This article was first published in the Australian Naval Review, 2021, Issue 2, in December 2021.
By Dr Patrick M Cronin*
China’s bare-knuckle effort to intimidate Taiwan and its supporters in early October, two weeks after the surprise nuclear-powered submarine announcement by Canberra, London and Washington, highlights the danger of US–China confrontation and the importance of long-term strategy.[1]
Escalating tensions in East Asia generally demands fresh thinking, including whether the United States, Australia and like-minded countries can preserve a favorable balance of power and a rules-based order. Debates over naval and other military means may seem secondary when confronted with questions as profound as whether major powers would go to war over the status of Taiwan. However, the sheer existence of nuclear weapons suggests the leap from confrontation to conventional war remains high. Even so, nothing should be assumed, and the tandem cross-Strait flashes of military muscle and caustic diplomatic verbiage shine a spotlight on the durability of deterrence in the face of intensified competition with China.
China’s Bid for Naval and Narrative Primacy
China may aspire to be the region’s dominant sea power, but that goal seems secondary to even loftier aims. It already commands the world’s largest navy.[2] Boasting more than 360 warships, the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) is on course to deploy a fleet of 400 ships by 2025.[3] Combined with China’s coastguard and maritime militia, Beijing’s total battle force will surpass 800 ships by 2030.[4] A decade ago, Hu Jintao urged China to become ‘a maritime great power’.[5] Now China is well on its way. And for Xi Jinping, the task of building up the PLAN ‘has never been so urgent’, as China assembles a ‘world-class military’ by 2049.[6]
Beijing’s bid for regional power via naval superiority is matched by its attention to narrative. State media regularly tout all PLA achievements: naval and non-naval, quantitative and qualitative. Daily stories in China-friendly media document how Chinese armed forces calibrate long-range anti-ship missiles, ramp up shipbuilding, deploy combat aircraft to fortified military outposts in the South China Sea for training, and conduct joint air, naval, and amphibious exercises around Taiwan.[7]
The same party-state propaganda apparatus praises every PLAN action and assails neighboring states’ attempts to augment their self-defence. When the trilateral security pact among Australia, the UK and the US (AUKUS) was announced in mid-September, Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian criticised the agreement to build nuclear-powered submarines (SSNs) as ‘extremely irresponsible’ and ‘seriously undermin[ing] regional peace’. An editorial in the Global Times threatened that ‘Since Australia has become an anti-China spearhead, the country should prepare for the worst’.[8] Even more aggressive statements circulate on Chinese social media, which Beijing can dial up or down depending on how much nationalist zeal is desired on the internet. So, while China works assiduously to market its ascending naval and maritime capabilities as powerful yet benign, it works equally hard at casting others’ naval capabilities as illicit and dangerous.
Whether or not naval pre-eminence is one of China’s goals, the impact of Beijing’s policies will be far-reaching if successful. China wishes to dominate the South China Sea and the East China Sea. China also seeks control of the crucial chokepoints of the Indo-Pacific theater and beyond. These feats would severely lower the barriers to a hostile takeover of Taiwan. Beijing’s nine-dash line claims to the vast majority of the South China Sea would become customary international law. Post-World War II security centred on an American hub-and-spokes alliance system would become a historical relic. Standing up to any Chinese Communist Party (CCP) policy would risk Beijing’s wrath. Maritime democracies such as Australia and Japan would depend on an authoritarian China to maintain free and open sea lines of communications in peacetime and time of crisis. Fearing these trends, some senior voices in Australia advocate greater strategic autonomy and giving the United States a wider berth.[9]
Yet myriad obstacles stand in the navigational path of any Chinese maritime dream. For all of China’s rapid naval strides and confident-sounding wolf-warrior diplomacy, Beijing harbours deep doubts. General anxieties arise from attempts to maintain an airtight narrative around Xi and CCP rule, which means there is little domestic bandwidth for candour when explaining real estate defaults, power outages, relations with the Taliban, or emerging public health threats. However, it is problematic to try to censor what is readily apparent. One uncomfortable fact not lost on China’s leadership is that Beijing’s assertive behavior is driving other countries closer together. The various clusters of like-minded states teaming up to advance security would not exist were it not for China’s actions. This is true whether one looks at the hard military cooperation envisioned by AUKUS or at the rule-minding, problem-solving Quad (formally, the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue comprising Australia, India, Japan and the United States).[10] Nor can PLAN crews be oblivious to the vulnerability of their surface ships to missile attack and undersea warfare. By dint of geography, China faces a daunting challenge of controlling vital chokepoints along the first and second island chains. Further, Chinese naval officers and officials are acutely aware of their lack of profound combat experience.[11] For all these and other reasons, Chinese leaders would be prudent to exercise caution when risking confrontation with the navies of the United States and its leading allies such as Australia and Japan.
