POLICY MEMO: Geography, Technology, and Crisis Escalation in U.S.-China Relations

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1 POLICY MEMO: Geography, Technology, and Crisis Escalation in U.S.-China Relations Prepared for Senate U.S.-China Working Group April 7, 2014 Jennifer Lind Associate Professor, Dept. of Government Dartmouth College Daryl G. Press Associate Professor, Dept. of Government Dartmouth College ABSTRACT Scholars emphasize a number of factors when they discuss the future of U.S.-China relations, but two critical ones are the region s geography and trends in military technology. Many scholars believe that these factors in East Asia create defense dominance that has stabilizing political effects. By contrast, we argue that geography and technology create four distinct paths to increased tension and potentially conflict in U.S.-China relations. Because of U.S. security commitments in the region, geography and technology enhance arms racing; they create first-strike incentives that can lead a political crisis to escalate to a military one; they make it likely that skirmishes will escalate into war; and they make war more likely because military outcomes are more difficult to predict in advance. Four policy implications follow from our analysis. First, despite America s overall military dominance relative to China, it is the regional balance of power that matters for East Asian stability: our analysis supports those analysts who worry about the U.S. s increasingly unfavorable position. Second, China s anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) efforts are indeed eroding the balance of power in the region, and necessitate a U.S. response if the United States wishes to maintain credible security guarantees. Third, as the U.S. military formulates its response, the links between force structure and military doctrine on the one hand, and the potential for conflict and escalation on the other, suggest the importance of civilian oversight in this process. Finally and relatedly, the policies or doctrine that may make the most sense from the standpoint of military efficiency may not make sense when one takes broader strategic goals into account.

2 Geography, Technology, and Crisis Escalation in U.S.-China Relations 1 By Jennifer Lind and Daryl G. Press Scholars describe many factors that will aggravate or stabilize U.S.-China relations. Nuclear deterrence and economic interdependence are said to deter the two countries from conflict, while the shifting balance of power, regional territorial disputes, and historic mistrust are said to have destabilizing effects. East Asia s geography and military technology are other important factors; scholars generally put them on the stabilizing side of the ledger. That s because East Asia s maritime geography (namely, its vast waterways) make power projection difficult, which reduces the likelihood of invasion, and reduces regional fears. Similarly, trends in military technology in which it is becoming increasingly easy to locate and target regional airpower and surface fleets exacerbate the difficulty of projecting power across water barriers. Because of geography and technology, scholars argue that East Asia is a region characterized by defense dominance in which crossborder invasions will be hard and thus potential aggressors will be dissuaded. We argue that for two reasons, geography and technology actually belong on the other side of the ledger that these factors will promote tension and instability in U.S.-China relations. First, although defense dominance may indeed reduce the risk of invasions in the region, it also creates significant hurdles for an outside power (the United States) needing to project power into the theater on behalf of its military allies. Overcoming these hurdles will be inflammatory toward China and will trigger spiral dynamics. And secondly, geography and technology have other destabilizing effects that analysts have overlooked. These particularly come into play in the increasingly salient territorial disputes in the region the disputed islands in the South China Sea (Spratlys, Paracels, and so forth) as well as in the East China Sea (the Senkaku/Diaoyu, disputed between China and Japan). 2 Below we develop four distinct paths to conflict, each of which is fueled by the geography and technology associated with maritime warfare. (1) THE NEED FOR SUPREMACY CAUSES ARMS RACING. In peacetime, geography and technology encourage arms racing because in order to overcome the defense dominance that they create, the United States requires regional military supremacy (not merely balance) in order to fulfill its security guarantees. Namely, should the U.S. need to defend its allies, it would need to need to project air and naval reinforcements across the ocean, as well as the vast amount of materiel they require to operate. To overcome regional defense dominance, the United States would need not just parity but total military dominance. The United States has enjoyed regional dominance for decades, but recent Chinese military modernization China s pursuit of anti-access, area denial or A2/AD capabilities today threaten U.S. military supremacy and thus (if the United States wants to maintain its alliances) require a U.S. response. For example, when China builds modern surveillance systems to track naval forces at sea a reasonable action for a country that depends on trade the United States is compelled to develop the means to jam, disable, or destroy those sensors. The U.S. need to counter improvements in Chinese military capabilities creates spiral dynamics with China. As the United States responds to Chinese military modernization, China responds as well, because it does not want to live completely exposed to U.S. military might. Thus, whereas defense dominance usually creates low arms racing and low fear among countries, because 1

