Abstract: Given the current importance of the United States and China in the international political and economic scene, a healthy strategic relationship between the United States and China in the future is going to be essential if these two countries want to continue to be strong economic and political allies. China’s recent naval military build-up has aroused much concern among certain groups of politicians and analysts, who see this build-up as a threat to the United States’ historic hegemonic position in Asia, with the Chinese Navy possibly trying to reduce the US Navy’s influence in Asian waters. How should the US government respond to this build-up? This article analyzes the Pessimist and Optimist positions on this dilemma that faces US strategists, and provides a policy recommendation that approaches the military build-up as an opportunity for cooperation between the two nations.

Introduction and Strategic Context

“China’s interest in a peaceful and stable environment that will support the country’s developmental goals is difficult to reconcile with new military capabilities that appear designed to challenge U.S. freedom of activity in the region and, if necessary, enforce China’s influence over its neighbors, including our regional allies and partners.”

Adm. Robert Willard, chief of the U.S. Pacific Command, 13 January 2010

A successful bilateral strategic relationship between the United States and China is widely regarded inside the national security communities of both countries as key to maintaining a peaceful and prosperous international system in the twenty-first Century. Whether one thinks about nuclear proliferation, piracy and freedom of the seas, climate change, or international financial stability, there will be very few global problems that can be tackled effectively without the cooperation of these two great military and economic powers. Therefore, an escalation of tensions between the two countries, particularly when military issues are involved, is often a source of concern for American and Chinese strategists alike. In recent months, Washington media outlets reported that there is a growing anxiety amongst American government analysts regarding China’s “defiant” and “strident” tone in its recent dealings with Western governments. In this environment of a perceived worsening of relations between the two countries, remarks about China’s growing military power, such as the comment made recently by Adm. Robert Willard, can have an inflammatory impact and contribute to increased suspicions and tensions between the two governments. If the Obama administration wants to continue to develop a constructive ‘grand strategic’ relationship with China, it will have to incorporate in its policy framework a more coherent and explicit response to Beijing’s military build-up.

Despite a general acceptance of the notion that the United States and China are mutually interdependent financially, and therefore a war between the two is extremely unlikely, there is nevertheless a vocal debate going on among Washington national security analysts on how the United States should respond to China’s continuing increase in the kinds of military capabilities that some analysts argue is meant to counter US influence and freedom of action in the region. At a strategic level, the Obama administration could respond to China’s military build-up by pursuing two different strategies: one option would aim to contain China’s expanding military influence by increasing the US military presence in the region and working with its allies to restrain China’s growing power, while another option would aim to engage the Chinese in a constructive dialogue and hope to integrate their emerging capabilities into a larger effort to address common interests such as fighting piracy, preventing nuclear proliferation, or maintaining peace and stability in the East Asian littoral region. Whether one chooses one or the other depends on how one judges a series of factors such as China’s medium and long-term strategic intentions, the extent to which their current capabilities pose a real military threat to US regional interests, and the ability (and desirability) of the United States to invest the material resources necessary to maintain the current balance of power in the region.

There are several aspects of the Chinese military build-up that are worrying American defense analysts inside and outside the government. The most traditional concern has been the so-called “Taiwan Scenario”: in a hypothetical conflict over the island, China’s modern military systems could deny access to US Navy carrier groups in the region and thus prevent the United States from intervening to defend Taiwan. A second issue that has garnered a lot of recent attention has been that of China’s development of high-end asymmetric strategies and tactics, so-called shashoujian, or “assassin’s mace.” According to Andrew Krepinevich, “shashoujian forces can be expected to engage in attacks to disrupt and/or destroy US battle networks, to include cyber attacks and the use of Anti-Satellite weapons.” The third aspect of the build-up is China’s sustained investment in maritime capabilities, both submarines and blue-water surface ships. In many ways, the debate over how to deal with China’s increasing maritime capabilities is a microcosm of the larger grand strategic debate on how to accommodate China’s rise, and therefore it is this naval component of the Chinese military expansion that will be the topic of this article.

