By Dr Subhash Kapila 15th March 2012
Introductory Observations
China’s Defence Budget 2012 announced in the first week of March 2012 significantly draws global and regional attention in that China has shot through its defence expenditure over the $ 100 billion mark, making China’s military expenditure at the global level, second only to that of the United States, even though there exists a wide differential between the two.
In terms of global concerns, China’s hikes in defence expenditures in 2012 military budget come under sharper scrutiny when China’s defence hikes are placed in the context of a sharp drop in United States defence budget by about $ 380 billion necessitated by US Congressional mandates. Though President Obama has reiterated that the Asia Pacific regional military posture of the United States would not be in the purview of budgetary cuts because of the new US strategic pivot to Asia Pacific, what cannot be ruled out is that in case of a sudden Middle East contingency, the United States would be forced to redirect US Forces from its strengthened posture against a fast militarily rising China.
Regionally in Asia, steep hikes in Chinese military expenditure cause multiple strategic and military concerns for China’s neighbours. Contextually, China’s recent aggressiveness and military assertion (facilitated by China’s military rise, fuelled by expanding economic resources) on territorial disputes foisted by China on virtually all its neighbours, multiply these concerns.
China’s military hikes would have been understandable had China’s peripheries on land and sea would have been threatening to China’s security. Such is not the case because the military balance is overwhelmingly in favour of China. China could convert this military balance in its favour for the last two decades because of United States earlier permissiveness to tolerate China’s military build-up as it suited United States and in the last decade because of the military and strategic distractions in Iraq and Afghanistan.
China’s expanded military budget comes immediately after President Obama’s announcement of the policy of a strategic pivot to Asia Pacific. China denies that the two are connected. In this connection it needs to be pointed out that China would continue to increase its military expenditure irrespective of any strategic steps of the United States. China’s strategic aims are to emerge as the undisputed military power in Asia and a rival power centre on the global strategic calculus.
In this connexion, it needs to be pointed out that scientific projections have been made which state that China’s military budget hikes are expected to total $ 238.2 billion by 2015 which when translated amounts to more than doubling China’s military expenditure in just another three years. China’s existing military profile a before the announcement of Budget 2012 is considerably powerful and would become more powerful with $106 billion planned for this year. Doubling of the budget by 2015 would facilitate China’s military profile to emerge so powerful that no Asian country, not even India, can ever hope to militarily catch up with China.
India’s defence budget in the year ending was about $36 billion—a fraction of China’s military budget. Shockingly, a former Defence Secretary was quoted in the media that every year the Finance Ministry would demand in March that the Defence Ministry surrender Rs 5,000 crores or so to balance the deficit in the Union Budget. He further added that for the last ten years the Defence Ministry was being made to surrender such amounts. This would total to Rs 50,000 crores cut from announced Defence budgets. This year the news has come that the Defence Ministry has been ordered not to sign existing defence purchases agreements till after 31 March 2012 including the order to purchase the 126 fighter planes badly needed by the Indian Air Force. It is distressing that to balance the Finance Ministry books and Union budget deficits arising from exorbitantly wasteful schemes, the Government plays around with India’s war preparedness in an extremely hostile environment.
India should be more than seriously concerned about China’s hiked defence expenditures considering that ‘The China Threat’ to India is more real than to other nations, simply because China perceives that India is its sizeable and comparable strategic and military Asian rival and could impede China’s rise and emergence as the undisputed military power in Asia. Strategically, it is ironic that despite the credibility and potency of ‘The China Threat’, India’s political leadership and apex national security establishment traditionally disconnected from its Armed Forces who manage ‘The China Threat’, continue to de-emphasize this threat and get tricked into China’s protestations that China’s rise is a ‘peaceful rise’.
Against such a backdrop it becomes incumbent on India’s strategic community to highlight and reiterate the implications arising for India’s national security of China’s rising military expenditures. This Paper intends to do so under the following heads:
• China Defence Budget 2012: Salient Features and Thrust Areas for Military Up- gradation
• India’s National Security: Implications of China Defence Budget 2012
• Can India Ever Militarily Check-mate China?
China Defence Budget 2012: Salient Features and Thrust Areas for Military Up-gradation
Statistical data and comparative analyses of China Defence Budget abound in the international media and are not going to be repeated here. The aim in this Paper is to provide a macro-level overview the Chinese defence budget for 2012 and the issues arising from the salient features that will be examined. This part of the Paper intends to examine it under the following heads; (1) Chinese Defence Budget 2012 –salient details of increased military expenditure (2) Chinese official explanations for the increased military spending (3) Analytical explanations for China’s increased military spending, and (4) Main thrust areas for Chinese military up-gradation.
Very briefly, Chinese military spending in 2012 is planned to increase by 11.2% to $106.4billion from $ 95.6 billion last year. China has on the average registered an annual increase of 12% in its defence spending. Between 2006 and 2011 China doubled its defence spending and by 2015 it will again be doubled. That indicates the colossal military expenditures that China has indulged in and what is going to be spent by China in the next three years. The strategic and political implications for the United States, China’s Asian neighbours and particularly India are serious, deep-rooted and long-range.
China’s official explanations are the traditional choreographed ones of defending national sovereignty, internal security and the requirement of protecting China’s long borders with fourteen countries and China’s long coastline. However, some official explanations forthcoming need to be quoted verbatim, and these are as follows:
• Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiao Bao: “We will enhance the armed forces capacity to accomplish a wide range of tasks, the most important of which is to win local wars under information age conditions”.
• China NPC Official spokesperson and Former Foreign Minister Xao Zhing: “China’s limited military power is for the sake of national sovereignty, security and territorial integrity. Fundamentally, it constitutes no threat to other countries”.
• Professor Su Hao, Chinese Foreign Ministry University, Beijing: “There are new issues (that need funding) like the protection of citizens and investments overseas”
The stress on winning local wars needs to be noted as this is reference to China’s peripheries where territorial disputes abound and which notably includes India. The ‘new issues’ are significant as it is a pointer to China’s expansion of force-projection capabilities without which protection of Chinese citizens and Chinese investments abroad cannot be undertaken. Is China signalling its future intentions of military interventions being undertaken much beyond China’s peripheries?
Analytically, one can advance a number of explanations for China’s increased military expenditures, the chief of which being are: (1) China’s present increase in military expenditure and doubling of that figure by 2015 is predictable in light of the United States strategic pivot to Asia Pacific which China perceives as US fencing-in of China (2) Chinese increased defence expenditures are aimed at upgrading of China’s military capabilities to deter any possible US military intervention against China or making it prohibitive (3) China’s quest for equal strategic weight with the United States would involve China’s military up- gradation to reduce the differential in the US-China military power.
China’s main thrusts in military up-gradation of its capabilities is obviously US-Centric in that China is aiming to dilute US military superiorities which can come in play militarily against China. However, Chinese enhancement in relation to the United States has more than disproportionate strategic impact on India. Contextually, in light of the preceding analysis China’s main thrust areas for sizeable military investments will be concentrated on the following:
• Second Artillery Corps which is entrusted with the management and operational use of China’s nuclear weapons arsenal and ballistic missiles arsenal. New generation of ICBMs and other missiles with greater emphasis on range and increased accuracy are in the pipeline.
• China Navy: China’s first aircraft carrier will be operational by the end of this year. China is planning to induct at least four aircraft carriers in the next few years. In terms of force projection, China is inducting amphibious warfare ships and logistics tenders. In terms of Chinese “anti-access and area denial” strategies against any United States possible military intervention, the Chinese Navy is planning introduction of land-based long range anti-ship missiles against US aircraft carriers, greater number of nuclear attack submarines, increased maritime reconnaissance and patrolling, and an overall increase in number of naval combat ships.
• China Air Force: China has planned a complete turn-over of its fighter aircraft fleet. Introduction of the J-20 Stealth Fighter planes is being speeded up. China has also expressed interest in the acquisition of the Russian SU-35 latest combat aircraft which competed for the Indian Air Force competition also. Up gradation of the bomber fleet and heavy lift strategic transport aircraft akin to the US C-17.-are in the pipeline to augment Chinese force-projection capabilities.
In addition to the above China is investing significantly in space warfare capabilities. China is working on anti-satellite weapons designed to neutralize US spy, targeting, navigation and communication satellites. China’s cyber warfare increasing capabilities have become a strategic headache for the United States military.
Not to be forgotten in terms of China’s military up-gradation is an increase of Chinese nuclear weapons arsenal. So far Chinese nuclear weapons arsenal has not been subjected to any strategic arms limitation treaty or any other scrutiny. The United States while raising hype on Chinese military up-gradations has steadfastly been muted on the subject of the increasing nuclear weapons stockpile of China.
Also to be noted is that China’s arms imports have shown a decrease indicating an increase in greater sophistication of its own R&D technological expertise and expanding defence production capabilities.
India’s National Security: Implications of China Defence Budget 2012 Analysed
India’s national security has consistently stood compromised by the persistent annual double digit increases in Chinese defence expenditure, and China Defence Budget 2012 is no exception. China crossing the $ 100 billion mark in defence expenditure in military plans for 2012 further accentuates and highlights India’s military unpreparedness to meet any possible Chinese military adventurism against India. In military budget comparisons itself, the Indian defence budget at about $36 billion pales into insignificance against China’s earmarked figure of $ 106.4 billion for 2012. The comparison gets more somber when in comparison China faces no credible military threat from any global power or Asian power whereas India has pronounced military threats from an ever-military rising China and its strategic ally Pakistan, with comparable long and sea frontiers to protect against them—both of them having a record of military adventurism and an expanding nuclear weapons arsenal.
Dispelling notions that one is advocating an arms race with China, it however needs to be noted and commonly understood within India and by Indians is that India’s defence postures against China are grossly inadequate both in terms of conventional military power and nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles. Suffice it to say that India today lacks both nuclear deterrence and conventional military deterrence against China. There is no such thing as minimum credible deterrence. Credible deterrence is relative to the adversaries strike capabilities to be effective.
In this Paper, I have no intention to draw a detailed comparative military balance between a military powerful China and an India where military up -gradations and effective war preparedness are at best given notional attention by the political leadership and apex national security establishment at best, and at worst a strategic obliviousness by both these entities arising from their strategic naivety in benign reading of Chinas military intentions underlying its recurrent and relentless military build-up.
The aim is to educate the India that exists outside the sphere of India’s apex national security decision-makers and the Indian Armed Forces hierarchy which gets disconnected from its political masters by Nehru’s archaic interposing of a strategic culture-deficit civilian bureaucracy of India’s Ministry of Defence.
India in relation to war preparedness to effectively meet ‘The China Threat’ can be said to be in the same repeat Nehruvian strategic mind-set of de-emphasis and under-playing of ‘The China Threat’ as that existed in the run-up to India’s 1962 military debacle foisted on the gallant Indian Army by its political leadership and its civilian bureaucracy. This assertion can be substantiated by Indian TV channels, particularly which stands reported having been pressurised to downplay Chinese intrusions into Indian Territory and not give them prominence.
The Chinese Prime Minister has reiterated this month and is quoted above, that China’s strategic aim is to win local wars under information age conditions and that is significant in relation to India for obvious reasons. Recently a high-powered committee in its report has been quoted in the media as having expressed that China is likely to make a military grab for portions of Ladakh and Arunachal Pradesh.
This belated recognition of ‘The China Threat’ against India provides the setting for the succeeding brief examination of our ‘Defensive Postures” against China across the entire military spectrum. It is intended to do so under the following heads (1) India’s Nuclear weapons and missiles arsenal (2) Military postures in Ladakh and Arunachal Pradesh reviewed (3) Indian Air Force-the major voids (4) Indian Navy- Need for wholesale expansion (5) Strategic infrastructure along Himalayan Borders sadly neglected.
India’s nuclear deterrence against China is woefully inadequate both in terms of numbers and reach. International reports indicate that even Pakistan is outstripping India in this sphere. China accorded delayed grudging strategic respect to India only after the 1998 nuclear weaponization of India. The crying need is to make India’s ICBM operational which so far has been held back by India’s strategic timidity against US pressures. That materialization would greatly offset India’s current lack of dissuasive conventional military deterrence.
Military postures in Ladakh and Arunachal Pradesh have been analysed in fair detail in my earlier Papers. Briefly to be highlighted is that both the Ladakh and Arunachal Pradesh Sectors require force accretions in addition to those planned by an additional mountain division each and integral limited offensive capability. Protecting India’s national sovereignty involves boots-on-the-ground along the Himalayan borders which cannot be replicated by high technology. To that extent the argument of those who advocate a ‘leaner meaner military machine’ does not hold ground.
India’s skies stand naked against Indian military adversaries today with voids of nearly 150 combat fighter aircraft. It took the Indian decision-makers ten years to clear the choice of the next MRCA and even now the agreement is on hold due to Finance Ministry’s budget-deficit balancing. India’s transport aircraft fleet has out-lived its normal operational life and no replacements are in view. The switch to US inventories would carry its own problems. The Indian Air Force both in wartime and in peacetime too needs to be maintained at optimum levels in terms of its authorised aircraft holdings. Case exists for increasing the Indian Air Force combat squadrons to 45 squadrons—a figure that was recommended immediately in the wake of 1962 military debacle.
China has made no secret of its naval ambitions on a strong Chinese naval presence in the Indian Ocean and is working in a focused manner towards that ambition. China’s acquisition of four to six aircraft carriers, nuclear attack submarines and amphibious warfare capabilities, makes a strategic call on Indian decision-makers to embark on a wholesale fast-track expansion of the Indian Navy assets. India cannot afford to await 10-12 years lead times for materialization of naval orders to Indian shipyards. The biggest worry is the slippage allowed in replacement of the current fleet of submarines.
India’s’ strategic infrastructure along the Himalayan borders is sadly neglected The Prime Minister should have made a personal push in this direction as critical lifelines are 3-5 years behind schedule due to inter-ministerial wrangling. After the 1962 War with China some notable projects which needed speedy implementation were a double road artery to Tawang and Bumla in Arunachal Pradesh, a road tunnel under the Rohtang Pass for the alternative road to Ladakh, widening of the Rangli road axis to Jelep La in Sikkim and a major bypass of Gangtok with a highway to Nathu La. Space does not permit greater elaboration.
Lastly India’s decision making elite should answer as to why the Indian aeronautical industry which goes back to around 1943 has not been encouraged to become capable of fast-track development of Indian Air Force requirements of fighter aircraft and transport aircraft within the country.
Can India Ever Militarily Checkmate China?
Strategic analysis would suggest that it should be a pressing strategic imperative for Indian decision-makers to work towards a military checkmating of China to neutralise ‘The China Threat’ and in turn the Pakistan threat assiduously nurtured militarily by China. But the follow-up question is whether India can ever hope to militarily checkmate China and improve India’s security environment?
Going by current trends of the Indian political leadership and the apex national security establishment of investing more on diplomacy than military preparedness to ward off ‘The China Threat’, the analytical answer is a big NO.