Allies, too, should keep their powder dry and neither declare success nor throw in the towel. Australian SSNs remain a distant hope, and there should be sufficient cause for concern in the fact that China did not appear to be exercising an abundance of caution when it launched a massive show of force, accompanied by uncompromising declaratory policy at the highest level. Instead, Beijing raised the stakes and showed a higher tolerance for risk but partly de-escalated and reverted to an old playbook.
Ends, Means, Strategy and Deterrence
Perhaps because of serious qualms about their relative military and naval capabilities, Chinese military leaders’ words and deeds oscillate between hard or sharp power and softer inducements. China’s penchant for practising military coercion while spinning narratives that can sound equally menacing and peace-loving is evocative of Miyamoto Musashi’s description of the ideal warrior as mastering both ‘pen and sword’.[12] China likes to brandish both words and weapons, as suggested by Xi’s plea for ‘peaceful reunification’ coming on the heels of a massive show of airpower.[13] The one-two punch of military pressure and diplomatic politesse over Taiwan is an ancient part of China’s playbook, and it is instructive in at least four ways for those ruminating about the future of naval strategy in the Indo-Pacific. These ways centre on means, ends, strategy and deterrence.
Means
First, when China deploys its naval and para-naval forces, it seldom relies on a single service or only one instrument of power.
Beijing is busy refining joint operations and hews to the disciplined application of force to support political goals. When a US Navy ship conducts a transit designed to uphold the prevailing interpretation of freedom on the high seas, China is well poised to counter this effort with a whole-of-government response. The PLA employs a ‘three warfares’ approach to influence the media, the law and psychology, backed by civilian government statements and military operations and punctuated by references to a diverse arsenal of ballistic and cruise missiles.
All told, China’s ready response centers on but is not limited to what the United States often calls China’s formidable inventory of weapons designed for anti-access and area-denial (A2/AD) missions. This arsenal includes PLA Rocket Force anti-ship and ground-attack ballistic missiles such as the Dong Feng (DF)-21D medium-range and DF-26 intermediate-range ballistic missiles and the CH-AS-X-13 air-launched missile with a hypersonic glide vehicle that may be mounted on PLA Air Force H-6N bombers.[14]
The US Navy and RAN need to hone their core competencies in naval warfare, but they also need to avoid parochialism, complacency and excessively tactical thinking. Instead, more effort is needed to thread naval capabilities into the larger political, military and economic strategy designed to preserve and adapt the rules-based order rather than gradually acquiesce to a set of rules determined unilaterally by China. In short, Washington and Canberra need to relate naval means to more elevated international ends. Although the roadmap for building Australian SSNs remains littered with challenges, AUKUS portends a tighter naval alliance and a burgeoning strategic technology partnership. That combination should prove invaluable in helping Australia with its undersea warfare requirements for decades to come.
Ends
Second, it underscores China’s unrelenting pursuit of specific ends. Using the deployment of bombers, fighters and other aircraft – and the latent threat of China’s air, naval and missile power – China’s actions support Beijing’s longstanding political aims vis-à-vis Taiwan. Those aims might range from avoiding Taiwan’s independence to realising Taiwan’s unification with the Mainland. In between, military goals could include wearing down and demoralising Taiwan and its supporters into thinking their cause is a lost hope, blocking foreign forces from coming to Taiwan’s rescue, having the ability to escalate the contest to frighten others into major concessions, or, if necessary, fighting and prevailing in significant combat operations.
If one only tracks China’s goals, however, it is easy to miss others’ objectives. For instance, Taiwan’s democratically elected president, Tsai Ing-wen, says she is resolute in standing against coercion and will not back down.[15] The United States says Taiwan must be allowed to engage the Mainland on its terms, not under duress. US allies and partners have made various declarations of late about the importance of peace and stability across the Strait. Beijing would like others to imagine that it has legitimacy, time, geography and political will on its side. According to Xi, ‘The historical task of the complete reunification of the motherland must be fulfilled, and will definitely be fulfilled’.[16]
Taiwan’s separate status has not interfered with China reclaiming a seat at the high table of international politics or hindered its economic or military success. Nonetheless, what could put all of those achievements at risk is trying to forcefully act out its claim to Taiwan – the same claim that Xi has made an indispensable element of the great rejuvenation of China. Because of that conflict, because the people of Taiwan have moved further away from than closer to Beijing’s governance model, China’s objective choice remains living with a variant of the status quo rather than forcing a final solution to the Taiwan problem.
