a frivolous attitudetowards China in public opinion account. . . . Chinaneeds to make it clear that the only choice is not tochallenge China’s core interest. . . . Developing ma-rine-based nuclear power is part of such work.38

Building up the navy is a critical part of China’slong-stated intention to develop as a maritime power.On July 11, 2005, China inaugurated its rst Naviga-tion Day to commemorate Admiral Zheng He’s rstvoyage in the 15th century. Seven years later, in hislast speech at the “Big 18” National Party Congress in

2012, President Hu Jintao argued for, “. . . enhancingthe Chinese capacity for exploiting marine resources,resolutely safeguarding China’s maritime rights andinterests, and building China into a maritime power.”39

This message was strongly reinforced by the rstmajor speech of his successor, President Xi, on thesubject, which, signicantly, took place on the guidedmissile destroyer Haikou.40 China’s urge to the sea,moreover, is robustly maritime, not just naval. Thestress of energy and also food security means it in-corporates far more than just shipping, ship-building,and associated industries. China’s growing interest inthe Arctic demonstrates that it is global in scope. Prac-tical progress and the extent of China’s institutionalreform (for example, its coast guard agencies) shows

how seriously these maritime aspirations are taken.41 Given the traditional land-centric and continental

focus of Chinese strategic culture,42 this latter develop-


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ment has struck many observers as particularly worry-ing. China is developing more ambitious naval forces,

and even more signicantly, the maritime industriesthat historically tend to go with them.43 Almost equal-ly inevitably, these will challenge the U.S. strategicprimacy in the Western Pacic, a geographic area ofstrategic maneuver hitherto dominated by Americannaval/air power. Given its many other global com-mitments and the likely impact of reduced levels ofdefense spending in the years ahead, the U.S. Navy isparticularly sensitive to these developments. This sen-sitivity is reected in the “rebalance” toward the Asia-Pacic, the “Air-Sea Battle construct,” and the currentU.S. naval preoccupation with political, technological,and operational ways of maintaining required levelsof access to the waters of the Western Pacic in thesenew and more challenging circumstances.44

Such perceptions may need, however, to be caveat-ed. First, it is easy to exaggerate the extent of China’snaval rise, its rst carrier and growing amphibiouscapability notwithstanding. Most estimates suggestthat for all its current difculties, the U.S. military ingeneral, and its naval and air forces in particular, willremain far more capable than the Chinese at least forthe next couple of decades.45 Second, it is possible tointerpret China’s greatly increased level of investmentin the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) as anunremarkable illustration of a historically natural andnow economically sustainable response of a countrywith developing maritime interests both in its nearseas and more distantly, to enhance its capacity to de-fend those interests. Offshore, China has substantial

economic and strategic interests most obviously in theSouth and East China Seas, an area from which, in therecent past, its national security has been threatened.


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China’s growing presence on the world ocean, suchas its participation in the international counterpiracy

mission off Somalia and the presence of an air-defensefrigate standing off the coast of Libya, while thou-sands of its citizens were evacuated from the perils ofa local civil war, reect the country’s integration withthe global trading system—a process that inevitablyexpands China’s international interests and securityobligations. The rst of these, at least, called for coop-eration with the U.S. Navy rather than competition,still less confrontation.

Once again, the extent of China’s relative militaryrise and the motivation and consequences of that riseremain a legitimate area for debate. These are likely tobe quite signicantly affected, among other things, byAmerican policy.

Alternative Futures.

A shift, then, is taking place across all three di-mensions of power—soft, sticky, and hard. It is evi-denced not just by greater economic and militarystrength, but by China’s greater diplomatic weight atthe United Nations (UN), as illustrated by its role inthe management of the North Korean problem and itsinuence in the ongoing debate over Libya, Syria, andIran. Some anticipate radical change in the global eco-nomic system, expecting a set of governing and oper-ating principles more collective, less individual, morestate-centric, less liberal. In other words, the Yuan willreplace the dollar, and Mandarin will take over fromEnglish—Globalization with Chinese characteristics.46

The immediate consequences were made clear byRuan Zongze in the Peoples’ Daily:


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Today, China, because of its rapidly rising strength,sits at the main table on the global stage, and needs toget used to newly being in the limelight. The interna-tional community also needs to adjust to China’s newrole.47

Hence the key question, if the status quo is not de-fensible and some degree of strategic change seemsinevitable, which of the possible alternative futuresin system change, both in terms of outcomes and the

means by which those outcomes are delivered, wouldseem the most benecial—or the least harmful—to U.S. interests? There are clearly a variety of suchoutcomes, with varying degrees of acceptability toWashington.

A Zero-Sum Shift.

History suggests, unfortunately, that war and con-ict often accompany systemic change, as the incum-bent great power either defeats a challenger or suc-cumbs to it.48 As Niall Ferguson succinctly comments,“Major shifts in the balance of power are seldom ami-cable.” In China, as elsewhere, there are hawks whomost denitely think along such potentially confron-

tational lines.49

There cannot be, they say, “two tigerson one mountain.” It would also be as well to remem-ber that with its combination of economic power andhard military power, China is potentially the mostformidable challenge the United States has ever comeacross, especially when it might turn itself into a major nuclear weapons state. Previous outcomes to suchconfrontations (which would include World Wars Iand II, and the Cold War) underline the wisdom ofHenry Kissinger’s observation that:


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Neither [the US and China] has much practice in co-

operative relations with equals. Yet their leaders haveno more important task than to implement the truthsthat neither country will ever be able to dominatethe other, and that conict between them would ex-haust their societies and undermine the prospects ofworld peace.50

Heightened Rivalry and Increased Multipolarity.