Checkmating China by India involves two major questions. Firstly, the political will and strategic audacity of India’s leadership to adopt a ‘hands-on’ approach to checkmate China, not as a strategic subsidiary of the United States but standing tall on its own two legs. Secondly, does India have adequate financial resources to bankroll increased defence expenditure to acquire substantial nuclear and conventional military deterrence to checkmate China from its current strategy in South Asia?
The answer to the first question is that it is unlikely that the existing mind-sets of India’s political leadership and apex national security establishment would undergo a change. Both these entities are likely to concentrate all strategic decision-making with themselves bypassing institutional inputs. Also keeping the Indian Armed Forces hierarchy out of apex level national security decision-making and more vitally nuclear weapons decision-making by these two entities leads to ‘mentally challenged’ strategic policy decisions. Political will and strategic audacity therefore cannot blossom in such a truncated decision-making environment.
The second question pertains to financial resources to bankroll sizeable defence expenditure to acquire substantial nuclear and conventional military deterrence against China. Financial resources are no longer a problem today for India. The Indian problem on increased defence expenditure is that massive amounts of the Indian budget are earmarked for non-productive political-populist schemes like NREGA and other subsidies which lead to substantial budget deficits and to offset which the Defence Budget becomes the notable casualty in terms of being asked to surrender thousands of crores of rupees every year before the presentation of the Budget.
The existing mind-set of underwriting wasteful expenditures on political-populist measures at the cost of Indian national security requires a complete transformation of policy approaches.
So the final answer is that India will never be able to militarily checkmate China’s enhanced military postures impinging on Indian security. If India’s political leadership under different political dispensations had been imbued with the will of checkmating China, they would not have allowed India’s slippage in its defensive postures and war preparedness, and kept pace with China’s constant military expenditure increases, not in an arms race, but in a sincere effort to not to allow the strategic and military chasm between China and India in terms of nuclear and conventional military deterrence differentials to grow.
Concluding Observations
China’s defence budgets every year have registered double-digit increases over the last two decades. This has facilitated China to emerge as the dominant military power in Asia and a contender capable of a serious challenge to United States global military predominance. China has achieved this posture by spending significant amounts on military expenditure facilitated by a booming economy.
India in contrast also has a booming economy but it has been niggardly in its defence expenditures as defence expenditure is made subservient to political-populist schemes. Capital acquisition of critical military hardware are delayed for decades due to political indecision, bureaucratic lethargy and other considerations which view capital acquisitions of critical military equipment from abroad with extraneous perspectives.
Resulting from the above is the stark strategic reality that India will not be able to militarily checkmate China. In 1962, China militarily humiliated India due to lack of Indian defence preparedness in the preceding two decades. In 2012, with existing mind-sets at the highest-level in India and the slippage that has taken place in defence outlays in the last two decades, India risks a similar repeat 1962 performance of not a military debacle (thanks to the Indian Armed Forces used to making-do with military hardware available with them to defend India) but of a “strategic diminishment” of India on the global stage which India aspires to ascend.
Monday, March 19, 2012
Sunday, March 18, 2012
INDIA-CHINA : Three Scenarios
B. Raman is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India
The Three Scenarios as regards China enunciated in this article need examining.
It needs to be realized that the Chinese Government and Politicians are prudent people who think thru matters in detail and do not act on impulse.
For the foreseeable future they are likely to focus on economic development of areas away from the coast and try and meet the aspiration of the common man. They will increasingly find it difficult to stifle the natural desires and wants of the people. The President of China in waiting has lived in USA and should be more liberal and loosen State controls.
India needs to set its own house in order; get away from dirty and selfish politics and focus on good governance. This will enable higher economic growth and increased military strength. India has to have potent deterrence against China and grow economically to have China's respect. The way politics are shaping up in India, one wonders if this will be possible though!!
Harbhajan Singh
Lt Gen
INDIA-CHINA-Three Scenarios
http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?280271
Stability maintenance and sovereignty assertion are the two sides of China’s strategic policy-making.
Stability maintenance refers to coping effectively with internal security problems which continue to confront the country in increasing measure not merely in the peripheral areas of Xinjiang, Tibet and Inner Mongolia inhabited by ethnic minorities, but also in the Han-inhabited hinterland.
The Chinese government and Communist Party have not succeeded in pacifying the ethnic minorities despite large-scale economic development, which has definitely improved the quality of life for the Muslim Uighurs and the Buddhist Tibetans and Mongols.
Despite their considerable intelligence, Chinese policy-makers have not been able to understand that man does not live by bread alone. He wants self-respect. He wants recognition of his unique personality and ethnic characteristics. He wants to be able to admire his own icons and choose his own leaders, instead of having to pay homage to icons and leaders imposed on him by the government and the party.
The Chinese government and party have given the ethnic minorities enough and to eat, a quality of life the like of which they had not enjoyed before--modern roads and railways, modern telecommunications, modern technologies, opportunities for better education, better jobs with better salaries than in the past and modern medicare.
In spite of this, they have not been to create in the Tibetans feelings of loyalty to the government and the party and devotion to the Panchen Lama of the party creation. Their loyalty and devotion continue to be to His Holiness the Dalai Lama and they yearn for the days when the Dalai Lamas used to live in their midst and spiritually guide them.
The ideologues of the Communist Party have not been able to understand the meaning and importance of spirituality. They think more and better quality bread is all that matters. The Uighurs and the Tibetans struggling for their self-assertion have shown with determination that they want more than bread, that they continue to be proud of their past and their ethnicity and that they want the spiritual and ethnic aspects of their past back.
The continuing clashes between the will of the State and the Party and the will of the individuals and their community are to be seen in the increasing flow of reports from the Tibetan and Uighur areas regarding self-immolations of Tibetan monks, protests by students and others over the attempts to impose the Han culture on them, the spread of the Be Tibetan, Speak Tibetan, Dress Tibetan and Live Tibetan non-coperation movement patterned after Mahatma Gandhi’s satyagraha against the British and violent clashes between Uighur youth and the security forces.
The dissatisfaction and alienation of the minorities have been compounded by the dissatisfaction of growing sections of even the Han majority over the arbitrary aspects of governance and decision making. This arbitrariness has been vividly demonstrated in land acquisitions in different parts of the country for the development of infrastructure and in the growing indifference of the affluent new class of the Party to the feelings, grievances and anger of the common man.
It is not only the ethnic minorities who have been asserting themselves. It is also the common man in the Han majority who has started asserting himself through protests, gherao (act of surrounding) of Government and party officials and resistance to the enforcement of arbitrary decisions.2011 was the year the common man in the Han community made himself seen and heard by the outside world.
There is a new destabilising factor on the horizon in China-- the vast community of netizens, who have no access to the traditional Government and party controlled media, but who have been able to take advantage of their access to the virtual world to expose the affluence of the new class in the party and government, the unhappiness of the people and the lack of democracy and the arbitrariness in governance which have made the Chinese economic miracle possible.
Till now, the world has been dazzled by the Chinese economic miracle without realising at what human cost it has come. Thanks to the Chinese netizens, the world is gradually becoming aware of the darker side of the miracle.
Threats to China’s internal stability are increasingly an important factor in its strategic policy-making. Modernisation of the internal security apparatus has consequently been receiving greater budgetary allocations than the modernisation of its external security apparatus.
Despite their growing preoccupation with the internal security situation, the Chinese government and Party have not given up or diluted their attempts to assert what they consider as their historic territorial sovereignty-- whether in the East China Sea against Japan or South China Sea against some ASEAN countries or across the Himalayas against India. China’s preoccupation with its internal security problems should not induce us to underestimate its determination to assert its territorial sovereignty. Its pursuit of economic, military and Net power have two objectives-- sovereignty assertion and power enhancement and projection. It has not allowed the increasing cost of internal stability maintenance to come in the way of enhancing its military strength and capabilities.
These are the ground realities of China today. Arising from these ground realities, three scenarios are possible in the coming years:
Scenario I: The Chinese government and party are overwhelmed by a relentless assertion of the will of the common man, resulting in a collapse of communism in Chinese colours as a binding factor.
Scenario II: Because of its internal security problems, China adopts a more restrained and a more moderate external posture and controls its assertive impulses.
Scenario III: It gives free rein to its assertive impulses abroad in order to divert attention from its internal security problems and rationalise and justify its suppression of domestic dissidence.
It would be difficult to predict which scenario is more likely. All the three are equally possible. While hoping for the first or second scenario, India should not fail to prepare itself for the third. The lead-time available to India is already much reduced because of our tardy start, our belated realisation of the implications of a militarily strong China and our poor implementation of even the inadequate plans that we have drawn up for strengthening our infrastructure on the Chinese border and for modernising our armed forces.
Unfortunately, we continue to suffer from a Pakistan obsession in our thinking and planning. While we should continue to monitor Pakistan, our focus has to shift to China-- whether in our intelligence community or in the armed forces or in our policy-makers or in our still vastly inadequate community of strategic thinkers.
The Three Scenarios as regards China enunciated in this article need examining.
It needs to be realized that the Chinese Government and Politicians are prudent people who think thru matters in detail and do not act on impulse.
For the foreseeable future they are likely to focus on economic development of areas away from the coast and try and meet the aspiration of the common man. They will increasingly find it difficult to stifle the natural desires and wants of the people. The President of China in waiting has lived in USA and should be more liberal and loosen State controls.
India needs to set its own house in order; get away from dirty and selfish politics and focus on good governance. This will enable higher economic growth and increased military strength. India has to have potent deterrence against China and grow economically to have China's respect. The way politics are shaping up in India, one wonders if this will be possible though!!
Harbhajan Singh
Lt Gen
INDIA-CHINA-Three Scenarios
http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?280271
Stability maintenance and sovereignty assertion are the two sides of China’s strategic policy-making.
Stability maintenance refers to coping effectively with internal security problems which continue to confront the country in increasing measure not merely in the peripheral areas of Xinjiang, Tibet and Inner Mongolia inhabited by ethnic minorities, but also in the Han-inhabited hinterland.
The Chinese government and Communist Party have not succeeded in pacifying the ethnic minorities despite large-scale economic development, which has definitely improved the quality of life for the Muslim Uighurs and the Buddhist Tibetans and Mongols.
Despite their considerable intelligence, Chinese policy-makers have not been able to understand that man does not live by bread alone. He wants self-respect. He wants recognition of his unique personality and ethnic characteristics. He wants to be able to admire his own icons and choose his own leaders, instead of having to pay homage to icons and leaders imposed on him by the government and the party.
The Chinese government and party have given the ethnic minorities enough and to eat, a quality of life the like of which they had not enjoyed before--modern roads and railways, modern telecommunications, modern technologies, opportunities for better education, better jobs with better salaries than in the past and modern medicare.
In spite of this, they have not been to create in the Tibetans feelings of loyalty to the government and the party and devotion to the Panchen Lama of the party creation. Their loyalty and devotion continue to be to His Holiness the Dalai Lama and they yearn for the days when the Dalai Lamas used to live in their midst and spiritually guide them.
The ideologues of the Communist Party have not been able to understand the meaning and importance of spirituality. They think more and better quality bread is all that matters. The Uighurs and the Tibetans struggling for their self-assertion have shown with determination that they want more than bread, that they continue to be proud of their past and their ethnicity and that they want the spiritual and ethnic aspects of their past back.
The continuing clashes between the will of the State and the Party and the will of the individuals and their community are to be seen in the increasing flow of reports from the Tibetan and Uighur areas regarding self-immolations of Tibetan monks, protests by students and others over the attempts to impose the Han culture on them, the spread of the Be Tibetan, Speak Tibetan, Dress Tibetan and Live Tibetan non-coperation movement patterned after Mahatma Gandhi’s satyagraha against the British and violent clashes between Uighur youth and the security forces.
The dissatisfaction and alienation of the minorities have been compounded by the dissatisfaction of growing sections of even the Han majority over the arbitrary aspects of governance and decision making. This arbitrariness has been vividly demonstrated in land acquisitions in different parts of the country for the development of infrastructure and in the growing indifference of the affluent new class of the Party to the feelings, grievances and anger of the common man.
It is not only the ethnic minorities who have been asserting themselves. It is also the common man in the Han majority who has started asserting himself through protests, gherao (act of surrounding) of Government and party officials and resistance to the enforcement of arbitrary decisions.2011 was the year the common man in the Han community made himself seen and heard by the outside world.
There is a new destabilising factor on the horizon in China-- the vast community of netizens, who have no access to the traditional Government and party controlled media, but who have been able to take advantage of their access to the virtual world to expose the affluence of the new class in the party and government, the unhappiness of the people and the lack of democracy and the arbitrariness in governance which have made the Chinese economic miracle possible.
Till now, the world has been dazzled by the Chinese economic miracle without realising at what human cost it has come. Thanks to the Chinese netizens, the world is gradually becoming aware of the darker side of the miracle.
Threats to China’s internal stability are increasingly an important factor in its strategic policy-making. Modernisation of the internal security apparatus has consequently been receiving greater budgetary allocations than the modernisation of its external security apparatus.
Despite their growing preoccupation with the internal security situation, the Chinese government and Party have not given up or diluted their attempts to assert what they consider as their historic territorial sovereignty-- whether in the East China Sea against Japan or South China Sea against some ASEAN countries or across the Himalayas against India. China’s preoccupation with its internal security problems should not induce us to underestimate its determination to assert its territorial sovereignty. Its pursuit of economic, military and Net power have two objectives-- sovereignty assertion and power enhancement and projection. It has not allowed the increasing cost of internal stability maintenance to come in the way of enhancing its military strength and capabilities.
These are the ground realities of China today. Arising from these ground realities, three scenarios are possible in the coming years:
Scenario I: The Chinese government and party are overwhelmed by a relentless assertion of the will of the common man, resulting in a collapse of communism in Chinese colours as a binding factor.
Scenario II: Because of its internal security problems, China adopts a more restrained and a more moderate external posture and controls its assertive impulses.
Scenario III: It gives free rein to its assertive impulses abroad in order to divert attention from its internal security problems and rationalise and justify its suppression of domestic dissidence.
It would be difficult to predict which scenario is more likely. All the three are equally possible. While hoping for the first or second scenario, India should not fail to prepare itself for the third. The lead-time available to India is already much reduced because of our tardy start, our belated realisation of the implications of a militarily strong China and our poor implementation of even the inadequate plans that we have drawn up for strengthening our infrastructure on the Chinese border and for modernising our armed forces.
Unfortunately, we continue to suffer from a Pakistan obsession in our thinking and planning. While we should continue to monitor Pakistan, our focus has to shift to China-- whether in our intelligence community or in the armed forces or in our policy-makers or in our still vastly inadequate community of strategic thinkers.
US Navy 2025: FORWARD WARFIGHTERS
By Admiral Jonathan Greenert, U.S. Navy
Created 2011-11-30 15:26
An August article in Proceedings laid out “Ten Realities for the New CNO.” Here, the new CNO offers his vision of the Navy 15 years hence, which touches on several of those same issues.