The Pessimist View of China’s Naval Build-up and the Containment Policy Option

For realist scholars of world politics who believe in the zero-sum nature of world power politics, China’s continuing increase in military power and influence in the region will eventually come at the expense of American geopolitical interests. As MIT’s Thomas Cristensen explains in International Security:

“The debate about China as a peer competitor revolves around simple realist notions of how international politics work: Power is what matters; and what matters in power is one’s relative capabilities compared with those of others, especially other great powers. For the pessimists, the Chinese military of the twenty-first century is replacing the Soviet military of the pre-Gorbachev years and the Japanese economy of the 1970s as the next big purported threat to American global leadership.”

Even though China’s military power is in relative terms far behind that of the United States, Cristensen argues that “…with certain new equipment and certain strategies, China can pose major problems for American security interests, and especially for Taiwan, without the slightest pretense of catching up with the United States by an overall measure of national military power or technology.” Similar to the reasoning underlying the “assassin’s mace” concept popularized by Krepinevich, Cristensen worries that the Chinese investment in sophisticated asymmetric weapon systems that could allow them to deny access in the vicinity of China’s coast to the qualitatively superior US Navy warships.

For the proponents of this “pessimistic” school of thought, the People Liberation Army Navy’s (PLAN) weapons procurement programs in recent decades, as well as PLAN’s new operational doctrines, are a great source of concern. China’s sustained purchases of attack submarines has been regarded by these analysts as indicative of an aggressive intent to “push” the US Pacific Fleet further away from the East Asian littoral. MIT professor Taylor Fravel noted in an extensive study of China’s military development that “Since 1995, China has commissioned 28 new submarines, including 12 advanced Kilo-class Russian vessels as well as several classes of domestically developed diesel and nuclear- powered attack boats.” Krepinevich warns that these modern Kilo-class submarines could pose a deadly threats to US Navy carrier strike forces operating in the region: “The Kilos are armed with advanced wake-homing and wire-guided torpedoes of Russian design…The eight newer Kilo SSK are armed with the highly capable Russian-designed Klub ASCM (Anti-Ship Cruise Missile) Sizzler. The Sizzler’s attack profile is specifically designed to defeat the US Aegis anti-air warfare system, penetrate a task force’s defenses, and strike high-value surface warships, to include carriers.” Chinese naval analysts often openly admit that even though they will not be able to build a carrier strike force similar to the US Navy’s anytime soon, the use of fast attack submarines could allow them to accomplish their strategic objective of sea denial at a much lesser cost. To sum up this argument, the “China hawks” argue that the procurement program of the PLAN betrays a clear desire to reduce the ability of the US Navy to operate in the East Asian theater, and that the PLAN will soon be coming dangerously close to accomplishing that goal.

In addition to the short-term concern about “sea denial”, there is also a longer-term aspect of the Chinese naval build-up that worries the “pessimists.” In recent years, the PLAN appears to have taken important initial steps to develop a blue water “Mahanian” maritime capability meant to accompany China’s rise to ‘superpower’ status and protect its rapidly expanding commercial interests. The acquisition of nuclear-power submarines and of advanced surface combatants are regarded as signs of China’s long-term ambitions to expand the mission of their fleet beyond sea denial and control of their nearby littoral areas. Professors James Holmes and Toshi Yoshihara have documented how the theories of sea power advocated by Alfred Thayer Mahan have a strong influence on how Chinese strategists perceive the present and future roles of the PLAN in China’s grand strategy. After examining a large amount of Chinese documents and research papers dealing with this topic, the two authors uncovered some worrisome trends in how at least some Chinese strategists think about missions of the PLAN in the 21st century. Some passages from Holmes and Yoshihara’s study are worth quoting at length below, as they offer a valuable perspective into modern Chinese naval doctrine:

“Mahan’s appeal to economics resonates powerfully in today’s China, which is at once preoccupied with economic development and increasingly reliant on seaborne commerce for oil and other commodities. So does his call for a powerful navy— suggesting that China’s maritime strategy will take on an increasingly military hue… In Zhongguo Junshi Kexue { the influential journal of the PLA Academy of Military Science and the China Military Science Association}, a senior officer used Mahan to justify China’s control of communications, especially the “strategic passages” which goods and materials had to traverse… The author cited Mahan’s dictum that economic prosperity hinged on the deployment of naval forces at strategic locations… ‘It is extremely risky for a major power such as China to become overly dependent on foreign import without adequate protection’.”

