http://foreignpolicy.com/2010/04/26/chinas-new-strategy/

China’s new strategy By Stephen M. Walt, April 26, 2010

For the past fifteen years or so, there’s been a continuing debate on the likelihood of a serious rivalry between the United States and China. On one side are realists who believe that if China continues to increase its economic power, then significant security competition between the two countries is virtually inevitable. On the other side are those (mostly liberal) theorists who believe that the potential for trouble will be muted by economic interdependence and the socializing effects of China’s growing participation in various international institutions. (This was Bill Clinton’s rationale for getting China into the World Trade Organization, for example). And if China were to make a gradual transition to democracy, so the argument runs, then democratic peace theory will kick in and there’s nothing to worry about.

On Saturday, the New York Times published an important story supporting the realist view. It described the rapid expansion of China’s naval capabilities (a classic manifestation of great power status), as well as the more ambitious new strategy that this growing capacity is designed to serve. Briefly, as China’s economic power and dependence on overseas raw materials (e.g., oil) has grown, it is seeking to acquire the ability to protect its access. In practice, China’s new strategy of "far sea defense" means acquiring the ability to project naval power into key ocean areas (including the Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf), while denying other naval powers the ability to operate with impunity in areas close to China.

Needless to say, this is precisely what realism would predict, and some prominent realists (e.g., my co-author John Mearsheimer) have already explained the logic behind this prediction very clearly. And the one country that shouldn’t be at all surprised is the United States, because China appears to be doing something akin to what we did during the latter part of the 19th century. To be specific: Beijing is seeking to build its economy, then expand its military capacity, achieve a position of regional dominance, and then exclude other major powers from its immediate neighborhood.

In the U.S. case, we expanded across North America ("Manifest Destiny") and other great powers to stay out of the Western hemisphere (the Monroe Doctrine). It took a long time before the United States was strong enough to enforce the latter idea, but eventually we could and we did. This position has been a huge strategic advantage ever since: not only is the United States the only great power that didn’t have to worry about foreign invasion (because it had no great power rivals nearby), this position also allowed us to intervene all over the globe without having to devote much blood or treasure to defending our own shores.

If you were a Chinese strategist, wouldn’t you like to be in similar position? Ideally, you’d like to be the strongest power in East Asia and you wouldn’t want any other great powers (like the United States) to have a major strategic role there. Achieving that goal is not easy, however, because China has some strong

neighbors (Japan, India, Vietnam, etc.) and many Asian states already have close security ties with the United States.

So here’s what I’d expect to see over the next few decades. I’d expect China to speak softly (for the most part) while it builds a bigger stick. If they are smart, they won’t throw their weight around too much lest they provoke more vigorous balancing behavior by their neighbors (and the United States). I would also expect them to continuing developing military capabilities designed to make it more dangerous for the United States to operate near China, and eventually build power projection capabilities that will complicate our operations in other areas that matter (like the Persian Gulf). At the same time, look for them to forge relations in some areas that have been traditional U.S. "spheres of interest," so that the United States has to devote more time and attention to these regions too. I’d expect them to play "divide-and-conquer" closer to home as well, and try to persuade some of their neighbors to distance themselves from Washington. Lastly, Beijing would dearly love to keep the United States bogged down in places like Afghanistan, distracted by disputes over Iran’s nuclear program, and stymied by the interminable Israeli-Palestinian conflict, while they exploit the anti-American sentiments that these problems exacerbate and stay focused on the bigger picture. So don’t expect a lot of help from them on those fronts.

There are at least three caveats worth noting in this otherwise gloomy picture. First, as the Times article makes clear, China remains much weaker than the United States today, and it has a long way to go before it becomes a true "peer competitor." So there’s no need for panic, just a timely and prudent response. The good news (such as it is) is that China’s rise should make it relatively easy for the United States to stay on good terms with its current Asian allies.

Second, Chinese economic growth is likely to slow in the years ahead, especially as its population ages and as its emerging middle class demands additional social benefits. This situation will force Beijing to make some hard choices about domestic and international priorities and may limit the speed with which economic might is translated into military power and overseas presence.

Third, and most important, nothing I’ve said above implies that open war between the United States and China is inevitable. Nuclear deterrence is likely to keep the competition within bounds, and prudent and sensible diplomacy may be able to defuse or limit potential clashes of interest. Nonetheless, if China continues on the course laid out here, you should expect significant security competition between Washington and Beijing in the decades ahead. To expect anything else is . . . well . . . unrealistic.