The Navy Support Activity in Bahrain may not be the first thing one thinks of when considering the Navy of 2025. Our operations from that small Persian Gulf island may seem like a holdover from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars—something that will end as we complete those conflicts and enter an era of fiscal austerity. Nothing could be further from the truth. Bahrain has been a steadfast U.S. partner for six decades, and our presence there exemplifies some of the key and enduring attributes of the U.S. Navy, whether the year is 1825 or 2025. Our sailors and Marines in Bahrain, and their complement of helicopters, strike-fighters, patrol aircraft, minesweepers, and coastal patrol ships, are forward, ready, and focused on warfighting.
In 2025 the Navy will operate from a larger number of partner nations such as Bahrain to more affordably maintain our forward posture around the world. Our future Fleet will remain ready, with the maintenance, weapons, personnel, and training it needs, although it may be smaller than today as a result of fiscal constraints. Our sailors and civilians will remain the source of our warfighting capability, and the Fleet of 2025 will be even more dependent on a motivated, relevant, and diverse force. The ships and aircraft of 2025 will predominantly be the proven platforms of today, but with greater reach and persistence thanks to new payloads of unmanned vehicles and weapons. The future Fleet will maintain our current advantages in the electromagnetic spectrum and cyberspace, but will fully operationalize them as warfighting domains. We will remain dominant under the sea, but the capability of our submarines will be expanded as they become part of a network of platforms, unmanned systems and sensors.
While the characteristics of the Navy will change over the next decade or two, our contribution to the nation’s defense will not. The Navy–Marine Corps team will remain vital to our national security and economic prosperity. Operating globally at the front line of our nation’s efforts in war and peace, the Fleet will continue protecting the interconnected systems of trade, information, and security that underpin our own economy and those of our friends and allies. The Navy and Marine Corps will still be the first responders to international crises through combat operations—as in Libya—or with humanitarian assistance—as in Japan or Haiti. And after U.S. ground forces have drawn down in Iraq and Afghanistan, the naval services will remain on watch with offshore options to deter aggression and—as necessary—to fight and win on, over, and under the sea.
Operating Forward with Our Partners
A navy is most effective when it is forward, especially at the strategic “maritime crossroads” where shipping lanes, energy flows, information networks, and national security interests intersect. Being forward is critical to deterring aggression without escalation, defusing threats without fanfare, and containing conflict without regional disruption. In addition to obvious choke points such as the Straits of Hormuz and Malacca, U.S. naval forces will support our allies and partners in protecting the freedom of new crossroads that will emerge by 2025 as Arctic ice recedes and the Panama Canal is widened. With their maritime focus, Navy ships and aircraft have a smaller footprint and pose less of a concern to host nations than ground forces—and routinely operate with their host on common concerns such as maritime security. Being forward is an essential element of building partnerships, because, as my predecessor Admiral Gary Roughead would say, “Trust cannot be surged.”
The Navy will need innovative approaches to staying forward around the world to address growing concerns about freedom of the seas while being judicious with our resources. Because we will probably not be able to sustain the financial and diplomatic cost of new main operating bases abroad, the fleet of 2025 will rely more on host-nation ports and other facilities where our ships, aircraft, and crews can refuel, rest, resupply, and repair while deployed. This will help the Navy sustain its global forward posture with what may be a smaller number of ships and aircraft than today.
The Navy–Marine Corps team will take advantage of ports and airstrips in places such as Diego Garcia to sustain deployed ships and aircraft and support prompt crisis response. We will also expand our forward-stationed forces to improve our posture and responsiveness. In Southeast Asia, we will station several of our newest littoral combat ships at Singapore’s naval facility, and as announced in November by President Barack Obama, begin rotational deployments of Marines to Darwin, Australia. In the Middle East, we will send littoral combat ships to replace our Bahrain mineseweepers in the coming decade, while in Europe we will station four destroyers at an existing facility in Rota, Spain. Those places, along with our longstanding homeports in Japan, Guam, and Italy, will allow U.S. naval forces to maximize our forward presence while strengthening our alliances and partnerships.
Between now and 2025, forward-deployed forces will be critical to our geographic combatant commanders, or COCOMs. As the strategic environment evolves from Cold War bipolarity and post–Cold War unipolarity to one with multiple centers of power, COCOMs will continue shifting their planning and operations away from only being ready for stereotypical warfighting. COCOMs will increase the stress placed on shaping the environment to prevent conflict.
Critical to shaping the environment is cooperation with partners and allies across the range of operations. At the high end, we will expand our combined efforts with allies in Japan, South Korea, and Australia to train and exercise in missions such as antisubmarine warfare and integrated air and missile defense. Over the next decade, we will also increase deployments of ships and aircraft for the cooperative missions our other allies and partners need most. Our ships in Singapore will conduct cooperative counterpiracy or countertrafficking operations around the South China Sea. Similarly, 2025 may see P-8A Poseidon aircraft or unmanned broad area maritime surveillance aerial vehicles periodically deploy to the Philippines or Thailand to help those nations with maritime domain awareness. Our small combatants, which in 2025 will predominantly be littoral combat ships, will deploy globally to counter terrorism, combat narcotics trafficking, and cooperatively train with partner nations to improve their capacity for those important missions.
As Secretary of State Hillary Clinton noted in a recent Foreign Policy article, the Asia-Pacific region will be emphasized in our forward posture. In addition to being home to five U.S. treaty allies, the region boasts six of the world’s ten largest economies—with China projected to be the largest by 2025. We will continue our robust rotational deployments to the western Pacific, complemented with our forward-stationed Navy and Marine forces in Japan, Guam, Singapore, and Australia.
We also will maintain rotational deployments in the Middle East and Indian Ocean. In 2025 those forces—along with our forward-stationed patrol boats, minesweepers, and littoral combat ships—will deter aggression in the region. With our local Persian Gulf partners and international allies such as the United Kingdom and Japan, those forces will also help ensure the Strait of Hormuz remains open; oil will remain the world’s most versatile fuel and chemical feedstock.
Although the Fleet may be smaller, the 2025 Navy will remain engaged in places such as Guantanamo Bay, Naples and Sigonella in Italy, Souda Bay in Greece, and Djibouti in Africa to maximize the presence from our periodic deployments and transits. The destroyers in Spain will not only provide ballistic-missile defense, but will be available for security and training operations with our European and African allies and partners.
Keeping Our Warfighting Edge
Being forward to deter, assure, and influence only works if the forces we deploy are credible and relevant to the tasks they have to do. Between now and 2025, the Navy will have to sustain its current dominance of the undersea domain, improve its ability to project power despite growing threats to access, operationalize cyberspace and the electromagnetic spectrum, and increase the reach and persistence of today’s Fleet.
By 2025, precision-guided weapons will be the norm among our adversaries and competitors—from terrorist groups and criminals to our maritime peers. Combined with widely available radar, as well as electronic and optical sensors, such weapons give adversaries an unprecedented ability to attack ships, aircraft, and ground forces and to deny access to certain areas of sea or land.
With that emerging capability, regional powers in 2025 could use ballistic and cruise missiles, submarines, and guided rockets and artillery to prevent military forces or legitimate users from entering an area (“anti-access,” or A2) or operating effectively within an area (“area-denial,” or AD). Those capabilities can be characterized as defensive, reducing opposition to them, and they can be deployed from the country’s mainland territory, making attacks against them highly escalatory. Their intended purpose, however, is clear—intimidation of neighboring countries, including U.S. allies and partners. Aggressors can threaten to hold key maritime crossroads at risk, render territorial claims moot, and assert that intervention by the United States or others in these disputes can be delayed or prevented. The stated or unstated implication is that their neighbors should capitulate to the aggressor’s demands.
To help defend our allies and protect our interests, U.S. forces in 2025 will need to be able to operate and project power despite adversary A2/AD capabilities. Over the next decade naval and air forces will implement the new AirSea Battle Concept and put in place the tactics, procedures, and systems of this innovative approach to the A2/AD challenge. Most important, sailors, airmen and Marines will be prepared to adapt, take the initiative, and operate effectively in a range of A2/AD environments.
Payloads over Platforms
Over the next decade, maintaining the Navy’s war-fighting edge and addressing fiscal constraints will require significant changes in how we develop the force. We will need to shift from a focus on platforms to instead focus on what the platform carries. We have experience in this model. Aircraft carriers, amphibious ships and the littoral combat ships are inherently reconfigurable, with sensor and weapon systems that can evolve over time for the expected mission. As we apply that same modular approach to each of our capabilities, the weapons, sensors, unmanned systems, and electronic-warfare systems that a platform deploys will increasingly become more important than the platform itself.
That paradigm shift will be prompted by three main factors. First, the large number, range of frequencies, and growing sophistication of sensors will increase the risk to ships and aircraft—even “stealthy” ones—when operating close to an adversary’s territory. Continuing to pursue ever-smaller signatures for manned platforms, however, will soon become unaffordable. Second, the unpredictable and rapid improvement of adversary A2/AD capabilities will require faster evolution of our own systems to maintain an advantage or asymmetrically gain the upper hand. This speed of evolution is more affordable and technically possible in weapons, sensors, and unmanned systems than in manned platforms.
The third factor favoring a focus on payloads is the changing nature of war. Precision-guided munitions have reduced the number and size of weapons needed to achieve the same effect. At the same time, concerns for collateral damage have significantly lowered the number of targets that can be safely attacked in a given engagement. The net effect is fewer weapons are needed in today’s conflicts.
Together, those trends make guided, precision stand-off weapons such as Tomahawk land-attack missiles, joint air-surface stand-off missiles, and their successors more viable and cost-effective alternatives to increasingly stealthy aircraft that close the target and drop bombs or shoot direct-attack missiles. To take full advantage of the paradigm shift from platform to payload, the Fleet of 2025 will incorporate faster, longer-range, and more sophisticated weapons from ships, aircraft, and submarines. In turn, today’s platforms will evolve to be more capable of carrying a larger range of weapons and other payloads.
Those other payloads will include a growing number of unmanned systems. Budget limitations over the next 10 to 15 years may constrain the number of ships and aircraft the Navy can buy.
Expanded (Unmanned) Reach
The future Fleet will deploy a larger and improved force of rotary wing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) including today’s Fire Scout and soon, the armed Fire-X. Those vehicles were invaluable in recent operations in Libya and in counterterrorism operations around the Central Command area of responsibility. Deploying from the deck of a littoral combat ship, a detachment of Fire Scouts can provide continuous surveillance more than 100 miles away. Those systems will expand the reach of the ship’s sensors with optical and infrared capabilities, as well as support special operations forces in the littorals. Even more significant, the Fleet of 2025 will include UAVs deploying from aircraft carrier decks. What started a decade ago as the unmanned combat air system will be operating by 2025 as an integral element of some carrier air wings, providing surveillance and some strike capability at vastly increased ranges compared with today’s strike fighters. Once that aircraft is fielded, it will likely take on additional missions such as logistics, electronic warfare, or tanking.
Submarines will deploy and operate in conjunction with a family of unmanned vehicles and sensors by 2025 to sustain the undersea dominance that is a clear U.S. asymmetric advantage. Large-displacement unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs) will deploy from ships, shore, or Virginia-class submarine payload tubes to conduct surveillance missions. With their range and endurance, large UUVs could travel deep into an adversary’s A2/AD envelope to deploy strike missiles, electronic warfare decoys, or mines. Smaller UUVs will be used by submarines to extend the reach of their organic sensors, and will operate in conjunction with unattended sensors that can be deployed from surface combatants, submarines, and P-8A patrol aircraft. The resulting undersea network will create a more complete and persistent “common operational picture” of the underwater environment when and where we need it. This will be essential to finding and engaging adversary submarines, potentially the most dangerous A2/AD capability.
The undersea picture is extremely important in terms of countering enemy mining. The most basic of A2/AD weapons, mines can render an area of ocean unusable for commercial shipping for weeks or months while we laboriously locate and neutralize them. Even the threat of mines is enough to severely restrict ship movements, significantly affecting trade and global economic stability if it happens in key choke points such as the Malacca or Hormuz straits. The mine countermeasure capabilities we are developing for littoral combat ships and MH-60 aircraft rely heavily on unmanned sensors to rapidly build the underwater picture, and unmanned neutralization systems to disable mines. By 2025 those systems will be fully fielded, and their portable nature could allow them to be another swappable payload on a range of combatants.
Mastering the Electromagnetic Domain
Electronic warfare (EW) and cyber operations are increasingly essential to defeating the sensors and command and control (C2) that underpin an opponent’s A2/AD capabilities. If the adversary is blinded or unable to communicate, he cannot aim long-range ballistic and cruise missiles or cue submarines and aircraft. Today, Navy forces focus on deconflicting operations in the electromagnetic spectrum or cyber domains. By 2025, the Fleet will fully operationalize those domains, more seamlessly managing sensors, attacks, defense, and communications, and treating EW and cyber environments as “maneuver spaces” on par with surface, undersea, or air.
For example, an electronic jammer or decoy can defeat individual enemy radar, and thus an enemy C2 system using the radar’s data. A cyber operation might be able to achieve a similar effect, allowing U.S. forces to avoid detection. This is akin to using smoke and “rubber-duck” decoys in World War II to obscure and confuse the operational picture for Japanese forces, allowing U.S. ships to maneuver to an advantageous position. The future Fleet will employ EW and cyber with that same sense of operational integration.
Remaining Ready
History is replete with examples of how our Navy innovated operationally and technologically to win. The advent of sea-based aircraft, radar, and submarines were step-increases in our capability that took time, experimentation, and initiative to fully exploit. Over the next 10 to 15 years, the Navy will continue to create new ways to remain forward at the maritime crossroads, sustain our undersea dominance, exploit the reach and persistence of unmanned vehicles, and operationalize the electromagnetic and cyber environments. To operate this Fleet, we will develop a motivated, relevant, and diverse 21st-century workforce through career-long tactical and strategic training.
What will not change, however, are the core attributes of Navy sailors and civilians and the Fleet in which they serve. Next year we will commemorate the War of 1812, when our Navy faced its first sustained trial by fire. After Britain attempted a blockade to suppress American shipping, the United States declared war. Within a day (quick in that era), the first blows were struck by Navy ships. Our Fleet was not large, amounting to a half-dozen frigates and a larger number of gunboats and other craft. It did, however, rapidly get ready and take the fight to the enemy as our sailors aggressively employed creativity, innovation, and individual initiative.
The Navy of 2025 will reflect those same values. It will be ready, with the sailors, training, ordnance, sensors, and communications it needs to fight and win the conflicts that may arise. It will be forward where it can work to prevent those conflicts through operations with our partners, the capability to respond, and the ability to assure access for the joint force. And the Fleet will focus on warfighting to deter aggression and if necessary engage and defeat those who would attack our people, territory, allies, or partners.
Admiral Greenert is Chief of Naval Operations.
Created 2011-11-30 15:26
An August article in Proceedings laid out “Ten Realities for the New CNO.” Here, the new CNO offers his vision of the Navy 15 years hence, which touches on several of those same issues.
