Is America Really "Up" For A Second Cold War?

Authored by Patrick Buchanan via Buchanan.org,

After the 19th national congress of the Chinese Communist Party in October, one may discern Premier Xi Jinping’s vision of the emerging New World Order.

By 2049, the centennial of the triumph of Communist Revolution, China shall have become the first power on earth.

Her occupation and humiliation by the West and Japan in the 19th and 20th centuries will have become hated but ancient history.

America will have been pushed out of Asia and the western Pacific back beyond the second chain of islands.

Taiwan will have been returned to the motherland, South Korea and the Philippines neutralized, Japan contained. China’s claim to all the rocks, reefs and islets in the South China Sea will have been recognized by all current claimants.

Xi’s “One Belt, One Road” strategy will have brought South and Central Asia into Beijing’s orbit, and he will be in the Pantheon beside the Founding Father of Communist China, Mao Zedong.

Democracy has been rejected by China in favor of one-party rule of all political, economic, cultural and social life.

And as one views Europe, depopulating, riven by secessionism, fearful of a Third World migrant invasion, and America tearing herself apart over politics and ideology, China must appear to ambitious and rising powers as the model to emulate.

Indeed, has not China shown the world that authoritarianism can be compatible with national growth that outstrips a democratic West?

Over the last quarter century, China, thanks to economic nationalism and $4 trillion in trade surpluses with the United States, has exhibited growth unseen since 19th-century America.

Whatever we may think of Xi’s methods, this vision must attract vast numbers of China’s young — they see their country displace America as first power, becoming the dominant people on earth.

What is America’s vision? What is America’s cause in the 21st century? What is the mission and goal that unites, inspires and drives us on?

After World War II, America’s foreign policy was imposed upon her by the terrible realities the war produced: brutalitarian Stalinist domination of Eastern and Central Europe and much of Asia.

Under nine presidents, containment of the Soviet empire, while avoiding a war that would destroy civilization, was our policy. In Korea and Vietnam, Americans died in the thousands to sustain that policy.

But with the collapse of the Soviet Empire and the breakup of the USSR, it seemed that by 1992 our great work was done. Now democracy would flourish and be embraced by all advanced peoples and nations.

But it did not happen. The “end of history” never came. The New World Order of Bush I did not last. Bush II’s democracy crusade to end tyranny in our world produced disasters from Libya to Afghanistan.

Authoritarianism is now ascendant and democracy is in retreat.

Is the United States prepared to accept a world in which China, growing at twice our rate, more united and purposeful, emerges as the dominant power? Are we willing to acquiesce in a Chinese Century?

Or will we adopt a policy to ensure that America remains the world’s preeminent power?

Do we have what is required in wealth, power, stamina and will to pursue a Second Cold War to contain China, which, strategic weapons aside, is more powerful and has greater potential than the Soviet Union ever did?

On his Asia tour, President Trump spoke of the “Indo-Pacific,” shorthand for the proposition that the U.S., Japan, Australia and India form the core of a coalition to maintain the balance of power in Asia and contain the expansion of China.

Yet, before we create some Asia-Pacific NATO to corral and contain China in this century, as we did the USSR in the 20th century, we need to ask ourselves why.

Does China, even if she rises to surpass the U.S. in manufacturing, technology and economic output, and is a comparable military power, truly threaten us as the USSR did, to where we should consider war to prevent its expansion in places like the South China Sea that are not vital to America?

While China is a great power, she has great problems.

She is feared and disliked by her neighbors. She has territorial quarrels with Russia, India, Vietnam, the Philippines, Japan. She has separatists in Tibet and Xinjiang. Christianity is growing while Communism, the state religion, is a dead faith. Moreover, the monopoly of power now enjoyed by the Communist Party and Xi Jinping mean that if things go wrong, there is no one else to blame.

Finally, why is the containment of China in Asia the responsibility of a United States 12 time zones away?

For while China seeks to dominate Eurasia, she appears to have no desire to threaten the vital interests of the United States. China’s Communism appears to be an ideology disbelieved by her own people, that she does not intend to impose it on Asia or the world.

