Inside Washington's Headlines

Farfetched and even unthinkable?

This column has been ready for a few years, waiting for the proper moment. With the publication in The Atlantic (June 2005) of an article by Robert D. Kaplan - ‘How We Would Fight China’ - the time has come.

The appearance of Kaplan’s article suggests that the coming conflict with China will no longer be a discussion for war-game playing military strategists or obscure foreign-policy cranks who debate the imagined ramifications of a theoretical conflict. The topic is now out of the closet. If Kaplan is crazy, so am I.

Nations need people with great and unconventional imaginations, people who try to foresee all sorts of futures, every situation, every possibility. The United States has many brilliant and imaginative minds looking out toward what some see as a dangerous and lonely future.

The way they see it, we in the U.S. are in for a rough century. The nervous peace of the Cold War, enforced by fear of mutual self-destruction, is over. Now comes the nervous confrontation between an emerging power and an established power, complete with military feints and thrusts, bravado and adventurism, cyber-terrorism and smaller wars with client states. This war, already begun, will feature the newest and most intricate kinds of asymmetrical warfare.

Are we ready? Are our allies ready? Who will fight with us? Who will oppose us? Who will frustrate one or many of our objectives? Many imaginations are at work on the answers - answers which are not always comforting.

Will the U.S. fight alone?

Most ominous for the United States: the U.S. may fight this war alone. Our traditional allies may side with China. In fact, they have given indications that they may do just exactly that. No wonder, then, that far-seeing men and women toil diligently in the Pentagon to prepare the U.S. military for the challenges of the coming war with China even as their boss deals with the dual demands of planning that unthinkable future war while working with the very different problems of the conflicts in the Middle East.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is changing the whole nature of the American fighting force. To achieve his vision he must battle against the wishes of the generals (who are forever fighting the last war, not tomorrow’s war), the elected representatives (who are forever advocating certain weapons systems of favored contractors), and the bureaucrats (who are forever divided in their analysis of the seriousness, timing and form of the coming conflict). The coming war, Rumsfeld's bright minds believe, will be a naval war, with powerful aircraft using carriers to strike targets on the other side of the world. The coming war will feature battles in cyberspace and will be fought over trade routes and natural resources.

This coming war will be fought in a region now dominated by U.S. naval power: the East and South China Seas, the Yellow Sea, the Sea of Japan, the Indian Ocean, and the western waters of the Pacific. It is not surprising that U.S. naval strength dominates in Asian waters; U.S. naval power dominates the world's oceans and seas and is the reason hostile governments, terrorists and rogue states cannot interrupt global shipping and trade. Naturally, China does not like our foreign presence in Asian waters. Just as naturally, we intend to stay.

Let’s look at some facts: First, the huge imbalance in naval power misleads some Americans and others into assuming that China cannot catch up with the U.S. Kaplan cites recent figures showing that nearly half of the world’s naval strength is represented by the U.S. Navy. China’s naval strength is less than ten percent of the U.S.

The aircraft carrier is today’s most potent offensive weapon, combining the striking force of air power with the mobility of floating air bases. The U.S. has 24 of the 34 aircraft carriers now seaworthy worldwide. China has no carriers. But China has embarked on a massive military buildup. China intends to stock up on cruise missiles (which are effective against aircraft carriers) and submarines (which will permit China to engage our naval power farther out in the Pacific). China is also beginning to isolate and protect its vital infrastructure while studying ways to disrupt our commercial cyber-communications. Even skeptics admit that China's current actions look a lot like preparations for a confrontation with the U.S.

Harassing attacks

If you analyze the buildup, you might conclude that China is working toward ultimate parity with U.S. naval power, decades from now, while launching weapons now that are designed to harass and humiliate our navy in Asian waters. Even if parity is never achieved, the harassing attacks can have a major effect. China will soon have a larger submarine force than the U.S. (although the U.S. should maintain a quality edge). Submarines are especially appropriate for the waters near China and are ideal for intimidating and humiliating a carrier-based navy.

The world depends on U.S. naval power to keep the trade routes open. A little Chinese success with intimidating and humiliating the U.S. Navy could convince the European Union that the U.S. might not be able to keep the trade routes safe. Then, Europe would be expected to resort to diplomacy to attempt to secure trade objectives. Europe might grant China's anti-U.S. objectives in exchange for trade advantages, even at the cost of a further division with the U.S.