The Navy Support Activity in Bahrain may not be the first thing one thinks of when considering the Navy of 2025. Our operations from that small Persian Gulf island may seem like a holdover from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars—something that will end as we complete those conflicts and enter an era of fiscal austerity. Nothing could be further from the truth. Bahrain has been a steadfast U.S. partner for six decades, and our presence there exemplifies some of the key and enduring attributes of the U.S. Navy, whether the year is 1825 or 2025. Our sailors and Marines in Bahrain, and their complement of helicopters, strike-fighters, patrol aircraft, minesweepers, and coastal patrol ships, are forward, ready, and focused on warfighting.
In 2025 the Navy will operate from a larger number of partner nations such as Bahrain to more affordably maintain our forward posture around the world. Our future Fleet will remain ready, with the maintenance, weapons, personnel, and training it needs, although it may be smaller than today as a result of fiscal constraints. Our sailors and civilians will remain the source of our warfighting capability, and the Fleet of 2025 will be even more dependent on a motivated, relevant, and diverse force. The ships and aircraft of 2025 will predominantly be the proven platforms of today, but with greater reach and persistence thanks to new payloads of unmanned vehicles and weapons. The future Fleet will maintain our current advantages in the electromagnetic spectrum and cyberspace, but will fully operationalize them as warfighting domains. We will remain dominant under the sea, but the capability of our submarines will be expanded as they become part of a network of platforms, unmanned systems and sensors.
While the characteristics of the Navy will change over the next decade or two, our contribution to the nation’s defense will not. The Navy–Marine Corps team will remain vital to our national security and economic prosperity. Operating globally at the front line of our nation’s efforts in war and peace, the Fleet will continue protecting the interconnected systems of trade, information, and security that underpin our own economy and those of our friends and allies. The Navy and Marine Corps will still be the first responders to international crises through combat operations—as in Libya—or with humanitarian assistance—as in Japan or Haiti. And after U.S. ground forces have drawn down in Iraq and Afghanistan, the naval services will remain on watch with offshore options to deter aggression and—as necessary—to fight and win on, over, and under the sea.
Operating Forward with Our Partners
A navy is most effective when it is forward, especially at the strategic “maritime crossroads” where shipping lanes, energy flows, information networks, and national security interests intersect. Being forward is critical to deterring aggression without escalation, defusing threats without fanfare, and containing conflict without regional disruption. In addition to obvious choke points such as the Straits of Hormuz and Malacca, U.S. naval forces will support our allies and partners in protecting the freedom of new crossroads that will emerge by 2025 as Arctic ice recedes and the Panama Canal is widened. With their maritime focus, Navy ships and aircraft have a smaller footprint and pose less of a concern to host nations than ground forces—and routinely operate with their host on common concerns such as maritime security. Being forward is an essential element of building partnerships, because, as my predecessor Admiral Gary Roughead would say, “Trust cannot be surged.”
The Navy will need innovative approaches to staying forward around the world to address growing concerns about freedom of the seas while being judicious with our resources. Because we will probably not be able to sustain the financial and diplomatic cost of new main operating bases abroad, the fleet of 2025 will rely more on host-nation ports and other facilities where our ships, aircraft, and crews can refuel, rest, resupply, and repair while deployed. This will help the Navy sustain its global forward posture with what may be a smaller number of ships and aircraft than today.
The Navy–Marine Corps team will take advantage of ports and airstrips in places such as Diego Garcia to sustain deployed ships and aircraft and support prompt crisis response. We will also expand our forward-stationed forces to improve our posture and responsiveness. In Southeast Asia, we will station several of our newest littoral combat ships at Singapore’s naval facility, and as announced in November by President Barack Obama, begin rotational deployments of Marines to Darwin, Australia. In the Middle East, we will send littoral combat ships to replace our Bahrain mineseweepers in the coming decade, while in Europe we will station four destroyers at an existing facility in Rota, Spain. Those places, along with our longstanding homeports in Japan, Guam, and Italy, will allow U.S. naval forces to maximize our forward presence while strengthening our alliances and partnerships.
Between now and 2025, forward-deployed forces will be critical to our geographic combatant commanders, or COCOMs. As the strategic environment evolves from Cold War bipolarity and post–Cold War unipolarity to one with multiple centers of power, COCOMs will continue shifting their planning and operations away from only being ready for stereotypical warfighting. COCOMs will increase the stress placed on shaping the environment to prevent conflict.
Critical to shaping the environment is cooperation with partners and allies across the range of operations. At the high end, we will expand our combined efforts with allies in Japan, South Korea, and Australia to train and exercise in missions such as antisubmarine warfare and integrated air and missile defense. Over the next decade, we will also increase deployments of ships and aircraft for the cooperative missions our other allies and partners need most. Our ships in Singapore will conduct cooperative counterpiracy or countertrafficking operations around the South China Sea. Similarly, 2025 may see P-8A Poseidon aircraft or unmanned broad area maritime surveillance aerial vehicles periodically deploy to the Philippines or Thailand to help those nations with maritime domain awareness. Our small combatants, which in 2025 will predominantly be littoral combat ships, will deploy globally to counter terrorism, combat narcotics trafficking, and cooperatively train with partner nations to improve their capacity for those important missions.
As Secretary of State Hillary Clinton noted in a recent Foreign Policy article, the Asia-Pacific region will be emphasized in our forward posture. In addition to being home to five U.S. treaty allies, the region boasts six of the world’s ten largest economies—with China projected to be the largest by 2025. We will continue our robust rotational deployments to the western Pacific, complemented with our forward-stationed Navy and Marine forces in Japan, Guam, Singapore, and Australia.
We also will maintain rotational deployments in the Middle East and Indian Ocean. In 2025 those forces—along with our forward-stationed patrol boats, minesweepers, and littoral combat ships—will deter aggression in the region. With our local Persian Gulf partners and international allies such as the United Kingdom and Japan, those forces will also help ensure the Strait of Hormuz remains open; oil will remain the world’s most versatile fuel and chemical feedstock.
Although the Fleet may be smaller, the 2025 Navy will remain engaged in places such as Guantanamo Bay, Naples and Sigonella in Italy, Souda Bay in Greece, and Djibouti in Africa to maximize the presence from our periodic deployments and transits. The destroyers in Spain will not only provide ballistic-missile defense, but will be available for security and training operations with our European and African allies and partners.
Keeping Our Warfighting Edge
Being forward to deter, assure, and influence only works if the forces we deploy are credible and relevant to the tasks they have to do. Between now and 2025, the Navy will have to sustain its current dominance of the undersea domain, improve its ability to project power despite growing threats to access, operationalize cyberspace and the electromagnetic spectrum, and increase the reach and persistence of today’s Fleet.
By 2025, precision-guided weapons will be the norm among our adversaries and competitors—from terrorist groups and criminals to our maritime peers. Combined with widely available radar, as well as electronic and optical sensors, such weapons give adversaries an unprecedented ability to attack ships, aircraft, and ground forces and to deny access to certain areas of sea or land.
With that emerging capability, regional powers in 2025 could use ballistic and cruise missiles, submarines, and guided rockets and artillery to prevent military forces or legitimate users from entering an area (“anti-access,” or A2) or operating effectively within an area (“area-denial,” or AD). Those capabilities can be characterized as defensive, reducing opposition to them, and they can be deployed from the country’s mainland territory, making attacks against them highly escalatory. Their intended purpose, however, is clear—intimidation of neighboring countries, including U.S. allies and partners. Aggressors can threaten to hold key maritime crossroads at risk, render territorial claims moot, and assert that intervention by the United States or others in these disputes can be delayed or prevented. The stated or unstated implication is that their neighbors should capitulate to the aggressor’s demands.
To help defend our allies and protect our interests, U.S. forces in 2025 will need to be able to operate and project power despite adversary A2/AD capabilities. Over the next decade naval and air forces will implement the new AirSea Battle Concept and put in place the tactics, procedures, and systems of this innovative approach to the A2/AD challenge. Most important, sailors, airmen and Marines will be prepared to adapt, take the initiative, and operate effectively in a range of A2/AD environments.
Payloads over Platforms
Over the next decade, maintaining the Navy’s war-fighting edge and addressing fiscal constraints will require significant changes in how we develop the force. We will need to shift from a focus on platforms to instead focus on what the platform carries. We have experience in this model. Aircraft carriers, amphibious ships and the littoral combat ships are inherently reconfigurable, with sensor and weapon systems that can evolve over time for the expected mission. As we apply that same modular approach to each of our capabilities, the weapons, sensors, unmanned systems, and electronic-warfare systems that a platform deploys will increasingly become more important than the platform itself.
That paradigm shift will be prompted by three main factors. First, the large number, range of frequencies, and growing sophistication of sensors will increase the risk to ships and aircraft—even “stealthy” ones—when operating close to an adversary’s territory. Continuing to pursue ever-smaller signatures for manned platforms, however, will soon become unaffordable. Second, the unpredictable and rapid improvement of adversary A2/AD capabilities will require faster evolution of our own systems to maintain an advantage or asymmetrically gain the upper hand. This speed of evolution is more affordable and technically possible in weapons, sensors, and unmanned systems than in manned platforms.
The third factor favoring a focus on payloads is the changing nature of war. Precision-guided munitions have reduced the number and size of weapons needed to achieve the same effect. At the same time, concerns for collateral damage have significantly lowered the number of targets that can be safely attacked in a given engagement. The net effect is fewer weapons are needed in today’s conflicts.
Together, those trends make guided, precision stand-off weapons such as Tomahawk land-attack missiles, joint air-surface stand-off missiles, and their successors more viable and cost-effective alternatives to increasingly stealthy aircraft that close the target and drop bombs or shoot direct-attack missiles. To take full advantage of the paradigm shift from platform to payload, the Fleet of 2025 will incorporate faster, longer-range, and more sophisticated weapons from ships, aircraft, and submarines. In turn, today’s platforms will evolve to be more capable of carrying a larger range of weapons and other payloads.
Those other payloads will include a growing number of unmanned systems. Budget limitations over the next 10 to 15 years may constrain the number of ships and aircraft the Navy can buy.
Expanded (Unmanned) Reach
The future Fleet will deploy a larger and improved force of rotary wing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) including today’s Fire Scout and soon, the armed Fire-X. Those vehicles were invaluable in recent operations in Libya and in counterterrorism operations around the Central Command area of responsibility. Deploying from the deck of a littoral combat ship, a detachment of Fire Scouts can provide continuous surveillance more than 100 miles away. Those systems will expand the reach of the ship’s sensors with optical and infrared capabilities, as well as support special operations forces in the littorals. Even more significant, the Fleet of 2025 will include UAVs deploying from aircraft carrier decks. What started a decade ago as the unmanned combat air system will be operating by 2025 as an integral element of some carrier air wings, providing surveillance and some strike capability at vastly increased ranges compared with today’s strike fighters. Once that aircraft is fielded, it will likely take on additional missions such as logistics, electronic warfare, or tanking.
Submarines will deploy and operate in conjunction with a family of unmanned vehicles and sensors by 2025 to sustain the undersea dominance that is a clear U.S. asymmetric advantage. Large-displacement unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs) will deploy from ships, shore, or Virginia-class submarine payload tubes to conduct surveillance missions. With their range and endurance, large UUVs could travel deep into an adversary’s A2/AD envelope to deploy strike missiles, electronic warfare decoys, or mines. Smaller UUVs will be used by submarines to extend the reach of their organic sensors, and will operate in conjunction with unattended sensors that can be deployed from surface combatants, submarines, and P-8A patrol aircraft. The resulting undersea network will create a more complete and persistent “common operational picture” of the underwater environment when and where we need it. This will be essential to finding and engaging adversary submarines, potentially the most dangerous A2/AD capability.
The undersea picture is extremely important in terms of countering enemy mining. The most basic of A2/AD weapons, mines can render an area of ocean unusable for commercial shipping for weeks or months while we laboriously locate and neutralize them. Even the threat of mines is enough to severely restrict ship movements, significantly affecting trade and global economic stability if it happens in key choke points such as the Malacca or Hormuz straits. The mine countermeasure capabilities we are developing for littoral combat ships and MH-60 aircraft rely heavily on unmanned sensors to rapidly build the underwater picture, and unmanned neutralization systems to disable mines. By 2025 those systems will be fully fielded, and their portable nature could allow them to be another swappable payload on a range of combatants.
Mastering the Electromagnetic Domain
Electronic warfare (EW) and cyber operations are increasingly essential to defeating the sensors and command and control (C2) that underpin an opponent’s A2/AD capabilities. If the adversary is blinded or unable to communicate, he cannot aim long-range ballistic and cruise missiles or cue submarines and aircraft. Today, Navy forces focus on deconflicting operations in the electromagnetic spectrum or cyber domains. By 2025, the Fleet will fully operationalize those domains, more seamlessly managing sensors, attacks, defense, and communications, and treating EW and cyber environments as “maneuver spaces” on par with surface, undersea, or air.
For example, an electronic jammer or decoy can defeat individual enemy radar, and thus an enemy C2 system using the radar’s data. A cyber operation might be able to achieve a similar effect, allowing U.S. forces to avoid detection. This is akin to using smoke and “rubber-duck” decoys in World War II to obscure and confuse the operational picture for Japanese forces, allowing U.S. ships to maneuver to an advantageous position. The future Fleet will employ EW and cyber with that same sense of operational integration.
Remaining Ready
History is replete with examples of how our Navy innovated operationally and technologically to win. The advent of sea-based aircraft, radar, and submarines were step-increases in our capability that took time, experimentation, and initiative to fully exploit. Over the next 10 to 15 years, the Navy will continue to create new ways to remain forward at the maritime crossroads, sustain our undersea dominance, exploit the reach and persistence of unmanned vehicles, and operationalize the electromagnetic and cyber environments. To operate this Fleet, we will develop a motivated, relevant, and diverse 21st-century workforce through career-long tactical and strategic training.
What will not change, however, are the core attributes of Navy sailors and civilians and the Fleet in which they serve. Next year we will commemorate the War of 1812, when our Navy faced its first sustained trial by fire. After Britain attempted a blockade to suppress American shipping, the United States declared war. Within a day (quick in that era), the first blows were struck by Navy ships. Our Fleet was not large, amounting to a half-dozen frigates and a larger number of gunboats and other craft. It did, however, rapidly get ready and take the fight to the enemy as our sailors aggressively employed creativity, innovation, and individual initiative.
The Navy of 2025 will reflect those same values. It will be ready, with the sailors, training, ordnance, sensors, and communications it needs to fight and win the conflicts that may arise. It will be forward where it can work to prevent those conflicts through operations with our partners, the capability to respond, and the ability to assure access for the joint force. And the Fleet will focus on warfighting to deter aggression and if necessary engage and defeat those who would attack our people, territory, allies, or partners.
Admiral Greenert is Chief of Naval Operations.
Saturday, March 17, 2012
WHEN A STUMP OF GRASS BECOMES A STUMBLING BLOCK
Capt Reet MP Singh, VrC (Retd)
Secretary General The War Decorated India
India’s National Security Advisor, SS Menon delivered a lecture on “Transforming South Asia” at the Third Asian Relations Conference in New Delhi yesterday. Leave alone our pique about the Indian sub-continent being called South Asia, the NSA spoke about the way forward for this transformation by quoting a tale about Chanakya.
