The United States dominates the globe, but analysts who make a living proclaiming America to be the essential nation, the unipower, the global rulemaker and policeman, are nervous. China refuses to remain supine and is increasingly investing in its military. U.S. policymakers who believe in inevitable and unending American global hegemony can glimpse the emergence of a very different world, one in which Washington no longer even try to unilaterally impose its will on friend and foe alike.
In its newly-released assessment of Chinese military spending, the Pentagon was too diplomatic to call Beijing an enemy. However, the Defense Department warned that “much uncertainty surrounds the future course China’s leaders will set for their country, including in the area of China’s expanding military power and how that power might be used.” A number of conservative analysts forthrightly predict war between these two great nations of East and West.
For instance, the Center for Security Policy charges that Beijing’s goal is “to displace this country as the world’s leading economic power and to defeat us militarily, if necessary.” Clinton H. Whitehurst, Jr., of the Strom Thurmond Institute, says “conflict is likely.”
Jed Babbin and Edward Timperlake entitled their recent book Showdown: Why China Wants War with the United States. In their view, “China’s military buildup is focused on meeting and defeating American forces in any engagement over Taiwan, the Koreas, or the Pacific Rim.”
The surprise, even shock, exhibited by some policymakers at the news that China has the temerity to create a real military demonstrates that American war-hawks are spoiled. In 1945 the U.S. emerged as the Western coalition’s protector and the planet’s dominant economic power. International leadership came naturally. Although Washington was constrained in its use of military power by America’s hegemonic antagonist, the Soviet Union, the U.S. eventually won the Cold War in a rout.
After the emergence of Mikhail Gorbachev, and especially the disintegration of the U.S.S.R., America reigned supreme militarily. The Soviet armed forces shrank and deteriorated; the Warsaw Pact members changed sides, clamoring to join NATO. In China Chairman Mao, the Red Guard, and revolutionary subversion all had disappeared; Beijing’s military was backward, offering quantity over quality. Washington’s “enemies,” where U.S. officials had advocated regime change, initiated military action, or imposed economic sanctions, were a sad lot: Burma, Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Sudan. (Today Iraq is off the list, while Syria and Venezuela are on.) U.S. weapons were a generation ahead of those of most of American allies and even further ahead of America’s less advanced potential adversaries.
Not since Rome had any power been so dominant. And Rome only ruled the Mediterranean world. The U.S. could exert its will any where at any time. The old British Empire was a second class power compared to America – Britain ruled the waves, but required allies to compete on land. The U.S. was more powerful in every way than everyone else.
In short, Washington appeared to be unconstrained and unaccountable. The hubristic sense of world dominance was evident in 1990, as the first Bush administration prepared for the first Gulf War. “What we say goes,” explained President H.W. Bush.
Unfortunately, policymakers, especially of the neocon variety, believed the illusion that the American government was able and entitled to do anything that it wished. Their arrogance, leavened by surprising incompetence, led to the debacle in Iraq. Although it has become increasingly clear that the second Bush administration’s grand global expectations are kaputt, most policymakers still presume a world in which the U.S. can boss, or “lead” in more polite parlance, other nations. Iraqi guerrillas might confound the U.S. government, but no country is supposed to question American dominance.
The People’s Republic of China (PRC), however, is refusing to play by the rules.
With an annual economic growth rate approaching ten percent, the Chinese government has real money to spend on the military. Even Beijing admits to robust increases in defense outlays – 17.8 percent this year, 14.7 percent in 2006. Moreover, the PRC’s official estimates ignore much of the military’s claim on national resources: weapons purchased overseas, R&D expenditures, subsidies for munitions producers. The International Institute for Strategic Studies figures Chinese defense outlays at $103 billion in 2005 and $122 billion in 2006. The Defense Intelligence Agency estimates that China’s military expenditures this year range between $85 billion and $125 billion. (The numbers vary widely, given the difficulty in assessing expenditures and different results from using currency conversion and purchasing power equivalent.)
The issue is not just piles of Dollars versus Renminbi, but capabilities. Beijing is recreating its military. Reports the Pentagon: “The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is pursuing comprehensive transformation from a mass army designed for protracted wars of attrition on its territory to one capable of fighting and winning short-duration, high-intensity conflicts against high-tech adversaries.”
For years the PRC’s primary concern appeared to be Taiwan. China views the island as a “renegade” province which must be prevented from asserting independence. Toward that end, Beijing desires to deter U.S. involvement in any conflict.