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http://foreignpolicy.com/2010/05/03/balancing-act-asian-version/

FOREIGN POLICY

Balancing act (Asian version) By Stephen M. Walt, May 3, 2010

Last week I suggested that if China’s power continues to rise, then Sino-American relations are bound to become significantly more competitive. China is likely to seek to become a regional hegemon, and the United States will probably try to prevent this. (For more on this broad theme, see Robert Kaplan’s essay on "The Geography of Chinese Power" in the latest Foreign Affairs, which arrived in my mailbox the day after I posted my original comment).

I also noted that China’s path to regional hegemony would be more difficult than America’s path had been, because there were no other major powers in the Western hemisphere and no strong obstacles to U.S. expansion across North America. (Britain was a major power presence in Canada, of course, but was generally preoccupied by events elsewhere). By contrast, there are several significant medium powers in China’s neighborhood. A key question, therefore, is whether other Asian states are likely to balance against China’s rising power, or whether they will choose to "bandwagon" with it. If the former, containment will be relatively easy; if the latter, the gradual emergence of a Chinese "sphere of influence" may be difficult to prevent.

Well, lo and behold, over the weekend the Times published an interesting article about China’s rising influence in Indonesia. Lots of Javanese are apparently learning Mandarin, and in the process ignoring an aversion to things Chinese dating back to Beijing’s role in the abortive 1965 coup there. This trend reflects both China’s growing economic clout and an active Chinese effort to expand the teaching of Mandarin overseas.

So will Asia balance or bandwagon? In my previous work on alliances, I argued that balancing behavior tends to predominate in international politics, but that especially weak and/or isolated states were somewhat more likely to bandwagon than strong states are. Because weak states can do little to affect the outcome of a contest and may suffer grievously in the process, they must choose the side that is likely to win. And where great powers tend to have global interests, weak states worry mostly about the balance of power in their immediate region. They may be willing to stand up to a stronger power if they are assured of ample allied support, but a weak state left to its own devices may have little choice but to kowtow to a larger and stronger neighbor. That is how "spheres of influence" are born.

What does this logic tell us about future events in East Asia? On the one hand, prospects for balancing ought to be fairly good. Although China has the greatest power potential in Asia, several of its neighbors are hardly "weak states." Japan has the world’s third largest economy (despite a lengthy period of stagnation), a latent nuclear capability, and significant military power of its own. Despite an aging population, it would be hard to intimidate. Vietnam has never been a pushover, India has a billion people and is nuclear-capable, and states like Indonesia and Singapore possess valuable real estate and (in Singapore’s case) military strength disproportionate to size.

Furthermore, even a far more powerful China would have some difficulty projecting power against its various neighbors, because it would have to do so via naval, air, and amphibious capabilities and not via land power alone. And given the U.S. interest in preventing China from exercising regional hegemony, the potential targets of a Chinese drive for regional dominance would have a great power ally ready to back them up.

But on the other hand, a U.S. effort to maintain a defensive alliance in East Asia would also face several obvious obstacles. First, defensive alliances invariably face collective action problems, as each member of the alliance tries to shift the main burden onto its partners. This is a tendency that an adroit rising power can exploit, in effect playing "divide-and-rule" while the putative partners quarrel over strategy and burden-sharing.

Second, and closely related, is the difficulty of figuring out just how much support the United States has to provide its Asian partners to keep them on board. Provide too little, and some of them might be tempted to cut a deal with Beijing. Provide too much, and Asian allies will free-ride on Uncle Sucker. Add to this the perennial U.S. obsession with credibility and the fact that these same allies have an incentive to exaggerate their own propensity to bandwagon (to convince a nervous Washington to do more on their behalf), and you have a recipe for American over commitment.

Third, as the Times story suggests, China’s most promising strategy will be to speak softly and focus on building economic and cultural ties with its various neighbors. Heavy-handed Chinese diplomacy will make it easier for Washington to maintain strong Asian partnerships, while the persistent exercise of Chinese "soft power" could convince some Asian states that Beijing was the wave of the future and that Chinese hegemony wouldn’t be all that onerous. At the very least, it would make the United States work harder to preserve its current position.

