China is on the rise as a military power. The People's Liberation Army (PLA) once relied on mass manpower to win victories, defend China's borders and quash internal dissent. Now the communist regime is modernising the PLA, building long-range naval and air forces, and developing strategic warfare capabilities, such as ballistic missiles (including satellite killers), submarines, and 'cyberwar' technologies.
What is driving this? As noted in China's Unquenchable Thirst for Oil, China's burgeoning economy relies heavily on foreign oil from the Middle East, South America and Africa. It needs warplanes and warships that can protect its oil tankers in a crisis. China sees the US as threatening its interests (like its claimed sovereignty over Taiwan), and fears US military power. It seeks ways to neutralise the US's high tech power.
American correspondent Robert D. Kaplan has analysed the threat that a resurgent China poses to the US. Kaplan is noted for his gritty coverage of the world's hot spots and insightful commentaries on the future of warfare, international relations and global society. Unlike Thomas L. Friedman - who argues that globalisation is making the world smaller and everyone happier, wealthier and interconnected - Kaplan's vision is darker. Anarchy, violence, poverty and war will be the defining characteristics of the 21st century, as they have been throughout history.
Kaplan challenges the notion of the 'modern world' and the orthodox view of a bright and cheery future of high technology, international trade and universal prosperity. He suggests that if you want to see what the 21st century will be like, read Herodotus, Thucydides, Livy and Hobbes.
In How we would fight China Kaplan argued that China and the US will confront each other in a 'decades long Cold War'. China will challenge US hegemony not through great sea and air battles (which would play to US strengths) but 'asymmetrically', using unconventional military tactics, psychological warfare, and a mix of intimidation and cheque book diplomacy to influence Asian and Pacific countries.
The US aim, Kaplan argues, should be to deter China without 'needlessly provoking it' with a web of bilateral alliances (a 'hub and spoke' system, with the US's Pacific Command, based in Hawaii, being the hub), and a powerful military presence in the Pacific which mixes high tech weaponry with unconventional warfare capabilities.
In my view, Kaplan emphasises China's advantages but downplays the strong cards that the US would hold in a confrontation. These include:
- the ring of US bases and allied or friendly countries around China;
- the US Navy's control of the world's sea lanes, including those that supply oil to China;
- China's vulnerabilities, such as its long littoral and land frontiers and fissile tendencies (internal dissent is one of the Chinese regime's greatest fears);
- its emotive stance on Taiwanese sovereignty, the assertion of which could provoke China into launching a conventional attack, a situation in which it would suffer heavily at US hands.
In a confrontation the US could use a 'bush fire' strategy to keep China at bay. When putting out bush fires, firefighters often have to deal with repeated outbreaks in different areas. Similarly, a combination of US threats and actions, targeted at China's vulnerabilities, would keep China busy fighting fires and dampening hot spots.
China will want to avoid such a situation. Its actions will be low key. It will seek to win one-off surprise engagements through unconventional means - humiliating the US without risking prolonged conflict. It may try to provoke a disproportionate US response to specific incidents, and cast the US as a dangerous aggressor. China's acts will be calibrated for psychological impact: on the American news media and population, and on Asian political and popular opinion. This will be part of a deeper strategy in which China seeks to undermine US willpower and America's prestige in the eyes of regional nations.
Sun-tzu wrote that war is deception and that the highest form of warfare is to attack the enemy's strategy. In the long confrontation between the US and China the winning side will see through deception, recognise the enemy's plans, and successfully impose its own strategy and will on that of the enemy.
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