3 of the regional security architecture, and because of maritime geography and technology, in East Asia it is encouraging arms racing between the United States and China. (2) INCENTIVES TO SHOOT FIRST. Geography and technology complicate crisis management in maritime East Asia by creating first strike advantages. The naval domain is offensive dominant, as reflected by the common maxim, He who shoots effectively first, wins. If your side strikes first, your side will fare better; this destabilizes crises because both sides know this. This is the route from political crisis to military skirmish in East Asia: it is how East Asia moves from shots across the bow to military engagements. First-strike advantage stems from the increasing vulnerability of targets (ships and air fields) created by improvements in missile technology. Today s navies are in a new age in which anti-ship missiles are the most influential weapons shaping tactics. 3 Warships today are very vulnerable a single hit by a common anti-ship missile would likely take a warship out of the fight and could sink it. An adversary can use missiles to destroy not only ships but airfields. Furthermore, naval warfare involves a relatively small number of vastly expensive, valuable military assets. Any large, visible objects are vulnerable to missile attack. But whereas a ground battle might feature thousands of relevant targets, in maritime warfare the number of critical platforms is much smaller. The new USS Gerald Ford aircraft carrier, for example, is costing $13.5 billion 4 to construct. AEGIS-equipped Arleigh Burke destroyers cost about $1 billion each. And because they are so expensive, naval forces are scarce. These factors the increasing vulnerability of a small number of high-value targets creates fears that create an incentive to strike before one is stuck. (3) THE WIDENING OF MILITARY CONFLICTS. The nature of modern maritime warfare i.e., the growing vulnerability of naval forces and forward air bases also will make it difficult to limit conventional military engagements when they occur. Trends in surveillance and long-range strike are making ground-based air bases and scarce naval assets so vulnerable that the modern way of war requires combatants to wage war by disabling the sensor / commander / shooter networks that underpin modern military power. If there were a small skirmish between the United States and China (perhaps in the waters surrounding disputed islands) the United States would likely want to reinforce its forces in the region. But doing so while leaving intact China s ability to destroy those forces would be a tremendous gamble. One way to protect them would be to conduct attacks conventional strikes, cyber warfare, and other steps designed to blind and disrupt China s anti-access capabilities. This new doctrine is known as AirSea Battle, and has been criticized for the risks it creates for nuclear escalation, stemming from its widespread attacks on command and control networks. 5 Our concerns here are different: the need to degrade enemy Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance networks as a precondition for conventional military operations will vastly complicate efforts to keep small skirmishes small. (4) UNCERTAINTY OF OUTCOMES. Political scientists argue that a powerful cause of peace is agreement about the outcome of a war. If one side knows it will likely lose, it is less likely to fight in the first place, so peace is more likely. But East Asia s geography and technology create powerful uncertainty about military outcomes. First, the existence of first-strike advantage means that who will win a war depends to a significant degree on how that war begins. What matters for the outcome of the war might not be the balance of power at time T, but rather that balance after the first attack, at T+1. Although at time T there might have been military parity, the initial operations could have a profound affect on the balance of power. 2