A second somewhat less immediately apocalypticpossibility would be of continued U.S.-China rivalryagainst a background of increased multipolarity withhigh levels of state versus state competition, reminis-cent perhaps of Europe before World War I, and ascharacterized perhaps by the tensions between Japanand China over the islands of the East China Sea, or, in

a somewhat lesser key, between Japan and South Ko-rea.51 Most analysts would reject this as a desired out-come, rst because of what the European example ledto, and, second, because of a systemically greater needfor a collective global response to common threatslike international crime, environmental degradation,international terrorism, economic recessions and

depressions, and so forth.

Lowered Rivalry and Increased Multipolarity.

Recognition of this need may, instead, lead to athird kind of outcome—greater multipolarity butwith less state-on-state competition, in which the keyinterests of all major stakeholders are sufciently ac-

commodated. Since China appears to be “catchingup” with the United States faster than other countriessuch as India or Russia are catching up with China,the resultant multipolarity would seem likely to have


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a distinctly bipolar edge to it, though it would be inthe interest of neither great power to seek to develop

this relationship in “G2” terms.Nonetheless, such an outcome anticipates the Unit-

ed States and China acting to a signicant extent as se-curity partners in a wider, more multipolar, world. Insuch a world, the individual and distinctive agendasof a host of other countries in a notably diverse regionact as both a restraint and—possibly playing one offagainst the other—an encouragement to both of themain actors in the drama, as has been done beforeelsewhere. This will ensure that neither emerges asthe sole superpower.52 This is plainly what Singaporeamong other U.S. partners would wish to see:

The rise of China does not imply the decline of theUnited States. And we in Singapore do not subscribeto the declinist theory . . . the world and Asia are bigenough to accommodate both a rising China and areinvigorated US.53

All the same, a distinctly competitive edge to therelationship between the United States and China inthis construct seems likely to remain. Hence, in thisrelationship, an element of mutual deterrence would

need to co-exist along with the reassurance in U.S.policy. Nonetheless, this kind of calibrated and defen-sive balancing would, in effect, be much less provoca-tive than outright competition.54

Peaceful Replacement.

The nal alternative outcome is of one major

power stepping down and being replaced by anotherpeacefully, as illustrated by the supplanting of Brit-ain as the world’s leading power in the 19th centuryby the United States in the 20th. As a process, this is


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in some ways the most benign of all outcomes. Butit was not without its own tensions and difculties55

and is in any case unlikely to be accepted by a UnitedStates, which doubts its necessity or may be reluctantto entrust its core national interests to the protectionof another state, or group of states, especially one withsignicantly different values.

Accordingly, of these four alternative outcomes,some variant of the third option, namely, greatermultipolarity but with less state-on-state competi-tion, would seem to have the greatest appeal. Thisrequires the retention within a broadly cooperativerules-based international system of China as a majormilitary and trading power, with national interests todefend and incentives to work substantially with oth-ers against common threats. There is, however, likelyto be some robust debate about what those rules are.56

The Chinese never cease to point out that institutionslike the World Bank, the Organization for EconomicCooperation and Development, and the InternationalMoney Fund are dominated by the West and need tochange rather more than they are changing. The keyissue here would seem to be the extent to which Chinaseeks to make new rules—or whether the old ones willmake China.

Nonetheless, engaging positively with China wasone of the major publicly stated motivations for therebalance toward the Asia-Pacic:

A key objective of our rebalance is to build a healthy,transparent and sustainable U.S.-China defense rela-tionship, one that supports a broader relationship . . .a strong and cooperative U.S.-China partnershipis essential for global security and prosperity in the21st Century.57


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The United States, in effect, will need to accommo-date China’s views more than it used to and prompt

a reconsideration of the rebalance toward the Asia-Pacic. For China’s part, President Xi has made hisview of the four required principles, in what he callsa “new type of great power relationship,” fairly clear.Both sides should:

1. Use existing intergovernmental mechanisms forcommunication and dialogue;

2. Utilize trade and exchanges on technology toopen new channels of cooperation;

3. Coordinate their policies on major internationalissues; and,

4. Develop a new pattern of military relations.58

Nonetheless, the extent and consequence of thisstrategic shift and the new relationship between Bei-

jing and Washington remains ambiguous. One of thereasons is that this shift, at least to a large extent, iscontingent on the direction and success of U.S. policy.

OUTLINES OF A RESPONSE

Denying Denial.

Sufcient changes are afoot to suggest that a sub-stantial reappraisal of U.S. policy toward China as anemerging great power is called for, even if the extentand consequence of that rise as yet remain ambigu-ous, and may mean no more than a shrinking ratioof American superiority. Hence, the value of HughWhite’s warning against what he calls the four com-

mon denials about China’s future is to be found amongthose who do not accept the need for the reappraisal


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of the necessity for some form of accommodationbetween Beijing and Washington, namely,

1. China is not really growing economically thatmuch;

2. China will not attain sufcient strategic weight;3. China will not choose to use its strategic weight,

as to do so is not in its interest; and,4. Even if China does so choose, it will necessarily

lose.59

On this basis, there would not be much need for theUnited States to re-evaluate substantially its currentcourse of policy.