Because the United States, Australia and others only have to preserve a version of the status quo, they need sufficient military and naval force to ensure Beijing retains sufficient doubt to act with restraint rather than rashly. In real-world scenarios, in which leaders may talk boldly but act cautiously, the goal of deterrence by denial should be achievable. Stealthy submarines can be an indispensable part of preserving the military balance of power that denies Beijing any risk-free use of military force to achieve its aims. Even assuming much-improved PLAN antisubmarine warfare capabilities in the future, Beijing officials are apt to suffer lingering uncertainty about the risks of using overt force. It is easier to begin a fight than to end it.
Strategy
Third, the sharp contrast of the PLA military display and authoritative declarations out of Beijing illuminates aspects of how China executes strategy. It is likely to remain restrained, yet it is also possible that Xi or another leader may execute a radical 180-degree turn based on an internal net assessment in the future.
Sun Tzu’s concept of shih, or strategic leverage, can be derived from superior foreknowledge applied at critical points of advantage, both physical and intangible.[17] ‘Attack where he is not prepared’ may seem a statement of the obvious. Still, at a deeper level, it is a demand to achieve information dominance to command complete control, with the ready means and ability to seize opportunities that pit one’s strengths against an opponent’s weaknesses, including in terrain, logistics, morale and psychology.[18] Properly employing strategic leverage leads to a favorable asymmetric advantage, ‘the distinction between “weak points” and “strong points” that makes one’s army falling upon the enemy a whetstone being hurled at eggs’.[19]
The allied naval and military forces should aim to deny China a situation in which it feels that it possesses a great asymmetrical advantage – a heavy stone against mere eggs. Indeed, allies ought to be seeking to flip that script and help Taiwan and allies and partners achieve greater A2/AD capabilities of their own. This applies not just to weapons but also to political resilience and a mindset determined to defend one’s turf and way of life.
If this strategy is pursued with the intent of preserving peace and for defensive rather than offensive purposes, then it is likely that China can be convinced to hold its fire. That is, China will seek strategic leverage with means short of major overt force. Either way, the calculus will include not just hardware and technology but also many more intangible factors, and the United States and Australia need to be mindful of more comprehensive strategy-making.
Deterrence
Finally, the Taiwan tensions of early October highlight the importance of preserving deterrence, dissuading Beijing from leaping from coercion to the use of force against Taiwan or elsewhere in the maritime Indo-Pacific. It has been far easier for Chinese mariners to close the gap on foreign navies than to position themselves for sea control and preserve good order at sea. It is now easier for the US Navy, the RAN and others to ensure China is denied exclusive control over chokepoints, for instance, than it is for Beijing to be sure it could control these critical waterways in a conflict.
But recent expressions of concern that China may be closer to escalating from coercion to conventional force, especially over a Taiwan scenario but perhaps in the East China Sea or the South China Sea, have emerged with greater regularity out of the United States Indo-Pacific Command and from other regional defence chiefs, including Taiwan’s defence minister, Chiu Kuo-cheng.[20] Former US Admiral Phil Davidson is now associated with a so-called ‘Davidson window’, which might arise in 2027 during a political transition at the end of Xi’s potential third five-year term as CCP General Secretary, when the PLA may be more likely to be thrust into kinetic action.[21]
Still, Chinese leaders will harbour doubts. The PLA rocket forces most threatening anti-access weapons, including the DF-26 ‘carrier-killer’ ballistic missile with a manoeuvrable warhead, can strike fixed targets and surface ships some 4000 kilometers away from China’s coast.[22] But as Edward Luttwak pointedly notes, while China can attack large surface ships, ‘what cannot be done is to sink a carrier with 5,000 Americans aboard and then expect that the next step will be talks in Geneva’.[23]
These brief reflections on the implications of recent events on alliance naval strategy lead me to this conclusion: preserving doubt preserves deterrence, and advancing undersea warfare and denying the PLAN exclusive control over the maritime Indo-Pacific will help sow doubt.
[1] Chris Buckley & Steven Lee Myers, ‘“Starting a fire”: U.S. and China enter dangerous territory over Taiwan’, The New York Times, 9 October 2021, <https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/09/world/asia/united-states-china-taiwan.html?searchResultPosition=1>.
[2] Office of the Secretary of Defense, Military and security developments involving the People’s Republic of China 2020: annual report to Congress, Department of Defense, Washington, DC, 2020, <https://media.defense.gov/2020/Sep/01/2002488689/-1/-1/1/2020-DOD-CHINA-MILITARY-POWER-REPORT-FINAL.PDF>.