When Chanakya/Kautilya first met Chandragupta Maurya in Taxila around 330 BCE, Chandragupta had just failed in his fifth or sixth attempt to overthrow the Nanda dynasty by a coup in their capital Pataliputra in Magadha/Bihar and fled to the North West. Kautilya then asked him, when you eat a hot dish of rice do you plunge your fingers into the centre or do you start at the cool fringes. Chandragupta changed his strategy to the indirect approach and the rest is history.
I think we should learn the same lesson and should build the economic and other links that we can, while attempting to resolve the political and security issues that divide us.
I am not sure if the lesson from this Chanakya tale is about doing the doable thing and leaving the rest for later. However, the idea that economic links in the subcontinent can be dissociated from political and security issues is a dangerous one, particularly when it comes to Pakistan. While India’s other neighbours may have grudged India’s size and approach at different points in time, they haven’t consistently tried to damage or hurt India. In fact, India’s political and security issues with these neighbours are insignificant in the larger scheme of things. In the last decade, India has displayed a benevolent approach in economic relations towards these neighbours.
But when it comes to Pakistan — where its military-jehadi-elite complex has had the single-minded agenda of pulling India down since 1947 — the wisdom contained in the tale below about Chanakya might be more relevant.
Just after getting humiliated from the king, Chanakya scampered through the streets of Patliputra. In a hurried walk, he stumbled upon a stump of grass and was about to fall. Chanakya the great scholar had his own style of handling things. He looked at the roots of the grass and quickly got into action. Though he was angry, he never let his anger get out of control. He directed the anger in the right direction. Calmly, he sat down in the burning sun, removed that grass from the roots from the earth. After making sure that not even a single strand of grass was left, he resumed his journey.
If a stump is hell-bent on being a stumbling block in the path of your progress, it is perhaps better to remove every single strand of grass from the roots of that tuft. Wash your hands after that. And then move on to eating your dish with your clean fingers. Surely, that’s what Chanakya would have done.
Secretary General The War Decorated India
India’s National Security Advisor, SS Menon delivered a lecture on “Transforming South Asia” at the Third Asian Relations Conference in New Delhi yesterday. Leave alone our pique about the Indian sub-continent being called South Asia, the NSA spoke about the way forward for this transformation by quoting a tale about Chanakya.
When Chanakya/Kautilya first met Chandragupta Maurya in Taxila around 330 BCE, Chandragupta had just failed in his fifth or sixth attempt to overthrow the Nanda dynasty by a coup in their capital Pataliputra in Magadha/Bihar and fled to the North West. Kautilya then asked him, when you eat a hot dish of rice do you plunge your fingers into the centre or do you start at the cool fringes. Chandragupta changed his strategy to the indirect approach and the rest is history.
I think we should learn the same lesson and should build the economic and other links that we can, while attempting to resolve the political and security issues that divide us.
I am not sure if the lesson from this Chanakya tale is about doing the doable thing and leaving the rest for later. However, the idea that economic links in the subcontinent can be dissociated from political and security issues is a dangerous one, particularly when it comes to Pakistan. While India’s other neighbours may have grudged India’s size and approach at different points in time, they haven’t consistently tried to damage or hurt India. In fact, India’s political and security issues with these neighbours are insignificant in the larger scheme of things. In the last decade, India has displayed a benevolent approach in economic relations towards these neighbours.
But when it comes to Pakistan — where its military-jehadi-elite complex has had the single-minded agenda of pulling India down since 1947 — the wisdom contained in the tale below about Chanakya might be more relevant.
Just after getting humiliated from the king, Chanakya scampered through the streets of Patliputra. In a hurried walk, he stumbled upon a stump of grass and was about to fall. Chanakya the great scholar had his own style of handling things. He looked at the roots of the grass and quickly got into action. Though he was angry, he never let his anger get out of control. He directed the anger in the right direction. Calmly, he sat down in the burning sun, removed that grass from the roots from the earth. After making sure that not even a single strand of grass was left, he resumed his journey.
If a stump is hell-bent on being a stumbling block in the path of your progress, it is perhaps better to remove every single strand of grass from the roots of that tuft. Wash your hands after that. And then move on to eating your dish with your clean fingers. Surely, that’s what Chanakya would have done.
Friday, March 16, 2012
What China Wants Us (USA) to Understand about China’s Rise
by Fabius Maximus
Summary: Today we have another guest post by Franz Gayl (Major, USMC, retired), where he provides some perspective on one of the most important developments of the 21st century. Correctly understanding and reacting to this is essential for American to have a successful grand strategy in this new era.
Graphic from Forbes
Contents
1.Introduction
2.What China Wants Us to Understand about China’s Rise
3.About the author
4.For more information
(1) Introduction
On 9 September 2011 the FM website republished Will China become a superpower?, with articles by by Minxin Pei (Prof of Government at Claremont McKenna College; his latest book is China: Trapped Transition) and Young J. Kim (former Captain in the US Army, currently a PhD candidate at Korea University in Seoul). It’s worth reading in full. This widely accessed piece has since benefited from extensive expert critique, a discussion that is still on-going in the comments. The discussion has provide an education for me on various aspects of China’s observed course and general historical precedents. I am neither a historian nor an economist, and there is little that I can add to those expert comments.
However, one voice that could be added to the discussion that began in 2011 is a definitive Chinese government position on China’s rise. During my development of a wider-ranging ICAF research paper in 2005 – 2006, I was permitted to interview Consular Jia Xiudong at the Embassy of the People’s Republic of China in Washington, D.C. where he then served. The paper in which the interview is nested has been posted on the FM website. Unfortunately, the length of my paper was as a major flaw, and the interview was effectively buried within it out of sight. Yet, Consular Jia’s observations in that interview would appear critical for the balance of FM’s China discussions today.
The interview is certainly dated in that it was conducted six years ago. This will be seen as many of the contemporary events discussed from that period have evolved or changed in quantitative scope. One cannot assume exactly what the Chinese would say today without conducting another interview in 2012. At the same, looking at the contents and given consistency-focused Chinese government strategic communications, it is unlikely a 2012 interview would yield much different positions, especially on critical themes.
My questions were wide-ranging and submitted to the Embassy almost two months in advance of the interview. Consular Jia was surprisingly candid in his detailed, Chinese Government approved answers to me. The interview was reviewed and approved by the Chinese again after I typed it up my notes so as to constitute a joint understanding of the 2006 interview contents shared by author and the Chinese Government in the published paper. I contend that its contents are overwhelmingly what China wants us to understand about China’s rise even today.
This is especially true when it comes to the topic of Taiwan and its employment by the U.S. defense industry as a justification for increased military expenditures focused on containing China. Taiwan is a salient topic today as industry and military interests are, according to public sources and media reports having significant success in influencing the Congress and Administration decision makers in this regard.
Here are pages 23-30 of Industrial College of the Armed Forces (ICAF) research paper titled: Realism and Realpolitik – Setting the Conditions for America’s Survival in the 21st Century, my thesis at the National Defense University, June 2006.
(2) What China Wants Us to know about its Rise
(a) General Introduction
China is committed to peaceful domestic development in the context of globalization, and seeks to contribute internationally as a partner in a multi-polar world. China’s leadership is also faced with great domestic challenges, as the people of China have different concerns and interests throughout society.
On the international front, China is committed to peace and cooperation. In terms of U.S.-Chinese bilateral relations, misunderstandings have arisen that cause Americans to question Chinese intentions, and the implications of her rapid development. Americans ask, is China a partner to be engaged or a threat to be contained. These misunderstandings can best be mitigated through franker bilateral communications on sensitive issues, including perceiving China and the U.S. through the eyes of the Chinese themselves, i.e. standing in the Chinese shoes. It also includes prioritizing the self interests of our nations as core, vital, and important, and finding the commonalities between them, i.e. the purpose of this interview.
(b) Chinese Economic and Societal Reforms
With regards to the Chinese economy, America, and indeed most of the world will agree that China’s pace of growth and fast development have been particularly noteworthy. Her sustained growth rate, that has averaged 9.5% per year over the past 26-27 years is without precedent in human history. The Chinese standard of living is rising and educational levels have been rising as a consequence, as are societal expectations. It is balance and stability China desires to preserve during this remarkable transformation. It must be noted here that Chinese characteristically treasure stability. As it pertains to Chinese reform, China’s population of over 1.3 billion people, her geographical challenges, and special history cause her societal approach to differ from the U.S., in both quality and scale. This can cause misunderstandings between our countries, especially on the issues of democratization, rule of law, and freedom of expression that America holds as ideal.
China admires these values, in fact China has made significant progress on all fronts since the reforms of 1979, largely by learning from the U.S. and Europeans. In fact China’s transition from a command economy to a market economy has been most dramatic, with influences from the governmental center limited today to macro-policy. Furthermore, China is not an enemy of the internet. There are currently 110 million Chinese internet users, second only to the U.S. in quantity. This number is rapidly increasing, as is the number of websites, currently numbered at over 700,000. Chinese education is another area of tremendous development since the reforms took effect, with China now producing the same number of college graduates each year that she produced over the entire 25 year period that preceded 1979. And the focus of education has turned to science, technology, economics, and education, the skill sets needed for further growth in the midst of globalization. Add to this China’s efforts to resolve civil and other issues in a court of law, as developmental imbalances last year resulted in 70,000 rural protests, freedom of expression unthinkable prior to the reforms.
And despite government interest in maintaining stability, this rapid economic growth has aggravated economically, regionally, and sector differentiated gaps. For example, the medium per capita income of the Chinese today is 1,700 dollars. But this increasing national wealth is by no means evenly distributed. While 100s of millions of Chinese are experiencing affluence, 100s of millions are also living in near-poverty. In fact, in 2005 24 million Chinese were actually living in poverty. Urbanization has also taken its toll, with a mobile work force seeking 24 million city jobs in 2005, even though only 10 million city jobs are being created each year. Further demarcations of wealth accumulation favor the East Coast Provinces over the western hinterland regions, and also favor the cities over the rural communities.
China believes that the next few years will be critical for maintaining China on a relatively balanced and stable course. As the medium per capital income grows from 1,700 dollars to 3,000 dollars gap tensions will increase, even threaten chaos. This is a focus of government efforts today, with the harmonious balance of gaps and growth stability as the goal. Once the 3,000 dollar threshold is crossed there will occur a much broader diffusion of national wealth and Services, especially to the disadvantaged. Essentially, the floor of subsistence for all will be raised, thereby relieving the tension. This is one of the reasons that the government is currently so interested in maintaining stability and developing the social nets of Social Security and universal medical care, including health insurance, to have them in place to mitigate the tension.
China’s special characteristics require that her evolution towards these ideal characteristics must be thoughtful and deliberate. All Chinese abhor the danger of allowing the anarchic aspects of rapid development to lead to societal instability, degeneracy, and even chaos. The Chinese know well the destructive potential of chaos. The Cultural Revolution was the most recent example of a loss of control of idealistic forces that turned out to threaten the very fabric of her society. The author brought up the issue of the Google search engine, and how this and other unrestricted forms of internet access in the U.S. has been a two-edged sword. The author noted that this the unregulated internet has enabled forms of societal degeneracy and crime that are destructive by any measure, and unprecedented in scale. The interviewee did not dispute the validity of this observation. The ideal of unbridled freedom can be anarchic, with unintended consequences that threaten societal stability and well being.
It is clear that China’s path is a challenging one, full of both risks and opportunities. The forces of globalization such as open market economies, multilateralism, and the values noted above, are shared by the Chinese government, as well as others such as the U.S. But stability must be maintained throughout or the value of reform will be for naught for the Chinese people; there will be no reform, no development, no progress, and China will have no global future. Again, America must stand in Chinese shoes to understand why China’s path to development should and must be different from that of the U.S., as the two nations come from fundamentally different circumstances.
China notes with concern reference to her “rise‟ as though it could be compared to that of Colonial or Imperial powers of the past. China’s remarkable economic achievements are the product of a total engagement with the other partners in a globalized world, and according to competitively–oriented, yet peaceful economic rule sets. These rule sets originate overwhelmingly in American open-free market principles, not in foreign conquest or the threat thereof, both anathemas to China’s world view as she herself has experienced colonization in the past. In this light, China would expect that America and others would welcome a highly competitive China to help raise the bar of scientific, technical and commercial excellence for the ultimate global betterment of all nations.
(c) Chinese Military Issues
As development pertains to her military capabilities, China continues to modernize her capabilities commensurate with her needs to preserve the sovereign integrity of One China and protect her boarders. Currently, China shares boarders with 18 other nations. Some of those nations have a history of tensions with China, and even fought wars with her as recently as the 1960s and 1970s. Since the institution of reforms, peaceful negotiations with her neighbors have dominated China’s resolution of disputes. Broad past disagreement with Russia over their shared border has now been reduced to peaceful negotiation over a small remaining 1,000 kilometer stretch of frontier. Similar contentions with Viet Nam, Philippines, Burma, Malaysia, India and others are largely resolved. Misunderstandings over outstanding issues in the South China Sea, such as the Separatley Island chain are being maturely handled through joint development rather than military confrontation. Still, a nation as geographically expansive and populous as China will continue to grow her military capabilities commensurate with the national and international security environment that she perceives, as well as her resources, a right and duty of all responsible sovereign nations.
The increases in Chinese military outlays and her fielding of advanced defensive capabilities have caused many in the U.S. concern regarding the strategic purpose of China’s military. This suspicion of China is routinely evident in high level U.S. official statements and documents, ranging from those of the U.S. Secretary of Defense, to influential members of the U.S. Congress, to the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR). These include incomprehensible suggestions that China needs to be “contained‟ with Cold War logic, as though One China has military or ideologically grounded imperial aspirations, such as those of the old Soviet Union.
What is needed most to alleviate a potentially harmful misunderstanding of China’s military intentions is, again, for the U.S. to stand for a moment in China’s shoes. 18 shared foreign boarders, a painful past occupation by Imperial Japan, a renegade Province of Taiwan that threatens succession from China, and the continuous presence of American troops in East and Central Asia. China’s understanding of sovereignty does not condone the stationing of foreign forces within the boarders of any other nations. Admittedly, the expeditionary presence of U.S. forces adjacent to China’s boarders and coasts, in Korea, Japan, and elsewhere has reasonable justification in preexisting alliances and the prosecution of the Global War on Terror, in which China is a committed ally. China accepts this encircling presence with understanding, and does not contest it under those circumstances.
At the same time, China has deep concerns that any nation would employ bilateral alliances, or GWOT prosecution as a pretext to exert coercive pressure on China. An example might include Japanese encouragement of Provincial Chinese secessionists knowing that it has a nuclear-armed American ally. China would consider such third party leverage over One China’s sovereign affairs as a clear violation of the past Communiqués that she has with the U.S., and extraordinarily threatening to Chinese national security.