Taken together (and at the risk of beating a dead horse), this analysis implies that managing alliance relations in Asia is going to take a lot more attention and skill than it took to manage relations in Europe during the Cold War (and even that wasn’t always so simple — remember Suez?). That task will be even harder if the U.S. government is devoting a lot of time and attention to areas that are ultimately of marginal strategic importance, like … um … Afghanistan.

http://foreignpolicy.com/2010/05/03/balancing-act-asian-version/

FOREIGN POLICY

Will Asia balance? (revisited) By Stephen M. Walt, October 1, 2010

Assuming China continues to grow economically (which seems like a fairly safe bet), how will this trend affect strategic alignments in Asia? I’ve posted on this topic before (see here), but I’ve been thinking about it again in light of some recent developments and after reading some recent scholarship on the topic.

Structural realism gives a straightforward answer to the question: As China becomes more powerful, other Asian states will move to balance it by devoting more of their own wealth to national security and by forging closer security ties with each other and with powerful external actors like the United States.

This is essentially a pure "balance-of power" explanation, but as some of you probably know, I think that is not the best way to explain why alliances form. In the near-to-medium term, the extent to which Asian states balance against China will depend not just on Chinese power, but on the level of threat that these states perceive. The level of threat, in turn will be affected not just by China’s aggregate capabilities (i.e., its GDP, defense spending, etc.) but also by 1) Geography, 2) Offensive military capabilities, and 3) Its perceived intentions.

To be more specific, states that are closer to China are likely to be more worried than states that lie some distance away. In particular, states that border directly on China — such as Vietnam — have to fear China’s rising power more than states who are separated by water (such as Indonesia) because it is inherently more difficult to project power over oceans. (Taiwan is something of a special case, given the tangled history of cross-strait relations and its relative proximity).

Furthermore, the level of threat that China poses will depend in part of how it chooses to mobilize its growing economic might. If it builds military capabilities that are primarily designed to defend its own territory, China’s neighbors will feel less threatened and be less inclined to balance against it. By contrast, if China develops the power projection capabilities that are typical of most great powers (i.e., large naval and

air forces, long-range missiles, amphibious capabilities, etc.), then others in the region will worry about what those capabilities might be used for and they will be more likely to join forces with each other (and the United States) to protect their own interests and autonomy.

Of course, as China becomes more deeply enmeshed in the world economy and more dependent on overseas resources and markets, its interest in having military capabilities that can operate in far-flung areas is likely to grow. If I had to bet, therefore, I’d assume that China’s power-projection forces will continue to expand and that this trend will reinforce balancing tendencies.

Finally, the level of threat will also be affected by whether China is perceived as an ambitious, revisionist power, or whether it is seen as a state that seeks to preserve the regional status quo. In this regard, China’s shift to a more assertive regional diplomacy — such as its recent assertion that the South China Sea is a "core interest" and its obvious desire to reduce the U.S. role there — stands in obvious contrast to its previous emphasis on a "peaceful rise." One might add the hard-nosed diplomacy China displayed in the recent dispute with Japan over a captured Chinese trawler. The more sharp elbows that Beijing throws, the more that its neighbors will worry and the more they will look for mutual support.

In short, the intensity of balancing behavior by China’s neighbors will be affected by more than just China’s material capabilities; how it chooses to use its growing capabilities will have a significant impact as well.

Yet balancing behavior is not automatic, even when the level of threat is rising. Here are several other factors to keep in mind when trying to forecast future Asian alignments.

First, any balancing coalition in Asia is going to face serious dilemmas of collective action. Although many Asian states may worry about a rising threat from China, each will also be tempted to get others to bear most of the burden and to free-ride on their efforts. This may also include trying to simultaneously balance (in part) while still cultivating close economic relations with China. This problem may be compounded by lingering historical divisions between potential alliance partners (e.g., Japan and South Korea), and by adroit Chinese efforts to play "divide-and-rule."

Second, the role of the United States will be critical, but success will require careful judgment and skillful diplomatic management. On the one hand, Asian states are more likely to balance China if they believe the United States will back them up. But on the other hand, if they are too sure of U.S. assistance, they will be tempted to free-ride on Uncle Sam and thus contribute too little to collective defense. U.S. policymakers will have to walk a fine line: providing enough reassurance to convince Asian partners that balancing will work, but leaving enough doubts so that Washington doesn’t have to do all the heavy lifting ourselves.

In addition, because U.S. allies will try to get us to do more by constantly questioning the credibility of U.S. commitments, managing these Asian alliances is going to require a deft combination of hard bargaining and supportive diplomacy. Washington does hold one obvious ace, however: In the end, China’s rising power is more of a problem for its neighbors than it is for us, and we ought to be able to drive a good bargain when it is time to allocate costs and benefits of any balancing coalition.