However, as the PRC has stepped ever more confidently onto the international stage, its ambitions have grown. Warns the Defense Department report: “analysis of China’s military acquisitions and strategic thinking suggests Beijing is also generating capabilities for other regional contingencies, such as conflict over resources or territory.” Thus, Chinese high-tech investments and quality acquisitions “are a major force in changing East Asian military balances” and “have ramifications far beyond the Asia Pacific region.”
The PRC is upgrading its ground units, adding a new main battle tank, the ZTZ-99. The navy is expanding, with new submarines, the first guided-missile frigate, and improved air defense systems. Officials continue to indicate their interest in adding an aircraft carrier. The air force is enhancing the capabilities of older fighters, deploying advance aircraft, and testing a new helicopter; the air defense system is being augmented with new missiles.
Beijing’s ambitions reach into space, as evidenced by the PRC’s anti-satellite test in January. Even more noteworthy is Beijing’s modernization of its strategic nuclear missile force. China has added a road-mobile, solid-fueled ICBM and is in the process of building submarines with newer SLBMs. Beijing is moving towards the inner-sanctum of the nuclear club, seeking to join the U.S. and Russia with a significant intercontinental nuclear missile arsenal.
Some American policymakers view China’s military ambitions as sinister. Complains the Pentagon: “The outside world has limited knowledge of the motivations, decision-making, and key capabilities supporting China’s motivation. China’s leaders have yet to explain adequately the purposes or desired end-states of the PLA’s expanding military capabilities. China’s actions in certain areas increasingly appear inconsistent with its declared policies.”
John Tkacik, Jr., of the Heritage Foundation goes even further. He writes: “China’s military expansion is extravagantly in excess of anything required by a responsible stakeholder in the existing international system and is even beyond that needed to ‘liberate’ Taiwan.” Without formally charging Beijing with plotting war, the DOD report warns that the “lack of transparency in China’s military affairs will naturally and understandably prompt international responses that hedge against the unknown.”
Despite this apprehensive response, China’s ongoing military build-up is not hard to understand – whether or not Chinese officials “adequately explain” their policy – from Beijing’s perspective. Once a great empire, China found itself humiliated, occupied, and dismantled by the Western powers and Japan over the last two centuries. A state which once received tribute from other Asian powers was forced to grant commercial “concessions” to European traders and yield territory to Britain, Portugal, and, most importantly, Japan.
Over the last century China has engaged in armed conflict big and small with several of its neighbors: India, Japan, Russia, and Vietnam, as well as the United States and American allies (South Korea, Taiwan). Today the globe’s dominant superpower maintains bases along the PRC’s Pacific periphery, has a long military relationship with Thailand, is improving ties with Vietnam, and appears to be building an alliance with India.
Moreover, that power has routinely used military force to coerce other nations and has threatened to intervene in any conflict between China and Taiwan, viewed as an internal affair by Beijing. At issue in the latter case, in Beijing’s view, is not just raw nationalism, but national security. The People’s Liberation Army puts Taiwan in terms of national defense: as a result of losing the island “our natural maritime defense system [would] lose its depth, opening a sea gateway to outside forces,” and “a large area of water territory and rich resources of ocean resources would fall into the hands of others.”
Beijing increasingly has global economic interests, including large-scale energy imports which must traverse critical sea lanes. The PRC’s diplomatic role is expanding as well, and to paraphrase Mao Zedong – and exemplified, frankly, by the U.S. – international influence, too, grows out of the barrel of a gun.
In short, China has legitimate security, economic, and political interests which it is entitled to advance without “explaining” them to the U.S. or anyone else. The PRC has many reasons for acquiring a modern military that have nothing to do with harming America. If there is any surprise, it may be that Beijing is not more quickly augmenting its forces, which started at such a low level of combat effectiveness. Argues Loren Thompson of the Lexington Institute: “There really isn’t much in China’s military programs that would lead you to the conclusion that they want to do anything beyond being influential in East Asia.”
None of this necessarily justifies either past or present Chinese policy. China is an authoritarian state which does not recognize, let alone protect, many of the basic human rights which are inherent to the human person. Beijing’s support for North Korea has had tragic and bloody consequences; war between the PRC and Taiwan would be a disaster for all concerned, including China. But it is foolish not to recognize the interests which animate Beijing’s actions.
