What will be the impact of the Chinese ASBM on the US-Japan alliance?

Reports are emerging that in the process of enhancing its short- and medium-range ballistic missile forces, China is also developing the world's first anti-ship ballistic missile, similar to the DF-21, a ballistic missile with a range of 1800 kilometers. (Whether the new version will have a similar range remains to be seen — it may in fact have a longer range.)

This could pose a major threat to US naval forces in East Asia in the event of a crisis.

As Richard Fisher, Jr. writes at the International Assessment and Strategy Center (Hat tip: NOSI):

China's new ASBMs pose a strategic as well as a tactical challenge to U.S. forces in Asia. At present the U.S. does not have anti-missile capabilities to defend large U.S. ships against this threat, so vulnerable targets, most importantly aircraft carriers, will have to remain out of missile range in order to survive. This factor will further limit the effectiveness of their already range-challenged F/A-18E/F fighter bombers. U.S. Aegis cruisers and destroyers now being outfitted with new SM-3 interceptors with upgraded radar and processing capabilities may in the future be configured to deal with this threat, but if so, they may not be available for other missions, like protecting people. The fact is that no anti-missile system is going to come close to providing reliable defense. For China, ASBMs provide a means for saturating U.S. ships with missiles. While ASBMs are bearing down from above, their attack can be coordinated with waves of submarine, air and ship-launched anti-ship cruise missiles.

Sam Roggeveen at The Interpreter recently noted that the US is waking up to the threat posed by a Chinese ASBM. Roggeveen notes that for the moment one saving grace is that it is difficult to find an aircraft carrier at sea. He also notes that the US is shifting its priorities to reflect the new threat.

But what Roggeveen doesn't address is the threat posed by the new ASBM to US naval assets berthed in Japanese ports, most notably US fleet activities Yokosuka, the future home of the USS George Washington and the headquarters of the US Seventh Fleet. It may be difficult to find an aircraft carrier and its escorts at sea, but it is considerably easier to find them in their home port, as the accompanying image from Google Maps shows. (That's the USS Kitty Hawk to the right side of the map.)


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Google Maps also tells me that Yokosuka is less than 1400 kilometers from Tonghua in China's Jilin province, home to some Chinese DF-21 launchers.

The question I have is whether the Chinese ASBM will render US naval forward deployments in Japan obsolete, in that homeporting an aircraft carrier in Yokosuka may leave it vulnerable to a crippling first strike before even leaving port. Are anti-ballistic missile deployments in Japan — both by the US military and the Japanese Self-Defense Forces — reliable enough to protect US forces while in Japanese ports?

If not, hadn't the US and Japan be having a serious discussion about the impact of China's ASBMs on the future of US forward deployments in Japan, and with them, the future of the US-Japan alliance? Should the US consider relocating more assets from Japan to Guam to put them out of the range of ASBMs?

This is all speculative given that next to nothing is known about the specifications of the new missile, but its impact is potentially drastic. It's certainly something to watch.

Deflating the China threat

The Danger Room's Noah Shactman points to a report by the Federation of American Scientists that notes that China's submarine fleet — a favorite bugbear of China hawks (see this report, for example) — was little more active in 2007 than it was in previous years.

Without dismissing China's military modernization, reports like this are important reminders that the China threat argument is based mostly on speculation about what China might be able to do in the indefinite future and the idea that the US has a right to unchallenged military primacy in the Asia-Pacific region.

Even in the Taiwan Straits, US deterrence of China still works. Regardless of Beijing's bluster and saber-rattling, China still believes that the threat of US intervention is credible enough and threatening enough and has still not acted to overturn the status quo, despite importance that the "recovery" of Taiwan has for many mainland Chinese. No matter how distracted the US is by Iraq, the US Navy is still the region's most powerful navy, a position that the US will not relinquish anytime soon.

So what does the US have to lose in persisting in efforts to keep lines of communication open between the PLA and the US Military? As the great Asian arms race continues, the US will have to become accustomed to sharing the maritime environment with other navies. The US should therefore persist in developing its ties with the PLA as much as China will permit and regardless of setbacks.