4 Secondly, war in a maritime domain is highly technologically dependent. Naval engagements have often turned on which side located the other s platforms first. In advance of conflict, neither side knows how its technology would perform under wartime conditions, and they can only guess about the performance of the adversary s weapons systems. In other words, who knows who will win when you combine one side s best stealth technology against the other side s best radar technology? And because of the very small numbers involved in naval operations (as opposed to ground warfare) the learning curve will be very unforgiving. In warfare, the adage holds that God is on the side of the strongest battalion ; however in naval warfare in particular, victory has repeatedly gone to the side whose surveillance and evasion capabilities prevailed on the battlefield. But neither side knows in advance which side that will be. POLICY PRESCRIPTIONS. This analysis has four major policy implications. The first relates to an ongoing debate about the U.S.-China balance of power. On the one hand, inside the Beltway, the bureaucracies, think-tanks and the U.S. military warn of vulnerabilities and weaknesses in the U.S. position, and often argue for more defense spending. On the other hand knowledgeable scholars tend to argue the opposite; they point out a vast disparity in defense spending between the United States and its competitors, and other major military and political advantages the United States enjoys in the conduct of foreign policy. A key takeaway of our analysis is that the truth lies in-between perhaps closer to beliefs inside the Beltway. The relevant military balance between the United States and China is not the aggregate one. The U.S. military capability is spread over the entire globe; whereas countries like China are merely trying to balance and counter us in their backyard. They have the benefit of concentration in one region, and the benefit of defense; whereas the United States has to project power across the Pacific. Especially given trends in technology, projecting power into the Pacific is increasingly difficult. Thus the large gap in the U.S. s favor in aggregate military power should not reassure us that the United States can have our way in East Asia. As Mr. Putin has recently demonstrated, regional balances of power are often more important than aggregate ones. Secondly, for many years the U.S. Air Force and Navy have been warning about China s A2/AD threat. Sometimes these warnings are dismissed as irresponsible threat-mongering or budget-padding. One of the implications of our analysis is that those who worry about A2/AD are correct not because of America s inherent strategic position, but because of the goals that the United States has set for itself. For a variety of sensible (though debatable) reasons, 6 the United States has taken it upon itself to be the principal actor in its security partnerships in East Asia, and to be the provider of military stability in that region. To the extent that the U.S. wants to continue to play this role, A2/AD is a real problem. A third implication relates to how the United States goes about solving this and other problems. There are dangerous, little-noticed linkages between the decisions the United States and its allies are making with respect to force structure and military doctrine on the one hand, and the likelihood of war and escalation. Normally, and appropriately, civilian leaders establish policy objectives and task the military with implementing those objectives. But because of the nature of modern warfare, some of the decisions that the military is making have vital strategic implications for the national security of the country and for the likelihood of conflict. This should thus rise to the level of civilian oversight. Namely, if the way the U.S. military plans to respond to A2/AD is by blinding adversary sensors and disrupting its command and control, that may be a sensible military strategy, but it has broader implications about the ability to contain limited wars so we need civilian oversight and leadership about the wisdom of such approaches. Finally, and relatedly, the fact that the implications of force structure and doctrine rise to the level of national security strategy should force the United States to ask some difficult questions 3

5 about the way it would fight in maritime East Asia. We may need to at times trade off military efficiency on the one hand versus achieving strategic objections on the other. Namely, it might make military sense to blind the adversary and disrupt its command and control but are the strategic risks of this so high, that those strategic considerations should outweigh the military considerations? 1 This memo is based on Jennifer Lind and Daryl G. Press, Geography, Maritime Warfare, and the Struggle for the Pacific, presented at the Annual Meeting of the International Studies Association, March On East Asia s island disputes see Mark J. Valencia, Foreign Military Activities in Asia EEZs: Conflict Ahead? NBR Special Report, No. 27 (Seattle, Wash.: National Bureau of Asian Research, 2011); Alastair Iain Johnston, How New and Assertive Is China s New Assertiveness? International Security 37:4 (2013): 7 48; Bonnie S. Glaser, Armed Clash in the South China Sea, Contingency Planning Memorandum no. 14, Council on Foreign Relations (April 2012). 3 Capt. Wayne P. Hughes, Jr., Fleet Tactics: Theory and Practice (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1986), p. 3, Capt Henry J. Hendrix, At What Cost a Carrier? Disruptive Defense Paper, Center for a New American Security, March 2013, p See memo from Keir A. Lieber and Daryl G. Press; also Lieber and Press, The Next Korean War, Foreign Affairs, April 1, 2013; Joshua Rovner, Air Sea Battle and Escalation Risks, IGCC Policy Paper, January 12, 2012; Raoul Heinrichs, America s Dangerous Battle Plan, The Diplomat, August 11, For debates about U.S. grand strategy see Stephen Brooks, G. John Ikenberry, and William C. Wohlforth, Don't Come Home, America: The Case against Retrenchment, International Security, Vol. 37, No. 3 (Winter 2012/13), pp. 7-51; Michele Flournoy and Janine Davidson, The Logic of U.S. Foreign Deployments, Foreign Affairs (July/August 2012); Daniel W. Drezner, Military Primacy Doesn t Pay (As Much as You Think), International Security, Vol. 38, No. 1 (2013), pp ; Christopher Preble, The Power Problem: How American Military Dominance Makes Us Less Safe, Less Prosperous, and Less Free (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009); Barry R. Posen, Pull Back: the Case for a Less Activist Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs (January/February 2013); Christopher Layne, The China Challenge to U.S. Hegemony, Current History (January 2008). 4