Third, if one takes an even longer-term perspective, and one assumes that China’s rise is not interrupted, then regional balancing of the sort depicted above may one day become impossible. Balancing the USSR was facilitated by the fact that its economy was significantly smaller and less efficient than America’s; which meant that we were waging the Cold War against an adversary with significant smaller latent capabilities. But if China eventually emerges as the world’s largest economy, and if rising per capita income creates greater surpluses for its government to devote to foreign policy purposes, then the advantages the United States enjoyed in World War I, World War II, and the Cold War would be significantly reduced and might

even disappear. Over time, some Asian states may choose to bandwagon instead, leading to the emergence of a Chinese sphere of influence in Asia akin to the U.S. sphere in the Western hemisphere.

This outcome is far from certain, however, and I frankly don’t expect it to occur before the end of my own career. (Side note: I plan on working for a long time). If the United States keeps squandering its power in unnecessary wars and fails to keep its house in order here at home, then that day might arrive more quickly. I don’t think such self-inflicted wounds will keep happening, but I wish I could rule them out completely.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/24/world/asia/24navy.html?ref=asia&_r=0

The New York Times

Chinese Military Seeks to Extend Its Naval PowerBy EDWARD WONG, APRIL 23, 2010

YALONG BAY, China — The Chinese military is seeking to project naval power well beyond the Chinese coast, from the oil ports of the Middle East to the shipping lanes of the Pacific, where the United States Navy has long reigned as the dominant force, military officials and analysts say.

China calls the new strategy “far sea defense,” and the speed with which it is building long-range capabilities has surprised foreign military officials.

The strategy is a sharp break from the traditional, narrower doctrine of preparing for war over the self-governing island of Taiwan or defending the Chinese coast. Now, Chinese admirals say they want warships to escort commercial vessels that are crucial to the country’s economy, from as far as the Persian Gulf to the Strait of Malacca, in Southeast Asia, and to help secure Chinese interests in the resource-rich South and East China Seas.

In late March, two Chinese warships docked in Abu Dhabi, the first time the modern Chinese Navy made a port visit in the Middle East.

The overall plan reflects China’s growing sense of self-confidence and increasing willingness to assert its interests abroad. China’s naval ambitions are being felt, too, in recent muscle flexing with the United States: in March, Chinese officials told senior American officials privately that China would brook no foreign interference in its territorial issues in the South China Sea, said a senior American official involved in China policy.

The naval expansion will not make China a serious rival to American naval hegemony in the near future, and there are few indications that China has aggressive intentions toward the United States or other countries.

But China, now the world’s leading exporter and a giant buyer of oil and other natural resources, is also no longer content to trust the security of sea lanes to the Americans, and its definition of its own core interests has expanded along with its economic clout.

In late March, Adm. Robert F. Willard, the leader of the United States Pacific Command, said in Congressional testimony that recent Chinese military developments were “pretty dramatic.” China has tested long-range ballistic missiles that could be used against aircraft carriers, he said. After years of denials, Chinese officials have confirmed that they intend to deploy an aircraft carrier group within a few years.

China is also developing a sophisticated submarine fleet that could try to prevent foreign naval vessels from entering its strategic waters if a conflict erupted in the region, said Admiral Willard and military analysts.

“Of particular concern is that elements of China’s military modernization appear designed to challenge our freedom of action in the region,” the admiral said.

Yalong Bay, on the southern coast of Hainan island in the South China Sea, is the site of five-star beach resorts just west of a new underground submarine base. The base allows submarines to reach deep water within 20 minutes and roam the South China Sea, which has some of the world’s busiest shipping lanes and areas rich in oil and natural gas that are the focus of territorial disputes between China and other Asian nations.

That has caused concern not only among American commanders, but also among officials in Southeast Asian nations, which have been quietly acquiring more submarines, missiles and other weapons. “Regional officials have been surprised,” said Huang Jing, a scholar of the Chinese military at the National University of Singapore. “We were in a blinded situation. We thought the Chinese military was 20 years behind us, but we suddenly realized China is catching up.”

China is also pressing the United States to heed its claims in the region. In March, Chinese officials told two visiting senior Obama administration officials, Jeffrey A. Bader and James B. Steinberg, that China would not tolerate any interference in the South China Sea, now part of China’s “core interest” of sovereignty, said an American official involved in China policy. It was the first time the Chinese labeled the South China Sea a core interest, on par with Taiwan and Tibet, the official said.