Again, are we Americans up for a Second Cold War, and, if so, why?

China Has Practiced Bombing Runs On Guam

Just as President Donald Trump is preparing to embark on a nearly two-week tour of Asia – his first since taking office – where he is expected to discuss, among other topics, the regional threat posed by North Korea, Defense News is reporting that China has reportedly been conducting bombing drills targeting the US territory of Guam.

Reports of China’s aggressive expansion of its air force – an attempt to exert its dominance over contested territories in the South China and East China seas – were relayed by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph Dunford during a briefing with reporters.

China “is very much the long-term challenge in the region,” Dunford said. “When we look at the capabilities China is developing, we’ve got to make sure we maintain the ability to meet our alliance commitments in the Pacific.”

The notion that both North Korea and China have threatened Guam, either explicitly or tacitly, speaks to the fact that China is the biggest threat to US security in the Pacific, nuclear standoff with North Korea notwithstanding, Dunford said.

To wit, a conflict with North Korea is still viewed as “a fight we can win,” military officials said during the briefing. With China, they said they “worry about the way things are going.”

Followers of US activities in the Pacific may have noticed the increase in confrontations between US and Chinese forces, both in the water and in the sky. While it hasn’t been nearly as widely publicized as the Chinese military’s buildup in the South China Sea, China has also been building its fleet of fighter jets, operating daily, aggressive campaigns to contest airspace over the East China Sea, South China Sea and further out into the Pacific, Defense News reported.

The officials described the escalatory behaviors by China in a briefing they provided to reporters traveling with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph Dunford.

China’s willingness to test boundaries has caused the number of confrontations between Japanese and Chinese fighter jets to escalate dramatically…

Over the last year Japan has scrambled 900 sorties to intercept Chinese fighters challenging Japan’s air defense identification zone, or ADIZ. In 2013 China announced borders for its own ADIZ, borders which overlapped Japan’s zone and included the disputed Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea. Since then, increased interactions between Japanese and Chinese aircraft ultimately resulted in Japan relocating two fighter squadrons to Naha Air Base on Okinawa to more easily meet the incursions, the officials said.

 

“We now have, on a daily basis, armed Chinese Flankers and Japanese aircraft” coming in close proximity of each other, the officials said, adding that intercepts between the U.S. and China are also increasing.

…While US military officials have accused the Chinese air force of provoking the US by staging intercepts of US aircraft.

“It’s very common for PRC aircraft to intercept U.S. aircraft” these days, the officials said, referring to the People’s Republic of China.

 

Chinese aircraft are also testing U.S. air defense identification zones, the officials said. Chinese H-6K “Badger” bombers upgraded with 1,000 mile range air launched cruise missiles are testing U.S. defense zones around Guam.

 

The Badgers run “not infrequent” flights to get within range of the U.S. territory, they said.

 

“The PRC is practicing attacks on Guam,” the officials said.

 

The vast majority of the flights occur without an incident, such as a report of unsafe flying, for example. The officials said they follow U.S. Pacific Command guidance on how to respond in those events, so they do not further escalate.

DefenseNews noted that the military relationship between the US and China remains open, if guarded. US officials meet twice a year at the Military Maritime Consultative Agreement conference, where the incursions are discussed along with other security topics.

However, officials described China’s repeated confrontations as part of a strategy of normalization, whereby Chinese officials repeatedly test boundaries until regional gradually come to accept their expanded presence. Ultimately, the strategy is aimed at forcing the international community to accept “the nine-dash line” – the contest maritime border surrounding islands in the South China Sea that China has claimed and developed, but have been the subject of an international dispute with several of China’s regional neighbors. Last year, an international court ruled in favor of the Philippines’ claim of ownership, but the ruling was promptly ignored by the Chinese.

The expanded Chinese fighter and bomber runs are just one part of the country’s effort to “win without fighting” to gradually normalize the gains China has made in the South China Sea, the officials said.

 

There are other pressures. For example, the officials said they estimate the People’s Liberation Army Navy has placed as many as 150,000 Chinese commercial fishing vessels under its direction, even though they are not official Chinese navy. The Chinese fishing vessels make coordinated attacks on Vietnamese fishermen, the officials said, ramming and sometimes sinking boats near the Paracel Islands. China took the territory from Vietnam in the 1970s and has militarized some of the islands. The area remains a traditional fishing area for the Vietnamese.