The declinist debate about the extent to which theUnited States will have to cede at least elements of itssupremacy to China remains unresolved, but, for allthat, there is little doubt that something of a strategic

shift is indeed taking place.60

As Ambassador CharlesW. Freeman, Jr. has observed:

In some disturbing ways, Sino-American competitionis beginning to parallel the contest between us and theSoviet Union in the Cold War. This time, however, theUnited States is in the scally precarious position ofthe USSR, while China plays the economically robust

role we once did.61

That may be an exaggeration of the robustnessof the Chinese economy and an underestimation ofU.S. resilience, but, even so, none of these four deni-als serve as a reliable basis for sensible policymaking.“Americans will need to move beyond the myth,”Christopher Layne concludes, “that the United States

is somehow immune from the forces of change thathistory has unleashed.”62 Exaggerated notions of whatthe “No. One Power” represents and can, in any case,achieve may also need restraint.


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Outlines of a Policy.

Evidently, there is a need for a clear-sighted andpragmatic policy of retaining China as a major stake-holder in a more multipolar world system and a pro-spective security and economic partner of the UnitedStates. This stands midway between the panda-hug-ging and dragon-slaying extremes of recommendedAmerican policy. It differs radically from the contain-ment options of “Mr. X” when confronting the SovietUnion of the late-1940s, in that there is no thought ofthe holding back of a major and essentially malignantnew power until its internal contradictions change itinto a more benign one. Any attempt to contain Chinasequentially in this way is likely to be counterpro-ductive, not the least because a policy would be mostunwelcome in much of Asia. Instead, the emphasis

is on the simultaneous transmission of messages ofreassurance and deterrence, both intended to conveythat China’s rise is to be welcomed as a responsible se-curity partner. Putting it simply, the aim would be toprovide incentives for “good” behavior and disincen-tives for “bad”—and in both cases to range across thewhole of the soft-sticky-hard dimensions of power.Critically, the aim needs also to involve wider engage-ment with other players in a more multipolar world.

There are three dimensions to such a policy:• Deterrence—providing disincentives to unwel-

come behavior;• Reassurance—providing incentives to welcome

behavior; and,• Wider Engagement with other players in an in-

creasingly multilateral setting in order to sup-port U.S. policies of deterrence and reassuranceas necessary.


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There are good reasons for caution about this pol-icy, and two initial points need to be made immedi-

ately. First, the U.S. capacity to engage in a nuancedand effective program of deterrence and reassuranceis itself much more conditional than often appears tobe the case. The extent to which China’s trajectory can be shaped easily by American policy initiatives maybe exaggerated. To a large extent, China has alwaysmarched to the sound of its own drums. This is truein terms both of domestic political and institutionalconstraints and of traditional cultural values—renedand consolidated by 5,000 years of history. As Kiss-inger has warned, these distinctive values and theirpossible effects need to be understood. For example:

A principal difference between Chinese and westerndiplomatic strategy is the reaction to perceived vul-nerability. American and western diplomats concludethat they should move carefully to avoid provoca-tion; the Chinese response is more likely to magnifydeance.63

That said, “a calibrated combination of rewardsand punishments, and majestic cultural performance”were arguably what preserved China through thou-

sands of years of turbulence. Logically, the country’sleaders may well understand, and even prove surpris-ingly receptive to, such a policy, even one emanat-ing from Washington.64 Nonetheless, there is a needfor some becoming modesty in Washington’s ap-praisal of what it can and should do to mold Chineseperceptions.

Moreover, its relationship with the United States is

far from being the sole, or even necessarily the main,preoccupation of a Chinese leadership concernedabove all with providing the kind of internal social


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and economic development that ultimately will bethe main way of ensuring the survival of the current

regime. For this reason, China is independently en-gaging in its own pivot toward Central Asia, Africa,South America, and the Middle East—not necessarilyin some grand game of global rivalry with the UnitedStates, but mainly because its requirement for resourc-es and markets demands it.65

This feeds into the second assumption that needsto be made about China’s being a responsible securitypartner, namely, that there is a sufcient constituencyof support for the notion of sharing power withinChina itself. Some Developmentalists would arguethe unwisdom of China’s assuming the burdens ofeven an informal empire. Instead, they argue, Beijingshould focus on more limited aims, simply to win thestatus needed to help create conditions in East Asia

conducive to the country’s economic developmentand the continued stability of the regime as it proceedsthrough its program of calibrated reform.66 China isrepresented as a still-developing country, and its in-volvement in the system should be designed to meetthose internal needs.

There are a number of difculties here, however.China frequently has exhibited a marked reluctanceto assume the burdens of being a responsible stake-holder, preferring instead to devote those resourcesto its immediate internal needs. This might explain,perhaps, China’s limited and tardy response to theHaiyun typhoon disaster in the Philippines.67

Other Chinese skeptics concerning the notion ofthe country’s acting as a responsible stakeholder, on

the other hand, argue that China’s intention should beto seek an East Asia that resembles the ancient past—Sino-centric, hierarchical, deferential, but reasonably


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stable—and that a substantial U.S. role in the areawould be unnecessary and unwelcome.68 These are

complex issues much debated by scholars.Among other points they make is that in its 5,000

years of history, China has actually played differentroles in East Asia, from victim to suzerain, from pro-moting the policies of openness and mutual respectcharacteristic of the Tang dynasty to the greater lev-els of control manifested by the Yuan and Ming dy-nasties.69 The “All Under Heaven” Tianxia system, inwhich China is at the center of a deferential universeof smaller-state vassals benignly looked after whilethe barbarians are kept at arm’s length, goes deep inthe Chinese psyche. It presupposes China setting therules of such a harmonious world.70 Skepticism aboutthe adoption of the role dened by the United Statesas a responsible stakeholder is further reinforced by

the sense that the rules of the current game histori-cally have been set by Washington and its allies, withlittle Chinese involvement.