Combating the China threat thesis

Japan's Ministry of Defense has issued its first white paper as the Ministry of Defense, and it seems that this year's edition is unique in its focus on China as a threat to Japan.

And it seems that the Yomiuri Shimbun is quite pleased by this, according to its editorial today. Citing America's debate on the same matter, Yomiuri notes the report's calling attention to China's pursuit of blue-water naval capabilities and long-range aviation capabilities. (Interestingly, Yomiuri published this editorial on the same day that Asahi devoted its entire editorial space to an editorial marking the seventieth anniversary of the Marco Polo Bridge incident, which is recognized as marking the beginning of the Second Sino-Japanese War — pointing at the need for Sino-Japanese reconciliation.)

Not having read the report yet, I will limit my judgments to Yomiuri's position, which blithely talks about the threat posed by China's rapid military modernization without actually bothering to note what threat China poses exactly. It seems fair for a reader to ask whether Yomiuri has specific scenarios in mind, or if it's just peddling the same hysteria found in some quarters of American policy debate. As I (and others) have argued before, the casual assumption that Chinese military modernization — especially at sea — is necessarily a threat to the region is inappropriate, and ought to be challenged by those interested in maintaining peace and order in the Asia-Pacific. Rather than issue the occasional alarmist report, the US, Japan, Australia, and other powers in the region should be thinking about how to co-opt China's military strength, not making self-fulfilling prophecies of military struggles to come.

Indeed, given the deepening mutual interdependence between China and the region's powers, none of them can afford to be too antagonistic. (Australia's recent publication of a defense report that peddles the same line as Japan's is baffling, given that Australia is, if anything, more dependent on maintaining a healthy relationship with China.) Washington, Canberra, and Tokyo surely don't need to be told that. So why these reports?

Arguably it has as much to do with the need to justify expensive defense programs (creating a budgetary enemy), as with the actual threat posed by China to their interests. Australia of late has been having an active debate about its future defense doctrine, rooted in having the ability to defend Australia alone if necessary (see this article at Defense Industry Daily on Australia's new airpower thinking). Hmm, defense of Australia — what country would Australia have to defend itself against, and what expensive technologies would it need to purchase in order to do so?

In Japan, meanwhile, the government has, despite a decade of falling defense expenditures, focused on enhancing its naval capabilities and airpower. Indeed, Prime Minister Abe has approached the US once again about purchasing F-22s as Japan's next air superiority fighter — despite oft-stated US doubts about selling. (These doubts can be found spelled out in a recent Congressional Research Service report, available for download here.) For the Japanese government, approaching the US about the F-22, it can't hurt to have a thick report in hand showing the threat posed by China to Japan (and a newspaper headline or two reinforcing the threat).

Level heads in these three governments must steadfastly resist the alarmist rhetoric emanating from China hawks and their allies in the media and the defense industry. The region is too complicated — and the stakes too important — to fall into simple fear-mongering.

Ending US Navy dominance?

So suggests the headline on an FT article (subscription only) by Mure Dickie and Stephen Fidler on Chinese naval modernization that is actually more considered than the headline would suggest.

Acknowledging that China is "a big beneficiary of the “Pax Americana” enforced by the US Navy that keeps its sea lanes open," the article seeks to explore the means by which China seeks to take its maritime security into its own hands.

The conclusion? China, while en route to becoming a more significant regional naval power, has yet to decide just what that means. How far does the PLAN plan to be able to reach? Will the relatively localized "string of pearls" ultimately reach into the Persian Gulf and the African shore of the Indian Ocean?

They write:

Mr Wang [Xiangsui] of the University of Aeronautics says Chinese defence planners have themselves yet to achieve consensus either on what their naval strategic goals should be or how they should go about achieving them. Indeed, he hopes Beijing will end up agreeing with him that the navy’s aim should not be to oppose the US but to fit into a stable international security system.

“China has a need to guarantee access to maritime key points – but does not need to do this by confronting the US Navy,” he says, suggesting instead that the main aim should be to work alongside Washington.