By looking out from the Chinese vantage point, it is hoped that those American policy makers most concerned with China’s military improvements might take a moment to see that China’s posture is pragmatic and measured, not chauvinistic. And it also responds to a fluid external military-security environment over which it has little control, other than through communication, negotiation, and deterrence. There is danger that an uninformed action-reaction cycle of tension between the U.S. and China leads automatically to arms escalation over time, as history has shown in previous eras as well. Most significantly, it’s incidental “self-evidence‟ gives fuel to the arguments of nationalists and extremists in both nations for whom mutual mistrust is a foregone conclusion, and basis for their political legitimacy. Open, frank communication and an absolute adherence to bilateral agreements is the key to interrupting the cycle constructively. In this light, the U.S.’ reliable adherence to all aspects and provisions of the 3 Joint Communiqués, which China cherishes, will have a certain outcome that mitigates bilateral tensions.
As it pertains to eliminating military tensions, closer and more consistent military-to-military interaction would be very beneficial, especially during periods of political tension when the personal trusts built into professional military relationships can weather misunderstanding. In the end, China understands the reasons for the presence of U.S. forces in Asia. In fact, China does not want U.S. out of Asia. Peaceful commercial, diplomatic, and military engagement in context of globalization is inevitable, and desirable, so long as the concerns noted above are considered and mitigated.
(d) The Province of Taiwan
For China, the importance of resolving the issue of Taiwan in strict accordance the 3 Joint Communiqués transcends any other national priority, including stability, balanced development, and sustained economic growth. Its fundamental importance to Chinese national identity eclipses even the issue of the form of government or rulership of China. No matter who governs One China, or under what pretext, Taiwan would always stand out separately as China’s Number One national security priority. It is the core issue at the center of U.S. and Chinese bilateral relations, and a source of increasing concern for the Chinese, a situation that it would be wise for the U.S. and One China to consider deescalating.
The Province of Taiwan’s artificial political alienation from One China is a deep emotional wound for 1.3 billion increasingly nationalistic Chinese, as well as fully half of voting age Provincial Taiwanese themselves. America’s is perceived as encouraging Taiwanese independence advocates by means of veiled military assurances in the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA), and the continued sales on modern weapons to the Province of Taiwan that are in blatant violation of the Joint Communiqués, documents that the Chinese cherish as inviolable.
The most recent 1982 Third Joint Communiqué reaffirms the 1972 Shanghai Communiqué and the 1979 Joint Communiqué on the Establishment of Diplomatic Relations in restating the U.S. acknowledgement that there is only One China. Furthermore, in that most recent 1982 Communiqué, the U.S. stated that arms sales to Taiwan will not exceed, either in qualitative or in quantitative terms, the level of those supplied since the establishment of diplomatic relations in 1979, i.e. they would be capped at 1982 levels of capability. It also committed to gradually reducing its sale of arms to Taiwan, leading, over a period of time, to a final resolution.
For the Chinese, concerns over this matter are reinforced in American promises of advanced armaments to Taiwanese that violate the agreed provisions of the 3rd Joint Communiqué. Specifically, this involves America’s promises of 150 F-16s, 12 P3Cs, 8 diesel submarines, and advanced Patriot Block III missile batteries, all advanced technologies, most being qualitatively superior to those provided to Taiwan between 1979 and 1982 . All told, this $18B capabilities package also represents an increase in the quantity as well, fueling a growing perception of American disingenuousness on the matter. This also fuels the martial sentiments of Chinese nationalists and further encourages the renegade behavior of the Taiwanese government. Together, these developments are very unfortunate. Whether or not the U.S. intended to fuel the ambitions if Taiwanese secessionists is not the point. What is critical for the U.S. to understand is that the TRA and violations of the 3 Joint Comminiques is leading to potentially disastrous unintended consequences. This constitutes China’s core national security concern today.
The intent of the 1979 TRA was for the U.S. to attempt to influence the terms of unification under Cold War circumstances, when the Kuomintang (KMT) contended with the Communist Party for rule over One China. The TRA and its associated weapons sales were designed to provide the KMT leverage in negotiations with the Communist Party on the Mainland as peaceful assimilation proceeded over time. While Taiwan was considered a practical and defensible temporary home for the KMT, it was never seen as a nation distinct from One China. Taiwan was considered a Province, nothing more and nothing less, and all Communiqués reaffirm this fact.
For their part, the Chinese are in no hurry with regard to a peaceful political assimilation, as One China is and has been a recognized reality in all Communiqués and within the United Nations. Many aspects of Taiwanese economic absorption into One China are already a reality. Massive Taiwanese investment in Mainland China and relaxation of previous cross-strait restrictions on familial fraternization are contributing to an inextricable interdependence over time. This stable path could only be threatened by moves to high jack a Taiwanese identity for purposes of secession, with American military intervention looming as a possibility.
However, President Chen Shui-bien’s recent decision to disestablish the National Unification Council and disregard the National Unification Guidelines threatens the emergence of an irreversible crisis. During its formulation in 1979, China had cautioned the U.S. that the TRA would eventually lead to deep mistrust between China and the U.S., in spite of American confidence to the contrary. The latest moves towards attempted succession are evidence that the Chinese perspective was and remains valid. On several other occasions in recent years the outdated TRA has prompted similar reckless actions by other Taiwanese separatists, as well as unfortunate comments by U.S. Presidents and influential members of Congress. Tacit U.S. encouragement of Taiwanese recklessness is perceived as a clear threat to China’s core national security issue.
During the interview, the author suggested that U.S. support for Taiwan compares approximately to Union concern over French assurances to Confederacy secessionists that international recognition was an incentive worth prolonging the American Civil War for. China does not dispute the validity of this comparison. Like America’s emotional commitment to wage total war to prevent Confederacy succession, China today feels compelled to prepare for just such a worst case, including total war with the Province’s foreign allies.
Still, many in the U.S. Congress and the Pentagon site the dangers of appeasing the Chinese, failing to stand up for American values overseas, and traitorously “walking away from our friends in Taiwan.‟ They point to the ambiguous language in the Act as preserving flexibility of U.S. options, and insist that arms sales to Taiwan constructively strengthen the province’s negotiating position vis-à-vis the Mainland as assimilation is worked out. However, it is reliability that is highly honored within Chinese foreign relations, not empty rhetoric, and this psychological support to the Taiwanese is an affront to the Communiqués that were negotiated and agreed to by the Chinese in total sincerity. China and Provincial Taiwanese both view the Act through the Chinese cultural prism. Favorable positioning for negotiations is not an issue for One China, no matter how well intended the thinking of naïve TRA advocates.
Preserving the status quo TRA is therefore a lose-lose situation. For the U.S. to opt not to come to the military aid of Taiwanese secessionists in a time of crisis her international credibility will be in a shambles globally. Alliances are not options from the Chinese perspective. Conversely, for the U.S. to opt to come to the defense of the secessionists, a conflict with China would escalate to total war with absolute certainty. The integrity of One China is not negotiable.
During the interview, the author recalled a passage from the book The U.S. Marine Corps Story. In it, J. Robert Moskin related one relevant example of China’s reliability when it comes to her consistency of policy and action on a core issue. The author recalled Moskin’s observation that on 3 October 1950 China’s Prime Minister Chou En-lai warned that if American troops crossed the 38th Parallel in Korea, China, a non-nuclear power, would enter the war against the nuclear-armed U.S. China did exactly what she promised and effectively prevented the unification of Korea, even while suffering tremendous losses at a rate of 20 combat deaths for every U.S. soldier lost. The interviewee neither confirmed nor disputed the validity of the author’s probing analogy. However, he restated clearly that any necessary means would be employed by China to prevent a renegade Province of Taiwan from seceding from One China.
Ironically, the advocates of the TRA are the same who ask why China does not do more in support of the U.S. against common threats. In fact China shares great concern for both Islamic extremism and rogue nuclear powers in her region. But China acts pragmatically in prioritizing her foreign relations objectives. Right now a renegade Taiwan is the major threat to her domestic and international legitimacy. Given a favorable resolution over Taiwan, China would deal with other threats, such as Radical Islamists in Iran and North Korea with sincerity and self-sacrifice. Furthermore, long-term partnerships in alternative energy, peaceful nuclear power, the environment and other common global interests are a certain outcome.
Conversely, the continued perceived interference by the U.S. in this core Chinese issue at the center of our bilateral relations, whether conscious or unintentional, is extraordinarily dangerous. A peaceful long-term full resolution is always preferred by China, as per the Joint Communiqués, and all possible tools will be employed to avert regrettable options of nearer-term last resort. But any incident that leads to a proclamation of independence by the Province Taiwan will cause China to react decisively, with physical implications being irrelevant on this emotional issue. Chen Shui-bien’s recent activities come dangerously close to inciting just such an irreversible crisis.
As it stands, the TRA and America’s continued violations of the three Joint Communiqués are a deeply unfortunate source of concern for China, over a core issue in which compromise is not an option. In fact, the Chinese see this Act as an unfortunate burden on the U.S. that risks placing U.S. interests and her forces at risk for a misguided cause. In 1972, 1979, and 1982 the U.S. was not signing up to Taiwanese succession, but rather it was affirming One China, whether it be KMT or Communist party governed in the future. In fact the Joint Communiqués explicitly forbade Taiwanese succession. It is China’s sincere hope that the formal elimination of the TRA and a recommitment to the strict upholding of the Joint Communiqués will become priorities for both the U.S. President and Congress.
China has invited an open dialogue with Chen Shui-bien and his Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). But unlike the KMT, the DPP has increasingly evolved into an Independence Party, refusing China’s communications overtures. This enables a small renegade party, elected to power on the slimmest of margins and whose democratic procedures are still in question, to hold the U.S. hostage to the whims of irresponsible leadership and the tensions of brinkmanship. With the TRA and weapons sales in place an irreversible and unintended domino scenario is conceivable.
Neither China nor the U.S. could possibly want total war with one another over Taiwanese succession, but China will certainly employ any and all available means to prevent it, however destructive the tragedy that might ensue. In the end, this core emotional contention remains fundamental to the identity of over 1.3 billion Chinese people, and it is not negotiable.
(3) About the author
Franz J. Gayl serves as a civilian science and technology advisor within Headquarters Marine Corps at the Pentagon. Previously he served for 22 years as an active duty infantry Marine, starting as enlisted and retiring with the rank of Major.
He earned an MS in Space Systems Operations from the Naval Postgraduate School and an MS in National Resource Strategy from the National Defense University. At NDU he was presented the “Ambassador’s Award” for my research and paper.
In 2006 he voluntarily deployed to Iraq. There he became aware of corruption within the Quantico support establishment that cost many under-equipped Marines their lives. His subsequent disclosures to the OSD, Congress and the press contributed to dramatic life-saving improvements in rapid acquisition
He also participated for 5 months in a DARPA internship, holds one patent, and is a graduate of the 2011 Singularity University Graduate Studies Program.
Summary: Today we have another guest post by Franz Gayl (Major, USMC, retired), where he provides some perspective on one of the most important developments of the 21st century. Correctly understanding and reacting to this is essential for American to have a successful grand strategy in this new era.
Graphic from Forbes
Contents
1.Introduction
2.What China Wants Us to Understand about China’s Rise
3.About the author
4.For more information
(1) Introduction
On 9 September 2011 the FM website republished Will China become a superpower?, with articles by by Minxin Pei (Prof of Government at Claremont McKenna College; his latest book is China: Trapped Transition) and Young J. Kim (former Captain in the US Army, currently a PhD candidate at Korea University in Seoul). It’s worth reading in full. This widely accessed piece has since benefited from extensive expert critique, a discussion that is still on-going in the comments. The discussion has provide an education for me on various aspects of China’s observed course and general historical precedents. I am neither a historian nor an economist, and there is little that I can add to those expert comments.
However, one voice that could be added to the discussion that began in 2011 is a definitive Chinese government position on China’s rise. During my development of a wider-ranging ICAF research paper in 2005 – 2006, I was permitted to interview Consular Jia Xiudong at the Embassy of the People’s Republic of China in Washington, D.C. where he then served. The paper in which the interview is nested has been posted on the FM website. Unfortunately, the length of my paper was as a major flaw, and the interview was effectively buried within it out of sight. Yet, Consular Jia’s observations in that interview would appear critical for the balance of FM’s China discussions today.
The interview is certainly dated in that it was conducted six years ago. This will be seen as many of the contemporary events discussed from that period have evolved or changed in quantitative scope. One cannot assume exactly what the Chinese would say today without conducting another interview in 2012. At the same, looking at the contents and given consistency-focused Chinese government strategic communications, it is unlikely a 2012 interview would yield much different positions, especially on critical themes.
My questions were wide-ranging and submitted to the Embassy almost two months in advance of the interview. Consular Jia was surprisingly candid in his detailed, Chinese Government approved answers to me. The interview was reviewed and approved by the Chinese again after I typed it up my notes so as to constitute a joint understanding of the 2006 interview contents shared by author and the Chinese Government in the published paper. I contend that its contents are overwhelmingly what China wants us to understand about China’s rise even today.
This is especially true when it comes to the topic of Taiwan and its employment by the U.S. defense industry as a justification for increased military expenditures focused on containing China. Taiwan is a salient topic today as industry and military interests are, according to public sources and media reports having significant success in influencing the Congress and Administration decision makers in this regard.
Here are pages 23-30 of Industrial College of the Armed Forces (ICAF) research paper titled: Realism and Realpolitik – Setting the Conditions for America’s Survival in the 21st Century, my thesis at the National Defense University, June 2006.
(2) What China Wants Us to know about its Rise
(a) General Introduction
China is committed to peaceful domestic development in the context of globalization, and seeks to contribute internationally as a partner in a multi-polar world. China’s leadership is also faced with great domestic challenges, as the people of China have different concerns and interests throughout society.
On the international front, China is committed to peace and cooperation. In terms of U.S.-Chinese bilateral relations, misunderstandings have arisen that cause Americans to question Chinese intentions, and the implications of her rapid development. Americans ask, is China a partner to be engaged or a threat to be contained. These misunderstandings can best be mitigated through franker bilateral communications on sensitive issues, including perceiving China and the U.S. through the eyes of the Chinese themselves, i.e. standing in the Chinese shoes. It also includes prioritizing the self interests of our nations as core, vital, and important, and finding the commonalities between them, i.e. the purpose of this interview.
(b) Chinese Economic and Societal Reforms
With regards to the Chinese economy, America, and indeed most of the world will agree that China’s pace of growth and fast development have been particularly noteworthy. Her sustained growth rate, that has averaged 9.5% per year over the past 26-27 years is without precedent in human history. The Chinese standard of living is rising and educational levels have been rising as a consequence, as are societal expectations. It is balance and stability China desires to preserve during this remarkable transformation. It must be noted here that Chinese characteristically treasure stability. As it pertains to Chinese reform, China’s population of over 1.3 billion people, her geographical challenges, and special history cause her societal approach to differ from the U.S., in both quality and scale. This can cause misunderstandings between our countries, especially on the issues of democratization, rule of law, and freedom of expression that America holds as ideal.