A third group, the Internationalist Globalists, ar-gue, on the contrary, that in its own economic andstrategic interests, a rising China needs to integrateitself into the world economic system and help shapeits future as a responsible stakeholder. Thus Liaowang,a leading party foreign affairs journal, says, in a much-cited article:

Compared with past practices, China’s diplomacy hasindeed displayed a new face. If China’s diplomacybefore the 1980s stressed safeguarding of national se-curity, and its emphasis from the 1980s to early thiscentury is on the creation of an excellent environment

for economic development, then the focus at presentis to take a more active part in international affairsand play the role that a responsible power should on


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the basis of satisfying the security and developmentinterests.71

It is difcult to gauge the relative strength of thesethree grouped responses or their future trajectories,but they do represent a variety of shades of opinion.The entrepreneurial middle class will tend to favorthe third option; the military and representatives ofthe still massive state-owned enterprises, the second.The United States therefore has to work on the vari-

ous potentially conicting schools of thought withinthe country.72 Assuming and acting as though the he-gemonists within China are the dominant group73 islikely to prove a self-fullling prophecy for the UnitedStates. The problem is compounded by the fact that asyet, there is no longer a leading Mao-like gure pre-dominant in setting China’s security agenda; instead,

there is a shoal of conicting agencies and views rang-ing from the hard to the soft liners. Nonetheless, Presi-dent Xi seems already to have won for himself a levelof state authority not enjoyed by his two predecessors.His immediate assumption of the chair of the CentralMilitary Commission and creation of a nascent Na-tional Security Council emphasize the point. PresidentXi’s own take on the issue is therefore likely to be key

to future developments, even if he is operating withina more pluralistic and constraining context than is of-ten assumed. That being so, his earlier U.S. residence(and, indeed, the fact that his daughter is studyingat Harvard) may suggest an encouraging degree ofopen-mindedness on the issue of China’s developingrelationship with the United States.74


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Messages of Deterrence.

That said, the Chinese military remains an impor-tant constituency, which on the whole tends to be morehawkish than many party ofcials in the Ministry ofForeign Affairs, or Commerce. This hawkishness istempered, however, by the military’s strategic-cultur-al emphasis on the notions of active defense and itsprofessional prudence and awareness of the militaryrealities. Accordingly, there is scope for the exertionof a degree of deterrent pressure on Chinese assertive-ness, should this be seen to recur. All the same, Bei- jing exhibits a marked propensity to push back whenunder pressure or challenged, a characteristic muchillustrated by its policy in the disputed South and EastChina Seas.

In addition to this the extent of the public reaction

to such events as the bombing of the Chinese Embassyin Belgrade, the air collision between Chinese andAmerican aircraft near Hainan in 2001, and rising ten-sions in the South and East China Seas demonstratesthe existence of a growing nationalist sentiment with-in China (and, indeed, elsewhere in the Western Pa-cic). This sentiment, when empowered by the toolsof the social media, can hardly be ignored by anygovernment, whatever its political hue or means ofcontaining it.

Moreover, as remarked earlier, the policy effectof such groups may be reinforced by the existence ofa strategic culture that features, for example, whatKissinger calls “offensive deterrence.” This involves“. . . the use of a pre-emptive strategy not so much to

defeat the adversary as to deal him a psychologicalblow to cause him to desist.” To an extent, such reac-tions to external events are the default setting.75


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Some Chinese policy initiatives do, indeed, seem toemanate from hard-line circles, not the least the extent

to which the regime is implicated in the widespreadcyberattacks on the United States and other sites. Suchinitiatives clearly demand a robust response.76 A prag-matic acceptance of the existence of hard-line opinion-formers in China and the unwelcome policy initia-tives that they may produce consequently means thata realistic policy has to include the provision, whennecessary, of disincentives for unhelpful behavior andpolicies. Such a policy therefore demands a degree ofdeterrence.

The United States, as the world’s biggest economy,leading military power, and a major source of globalvalues, is in a good position to engage in policies of cal-ibrated deterrence when there is a need. The extent ofits military decline vis-à-vis China, and indeed every-

one else, should not be exaggerated. The United Statesspends more than eight times on defense than doesChina. Moreover, of the top nine defense spenders,four are allies—the UK, France, Japan, and Germanyand one a partner, Saudi Arabia. U.S. spending com-fortably exceeds the rest of the nine put together—$739billion to $486 billion.77 If partners such as South Koreaand Singapore are factored in as well, the total goeshigher still. U.S. defense spending is still only some4.4 percent of its GDP, more than most countries, butless than some and is, in strictly economic terms,78 eas-ily affordable. Certainly, even now the United States isnowhere near the level of defense spending that con-tributed to the fall of the Soviet Union. China’s level ofdefense spending by comparison is notoriously hard

to measure, but almost any calculation suggests that,although China is catching up, there remains a hugegap in military spending between the two countries.79


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As a result, in the Pacic, it will be many yearsbefore Washington’s commanding lead in deployable

air and naval power is seriously compromised:

The consensus of sources is that the size and level ofoperational experience of the U.S. Navy and Air Forcemakes it nearly impossible for potential opponents tomount a serious challenge in the waters and air spaceover the world’s oceans. This is likely to continue until2035.80

The obvious exception to this, though, may be themuch narrower waters of the Western Pacic, wherethe gap between the two countries could proveconsiderably less.