Nonetheless, US defence planners are likely to continue to find it hard to take China’s good intentions on trust while the country remains an authoritarian and avowedly communist one-party state. Beijing meanwhile still shows little willingness to embrace the level of transparency that might allay their suspicions.

Given the different messages emanating from different corners of the US defense establishment on China, it may be premature to conclude that the US has made up its mind on how to interact with China.

And for that reason it is incredibly important the the candidates vying for the 2008 Republican and Democratic presidential nominations spend a great deal of time explaining how they would resolve the many paradoxes of China, and mold a security environment that will encourage China to opt for a navy development plan that upholds, not undermines regional order.

Building a new relationship in Shangri-La

Contrary to coverage of the Sino-US relationship that greeted the publication of the latest Pentagon report on Chinese military power, Secretary of Defense William Gates is in Singapore, setting out the terms of Sino-US security cooperation (and building on visits to China by General Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Admiral Timothy Keating, head of US Pacific Command).

At the Shangri-La Dialogue, convened annually by the International Institute of Strategic Studies in Singapore, Secretary Gates gave a speech that focuses mostly on trying to convince East Asia's powers that the fate of Central Asia is as much their interest as the interest of the US. But it concludes by summing up the US-China defense relationship for all in attendance:

The United States shares common interests with China on issues like terrorism, counter proliferation, and energy security. But we are concerned about the opaqueness of Beijing’s military spending and modernization programs issues described in the annual report on the Chinese armed forces recently released by the U.S. government. But as General Pete Pace, our Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, pointed out, there is some difference between capacity and intent. And I believe there is reason to be optimistic about the U.S.-China relationship.

We have increased military-to-military contacts between all levels of our militaries, most recently dramatized when General Pace sat in the cockpit of the top-of-the-line Chinese fighter during his last visit. We obviously have a huge economic and trade relationship. Indeed, I have been told that if just one American company Wal-Mart was a country, it would be China's eighth largest trading partner. The second meeting of the U.S.-China Strategic Economic Dialogue concluded last week in Washington, D.C. a process designed to improve our economic bilateral relationship. As we gain experience in dealing with each other, relationships can be forged that will build trust over time.

As the New York Times reports on Gates's speech, this supposedly contrasts with former Secretary Rumsfeld's speech at Shangri-La in 2005, when he essentially reiterated the contents of the Pentagon report on China's military modernization. But the Times is misleading: the new embrace of China by Washington has been a long time in coming, even if Rumsfeld's stance on China was ambivalent at best.

Reiterating his ideas in a press conference following his speech, Gates said in response to a question from a PLA colonel:

I’ve always believed that the years-long negotiations on strategic arms limitations may or may not have made much of a contribution in terms of limiting arms. But they played an extraordinarily valuable role in creating better understanding on both the Soviet and American sides about what the strategic intentions of each side were, what the strategic thinking was, what their motives were, where they were headed. That dialogue that continued intensively for something like twenty years built a cadre of people who were accustomed to working and talking with one another, who were on opposite sides of a major conflict, and I think that -- while we have no conflict at this point -- this kind of transparency, this kind of discussion is the kind of thing that prevents miscalculation and helps each side understand where the other is headed and what its intentions are.

This is by no means revolutionary change, but it suggests a Sino-US relationship cushioned from the thorny issues surrounding human rights, democracy, Tibet, Taiwan, etc. Whatever events shake the relationship, whatever outside actors (the US Congress, NGOs, etc.) do to raise issues of concern, the relationship will rest in the hands of a "cadre" (how funny that Gates used that word in the Sino-US context) that will keep things on an even keel. Come to think of it, not altogether unlike the US-Japan relationship for most of the cold war, in which alliance managers successfully cordoned off the security relationship from other concerns.