 

Taken together, China’s activities suggest it is preparing to defend expanded boundaries, the U.S. officials worry.

 

“I think they will be ready to enforce it when they decide to declare the Nine-Dash line as theirs,” one of the officials said, referring to the territorial line China has identified that would notionally put the entire South China Sea under Chinese control if enforced.

Ultimately, the US fears that Chinese systemic provocations will erode the so-called “rules-based order” – the system of international codes and treaties that governs military relationships between sovereign states.

If unchallenged, the U.S. officials worry that China could slowly force countries away from what they describe as the “rules based order” — essentially the standing international treaties and norms — in the region and make them shift their security alliances to Beijing for their own economic survival.

 

Dunford said the U.S. would not allow that to happen.

 

“We view ourselves as a Pacific power,” Dunford said.

 

“There are some who try to create a narrative that we are not in the Pacific to stay,” he said. “Our message is that we are a Pacific power. We intend to stay in the Pacific. Our future economic prosperity is inextricably linked to our security and political relationships in the region.”

 

While all of the officials stressed that there is no imminent danger of a conflict with China, U.S. forces in the region are rethinking what a Pacific fight would look like.

 

“If we find ourselves in conflict out there we will be under air attack,” the official said.

While North Korea will likely be the main topic of discussion during Trump’s Asia tour, Dunford said he expects Trump will convey the US’s displeasure with China’s increasingly aggressive posture in the Pacific.

Of course, while China has cooperated with the US in passing sanctions against North Korea, while partly acquiescing to US demands that Beijing curtail economic support for the Kim regime, Dunford seems to suggest that China’s cooperation on these issues is nothing more than a ploy to create a buffer of goodwill as it gradually expands its reach in the Pacific. The question now is: Will the US seek to more boldly counter China’s advance? Or, like the famous analogy of the frog in the pot of boiling water, will US reticence allow China to keep pushing until it is the dominant military power in the Pacific?

What do you think?
 

China As A Superpower: "They Will Not Be Humiliated Again"

He is the co-author of Red Star over the Pacific: China’s Rise and the Challenge to U.S. Maritime Strategy, Indian Naval Strategy in the Twenty-first Century and Chinese Naval Strategy in the 21st Century: The Turn to Mahan. He is also co-editor of Strategy in the Second Nuclear Age: Power, Ambition and the Ultimate Weapon and Asia Looks Seaward: Power and Maritime Strategy.

He holds a PhD from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, an MA from the School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University and a BSFS from the School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University.

E Tavares: Prof. Yoshihara, thank you for being with us today. China has been very busy building up their military capabilities in recent years. Broadly speaking, what are their medium and long term intentions?

T Yoshihara: One way to gauge China’s longer term intentions is to assess what Chinese leaders are saying today. President Xi Jinping has articulated a vision for China over the next few decades. This vision has been termed the “Chinese Dream” or the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.” These slogans capture goals, milestones, and timelines.  

In terms of timeframe, the Chinese refer to the “two one hundreds”: i) the centenary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party in 2021; and ii) the centenary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 2049.

By 2021 China hopes to become what the Chinese call a “moderately well-off society.” By mid-century China hopes to be on par with other developed countries. Most measures for tracking China’s progress are socio-economic in nature: disposable income, socioeconomic equality, access to higher education, access to healthcare and so forth. To achieve these objectives, China still hews to the basic principle laid out by paramount leader Deng Xiaoping, namely, peace and development. The concept of peace and development derives from the notion that China needs a peaceful external environment to develop economically.  

But there are also external components to China’s long term goals, particularly China’s relations with the rest of the world. President Xi Jinping offers some hints. He has discussed the prospects for “democratizing” the international system. This is code for a transition from a unipolar world dominated by the United States to a multipolar world. As China rises, China envisions the emergence of a new global configuration in which China is a great power among other coequal great powers, including the European Union, India, and Russia, in the international system. This aligns with the “rise of the rest” hypothesis. As China gets very strong, it would also seek to amend the rules that have governed the current international order in ways that accommodates China’s interests as a great power.  