More widely, Washington’s deterrent capability issustained by the continuing appeal of the U.S. dream;and for all the country’s current budgetary problems,

that dream remains strong, and its economy is still re-garded as the essential motor of the world economy.The U.S. image—its capacity to win and inuencefriends in the Asia-Pacic and to avoid playing into thehands of the Chinese hegemonic constituency, how-ever—depends on avoiding the appearance that theUnited States is “looking for a ght.” For this reason,

deterrence needs to be recessed, pragmatic, noncon-frontational, and, hence, frequently silent, so far as themedia and much of the outside world is concerned—over such matters as the Chinese declaration of a newAir Defense Zone in the East China Sea. But privatepersuasion behind closed doors is likely to be moreeffective than repeated and ostentatious displays ofAmerican resolve.81

Accordingly, using these power advantages in or-der to make disincentives for bad behavior clear hasto be carefully calibrated—rst, that such use is seenby Beijing as credible; second, that it does not feed


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the paranoia of the hard-liners and encourage theirrise relative to that of the soft-liners inside China’s

policymaking circles; third, that it does not triggerthe instinctive rather than thinking cultural reactionsdescribed by Kissinger; and, fourth, that it does notunduly upset the other Asian powers. As a generalrule, the further up the soft power/hard power scalethey are, the more likely responses are to have thesenegative effects. Even so, they may be necessary insome cases.

China is well aware of the dangers of encirclement,but may need to be shown that in its assertive behav-ior in the East, and especially the South China Seas,it is in danger of encircling itself. Hence, likely localreactions to assertive acts may also act as a deterrentto such acts.82

Messages of Reassurance.

But alongside acting as a deterrent, the successfulretention of China as a security partner will requirethe United States to provide ample reassurance thatits intentions toward China are not malign, and that itwelcomes, in fact as well as in rhetoric, the country’sresumption of its proper place in the world order. Thispolicy rests, of course, on the assumption that Chinais willing to share responsible power with the UnitedStates, as Beijing says, and is not secretly aiming atpredominance either within the region or globally.There is room for doubt about this, as Kurt Campbellin one of his last interviews as Assistant Secretary ofState pointed out:

. . . We have done everything possible to encourageChina to play a leading role in the G20, in the East Asia


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Summit, just every imaginable institution and venue.But in many respects, China is ambivalent about play-ing that role.83

Because of the various constituencies of opinionabout such reassurances, Beijing may need to be per-suaded into being a responsible Great Power and ac-cepting the political and economic costs that go withit. One paradoxical characteristic of this role is the oc-casional need to accept being bullied by the weak and

to moderate, or even withdraw, policies that provedeeply unwelcome to the irritatingly presumptuoussmaller fry clustered around one’s heels. Persuasionaccordingly requires the provision of positive incen-tives for good behavior.

What is encouraging, as discussed earlier, is thewealth of evidence suggesting that the advantages

of a cooperative relationship with the United Statesis widely recognized within Chinese policymakingcircles. If the economic development of China, the so-lution of its many domestic problems, and, indeed, thesurvival of the regime are China’s top priorities, then afruitful economic relationship with the world’s largestand generally most successful economy is recognizedas essential. Unsurprisingly, then, trade between the

two countries is steadily rising. Worth approximately$100 billion in 2003, it doubled to $200 billion in 2005,rose to $300 billion in 2007, to $406 billion in 2011, andin 2012, topped $500 billion.

The consequent need for mutual understandingis evidenced by the existence of more than 60 mecha-nisms for ofcial U.S.-China discussions. Presidents

Hu and Obama met 13 times, and at Sunnylands inRancho Mirage, CA, Obama and Xi appear to havegotten off to a good start.84 Such contacts are rein-


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forced by a plethora of more informal ones, such asthe two-way tourist trade, huge numbers of student

exchanges, and so forth. Although the notion of Chi-merica can be pushed too far, there is certainly evi-dence of mutual dependence in the economic relationsbetween the two countries, even perhaps a degree ofconvergence.85

This reects, and indeed strengthens, the existenceof soft-liners in China, who wish China to adopt aresponsible stakeholder position alongside the Unit-ed States, and who are well aware of the dangers ofdrifting into strategic rivalry. The notion of China’ssoft power has been widely discussed in China86—(hence the push for Confucian Institutes), and Beijingis perfectly aware that perceived assertiveness in theEast and South China Seas has made its neighborsmore wary.

Moreover, there is a great deal of diversity evenamong the soft-liners about what China should do inpractical terms to secure this new relationship with theUnited States, differences that reect a greater varietyof opinion about how China should develop in gener-al. Nor is there any doubt about the fact that there arelimitations to the concessions China can make in orderto be seen as a responsible stakeholder. Thus, in hisrst Presidential address, Xi was noticeably tougherthan his predecessors in making this point clear:

[N]o country should presume that we will engagein trade involving our core interests or that we willswallow the bitter fruit of harming our sovereignty,security, or development interests. . . . [China would]. . . stick to the road of peaceful development but never

give up our legitimate rights and never sacrice ournational core interests.87


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In his foreign policy initiatives, Xi has to balancebetween contending domestic forces, as does every-

one else. China has real concerns about U.S. policy,which need to be, and indeed are being, addressed.88

Therefore, the United States has to present and ex-plain its policies carefully. Many would see Obama’spivot/rebalance toward Asia as a prime exampleof how not to present policy. Arguably, its rst ap-pearance fed paranoia in Beijing that the policy wasessentially a military demarche toward China (and sosustained the hard-liners). Then, when its real limitsbecame clear, the policy troubled them further byrevealing the limits of American power at a time ofsequestration. The policy alienated other countries inAsia, who concluded that it looked like the policy ofcontaining China in which they did not wish to par-ticipate. The policy also mystied local U.S. partners,

who felt insufciently consulted and were not sureof their role in it. The assumed association of the re-balance with the much misunderstood Air-Sea Battleconstruct reinforced misperceptions of both. Further-more, U.S. allies and partners in other areas becameconcerned that their interests would be neglected. Thefact that much of the rebalance was a perfectly natu-ral response to the running-down of the Iraq and Af-ghanistan commitments and hence a return to normal,and that the military dimension was a relatively smallaspect of the rebalance, got lost in the noise. Arguably,it would have been better not to have announced theinitiative with such fanfare, but simply, quietly, tohave gotten on with it. In crafting a new security rela-tionship with China, such “bumper-sticker” strategies

are more hindrance than help in a policy designed toassuage, not exploit, China’s anxieties, while protect-ing U.S. interests in the region.89