Still, America undoubtedly factors into China’s plans. J. Michael McConnell, Director of National Intelligence, acknowledges that “threat perceptions” is one of the factors driving the PRC’s military “modernization effort.” And Washington is a potential threat. Indeed, from Beijing’s perspective there may well be no higher defense priority than creating a military which can deter the U.S. (When Tkacik contends that China is building a force larger than necessary to retake Taiwan, he ignores the fact that China could prevail only if it also was able to dissuade Washington from intervening.)
The thought of China acquiring a deterrent military capability is unpleasant for America, but isn’t necessarily threatening to America. Should the U.S. worry? It is an odd question for a country which accounts for half of the world’s military spending. The U.S. spent $495 billion on the military in 2005. If the Bush administration has its way, defense outlays next year will be $607 billion, a $112 billion increase over three years. That jump is roughly equivalent to what China spends on its military in a year.
Although spending does not automatically generate capability, America is far ahead of the PRC in combat effectiveness. The U.S. nuclear arsenal dwarfs that possessed by China; America deploys twelve carrier groups to none. U.S. weapons are more advanced and U.S. soldiers are better trained. Moreover, Washington is allied to or friends with all of the world’s leading industrialized states and most of the PRC’s neighbors. It will be years – decades, actually – before China can match Washington’s global power.
Thus, Beijing almost certainly desires not dominance but deterrence vis-a-vis the U.S. The PRC does not expect to be able to coerce America. But it likely hopes to avoid being coerced by America. As China’s 2006 defense white paper explained, the purpose of the PRC’s nuclear force is to “deter other countries from using or threatening to use nuclear weapons against China.” Only three nations, India, Russia, and the U.S., today conceivably might use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against the PRC. Only one, America, now routinely uses military force against other countries.
In short, after deterring the Soviet Union for decades, Washington now faces deterrence by China. National Intelligence chief McConnell says that the Chinese are “building their military, in my view, to reach some sort of state of parity with the United states.” In that case, the U.S. no longer will be able to act however it wishes irrespective of the desires of other nations.
What should America do – how should it “hedge against the unknown,” as the Pentagon put it? Maintaining robust military capabilities obviously is essential. Spending enough is not an issue, however. The U.S. currently spends far more than is necessary to defend itself from China and everyone else. Indeed, the bulk of American military expenditures long have underwritten needless intervention elsewhere, usually with ill effects on U.S. security.
There surely is no reason for Washington to defend populous and prosperous allies. For instance, why maintain 100,000 troops in Europe? Our friends are threatened by no one and are capable of dealing with any conceivable contingency. Many South Koreans no longer believe they are threatened by the North, and the South vastly outranges North Korea in economic strength, population, and allies. Japan is capable of guarding sea-lanes and deterring neighborly adverturism.
Capturing and killing terrorists remains America’s most important security interest at present but, in contrast to foolish attempts at nation-building, requires only modest military forces. While spending less Washington should spend better – concentrate on maintaining technological superiority, thwarting asymmetric attacks, and bolstering special forces. The Pentagon could spend and do far less while better protecting Americans.
At the same time the U.S. should carefully assess its fundamental interests. Absent a suicidal nuclear strike, it is hard to imagine how China could threaten American lives, territory, freedom, or prosperity in the foreseeable future. Just as an American invasion of the PRC is a fantasy, so too is a Chinese attack against the U.S. homeland or possessions.
In the longer-term China could become a hostile peer competitor to America, though cooperation would seem to be a better strategy than confrontation for Beijing to win international influence. Moreover, while the PRC has much promise, it also faces many challenges. In the face of extensive social and rural unrest, China may have difficulty simply maintaining national stability and unity.
Despite the bountiful increases in military outlays, Beijing’s capabilities “remain limited,” notes a new Council on Foreign Relations study. The PRC’s neighbors (most notably Japan, Russia, and South Korea) also are modernizing their forces, increasing their ability to protect their own interests. Eventually – probably decades from now – Beijing likely will be a world military power. But at that point it almost certainly will face additional competitors: India, maybe Brazil and Indonesia, possibly a united Europe.
The PRC more quickly will pose a regional challenge. But should China appear to take a more threatening path, Beijing’s neighbors have an incentive to cooperate with each other, as well as with India and Russia. Moreover, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and even Taiwan retain the nuclear option. That might not be a course which the U.S. as well as their neighbors would prefer, but the mere possibility of the spread of nuclear weapons provides the PRC with a persuasive reason to remain a good regional citizen.