What will be the basis of security cooperation? This People's Daily article suggests that the PLA at least knows what the US wants to hear, with General Zhang Qinsheng, the PLA's deputy chief of staff telling the Shangri-La gathering that China is interested primarily in stability in the region. Zhang said, "International relations in the region are generally stable. Regional cooperation continues to deepen. Economic cooperation and trade is more active than ever. Multiple cultures prosper side by side. Security dialogues are increasingly pragmatic to maintain peace, avoid confrontation and promote development have become shared goals of the Asia-Pacific countries." While that might sound like pablum, for all the tension surrounding maritime claims and energy resources, Asia is shockingly peaceful — barring the Taiwan Straits — considering that the region is home to some of the most significant military and economic powers in the world. To date, Aaron Friedberg's "struggle for mastery in Asia" (PDF) has not quite come to pass.

And what of Japan? Japan was but a footnote in Secretary Gates's speech, grouped with South Korea in a passing reference to how the US is updating old alliances for the new security environment. I cannot help but wonder if that's increasingly how Japan looks to Washington: potentially useful if it gets its legal and constitutional act together (although constitution revision may not be an unmitigated boon for the alliance, as discussed here), but otherwise a distraction for the US as it considers the shape of the broader region and the world. Gates does not strike me as a man who has the time or the patience to indulge Japan's neuroses — and with no Japan hands in other senior positions in the Pentagon (or at State), it seems that Gates has plenty of company.

So military-military cooperation may continue, but as I have argued before, the strategic direction is withering, with the US no longer looking at Asia through a Japanese lens.

More retrograde thinking on China from Gertz

Bill Gertz of the Washington Times finally got around to commenting on Admiral Keating's offer to help the Chinese — which I have been told by someone who would know that it was more a "half-joke" and thought experiment than serious offer — develop aircraft carriers. Gertz noted, "Critics say the comments are a sign that the U.S.-China military exchange program is spinning out of control under Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chief of naval operations."

Got to love that — "critics say."

I have written about Gertz's utterly blinkered Sinophobia before, but Tom Barnett lays into him here with far greater anger than I could ever muster, expertly smashing the thinking of Gertz and others who look at the rise of China as a replay of the rise of Germany, Imperial Japan, and the Soviet Union all rolled into one.

As for me, I like that Keating made the offer. I like that someone in a position of tremendous responsibility for US Asia policy has moved beyond the linear thinking that characterizes so much of how Washington views the world. Ours is a world marked by ambiguity and contradiction, and China hawks like Gertz, rather than embracing ambiguity, reject it, claiming that nothing has changed, that China is just trying to lull the US into passivity before it strikes.

Since when did the world have to make sense, neatly divided into friends and foes?

As Barnett notes, and as I've discussed before, outside of Taiwan, the chances of war with China are nil, and the more US policymakers come to recognize that and make policy accordingly, the greater the basis for Sino-US cooperation on the shared goal of maintaining regional stability.

Seeing the world through China's eyes

Susan Shirk, author of China: Fragile Superpower, noted in an interview at China Digital Times:

To get anywhere diplomatically you have to put yourself in the shoes of the person sitting across from you at the table. I traveled with Jiang Zemin and Zhu Rongji when they visited the U.S. and joined many meetings with them. I have met Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao as well. In their informal comments as well as their formal statements they make no secret of their worries about China's political stability. But the leaders do try to hide differences of opinion over foreign and domestic policy which undoubtedly exist.

I'm with Shirk. How the US, or any country, can make foreign policy without trying to understand how an interlocutor sees the world is beyond me. As such, I think that was the thinking behind Admiral Keating's offer of help on aircraft carrier development; looking through the eyes of the PLA Navy, Keating seemed to recognize that China might have legitimate reasons for wanting an aircraft carrier, and from there sought to provide practical advice from a navy that has been operating carrier groups for decades.

A recent article by Richard Halloran spells out Keating's thinking in more detail, and notes that among the five reasons why China might develop an aircraft carrier — international prestige, power projection, defending lifelines, regional rivalry, and relief operations — attacking Taiwan is not one of them. Indeed, there seems to be little in Halloran's list that would result in war. Rather, after decades of watching US carriers show the flag, especially in the Taiwan Straits, it should hardly be surprising that China wants a similar platform.

So China's reaction to the Pentagon report is understandable: the US report is drafted from the perspective that the decision by China to develop its conventional and nuclear forces is an insult, as well as a threat, to the US. Clearly we're not threatening you, it thinks, so why should you need to modernize your armed forces? (Ed. — How can a report think? Quiet, you.)