While the potential threat to US interests from a Chinese blue-water navy is significantly less clear (at least in the short- to medium term) than in the case of the PLAN’s sea denial capabilities, the advocates of the “pessimistic” school of thought nevertheless argue that the United States needs to take this long-term challenge seriously and consequently increase its investment in naval forces to maintain its advantage over China’s navy in the long run.

If one accepts the analysis of the proponents of the “pessimistic” school of thought regarding the offensive nature of the Chinese naval build-up, and of its potential to harm US interests, how do they suggest that the United States should address this problem? The set of policies proposed by these analysts could best be described as a muscular, Reaganite version of containment. They emphasize the need to engage in a sustained US military build-up of naval and air forces designed to counter China’s emerging asymmetric capabilities, and to strengthen our alliances in the region. One of the most vocal advocates of these policies, Princeton professor and former Bush administration official Aaron Friedberg, writes in gloomy terms about the consequences of failing to adopt such counter-measures to China’s build-up:

“America’s influence in and access to Asia will be drastically reduced, with harmful long-term consequences for its security, prosperity and ability to promote the spread of liberal democracy, if it is seen to be in long-term decline relative to China or, even worse, if it appears irresolute, incompetent, unwilling or simply unable to fulfill its commitments… If it wants to reassure its strategic partners and bolster deterrence, Washington must find ways to counter China’s evolving anti-access capabilities. If it does not, America’s long-standing military dominance in East Asia will quickly disappear.”

Friedberg and other members of this school of thought are skeptical of potential opportunities for cooperation with authoritarian China, and instead emphasize the opportunity to “balance” against China’s rising power by deepening the US alliance relations with fellow regional democracies such as India, Japan and Taiwan.

The “Optimistic View” of China’s Naval Build-up and the Engagement Policy Option

At the core of the “optimistic view” of China’s development of maritime capability is not so much a rosy view of Beijing’s present and future intentions, as a belief that China’s naval capabilities, at least in the medium term, cannot pose a significant threat to US regional security or strategic interests. On the contrary, some of China’s emerging capabilities could serve the common interests of both countries to the extent that PLAN and the US Navy could find ways to work together to address shared challenges such as piracy, humanitarian crises caused by natural disasters, or the proliferation of WMD materials. Therefore, rather than hyping the potential threat from China and adopting counter-measures that worsen the “security dilemma” between the two countries, US leaders should follow a policy of engagement that promotes increased cooperation between the two militaries.

The first important area of disagreement between the “pessimist school” and the “optimist school” is the extent to which China’s recent build-up could really threaten the US Navy’s operations in the East Asian littoral. Contrary to the opinion of Aaron Friedberg and others, Boston College professor Robert Ross argues that:

“America’s vital security interests, including in East Asia, are all in the maritime regions. With superior maritime power, the United States can not only dominate regional sea-lanes but also guarantee a favorable balance of power that prevents the emergence of a regional hegemon. And despite China’s military advances and its challenge to America’s ability to project its power in the region, the United States can be confident in its ability to retain maritime dominance well into the twenty-first century.”

For example, Ross contends that even though China indeed purchased a number of quiet Kilo-class diesel submarines in recent years, the US Navy in turn constantly increased its capability to accurately track Chinese submarines. Moreover, the electronic-warfare capabilities of US carrier strike forces could seriously hamper PLAN’s command-and-control and intelligence collection systems during any potential conflict. Regarding China’s blue-water “Mahanian” ambitions, even if the PLAN were successful in its long-term quest to build an aircraft carrier, this would still pose almost no threat to the United States in a crisis due to the likely vulnerability of such a carrier to advanced US anti-ship missiles. Ross’s military assessment of the limited potential of PLAN to challenge the US Navy is not unique. In his study “Bear Facts and Dragon Boats: Rethinking the Modernization of Chinese Naval Power,” Marshall Beier stated that the “PLAN’s comprehensive submarine procurement efforts are most appropriately characterized as necessary modernization of the sort to be expected of any major navy and not as anything akin to an ominous ‘build up’.” Similarly, regarding China’s emerging blue water capabilities, he is far less worried than the analysts from the pessimist school: “Despite the PLAN’s modernization program and the adoption of an ‘offshore’ defensive posture, China is nowhere near about to acquiring a ‘blue water’ capability in the (neo)Mahanian sense of projecting power or securing control of the sea.”