China admires these values, in fact China has made significant progress on all fronts since the reforms of 1979, largely by learning from the U.S. and Europeans. In fact China’s transition from a command economy to a market economy has been most dramatic, with influences from the governmental center limited today to macro-policy. Furthermore, China is not an enemy of the internet. There are currently 110 million Chinese internet users, second only to the U.S. in quantity. This number is rapidly increasing, as is the number of websites, currently numbered at over 700,000. Chinese education is another area of tremendous development since the reforms took effect, with China now producing the same number of college graduates each year that she produced over the entire 25 year period that preceded 1979. And the focus of education has turned to science, technology, economics, and education, the skill sets needed for further growth in the midst of globalization. Add to this China’s efforts to resolve civil and other issues in a court of law, as developmental imbalances last year resulted in 70,000 rural protests, freedom of expression unthinkable prior to the reforms.
And despite government interest in maintaining stability, this rapid economic growth has aggravated economically, regionally, and sector differentiated gaps. For example, the medium per capita income of the Chinese today is 1,700 dollars. But this increasing national wealth is by no means evenly distributed. While 100s of millions of Chinese are experiencing affluence, 100s of millions are also living in near-poverty. In fact, in 2005 24 million Chinese were actually living in poverty. Urbanization has also taken its toll, with a mobile work force seeking 24 million city jobs in 2005, even though only 10 million city jobs are being created each year. Further demarcations of wealth accumulation favor the East Coast Provinces over the western hinterland regions, and also favor the cities over the rural communities.
China believes that the next few years will be critical for maintaining China on a relatively balanced and stable course. As the medium per capital income grows from 1,700 dollars to 3,000 dollars gap tensions will increase, even threaten chaos. This is a focus of government efforts today, with the harmonious balance of gaps and growth stability as the goal. Once the 3,000 dollar threshold is crossed there will occur a much broader diffusion of national wealth and Services, especially to the disadvantaged. Essentially, the floor of subsistence for all will be raised, thereby relieving the tension. This is one of the reasons that the government is currently so interested in maintaining stability and developing the social nets of Social Security and universal medical care, including health insurance, to have them in place to mitigate the tension.
China’s special characteristics require that her evolution towards these ideal characteristics must be thoughtful and deliberate. All Chinese abhor the danger of allowing the anarchic aspects of rapid development to lead to societal instability, degeneracy, and even chaos. The Chinese know well the destructive potential of chaos. The Cultural Revolution was the most recent example of a loss of control of idealistic forces that turned out to threaten the very fabric of her society. The author brought up the issue of the Google search engine, and how this and other unrestricted forms of internet access in the U.S. has been a two-edged sword. The author noted that this the unregulated internet has enabled forms of societal degeneracy and crime that are destructive by any measure, and unprecedented in scale. The interviewee did not dispute the validity of this observation. The ideal of unbridled freedom can be anarchic, with unintended consequences that threaten societal stability and well being.
It is clear that China’s path is a challenging one, full of both risks and opportunities. The forces of globalization such as open market economies, multilateralism, and the values noted above, are shared by the Chinese government, as well as others such as the U.S. But stability must be maintained throughout or the value of reform will be for naught for the Chinese people; there will be no reform, no development, no progress, and China will have no global future. Again, America must stand in Chinese shoes to understand why China’s path to development should and must be different from that of the U.S., as the two nations come from fundamentally different circumstances.
China notes with concern reference to her “rise‟ as though it could be compared to that of Colonial or Imperial powers of the past. China’s remarkable economic achievements are the product of a total engagement with the other partners in a globalized world, and according to competitively–oriented, yet peaceful economic rule sets. These rule sets originate overwhelmingly in American open-free market principles, not in foreign conquest or the threat thereof, both anathemas to China’s world view as she herself has experienced colonization in the past. In this light, China would expect that America and others would welcome a highly competitive China to help raise the bar of scientific, technical and commercial excellence for the ultimate global betterment of all nations.
(c) Chinese Military Issues
As development pertains to her military capabilities, China continues to modernize her capabilities commensurate with her needs to preserve the sovereign integrity of One China and protect her boarders. Currently, China shares boarders with 18 other nations. Some of those nations have a history of tensions with China, and even fought wars with her as recently as the 1960s and 1970s. Since the institution of reforms, peaceful negotiations with her neighbors have dominated China’s resolution of disputes. Broad past disagreement with Russia over their shared border has now been reduced to peaceful negotiation over a small remaining 1,000 kilometer stretch of frontier. Similar contentions with Viet Nam, Philippines, Burma, Malaysia, India and others are largely resolved. Misunderstandings over outstanding issues in the South China Sea, such as the Separatley Island chain are being maturely handled through joint development rather than military confrontation. Still, a nation as geographically expansive and populous as China will continue to grow her military capabilities commensurate with the national and international security environment that she perceives, as well as her resources, a right and duty of all responsible sovereign nations.
The increases in Chinese military outlays and her fielding of advanced defensive capabilities have caused many in the U.S. concern regarding the strategic purpose of China’s military. This suspicion of China is routinely evident in high level U.S. official statements and documents, ranging from those of the U.S. Secretary of Defense, to influential members of the U.S. Congress, to the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR). These include incomprehensible suggestions that China needs to be “contained‟ with Cold War logic, as though One China has military or ideologically grounded imperial aspirations, such as those of the old Soviet Union.
What is needed most to alleviate a potentially harmful misunderstanding of China’s military intentions is, again, for the U.S. to stand for a moment in China’s shoes. 18 shared foreign boarders, a painful past occupation by Imperial Japan, a renegade Province of Taiwan that threatens succession from China, and the continuous presence of American troops in East and Central Asia. China’s understanding of sovereignty does not condone the stationing of foreign forces within the boarders of any other nations. Admittedly, the expeditionary presence of U.S. forces adjacent to China’s boarders and coasts, in Korea, Japan, and elsewhere has reasonable justification in preexisting alliances and the prosecution of the Global War on Terror, in which China is a committed ally. China accepts this encircling presence with understanding, and does not contest it under those circumstances.
At the same time, China has deep concerns that any nation would employ bilateral alliances, or GWOT prosecution as a pretext to exert coercive pressure on China. An example might include Japanese encouragement of Provincial Chinese secessionists knowing that it has a nuclear-armed American ally. China would consider such third party leverage over One China’s sovereign affairs as a clear violation of the past Communiqués that she has with the U.S., and extraordinarily threatening to Chinese national security.
By looking out from the Chinese vantage point, it is hoped that those American policy makers most concerned with China’s military improvements might take a moment to see that China’s posture is pragmatic and measured, not chauvinistic. And it also responds to a fluid external military-security environment over which it has little control, other than through communication, negotiation, and deterrence. There is danger that an uninformed action-reaction cycle of tension between the U.S. and China leads automatically to arms escalation over time, as history has shown in previous eras as well. Most significantly, it’s incidental “self-evidence‟ gives fuel to the arguments of nationalists and extremists in both nations for whom mutual mistrust is a foregone conclusion, and basis for their political legitimacy. Open, frank communication and an absolute adherence to bilateral agreements is the key to interrupting the cycle constructively. In this light, the U.S.’ reliable adherence to all aspects and provisions of the 3 Joint Communiqués, which China cherishes, will have a certain outcome that mitigates bilateral tensions.
As it pertains to eliminating military tensions, closer and more consistent military-to-military interaction would be very beneficial, especially during periods of political tension when the personal trusts built into professional military relationships can weather misunderstanding. In the end, China understands the reasons for the presence of U.S. forces in Asia. In fact, China does not want U.S. out of Asia. Peaceful commercial, diplomatic, and military engagement in context of globalization is inevitable, and desirable, so long as the concerns noted above are considered and mitigated.
(d) The Province of Taiwan
For China, the importance of resolving the issue of Taiwan in strict accordance the 3 Joint Communiqués transcends any other national priority, including stability, balanced development, and sustained economic growth. Its fundamental importance to Chinese national identity eclipses even the issue of the form of government or rulership of China. No matter who governs One China, or under what pretext, Taiwan would always stand out separately as China’s Number One national security priority. It is the core issue at the center of U.S. and Chinese bilateral relations, and a source of increasing concern for the Chinese, a situation that it would be wise for the U.S. and One China to consider deescalating.
The Province of Taiwan’s artificial political alienation from One China is a deep emotional wound for 1.3 billion increasingly nationalistic Chinese, as well as fully half of voting age Provincial Taiwanese themselves. America’s is perceived as encouraging Taiwanese independence advocates by means of veiled military assurances in the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA), and the continued sales on modern weapons to the Province of Taiwan that are in blatant violation of the Joint Communiqués, documents that the Chinese cherish as inviolable.
The most recent 1982 Third Joint Communiqué reaffirms the 1972 Shanghai Communiqué and the 1979 Joint Communiqué on the Establishment of Diplomatic Relations in restating the U.S. acknowledgement that there is only One China. Furthermore, in that most recent 1982 Communiqué, the U.S. stated that arms sales to Taiwan will not exceed, either in qualitative or in quantitative terms, the level of those supplied since the establishment of diplomatic relations in 1979, i.e. they would be capped at 1982 levels of capability. It also committed to gradually reducing its sale of arms to Taiwan, leading, over a period of time, to a final resolution.
For the Chinese, concerns over this matter are reinforced in American promises of advanced armaments to Taiwanese that violate the agreed provisions of the 3rd Joint Communiqué. Specifically, this involves America’s promises of 150 F-16s, 12 P3Cs, 8 diesel submarines, and advanced Patriot Block III missile batteries, all advanced technologies, most being qualitatively superior to those provided to Taiwan between 1979 and 1982 . All told, this $18B capabilities package also represents an increase in the quantity as well, fueling a growing perception of American disingenuousness on the matter. This also fuels the martial sentiments of Chinese nationalists and further encourages the renegade behavior of the Taiwanese government. Together, these developments are very unfortunate. Whether or not the U.S. intended to fuel the ambitions if Taiwanese secessionists is not the point. What is critical for the U.S. to understand is that the TRA and violations of the 3 Joint Comminiques is leading to potentially disastrous unintended consequences. This constitutes China’s core national security concern today.
The intent of the 1979 TRA was for the U.S. to attempt to influence the terms of unification under Cold War circumstances, when the Kuomintang (KMT) contended with the Communist Party for rule over One China. The TRA and its associated weapons sales were designed to provide the KMT leverage in negotiations with the Communist Party on the Mainland as peaceful assimilation proceeded over time. While Taiwan was considered a practical and defensible temporary home for the KMT, it was never seen as a nation distinct from One China. Taiwan was considered a Province, nothing more and nothing less, and all Communiqués reaffirm this fact.
For their part, the Chinese are in no hurry with regard to a peaceful political assimilation, as One China is and has been a recognized reality in all Communiqués and within the United Nations. Many aspects of Taiwanese economic absorption into One China are already a reality. Massive Taiwanese investment in Mainland China and relaxation of previous cross-strait restrictions on familial fraternization are contributing to an inextricable interdependence over time. This stable path could only be threatened by moves to high jack a Taiwanese identity for purposes of secession, with American military intervention looming as a possibility.
However, President Chen Shui-bien’s recent decision to disestablish the National Unification Council and disregard the National Unification Guidelines threatens the emergence of an irreversible crisis. During its formulation in 1979, China had cautioned the U.S. that the TRA would eventually lead to deep mistrust between China and the U.S., in spite of American confidence to the contrary. The latest moves towards attempted succession are evidence that the Chinese perspective was and remains valid. On several other occasions in recent years the outdated TRA has prompted similar reckless actions by other Taiwanese separatists, as well as unfortunate comments by U.S. Presidents and influential members of Congress. Tacit U.S. encouragement of Taiwanese recklessness is perceived as a clear threat to China’s core national security issue.
During the interview, the author suggested that U.S. support for Taiwan compares approximately to Union concern over French assurances to Confederacy secessionists that international recognition was an incentive worth prolonging the American Civil War for. China does not dispute the validity of this comparison. Like America’s emotional commitment to wage total war to prevent Confederacy succession, China today feels compelled to prepare for just such a worst case, including total war with the Province’s foreign allies.
Still, many in the U.S. Congress and the Pentagon site the dangers of appeasing the Chinese, failing to stand up for American values overseas, and traitorously “walking away from our friends in Taiwan.‟ They point to the ambiguous language in the Act as preserving flexibility of U.S. options, and insist that arms sales to Taiwan constructively strengthen the province’s negotiating position vis-à-vis the Mainland as assimilation is worked out. However, it is reliability that is highly honored within Chinese foreign relations, not empty rhetoric, and this psychological support to the Taiwanese is an affront to the Communiqués that were negotiated and agreed to by the Chinese in total sincerity. China and Provincial Taiwanese both view the Act through the Chinese cultural prism. Favorable positioning for negotiations is not an issue for One China, no matter how well intended the thinking of naïve TRA advocates.
Preserving the status quo TRA is therefore a lose-lose situation. For the U.S. to opt not to come to the military aid of Taiwanese secessionists in a time of crisis her international credibility will be in a shambles globally. Alliances are not options from the Chinese perspective. Conversely, for the U.S. to opt to come to the defense of the secessionists, a conflict with China would escalate to total war with absolute certainty. The integrity of One China is not negotiable.
During the interview, the author recalled a passage from the book The U.S. Marine Corps Story. In it, J. Robert Moskin related one relevant example of China’s reliability when it comes to her consistency of policy and action on a core issue. The author recalled Moskin’s observation that on 3 October 1950 China’s Prime Minister Chou En-lai warned that if American troops crossed the 38th Parallel in Korea, China, a non-nuclear power, would enter the war against the nuclear-armed U.S. China did exactly what she promised and effectively prevented the unification of Korea, even while suffering tremendous losses at a rate of 20 combat deaths for every U.S. soldier lost. The interviewee neither confirmed nor disputed the validity of the author’s probing analogy. However, he restated clearly that any necessary means would be employed by China to prevent a renegade Province of Taiwan from seceding from One China.
Ironically, the advocates of the TRA are the same who ask why China does not do more in support of the U.S. against common threats. In fact China shares great concern for both Islamic extremism and rogue nuclear powers in her region. But China acts pragmatically in prioritizing her foreign relations objectives. Right now a renegade Taiwan is the major threat to her domestic and international legitimacy. Given a favorable resolution over Taiwan, China would deal with other threats, such as Radical Islamists in Iran and North Korea with sincerity and self-sacrifice. Furthermore, long-term partnerships in alternative energy, peaceful nuclear power, the environment and other common global interests are a certain outcome.
Conversely, the continued perceived interference by the U.S. in this core Chinese issue at the center of our bilateral relations, whether conscious or unintentional, is extraordinarily dangerous. A peaceful long-term full resolution is always preferred by China, as per the Joint Communiqués, and all possible tools will be employed to avert regrettable options of nearer-term last resort. But any incident that leads to a proclamation of independence by the Province Taiwan will cause China to react decisively, with physical implications being irrelevant on this emotional issue. Chen Shui-bien’s recent activities come dangerously close to inciting just such an irreversible crisis.