Another element of the Chinese Navy’s new strategy is to extend its operational reach beyond the South China Sea and the Philippines to what is known as the “second island chain” — rocks and atolls out in the Pacific, the official said. That zone significantly overlaps the United States Navy’s area of supremacy.

Japan is anxious, too. Its defense minister, Toshimi Kitazawa, said in mid-April that two Chinese submarines and eight destroyers were spotted on April 10 heading between two Japanese islands en route to the Pacific, the first time such a large Chinese flotilla had been seen so close to Japan. When two Japanese destroyers began following the Chinese ships, a Chinese helicopter flew within 300 feet of one of the destroyers, the Japanese Defense Ministry said.

Since December 2008, China has maintained three ships in the Gulf of Aden to contribute to international antipiracy patrols, the first deployment of the Chinese Navy beyond the Pacific. The mission allows China to improve its navy’s long-range capabilities, analysts say.

A 2009 Pentagon report estimated Chinese naval forces at 260 vessels, including 75 “principal combatants” — major warships — and more than 60 submarines. The report noted the building of an aircraft carrier, and said China “continues to show interest” in acquiring carrier-borne jet fighters from Russia. The United States Navy has 286 battle-force ships and 3,700 naval aircraft, though ship for ship the American Navy is considered qualitatively superior to the Chinese Navy.

The Pentagon does not classify China as an enemy force. But partly in reaction to China’s growth, the United States has recently transferred submarines from the Atlantic to the Pacific so that most of its nuclear-

powered attack submarines are now in the Pacific, said Bernard D. Cole, a former American naval officer and a professor at the National War College in Washington.

The United States has also begun rotating three to four submarines on deployments out of Guam, reviving a practice that had ended with the cold war, Mr. Cole said.

American vessels now frequently survey the submarine base at Hainan island, and that activity leads to occasional friction with Chinese ships. A survey mission last year by an American naval ship, the Impeccable, resulted in what Pentagon officials said was harassment by Chinese fishing vessels; the Chinese government said it had the right to block surveillance in those waters because they are an “exclusive economic zone” of China.

The United States and China have clashing definitions of such zones, defined by a United Nations convention as waters within 200 nautical miles of a coast. The United States says international law allows a coastal country to retain only special commercial rights in the zones, while China contends the country can control virtually any activity within them.

Military leaders here maintain that the Chinese Navy is purely a self-defense force. But the definition of self-defense has expanded to encompass broad maritime and economic interests, two Chinese admirals contended in March.

“With our naval strategy changing now, we are going from coastal defense to far sea defense,” Rear Adm. Zhang Huachen, deputy commander of the East Sea Fleet, said in an interview with Xinhua, the state news agency.

“With the expansion of the country’s economic interests, the navy wants to better protect the country’s transportation routes and the safety of our major sea lanes,” he added. “In order to achieve this, the Chinese Navy needs to develop along the lines of bigger vessels and with more comprehensive capabilities.”

The navy gets more than one-third of the overall Chinese military budget, “reflecting the priority Beijing currently places on the navy as an instrument of national security,” Mr. Cole said. China’s official military budget for 2010 is $78 billion, but the Pentagon says China spends much more than that amount. Last year, the Pentagon estimated total Chinese military spending at $105 billion to $150 billion, still much less than what the United States spends on defense. For comparison, the Obama administration proposed $548.9 billion as the Pentagon’s base operating budget for next year.

The Chinese Navy’s most impressive growth has been in its submarine fleet, said Mr. Huang, the scholar in Singapore. It recently built at least two Jin-class submarines, the first regularly active ones in the fleet with ballistic missile capabilities, and two more are under construction. Two Shang-class nuclear-powered attack submarines recently entered service.

Countries in the region have responded with their own acquisitions, said Carlyle A. Thayer, a professor at the Australian Defense Force Academy. In December, Vietnam signed an arms deal with Russia that included six Kilo-class submarines, which would give Vietnam the most formidable submarine fleet in Southeast Asia. Last year, Malaysia took delivery of its first submarine, one of two ordered from France, and Singapore began operating one of two Archer-class submarines bought from Sweden.

Last fall, during a speech in Washington, Lee Kuan Yew, the former Singaporean leader, reflected widespread anxieties when he noted China’s naval rise and urged the United States to maintain its regional presence. “U.S. core interest requires that it remains the superior power on the Pacific,” he said. “To give up this position would diminish America’s role throughout the world.”