A second relevant point of contention between the China “pessimists” and “optimists” refers to how much stock one should put in the doctrinal and strategic pronouncements that come out of the PLAN. While “pessimists” often quote some of the most hawkish Chinese officials, the “optimists” make the point that one should take the more belligerent declarations with a grain of salt because they may reflect the influence of domestic politics or parochial interests rather than a purely strategic decision that would guide future policies. A recent International Security article documents how Chinese “naval nationalism” influences the thinking of important groups both within the PLAN and also within the Chinese government elite more broadly. Moreover, the “pragmatic” wing of the Chinese elites who argue that the cost of a truly blue water navy would be prohibitive given China’s many other national priorities, and that moreover China’s soft power and its peaceful rise image in the region would be hurt by such a build-up. Ross worries that the more bombastic pronouncements of the PLAN hardliners could be used by American adherents of a more belligerent policy towards China to justify a US counter-build-up and more generally a policy of containment. As he puts it, even though China’s naval nationalism will not challenge US maritime security, “U.S.-China naval competition has the potential to politicize the full agenda of U.S.-China relations and challenge cooperation on a wide range of issues, including cooperation on nuclear nonproliferation on the Korean Peninsula, the Taiwan issue, bilateral economic issues, and human rights.”

A third way in which the “optimist” and the “pessimist” schools differ is on how much potential for cooperation exists between the PLAN and the US Navy (and other regional powers) in addressing certain global problems. Perhaps not too surprisingly, Chinese scholars and academics portray Chinese maritime policy in a way that emphasizes its “soft power” aspects rather than the hard power ones discussed by some PLAN officials. Professor Mingjiang Li, for example, who is one of the main proponents of the less military-focused view of China’s maritime role in East Asia, argues that the focus of the PLA has broadened in recent years from merely addressing immediate security threats to engaging in a broader range of missions such as non-proliferation, peace-keeping, disaster relief, and military cooperation exercises and with other regional partners. Li concludes that, given Beijing’s desire to maintain a peaceful international environment that would allow it to focus on domestic development, the PLAN’s activities will be part of this broader grand strategy of “proactive engagement.” Therefore, he argues, the opportunities for cooperation between the PLAN and the US Navy are more significant than some in Washington realize.

The “optimist” school favors a policy of engagement on the part of the United States as well. Jonathan Holslag argues in the pages of Washington Quarterly that China’s increase in military capabilities is only natural given its expanding economic interests, and that this need not necessarily worry the United States. On the contrary, the U.S. should consider China more of a “partner rather than a rival”, recognize the many common threats such as piracy, maintaining the flow of commerce, stabilizing failed states, or non-proliferation, and ultimately explore “options for cooperation” more vigorously. Holslag even goes on to state that: “It is widely recognized that for various economic, diplomatic, and security reasons, the U.S.—China partnership is inevitable. Bringing in the military dimension can make this relationship even more robust and stable.” Therefore, for advocates of engagement, the rationale is not only based on a more positive assessment of China’s current naval capabilities and its intentions, but also on a grand strategic analysis which leads them to conclude that cooperation with Beijing, including in the military realm, is a core component of an effective American grand strategy in the 21st century.

Policy Recommendation: Incremental naval engagement with China

Defense and military policies are an integral part of a country’s overall grand strategy. In the context of Obama’s grand strategy towards China, I believe that a maritime policy of incremental engagement towards the PLAN would best serve the United States national interest at this point in time. My recommended policy of incremental naval engagement incorporates many of the elements of the engagement strategy advocated by the “optimist school” discussed in the previous section of the paper. One important difference of nuance is my emphasis on the incremental nature of the policy. Before the US can fully embrace China’s increasing military role in the region and beyond, Washington must begin with small steps such as confidence-building measures and small-scale military cooperation exercises. If after these steps some of the concerns regarding Chinese capabilities and intentions diminish, then one could move more strongly towards developing a full-scale partnership aimed at addressing the shared challenges cited earlier in the article. However, if the PLAN does not seem interested in working closer together with the US Navy, and if they continue to advance their naval modernization program in a manner that could be judged to realistically imperil US freedom of action in the region, then one must reassess whether the cooperation-oriented naval policy strategy that I’m recommending is the most appropriate one.

