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.

"We would...help them"

Having previously written about the strategic and political questions surrounding China's rumored aircraft carrier program, I found this VOA article (hat tip: China Digital Times) on Admiral Keating's visit to China fascinating.

VOA reports that Keating discussed the operational difficulties of deploying and maintaining aircraft carriers with Vice Admiral Wu Shengli of the PLAN — but not necessarily as a way of dissuading China from developing aircraft carriers.

Rather, Keating apparently said that if China is determined to develop an aircraft carrier, the US will offer its assistance: "It is not an area where we would want any tension to arise unnecessarily...and we would, if they choose to develop [an aircraft carrier program] help them to the degree that they seek and the degree that we're capable, in developing their programs."

With the US offering help to the PLAN in developing aircraft carriers, does anyone still think that the region's security environment can be neatly summarized as the US seeking to build up a coalition to contain China?

I think Keating's suggestion contains a certain logic. US help in building a blue-water navy reinforces the idea that a Chinese blue-water navy need not be a threat to US interests, because the US and China share an interest in keeping maritime Asia stable and open.

I wonder, though, what Japan thinks about Keating's offer.

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?

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.