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Given the reluctance of most Asian states to takesides in a great power rivalry between China and the

United States, and the need to secure a sustainable bal-ance of interests between them, the United States hasto engage in a policy of careful conciliation alongsideits deterrence of Chinese assertiveness.90

Wider Engagement.

The third and nal constituent of a policy of help-ing to turn China into a security partner is, at the sametime, seeking the support of other partners in a moremultipolar world. In such a world, there will be othersignicant rising players, both in the region (Japan,Korea, Australia, the Association of Southeast AsianNations [ASEAN], and Indonesia) and, outside theregion; these countries include India, Brazil, Mexico,

South Africa, the European Union [EU], Saudi Ara-bia, and Russia. Responsibility for the direction of theworld’s affairs will be rather more shared than it usedto be. Russia and China tend to call this the “democ-ratization of international relations,”91 and are clearlyanxious to facilitate such a process.

This can be a helpful process for the United Statesin two ways. First, all these countries, to a greateror lesser extent, face the same range of problems—the dangers of recession and depression, organizedtransnational crime, mass migration, global warm-ing, pandemics, and international terrorism, whichcan only be addressed by serious collective action andeffective global or at least regional governance. Theyhave a signicant share in the global economy and,

in consequence, an interest in advancing solutions toglobal challenges.


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Second, most countries in the region do not want toanswer, or even to be asked, “Whose side are you on?”

in any strategic competition between the United Statesand China. Their differing levels of economic depen-dence on China is one of the main reasons, but theirattitude may also suggest implicit assumptions aboutthe strategic unwisdom of facilitating the emergenceof “China versus the Rest” structures in the Asia-Pacic region, which would take it back to unwantedand potentially dangerous forms of bilateralism. Forthis reason, the United States needs to tread a carefulline between encouraging closer relations among thecountries of the region and seeming to seek to marshalthese countries into an anti-Beijing coalition. Nonethe-less, a number of them, especially in the Indo-Pacicregion, have their own reservations about aspects ofChina’s possible future trajectory and may seek com-

fort in each other’s company.92

Beijing is perfectly wellaware of this fact and of the damage that overassertivebehavior in the South and East China Seas can do toits charm offensives by reinforcing, rather than un-dermining, the China threat theory. This acts as a sys-temic constraint on aggressively nationalistic policies.

These two points strengthen the notion that con-structively engaging with other countries, perhaps es-pecially in the Western Pacic, will play a key role in ageneral policy of encouraging China to become a U.S.partner and perhaps an even more signicant securityprovider in the global system. No other country seemsas well placed as the United States to engage in thiskind of focused consensus-building leadership.93

The importance of a considered and energetic en-

gagement with the rest of the countries of the WesternPacic is reinforced by the fact that one consequenceof China’s rise is that it puts some of Washington’s lo-cal alliances under great strain. In such maritime dis-


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putes as those over the islands of the South and EastChina Seas, the United States has to steer a complex

course between providing sufcient support to alliesand partners like Japan and the Philippines, whilenot enough to encourage entangling adventurism. Assuch recent events over the Scarborough and SecondThomas shoals in 2012-13, and over China’s declara-tion of an air defense identication zone (ADIZ) inDecember 2013, have shown, this can be a tricky lineto follow.

In spite of that, the other countries of East Asia,sensitively engaged, have a substantial contributionto make to the mixed deterrence/reassurance policiesthat could help China become a true security partnerfor the United States, rather than a hegemonic threat.Heightened awareness in Beijing of the reactions andimportance of local states should act as a signicant

incentive for truly harmonious policies.

IMPLICATIONS FOR THE U.S. MILITARY

Introduction.

In order to facilitate China’s rise as a responsiblestakeholder, the United States will need to developinitiatives designed to deter, reassure, and garner thesupport of other states. Although the U.S. military inthe Asia-Pacic has a key contribution to make to sucha policy, there is a good deal more to such an exercisethan that. Political, economic, and social initiatives, inmany cases, will be far more important. But as HillaryClinton nonetheless has remarked, the military role is

indispensible if the full spectrum of possible events isto be adequately covered:


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The U.S. will be better positioned to support humani-tarian missions; equally important, working withmore allies and partners will provide a more robustbulwark against threats or efforts to undermine re-gional peace and security.94

The Asia-Pacic is generally recognized as a pri-marily maritime region. Great sections of the world’slargest ocean lie between most of its leading actors.The region’s economy depends absolutely on sea traf-

c and, to an increasing extent, on sh and energy re-sources to be found at sea. In consequence, many coun-tries in the region are rapidly developing the maritimeelements of their economies, including China. Thereare numerous challenges to that sea dependence.Among them is the great skein of island and juris-dictional disputes stretching from the north of Japanto the Bay of Bengal. Not surprisingly, a substantialbuildup of naval/air forces is taking place around theregion. Not unnaturally, then, the U.S. Navy, Marines,and Air Force are widely seen as having the lead-ing role in the military aspects of U.S. policy towardthe region.