Moreover, I believe that devoting more material resources to countering China’s build-up would not only increase the risk of a naval arms race that worsens the security dilemma between the two states, but also imply some trade-offs in the allocation of American defense investments. Specifically, an increase in focus on a potential yet unlikely future conflict in East Asia means devoting less military resources to addressing current conflicts such as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Given that defense spending overall is unlikely to increase in the coming years, such a trade-off is a real concern and it is the reason why Secretary Gates warned the Pentagon planners against “next war-itis”, the exaggerated concern with potential future conventional threats to the detriment of current irregular ones.

Another reason why an incremental engagement strategy is the most appropriate response to China’s naval build-up is that it could lay the foundation for a stable transition in East Asia from an almost unquestioned hegemonic position of the United States, a legacy of World War II, to a power arrangement more reflective of the realities of the twenty-first century. There is no reason why the United States and its regional allies should continue to provide the bulk of international public goods such as maintaining freedom of the seas in the face of piracy attacks or conducting counter-proliferation maritime operations; as China’s economy grows, so do its responsibilities to participate in collective international actions meant to counter threats to international security such as piracy or proliferation of WMDs. Many Chinese strategists understand this, and the United States should adopt a policy aimed at encouraging China to become a “responsible stakeholder” in the realm of maritime power as much as Washington does on other policy arenas such as climate change, trade, or international finance. As Robert Ross showed, there is a current debate inside the PLAN between “naval nationalists” and “naval pragmatists.” The United States should try to support the moderate/pragmatist faction by adopting a policy that encourages stronger partnership in securing the region.

Lastly, in addition to being strategically sound from a geopolitical perspective for the reasons presented above, a policy of cooperation could also be more politically feasible than the alternatives. An aggressive containment policy is likely to generate resistance on the part of the business community which is heavily involved in commercials relations with China, as well as in general on the part of the left-leaning Democratic members of Congress who favor in general relying on engagement and diplomacy rather than military power. On the other hand, a full-fledged cooperation policy may leave Obama vulnerable to criticism from the Republicans and the more “hawkish” or conservative Democrats and thus make it difficult to implement such an approach. As I believe that the most successful foreign policy strategies over the long term usually enjoy a significant amount of bipartisan support, I think an essentially centrist incremental engagement approach is more capable of sustaining such support than either of the two more partisan alternatives.

References

John Pomfret, “Newly powerful China defies Western nations with remarks, policies”, The Washington Post, March 15, 2010

John Pomfret, “China’s strident tone raises concerns among Western governments, analysts”, The Washington Post, January 31, 2010

Rick Maze, “US officials wary of Chinese military buildup”, Army Times, January 13, 2010

Andrew Krepinevich, “Why AirSea Battle”, Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, Washington, DC, 2010

Aaron Friedberg, “Here Be Dragons: Is China a Military Threat?”, The National Interest, September-October 2009

Thomas Cristensen, “Posing Problems without Catching Up: China’s Rise and Challenges for U.S. Security Policy”, International Security, vol. 25 no.4 Spring 2001

Taylor Fravel, “China’s Search for Military Power”, The Washington Quarterly, vol. 31 no.3 Summer 2008

James Holmes and Toshi Yoshihara, “The Influence of Mahan upon China’s Maritime Strategy”, Comparative Strategy, no 24, 2005

Robert Ross, “Here Be Dragons: Is China a Military Threat?”, The National Interest, September-October 2009

J. Marshall Beier, “Bear Facts and Dragon Boats: Rethinking the Modernization of Chinese Naval Power,” Contemporary Security Policy, vol.26, no.2

Robert Ross, “China’s Naval Nationalism: Sources, Prospects, and the US response”, International Security, vol.34 no.2 (Fall 2009)

Mingjiang Li, “China and Maritime Cooperation in East Asia: recent developments and future prospects”, Journal of Contemporary China, no.19 (62) March 2010

Jonathan Holslag, “Embracing China’s Global Ambitions”, The Washington Quarterly, July 2009

“Gates: Pentagon must focus on Iraq, not future war”, Associated Press, May 13, 2008, accessed at http://cbs13.com/national/robert.gates.pentagon.2.722676.html

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