Growing Chinese influence in East Asia would affect America as well. Washington then will have to decide whether confronting China along its border is worth the risk of war. Those analysts most worried about China admit as much. Writes Tkacik: “one can discern Beijing’s intention to challenge the United States in the Western Pacific and establish itself as the predominant military power in the region.” Not rule the world. Not attack America. Not dominate the Pacific. Not conquer its neighbors. But supplant American dominance.
As noted earlier, the U.S. continues to enjoy unnatural influence in every region of the globe born out of World War II and the collapse of the Cold War. That era will inevitably end. Absent an extraordinary effort – the Council on Foreign Relations panel recently suggested that the U.S. “selectively enhance its force posture in East Asia” – Pax Americana seems likely to end more quickly in Asia than elsewhere.
Losing influence is always painful for governments. Nevertheless, accommodation makes more sense than confrontation where vital interests are not at stake. (Imagine America’s reaction if Beijing established alliances with Canada and Mexico, deploying forces along the U.S. border.) Moreover, China’s neighbors so far seem less concerned than America, since Beijing has been assertive rather than aggressive; all are likely to hesitate joining an American-led “containment” campaign, lest they turn themselves into China’s permanent enemies.
Rather than attempt to maintain an encircling network of allies, bases, and troops, the U.S. should begin stepping back, maintaining a policy of watchful wariness. Instead of meddling in every East Asian dispute and conflict, no matter how irrelevant to American security, the U.S. should act as an off-shore balancer. Washington should encourage its friends to cooperate with one another, but intervene only if a hostile hegemonic power seemed destined for continental domination. Today the PRC is not such a power. That could change in the future, of course, at which time the U.S. should adjust its policy. But Washington need not maintain commitments and forces for such an (hopefully) unlikely contingency years and even decades before it might occur.
While downgrading the potential for military confrontation, the U.S. should press China in a wide-ranging dialogue over various interests and concerns. There is much that the countries with the world’s biggest economy and largest population can achieve together. Among the issues that warrant discussion and hard bargaining are human rights, proliferation, trade, relations with outlaw regimes (Burma, North Korea, and Sudan, in particular), and military strategies. Overall, Washington, along with its Asian and European friends, should seek to integrate a rising China into regional and global institutions and processes, rather than work to thwart the PRC’s rise. Beijing is unlikely to be thwarted, and may react violently to any attempt to do so. Washington would do better attempting to shape than block China’s ambitions.
In all of these areas, the bilateral relationship will be stronger if it is more open and transparent. Beijing would help by providing accurate figures on military spending. Expanded exchanges between the respective armed forces would reduce ignorance and the risk of underestimating one another. Although no crises impend, creating a hotline a la the famed communication system with the Soviet Union – recently suggested by Gen. Peter Pace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff – would be another worthy step.
The future is not predetermined. Neither the PRC’s development nor its relationship with the U.S. is certain. But America and China, along with the rest of the world, have much at stake in the world’s great power and next likely great power getting along. Washington should prepare for the worst but press for the best. The gains from friendly cooperation dictate that both nations make every effort to maintain the peace.
Some U.S. analysts are not sanguine. Complains John Tkacik: “Despite the Beijing leadership’s espousal of China’s ‘peaceful rise,’ this unprecedented peacetime expansion of China’s military capabilities can no longer be viewed as though some benign force animates it.”
Yet there is nothing inherently threatening in the PRC’s military build-up, including Beijing’s presumed desire to acquire a force capable of deterring U.S. military action. Washington policymakers undoubtedly (and understandably) prefer American hegemony, but there is no principle of morality or politics that requires other states to remain militarily naked when facing the U.S.
The rise of China, exemplified by its rapidly expanding armed forces, almost certainly heralds the coming end of America’s role as unaccountable, unitary superpower. The process will take time and almost certainly will prove painful for U.S. officials who have grown used to thinking that they can dictate to the world. But America will remain an, if not the, essential nation for decades to come. And Americans will prosper even if (actually, especially if) the only nation they are attempting to run is their own.
If peace is to be maintained, then, Washington policymakers must discern the difference between threats to American influence and threats to America. China’s growing diplomatic, economic, and military power inevitably will reduce the former in Asia. In contrast, the U.S. is not likely to be at risk for decades, if then. Washington had best accept, however reluctantly, that it has a new partner in Asia.