In consequence, there may be a danger of over-looking the role of the U.S. Army in a properly coordi-

nated joint approach to the challenges of the WesternPacic. The U.S. Army role, however, is an essentialcomponent in the mix. For all its push to the sea, Chi-na at the moment remains essentially a continentalpower; China’s strategic culture reects long periodsin which its main security preoccupations were withthe defense, and sometimes the extension of, its ter-ritorial borders. This goes for most other countriesin the region as well. Seven of the world’s 10 biggestarmies are to be found in Asia, and 21 of the 27 Asia-


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Pacic nations traditionally have the Chief of Army astheir Chief of Defense.95 Many countries in the region,

moreover, still suffer from major problems of domes-tic insurgency and are therefore required to engage inlong, costly, and difcult land-force-centric campaignsto secure national integrity. In such a situation, an en-gagement approach that neglects the land dimensionis unlikely to succeed. Accordingly, the U.S. Army Pa-cic Command (USARPAC) seeks to maintain “per-sistent engagement, forward presence, trained, andready forces and an agile mission command” in orderto cope with a wide range of theater contingencies.96 Accordingly, all three services will need to contributeto the deterrence of China’s assertiveness to its reas-surance and to a strategy of wider engagement inthe region.

Deterrence and the Military.

Despite the fact that “preventing and deterring fu-ture conict relies on nding the right theater forceposture” and that “winning the nation’s wars has andwill always be the U.S. Army’s most essential mis-sion,”97 it is hard to conceive of a situation in whichit would be necessary or even credible for the UnitedStates to engage in a direct land war with China. Thisdoes not, however, apply to the Korean Peninsula,where the explicit deterrence of North Korean aggres-sion remains in many ways USARPAC’s core missionin the Asia-Pacic theater. But this deterrence is notaimed at China and indeed is partly designed to avoidprovoking it. With this signicant exception, the U.S.

Navy, Marines, and Air Force, rather than the Army,would be at the daily cutting edge of U.S. military de-terrence of Chinese aggression, should that ever seemlikely to occur.


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Nonetheless, it is the Army’s contention that theAir-Sea Battle construct, to the extent that it is a con-

sciously deterrent strategy, “requires a joint force . . .You can’t achieve in my opinion, A2AD with just airand sea . . . You have to look at it from a joint forceperspective and not from a parochial perspective.”

This was certainly the language of the Joint Opera-tional Concept (JOAC) in November 2011. The Armyshould be able to provide the vital infrastructure, mis-sile defenses, supply, and command-and-control fa-cilities, even if not apparently in the forefront of anysuch Pacic-based campaign.98 Some, indeed, advo-cate a shift in Army thinking away from mechanizedmaneuver and toward missile forces designed to deterthrough the capacity to defend allies and “hinder ad-versaries from projecting power themselves.” Work-ing with the U.S. Navy and Air Force, the Army’s

deployment of anti-ship missiles on land sites, it isargued, would “limit China’s ability to inict damageoff the Asian mainland” and offer enhanced prospectsfor a blockade of Chinese shipping (or Offshore Con-trol).99 Others, though, defend the continued need formechanized armor.100

However this maneuver/repower debate worksout, as an editorial in DefenseNews remarked: “Thereare few crowded battle-elds, and fewer theatres inwhich some land component will not be necessary toshape events or attain decisive results.”101 This is con-sistent with the ofcial language, which talks of “inte-grated operations across all ve domains,” the need tomaintain the capacity to “defend and respond in eachwarghting domain” in order to ensure “the U.S. and

allied expeditionary warfare model of power projec-tion and maneuver.”102


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Contextual realities reinforce the point about theindispensability of a signicant role for the Army in a

recessed strategy of deterrence in the Western Pacic,not the least because of the very poor record sinceWorld War II of predictions about when and wherethe large-scale commitment of ground forces mightprove to be necessary. To cope with unexpected con-tingencies, “we should be organized and prepared fora rapid response of widely dispersed expeditionaryforces that converge to any crisis.”103

The presence of U.S. forces in the region, moreover,is a matter of choice, not geography, since the area isfar removed from the continental United States. Thereis then a signicant discretionary element to the U.S.guarantee of less fortunately placed allies and part-ners such as Japan and South Korea. Accordingly, apolicy of sea-based offshore-balancing (which im-

plicitly retains the option of sailing/ying away if/when the going gets tough) needs to be sustained bya substantial presence ashore for maximum credibil-ity and strategic effectiveness. Finally, the mainte-nance of a heavy land capability ashore in Korea with“(h)igh states of readiness and training for the NorthKorean threat that is the best deterrence to prevent itfrom actually occurring” requires the maintenance ofdemanding warghting standards and helps provide“. . . the Army that everybody wants to be associatedwith.”104

Moreover, the substantial buildup of Chinese na-val/air capability, its relative lack of transparency,and the apparent furthering of its counterinterventionstrategy could certainly all be seen as a challenge to

the U.S. maritime supremacy in the area. Up to now,the U.S. Navy had become accustomed to thinkingof itself as the dominant naval player in the Western


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Pacic, in fact if not theory, conceding China’s pre-eminence in the continental theater. Now China ap-

pears to be seeking to transform this military balanceto its own advantage. One probable consequence maybe the unraveling of the standard maritime off-shorebalancing narrative, which argues:

. . . that America can best contain our adversaries notby confronting them on land, but by maintaining ournaval and air power and strengthening those smaller

nations that see us as a natural counterweight to theirlarger neighbors.105

The more maritime China becomes, the less likely insome respects will all this seem possible.