As it stands, the TRA and America’s continued violations of the three Joint Communiqués are a deeply unfortunate source of concern for China, over a core issue in which compromise is not an option. In fact, the Chinese see this Act as an unfortunate burden on the U.S. that risks placing U.S. interests and her forces at risk for a misguided cause. In 1972, 1979, and 1982 the U.S. was not signing up to Taiwanese succession, but rather it was affirming One China, whether it be KMT or Communist party governed in the future. In fact the Joint Communiqués explicitly forbade Taiwanese succession. It is China’s sincere hope that the formal elimination of the TRA and a recommitment to the strict upholding of the Joint Communiqués will become priorities for both the U.S. President and Congress.
China has invited an open dialogue with Chen Shui-bien and his Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). But unlike the KMT, the DPP has increasingly evolved into an Independence Party, refusing China’s communications overtures. This enables a small renegade party, elected to power on the slimmest of margins and whose democratic procedures are still in question, to hold the U.S. hostage to the whims of irresponsible leadership and the tensions of brinkmanship. With the TRA and weapons sales in place an irreversible and unintended domino scenario is conceivable.
Neither China nor the U.S. could possibly want total war with one another over Taiwanese succession, but China will certainly employ any and all available means to prevent it, however destructive the tragedy that might ensue. In the end, this core emotional contention remains fundamental to the identity of over 1.3 billion Chinese people, and it is not negotiable.
(3) About the author
Franz J. Gayl serves as a civilian science and technology advisor within Headquarters Marine Corps at the Pentagon. Previously he served for 22 years as an active duty infantry Marine, starting as enlisted and retiring with the rank of Major.
He earned an MS in Space Systems Operations from the Naval Postgraduate School and an MS in National Resource Strategy from the National Defense University. At NDU he was presented the “Ambassador’s Award” for my research and paper.
In 2006 he voluntarily deployed to Iraq. There he became aware of corruption within the Quantico support establishment that cost many under-equipped Marines their lives. His subsequent disclosures to the OSD, Congress and the press contributed to dramatic life-saving improvements in rapid acquisition
He also participated for 5 months in a DARPA internship, holds one patent, and is a graduate of the 2011 Singularity University Graduate Studies Program.
Thursday, March 15, 2012
The Road to Smart Vehicles:
CommNexux, San Diego, Calif
The Emerging Wireless SIG Presents...
An Industry Review of Vehicle-to-Vehicle Communications
In an effort to make our roads and vehicles smarter and safer, the FCC allocated an allotment of 75 MHz of spectrum in 5.9 GHz for Dedicated Short Range Communications (DSRC), intended for use in Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS). The objective is the ability of Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-roadside communications (in combination referred to as V2X), enabling a range of features to warn drivers of upcoming dangers.
The US Government, system manufacturers and car manufacturers have been collaborating for many years to develop standards for communications, which efforts have been concentrated within IEEE 802.11p and IEEE 1609. Progress is reflected in various field trial deployments around the country.
In our upcoming event, we will review wireless technologies and standards for V2X communications, trials and other developments to date, and expectations of Intelligent Transportation Systems in the future, providing both a system manufacturer and car manufacturer perspective.
The Emerging Wireless SIG Presents...
An Industry Review of Vehicle-to-Vehicle Communications
In an effort to make our roads and vehicles smarter and safer, the FCC allocated an allotment of 75 MHz of spectrum in 5.9 GHz for Dedicated Short Range Communications (DSRC), intended for use in Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS). The objective is the ability of Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-roadside communications (in combination referred to as V2X), enabling a range of features to warn drivers of upcoming dangers.
The US Government, system manufacturers and car manufacturers have been collaborating for many years to develop standards for communications, which efforts have been concentrated within IEEE 802.11p and IEEE 1609. Progress is reflected in various field trial deployments around the country.
In our upcoming event, we will review wireless technologies and standards for V2X communications, trials and other developments to date, and expectations of Intelligent Transportation Systems in the future, providing both a system manufacturer and car manufacturer perspective.
Turbulence in India-US Ties
By T.P.Sreenivasan
The irony of the suspicion of a foreign hand in the Koodankulam protests, voiced by the Prime Minister, was that it brought back memories of India as the theatre of great power rivalry. The Russian Ambassador, an old India hand, jumped in to say that he had always suspected that the Americans were undermining Koodankulam. The Americans asserted, rightly, that they had nothing to gain by sabotaging the Indian nuclear industry. If anything, they had much to gain by wide acceptance of nuclear power in India, as they were ready to supply reactors as soon as the liability issue was resolved. The unspoken fact that Koodankulam could not have reached the current state of progress without the India-US nuclear deal was forgotten. Mutual suspicion crept into the very basis of the new strategic partnership with the US.
An architect of the nuclear deal and a champion of the new partnership, Nicholas Burns, had lamented only in February that, in failing to join the EU-US sanctions against Iran, “India had let down the US”. Is the India-US roller coaster continuing its downward spiral, despite the innumerable working groups burning the midnight oil to find new avenues of cooperation?
Ambassador Nirupama Rao asserted as recently as on March 2, 2012: “Today, India and the US are true partners- in strategic terms, in economic terms, and in the development context…. the oldest democracy and the largest democracy in the world are also natural allies.”. But she had nothing to say about the vibrancy of the relationship in strategic terms, except that the strategic dialogue would resume in a few months. If economic partnership is the bedrock of the strategic partnership still, our divergent views on the global scene are making an adverse impact on bilateral relations.
The list of US grievances against India is growing. Added to the nuclear liability law, the decision on the purchase of fighter jets and the Arab Spring issues, is the Indian hedging on Iran. Nothing is more vital for the US today than Iran, with Israel threatening to go it alone if the US dithered into letting Iran go critical with its nuclear ambitions. The signals India had given in the heyday of the nuclear embrace that Iran may not be indispensable to Indian energy and defence strategies appear false, when India is going the extra mile to ensure continuity of oil supplies, despite the disruption in the payment arrangements.
Hillary Clinton had seen India-Iran relations as part of India’s smart economic diplomacy and tried to cool tempers in Washington and urged that the US should learn from India and Brazil to make its economic interests central to its foreign policy. “Emerging powers like India and Brazil put economics at the center of their foreign policies. One of the first questions they ask is ‘how will this affect our economic growth?’ We need to be asking the same question, not because the answer will dictate every one of our foreign policy choices- it will not- but it must be a significant part of that equation,” she had said last year. But she said a couple of weeks ago in response to a question as to what steps India, China and Turkey were taking to help the US-led sanctions against Iran: “We are going to continue to keep an absolute foot on the pedal in terms of our aggressive outreach to them.” She said that the US had very intense and very blunt conversations with each of those countries and that there were a number of steps being pointed out to them that they could and should take. She even claimed that these countries were taking action that went further and deeper than their public statements indicated. Clearly, the economic argument is no more acceptable to the US in the Iran case and it seems to have given up any hope that India might be able to influence Iran to change its nuclear posture.
A vital area of cooperation, counter terrorism, is itself a matter of quibbling with words between India and the US. A top Pentagon commander told the Congress recently that US special forces were stationed in five South Asian countries, including India and Sri Lanka. This seemingly innocuous statement attracted a sharp denial from an Indian Defense Ministry spokesman. “US Special Forces teams have never been stationed in India in the past, nor are such teams stationed in the country presently”, he said. It is public knowledge that the two countries have a robust programme of military exchange with cross visits for training and joint drills. It is quite possible, as Sri Lanka has admitted, that US military personnel may have been stationed in the respective Embassies on occasions and the Indian denial appeared to be an over sensitive reaction.
Our current non-permanent membership of the UN Security Council has imposed its own strains on India-US relations. When India was on the Council in 1991-92, there were occasions when India voted differently from the US, but since there was a global consensus on the first Gulf war, there were no glaring contradictions in our respective stands. Our reservations on the summit document of the Security Council on non-proliferation and our position on humanitarian intervention created tense moments, but we were largely on the same page on many issues relating to the Gulf war. The US was appreciative of the fact that, though we had reservations on forced disarmament and other measures in what came to be known as the “mother of all resolutions” after the war, we went along, because of the special nature of the situation. But this time, with the increased expectation from India after the nuclear deal and the apparent support President Obama gave to India for permanent membership of the Security Council, the US became less tolerant of our differences on a number of issues that came up before the Council. Accusations were made of a return to the nonaligned mentality and not facing up to the challenges posed by the dramatic changes in the world. The perils of permanent membership of the Security Council without the power of the veto were all too evident this time around.
It is indeed a sign of the times that a former Foreign Secretary felt constrained to answer criticism in US circles as well as among Indian commentators that India’s reluctance to take position on difficult issues facing the international community as fence sitting and avoiding decisions that could carry political costs. He asserted that India is not a “freeloader” on the international system, enjoying its benefits, but shirking responsibility for sustaining it. “Demanding India’s support for dubious, interventionist regime change policies in which negotiations are excluded unless those targeted capitulate, and on not obtaining it to accuse India of ‘slapping the US in the face’ is hectoring, not diplomacy”, he said.
The truth of the matter is that the US is looking for friends, who will be friends whether they are right or wrong. Unless it serves the purposes of the US as a global power, no country receives its largesse, not even recognition. India has paid a price for its independence right from the start and we cannot expect the status of a natural ally as long as we exercise our options in the light of our own wisdom. The roller coaster must move on with its gradual ascent and fast descent.
T.P. Sreenivasan, (IFS 1967)
Former Ambassador of India and Governor for India of the IAEA
The irony of the suspicion of a foreign hand in the Koodankulam protests, voiced by the Prime Minister, was that it brought back memories of India as the theatre of great power rivalry. The Russian Ambassador, an old India hand, jumped in to say that he had always suspected that the Americans were undermining Koodankulam. The Americans asserted, rightly, that they had nothing to gain by sabotaging the Indian nuclear industry. If anything, they had much to gain by wide acceptance of nuclear power in India, as they were ready to supply reactors as soon as the liability issue was resolved. The unspoken fact that Koodankulam could not have reached the current state of progress without the India-US nuclear deal was forgotten. Mutual suspicion crept into the very basis of the new strategic partnership with the US.
An architect of the nuclear deal and a champion of the new partnership, Nicholas Burns, had lamented only in February that, in failing to join the EU-US sanctions against Iran, “India had let down the US”. Is the India-US roller coaster continuing its downward spiral, despite the innumerable working groups burning the midnight oil to find new avenues of cooperation?
Ambassador Nirupama Rao asserted as recently as on March 2, 2012: “Today, India and the US are true partners- in strategic terms, in economic terms, and in the development context…. the oldest democracy and the largest democracy in the world are also natural allies.”. But she had nothing to say about the vibrancy of the relationship in strategic terms, except that the strategic dialogue would resume in a few months. If economic partnership is the bedrock of the strategic partnership still, our divergent views on the global scene are making an adverse impact on bilateral relations.
The list of US grievances against India is growing. Added to the nuclear liability law, the decision on the purchase of fighter jets and the Arab Spring issues, is the Indian hedging on Iran. Nothing is more vital for the US today than Iran, with Israel threatening to go it alone if the US dithered into letting Iran go critical with its nuclear ambitions. The signals India had given in the heyday of the nuclear embrace that Iran may not be indispensable to Indian energy and defence strategies appear false, when India is going the extra mile to ensure continuity of oil supplies, despite the disruption in the payment arrangements.
Hillary Clinton had seen India-Iran relations as part of India’s smart economic diplomacy and tried to cool tempers in Washington and urged that the US should learn from India and Brazil to make its economic interests central to its foreign policy. “Emerging powers like India and Brazil put economics at the center of their foreign policies. One of the first questions they ask is ‘how will this affect our economic growth?’ We need to be asking the same question, not because the answer will dictate every one of our foreign policy choices- it will not- but it must be a significant part of that equation,” she had said last year. But she said a couple of weeks ago in response to a question as to what steps India, China and Turkey were taking to help the US-led sanctions against Iran: “We are going to continue to keep an absolute foot on the pedal in terms of our aggressive outreach to them.” She said that the US had very intense and very blunt conversations with each of those countries and that there were a number of steps being pointed out to them that they could and should take. She even claimed that these countries were taking action that went further and deeper than their public statements indicated. Clearly, the economic argument is no more acceptable to the US in the Iran case and it seems to have given up any hope that India might be able to influence Iran to change its nuclear posture.
A vital area of cooperation, counter terrorism, is itself a matter of quibbling with words between India and the US. A top Pentagon commander told the Congress recently that US special forces were stationed in five South Asian countries, including India and Sri Lanka. This seemingly innocuous statement attracted a sharp denial from an Indian Defense Ministry spokesman. “US Special Forces teams have never been stationed in India in the past, nor are such teams stationed in the country presently”, he said. It is public knowledge that the two countries have a robust programme of military exchange with cross visits for training and joint drills. It is quite possible, as Sri Lanka has admitted, that US military personnel may have been stationed in the respective Embassies on occasions and the Indian denial appeared to be an over sensitive reaction.
Our current non-permanent membership of the UN Security Council has imposed its own strains on India-US relations. When India was on the Council in 1991-92, there were occasions when India voted differently from the US, but since there was a global consensus on the first Gulf war, there were no glaring contradictions in our respective stands. Our reservations on the summit document of the Security Council on non-proliferation and our position on humanitarian intervention created tense moments, but we were largely on the same page on many issues relating to the Gulf war. The US was appreciative of the fact that, though we had reservations on forced disarmament and other measures in what came to be known as the “mother of all resolutions” after the war, we went along, because of the special nature of the situation. But this time, with the increased expectation from India after the nuclear deal and the apparent support President Obama gave to India for permanent membership of the Security Council, the US became less tolerant of our differences on a number of issues that came up before the Council. Accusations were made of a return to the nonaligned mentality and not facing up to the challenges posed by the dramatic changes in the world. The perils of permanent membership of the Security Council without the power of the veto were all too evident this time around.
It is indeed a sign of the times that a former Foreign Secretary felt constrained to answer criticism in US circles as well as among Indian commentators that India’s reluctance to take position on difficult issues facing the international community as fence sitting and avoiding decisions that could carry political costs. He asserted that India is not a “freeloader” on the international system, enjoying its benefits, but shirking responsibility for sustaining it. “Demanding India’s support for dubious, interventionist regime change policies in which negotiations are excluded unless those targeted capitulate, and on not obtaining it to accuse India of ‘slapping the US in the face’ is hectoring, not diplomacy”, he said.
The truth of the matter is that the US is looking for friends, who will be friends whether they are right or wrong. Unless it serves the purposes of the US as a global power, no country receives its largesse, not even recognition. India has paid a price for its independence right from the start and we cannot expect the status of a natural ally as long as we exercise our options in the light of our own wisdom. The roller coaster must move on with its gradual ascent and fast descent.
T.P. Sreenivasan, (IFS 1967)
Former Ambassador of India and Governor for India of the IAEA
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)