[3] Office of Naval Intelligence, ‘China: naval construction trends vis-à-vis U.S. Navy shipbuilding plans, 2020–2030’, memorandum, 6 February 2020, <https://irp.fas.org/agency/oni/plan-trends.pdf>.
[4] Department of the Navy, Advantage at sea: prevailing with integrated all-domain naval power, Washington, DC, December 2020), pp. 3–4.
[5] Michael A McDevitt, China as a twenty-first-century naval power: theory, practice, and implications, Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, MD, 2020), p. 1.
[6] Ibid., pp. 17, 2.
[7] Even when these stories are put into context, the meta message of a growing Chinese military juggernaut may still be advanced. For instance see Feliz Solomon, ‘China airlift mission shows off capabilities in disputed sea’, The Wall Street Journal, 24 September 2021, <https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-airlift-mission-shows-off-capabilities-in-disputed-sea-11632483273>.
[8] Lily Kuo, ‘China accuses new U.S.-Australian submarine deal of stoking arms race, threatening regional peace’, The Washington Post, 16 September 2021, <https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/china-reaction-australia-nuclear-subs/2021/09/16/f33b7f7a-16cd-11ec-a019-cb193b28aa73_story.html>.
[9] Most notably, former Prime Minister Paul Keating and veteran strategy analyst Hugh White (although in White’s case, he is certainly right to warn that no-one should take US success as a given). See Charles Miller, ‘There is no alternative to AUKUS. Australia is dependent on the US anyway’, The Canberra Times, 28 September 2021, <https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/7446190/there-is-no-alternative-to-aukus-australia-is-dependent-on-the-us-anyway/>.
[10] Patrick M Cronin, ‘The 3 pillars of Asia’s new security architecture’, The Straits Times, 2 October 2021, <https://www.straitstimes.com/opinion/the-3-pillars-of-asias-new-security-architecture>.
[11] Timothy R Heath, ‘China’s untested military could be a force – or a flop’, Foreign Policy, 27 November 2018.
[12] ‘It is said that the warrior’s is the twofold Way of pen and sword, and he should have a taste for both Ways.’ Miyamoto Musashi, The book of five rings, Sirius Publishing, London, 2020, p. 44.
[13] Elaine Yu & Joyu Wang, ‘China’s Xi emphasizes ‘peaceful reunification’ with Taiwan days after record show of force’, The Wall Street Journal, 10 October 2021, <https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinas-xi-emphasizes-peaceful-reunification-with-taiwan-days-after-record-show-of-force-11633846538?tesla=y>.
[14] Malcolm Davis, ‘Australia must prepare as China’s coercive capabilities draw closer’, The Strategist (ASPI), 15 September 2021, <https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/australia-must-prepare-as-chinas-coercive-capabilities-draw-closer/>.
[15] Tsai Ing-wen, ‘Taiwan and the fight for democracy,’ Foreign Affairs, November/December 2021, <https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/taiwan/2021-10-05/taiwan-and-fight-democracy>.
[16] Carlos Garcia & Yew Lun Tian, ‘China’s Xi vows ‘reunification’ with Taiwan’, Reuters, 9 October 2021, <https://www.reuters.com/world/china/chinas-xi-says-reunification-with-taiwan-must-will-be-realised-2021-10-09/>.
[17] See Robert T Ames, ‘Introduction’, in Sun-tzu, The art of warfare (Sun-tzu ping-fa), trans. Roger T Ames, Ballantine Books, New York, 1993, pp. 71–82.
[18] Sun-tzu, The art of warfare, p. 105.
[19] Ibid., p. 119.
[20] Kathrin Hille & Demetri Sevastopulo, ‘Taipei warns that China will be able to invade Taiwan by 2025’, Financial Times, 6 October 2021, <https://www.ft.com/content/212f44b9-a271-425b-a7cf-608d43d46288>.
[21] Mikio Sugeno & Tsuyoshi Nagasawa, ‘Xi’s potential 2027 transition poses threat to Taiwan: Davidson’, Nikkei Asia, 18 September 2021, <https://asia.nikkei.com/Editor-s-Picks/Interview/Xi-s-potential-2027-transition-poses-threat-to-Taiwan-Davidson>.
[22] Kristin Huang, ‘China’s rocket force tests ‘carrier killer’ DF-26 ballistic missiles’, South China Morning Post, 10 June 2021, <https://www.scmp.com/news/china/military/article/3136789/chinas-rocket-force-tests-carrier-killer-df-26-ballistic>.
[23] Nirmal Ghosh, ‘With Australia card, the US has a stronger hand’, The Straits Times, 10 October 2021, <https://www.straitstimes.com/opinion/with-australia-card-the-us-has-a-stronger-hand>.