But is the Pentagon really incapable of appreciating the fact that China might have legitimate reasons for military modernization that have nothing to do with threatening the US directly? And, does the Pentagon realize that the US pursuit of military predominance can last only as long as other countries are deterred? Once a country decides to develop an advanced military the jig is up; the US needs to think of more creative approaches to a country with a sophisticated military, other than insisting, "From where we stand, you're not threatened." It seems that's what Admiral Keating is groping towards.

To connect Keating to Shirk, the admiral is trying look at the world through Beijing's eyes and alter the US Military's approach to China so that it acknowledges that China has legitimate interests that may require an advanced military. That does not mean acquiescing entirely — Keating clearly communicated American concerns, after all — it simply means acknowledging that the world looks different from Beijing than it does from Washington.

I should note that I do not think that the US will be helping China with aircraft carriers anytime soon — nor should it, at least not for now. But this is yet another sign of a new flexibility in US Asia policy; the old San Francisco system of bilateral alliances is simultaneously being agglomerated, as the US, Japan, and Australia seek to deepen trilateral ties, and de-prioritized, with the US less inclined — in practice, if not in rhetoric — to view the region as marked by stark, clear divisions.

China's emergence at sea

In the midst of concerns about the changing profile of the Chinese People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) -- as suggested by reports about China's "secret" aircraft program, discussed at Wired's Danger Room blog, and this report about China's submarine purchases sparking a maritime arms race (via NOSI) -- it is worthwhile to look closer at China's maritime strategic thinking.

Two articles from the Autumn 2006 issue of the (US) Naval War College Review -- one is a translation of an article from a Chinese defense journal -- provide a realistic assessment of China's naval plans that suggest the course of the PLAN's budgeting priorities and doctrine is still up in the air.

The first, by two professors at the Naval War College, looks at Chinese thinking on developing aircraft carriers, and concludes that it is far from certain that the PLAN will opt to develop American-style supercarriers, and even if they develop aircraft carriers, it is not certain how they will fit in Chinese plans. The second, meanwhile, is by Xu Qi, a PLAN senior captain, and looks at the big picture of China's thinking on maritime geostrategy, suggesting that after under emphasizing naval affairs for centuries, China is rethinking its approach to the sea: "If a nation ignored maritime connectivity, it would lack a global perspective for planning and developing, and it would likely have difficulties in avoiding threats to its security."

Both articles suggest that there are still more questions than answers surrounding Chinese military modernization, despite the media's -- and the global defense industry's -- interest in suggesting that the threat posed by China is unambiguous.

Interesting...the media-industrial complex?

Tales from the strategic triangle

General Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is currently in China after a stop in Japan, during which he talked with Foreign Minister Aso -- and possibly Defense Minister Kyuma, as Steve Clemons wonders, following the rumors surrounding Vice President Cheney's visit -- about a range of technical issues related to alliance cooperation.

On the agenda was the question of the realignment of US forces in Japan, including the removal of 8,000 US Marines from Okinawa to Guam. The debate on last year's agreement on US realignment, in which Japan agreed to pay $6.9 billion towards the Guam relocation, is likely to heat up now, as the Abe Cabinet has just submitted a realignment bill to the lower house of the Diet. The Democratic Party of Japan -- including the Upper House member for whom I work -- has raised questions about whether it's appropriate for Japan to be contributing this sum towards the cost of preparing Guam for a major influx of US forces. Such questions are reasonable, considering Japan's prevailing budgetary difficulties. And of course Japan should demand transparency and accountability about the project to expand existing US Military facilities on Guam to accommodate the new Marine presence that its contributions will be supporting.

Meanwhile, in China Pace has reiterated US (and Japanese) concerns about the lack of transparency in the People's Liberation Army (PLA). Differences no doubt remain, but I am pleased to see the chairman of the Joint Chiefs meeting with his Chinese counterpart -- and discussing the creation of a US-China military hotline, no less.

The delicate ballet that is the US-China-Japan strategic triangle goes on.