Nonetheless, there is a substantial maritime com-ponent to the strategic tension between China and theUnited States. One of the most obvious signs is the

defense of what the United States sees as freedom ofnavigation in waters the Chinese regard as their own.This has become one of the main irritants in the cur-rent relationship between the two countries, and, withthe Chinese announcement of a new ADIZ in the EastChina Sea in November 2013, could easily get bothmore complicated and more dangerous operational-

ly.106

China maintains that unauthorized foreign air/naval activity in its economic exclusion zone (EEZ),including what the British call “military data gather-ing,” is a kind of tactical/battleeld preparation, andso prejudicial to the security of China.107 This activity,China claims, is a contravention of the UN Confer-ence on Laws of the Sea (UNCLOS) Article 301, whichrequires parties to refrain from threatening the sov-

ereignty of any state when exercising their rights insomeone else’s EEZ. The opening of the PLAN’s newsubmarine base at Sanya, with its all important ac-


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cess to deep water, will no doubt have strengthenedsuch perceptions. Should China be slowly developing

a bastion approach for the deployment of its futuresubmarine submersible ballistic missile (SSBNs), asthe Soviet Union did in the Barents Sea and the Sea ofOkhotsk, sensitivity to such data gathering would nodoubt increase still further.108 The Impeccable incident,after all, took place a mere 75 nautical miles southeastof the Sanya Naval Base.109 The intensity and frequen-cy of such U.S. activities is held to be evidence of ColdWar thinking and a stumbling block to better military-to-military relations. The United States would regardall this as an instance of China seeking to change therules rather than observe them. The same observa-tion may be made about the USS Cowpens incident ofNovember 26, 2013.

Further, China’s conception of its EEZ and its near

seas is that it is an abundant source of sh, oil, and gasresources essential to the national economy, an areaof indisputable sovereignty that must be protected,a large defensive moat against unwelcome intrud-ers, and a point of access to the wider ocean. For allthese reasons, in Beijing’s view, these are waters inwhich China’s interests and expectations should beparamount. The unexpectedly harsh tone of China’sresponse to the projected but canceled presence of theU.S. carrier George Washington in an exercise with theRepublic of Korea’s navy in the Yellow Sea after thesinking of the Cheonan (and by subsequent editori-als in the Global Times, the English-language versionof the ofcial People’s Daily) , illustrates the point. Thelatter said:

China undoubtedly needs to build a highly credibleanti-carrier capacity. . . . Not only does China need an


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anti-ship ballistic missile, but also other carrier-killingmeasures . . . Since US aircraft carrier battle groupsin the Pacic constitute deterrence against China’sstrategic interests, China has to possess the capacity tocounterbalance.110

China seems often to see itself as potentially en-circled by foreign forces in local seas. Accordingly,Chinese commentators regularly and publicly con-demn the forward presence of U.S. naval warships,

and no longer accept—if they ever did—argumentsthat it has a stabilizing function that also works tothe benet of China. Thus, People’s Liberation Army(PLA) Major General Luo Yuan declared: “The so-called forward presence means that the United Statescan send its gunboats to every corner of the world . . .This way, the United States can even claim the Yel-low Sea and the South China Sea is covered withinits security boundary.”111 Chinese commentators alsopoint out that were the USS George Washington to havesailed into the Yellow Sea, its aircraft would have beencapable of reaching Beijing. If we add to this a stra-tegic culture deeply affected by the country’s historicexposure to threats from the sea, not the least of whichis in this particular area, and to the disastrous conse-

quences for China of the failure to deter these activi-ties, Chinese sensitivity to the unauthorized presenceand activity in Chinese waters is understandable.

It is this context that China has seemingly em-barked on a campaign of developing counterinter-vention capabilities that would put American forcesat risk, should they enter the near seas in a mannerto which China takes exception. The resultant anti-ac-cess/area denial (A2/AD) strategy,112 as this has beendubbed by its prospective victims, appears to be a


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complex system-based sea denial strategy that makesuse of sophisticated and resilient command, control,

communications, computers, and intelligence, surveil-lance, and reconnaissance (C4ISR) facilities to detectand target hostile surface ships and to threaten themwith a range of ballistic and cruise anti-ship missiles,delivered from land bases, land-based aircraft, sub-marines, and medium and small surface combatants.All of this strategy, it would seem, is accompaniedby a cyber offensive intended to undermine the U.S.Navy and Air Force’s electronic capacities to defendthemselves and to sustain offensive operations. TheUnited States seems to have been surprised by howrapidly key components of this strategy, such as theanti-satellite capacity revealed in 2009, the initial oper-ating capacity of the DF-21D anti-ship ballistic missilein late-2010, and the J-20 fth generation ghter that

appeared in March 2011, have emerged. How effectiveall this would be militarily remains an issue of consid-erable debate, but even its critics accept that A2/ADputs U.S. forward presence in the near seas at signi-cantly greater hazard, and thus may serve the Chinesepolitical/deterrent purpose of such a strategy.

The effect is reinforced by what seems to be a rea-sonably concerted political and legal campaign todemonstrate to the other countries of the region thatU.S. naval intentions, especially, but not exclusively,in the EEZ, are provocative, destabilizing, and illegalin terms of the UNCLOS (which, as they rarely fail topoint out, the United States has so far not ratied). Thiscombination of threatened hard power and deployedsoft power has had its effect on Asia opinion, and

certainly is not conducive to improved relationshipsbetween the two main actors in this drama.113 It is notinconceivable that this combined power could lead to

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A New Type of Great Power Relationship between the United States and China: The Military Dimension

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