After all, Europe is already concerned about the hegemony of the U.S. and could see support for China as a way to achieve some new balance of power. European ambitions in Asia are based on expanding trade and any military action, whether involving the U.S. or not, will be seen as detrimental to Europe’s economic interests. Beside, China will be operating within her presumed sphere of influence in Asia while the U.S. will be seen as meddling, far from home.

Europe may not be alone in frustrating America. Israeli diplomats have just left Washington after attempting to convince American policymakers that Israel's sales of weapons systems and military technology to China will not come back to haunt the United States. Have we now learned that Israel is willing to risk the overall relationship with the U.S. to continue to supply China with tools that could hurt Americans?

No permanent alliances

European ambivalence toward the U.S. in the Pacific ignores the fact that the U.S. is both an Atlantic and a Pacific nation. In fact, Americans would do well to understand our dualism. Although we often view ourselves through the prism of our European beginnings, the Europeans do not see us in quite the same way. Therefore, Europeans are willing to cooperate with us or compete with us, as the circumstances dictate. To Europeans, today there are no permanent alliances, simply permanent interests. Those interests are often defined as economic rather than cultural, historic or political.

Kaplan says it this way: ‘Because of globalization, the 21st century will see unprecedented sea traffic, requiring unprecedented regulation by diplomats and naval officers alike. As the economic influence of the European Union expands around the globe, Europe may find, like the United States in the 19th century and China today, that it has to go to sea to protect its interests.’

This is troubling for the U.S. because Europe seems to be coalescing into a bureaucratic, regulated continent in which functionaries in Brussels - ever more distant from the peoples they represent - make decisions that are reserved for elected officials in the U.S. Even France's vote against the European constitution should not stop the trend. Ever so slowly, the individual nations of the European Union may surrender their autonomy to Brussels. Those nations with strong trade ties to the U.S. may not have the influence or will to stop the anti-American bias of the bureaucrats.

Already, Americans working with NATO report that some Brussels bureaucrats are jealous of the independent military forces of the member states of the E.U. Sweden, for example, enforces and protects its neutrality with a fleet of some of the world’s most sophisticated submarines. Those submarines are viewed with envy by some in Brussels who want them, and other E.U. nations’ advanced weapons, for the European Union’s future military force. In a united Europe, with a central government, can any one nation long maintain its own weapons, whether originally procured for defense or for war?

Realism versus real democracy?

In a few decades that united military force could supplant NATO (with its strong U.S. presence) and be allied with China against U.S. interests. Russia has already shown the way: the Chinese and Russians will engage in joint military operations later this year. This is a major coup for China and was spurred by U.S. support for democratic movements in Georgia, Ukraine and other former Soviet republics. The Europeans may make a bureaucrat’s decision to support China to cut us out of trade in Asia while bolstering European trade.

The naval power that fostered the development of global trade in the 20th century could be jettisoned by bureaucratic European realists. Europe has a long history of states changing sides, back and forth, balancing interests and making new alliances against former allies. Could we blame them for pursuing their perceived self-interest?

Sometimes, those who try to see into the future see too far. Events intervene and make predictions meaningless. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse still thunder across history but War is just one of those deadly four horsemen. China could suffer a crippling epidemic, a shortage of fuel or food, industrial contamination of whole areas. China could miscalculate and provoke a war on American terms. The E.U. could cast its lot with the U.S.

Despite those possibilities, we would do well to remember that today’s superior military strength can be dissipated quickly. History has ample examples. Take just one: Athens began the Peloponnesian War with the only navy and a huge treasury. Sparta was desperate. Less than three decades later, the Athenian navy was in shambles, the treasury depleted, and Sparta was victorious. Their allies turned on the Athenians, sometimes returning later to support Athens for a time, then changing sides again. The reasons, city-state by city-state, ally by ally, seemed to make sense at the time. Things will make sense in Beijing and Brussels, too.

That is why bright, imaginative minds work late most nights. The U.S. needs to plan for a war we hope will never come - a war without allies.

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copyright © 2005 Radnor Inc.