UPDATE: The FT reports that the PLA has reciprocated by offering a list of measures to promote greater openness and enhance cooperation between the Chinese and US militaries.

China is not creating its own risk fleet...yet

In the years before World War I, Imperial Germany developed its "risk fleet" -- a large fleet of relatively little utility -- to force the Royal Navy to focus on defending the British Isles, a textbook example of the concept of a fleet in being.

It is with this in mind that I read this op-ed by the Heritage Foundation's Peter Brookes -- via RealClearPolitics -- about reports of a Chinese program to build an aircraft carrier, leading Brookes to conclude, "This isn't good news."

And yet the reasons he gives to demonstrate why this is so can easily be used to reach different conclusions.

Brookes suggests that a domestically produced Chinese aircraft carrier would mark a pronounced turn from asymmetry in Chinese military doctrine -- but I fail to see why a shift away from platforms and planning that seeks to deny American advantages in a potential conflict in the Taiwan Straits would be a bad thing. Brookes suggests two possibilities: a desire by Beijing for a more balanced fleet capable of projecting power at greater distances or a desire by Beijing for a naval force capable of showing the flag. I suspect it's a combination of both.

But I repeat my objection: why is either development necessarily a bad thing?

Specifically regarding the latter, it's entirely appropriate that China would want to have a blue-water navy capable of showing the flag. As Brookes admits:

China is, without question, a rising power - world's largest population, No. 2 energy consumer, No. 3 defense budget, No. 4 economy. And so on. It's an up-and-comer. Beijing may well think the time is ripe to unmistakably proclaim to the world: We're not just a regional power anymore.

That was the message of President Teddy Roosevelt's Great White Fleet 100 years ago. Flush with success in the Spanish-American War - defeating a major European power and adding possessions in the Atlantic and Pacific - TR sent a large naval task force on a global circumnavigation in 1907-09.

I especially like that Brookes refers to the US Navy's Great White Fleet, because, as I've argued before, I think the position of the US at the turn of the twentieth century may provide the best historical example for assessing China at the turn of the twenty-first century.

But, again, why is this a problem? Brookes suggest one way a Chinese "prestige" fleet could have real consequences: he argues that China may seek a carrier force so as to be able to secure unobstructed access to oil moving along sea lines of communication (SLOC) currently protected by the US Navy. But the mission of securing SLOCs that serve East Asia may well be an opportunity to deepen cooperation between the US Military and the PLA, being an area in which US and Chinese interests overlap.

The US should view Chinese aspirations for a blue-water navy -- which is still more dream than reality, at least according to the Pentagon's own assessment in the 2006 Annual Report on the Military Power of the People's Republic of China -- as an opportunity first, the basis for Sino-US cooperation to secure SLOCs. That doesn't mean the US shouldn't hedge at the same time, but naval cooperation could serve to give China a "stakeholder" role in providing public goods to the region, a point made by Thomas Barnett, among others.

Perfect storm over Taiwan?

At the talk I heard last week by Randall Schriver (discussed here), he referred to the possibility of a "perfect storm" in the dispute between China and Taiwan as 2008 approaches, 2008 being the year in which the US and Taiwan elect new presidents and China hosts its long-desired Olympic Games. He suggested that the storm has begun forming already, as candidates in both countries begin campaigning.

I was somewhat incredulous about the "perfect storm" idea, but over the past couple of days several stories have led me to wonder if the danger might be real.

First, China tells a visiting John Negroponte that the US should halt plans to sell missiles to Taiwan, at the same time that China announced a major increase in defense spending. Now, Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian, at a campaign rally for presidential candidates from his Democratic People's Party, has apparently hinted at Taiwanese independence. (The Financial Times suggests that the verb he used could be "understood as 'will,' 'wants,' 'must' or 'should,' but regardless of the interpretation his statement -- "Taiwan wants independence, Taiwan wants name rectification, Taiwan wants a new constitution" -- is potentially provocative.) The brinkmanship will undoubtedly continue as what looks to be a hard-fought election heats up.

There is indeed real potential for a perfect storm.