China’s rise thus raises a series of important questions about the implications for Asia. What does China want in East Asia as it rises? Would China seek to become the dominant power in East Asia? Would it seek a dramatically reduced role for the United States? More troubling, would China seek a Sino-centric regional order in which many of its neighbors, including Japan, must acquiesce to its strategic prerogatives?  

ET: So “power” for China is not just economic power, where they have performed spectacularly in recent decades. What they also envision is establishing themselves as a great military power to adequately achieve the goals you outlined, correct?

TY: Absolutely. China’s rise must be measured in terms of “comprehensive national power,” a phrase Chinese strategists use to asses China’s ascent. Comprehensive national power includes all instruments of national power, including political, diplomatic, economic, social, ideological, cultural, and, importantly, military power.

For decades after China opened itself in the late 1970s, China more or less accepted the U.S.-led liberal international order.  Being a member of the order was essential for China’s national development. But to join the order, it struck a bargain with the United States: it would accept American primacy in East Asia in exchange for access to the U.S.-led order.  

However, as China has gotten much stronger, this grand bargain has come under strain, especially over the last decade. This strain is reflected in an ongoing debate within China: should a great power like China continue to depend on the goodwill of another great power, the United States, for its economic well-being and national security? As China becomes more powerful, some Chinese believe that no self-respecting power should depend on outsiders but should rely on its own power, including military power, to determine its destiny.

ET: Is it fair to say that the bulk of their impressive military development of late is intentionally targeting U.S. capabilities in the region, and even bypass defense protocols to strike the U.S. homeland?

YT: If China seeks to revise the grand bargain it struck with the United States, if China seeks to be a great power in a multipolar world, and if China seeks to be the dominant power in East Asia, then China needs to seek a significantly reduced role of the United States in the region. If you accept these propositions, then China clearly needs the capability to counterbalance America’s military dominance in Asia today.

But there are specific contingencies, including those related to Taiwan, that have compelled China’s military modernization. In particular, the 1995-1996 Taiwan Strait crises demonstrated to China that it needed military capabilities to respond to American military power. At the height of the crises, the Clinton Administration deployed two carrier battle groups in the vicinity of Taiwan as show of American resolve. Chinese leaders learned to their utter horror that they lacked credible military options to respond to this U.S. show of force. They thus concluded that they needed certain capabilities to ensure that they are not humiliated again.

Given the structural change in the balance of power in Asia and the various regional flashpoints that might involve China and U.S. intervention, it is not surprising that many Chinese military capabilities frequently match a discernible U.S. military target.  

ET: Have they reached military parity with the U.S. and if so in what terms?

YT: In terms of conventional military power, China has not reached parity with the US across the board. The United States is also qualitatively superior across many measures of military power. However, such broad military parity is not necessary for China to pose serious challenges to the United States. In certain niche areas China has already achieved tremendous advances and has even surpassed those of the United States.

It is actually more useful to think about asymmetries in the competition through which China has pitted its strengths against America’s military weaknesses. For instance, China has developed a very large family of missiles that can be launched from ships, submarines, aircraft, and trucks to attack U.S. platforms and bases in the Pacific. These missiles have furnished China a competitive advantage at sea: relatively inexpensive Chinese anti-ship missiles could inflict crippling damage to a U.S. aircraft carrier that costs billions of dollars to build. And, it takes only one missile to get through to put out of action a surface combatant essential to America’s regional strategy in Asia.

Chinese missiles also threaten U.S. bases in the Western Pacific. American bases there represent massive concentrations of U.S. capital in a few key locations. This means that China can direct the bulk of its missile prowess against a few positions to do some real damage to, if not severely cripple, America’s ability to project power in the region.

China is becoming very competitive in the missile arena, in part, because it is filling a strategic vacuum left behind by the superpowers during the Cold War. The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty committed both the US and the then Soviet Union (and now Russia) to eradicate entire classes of missiles prohibited by the treaty. Unconstrained by the treaty, China embarked on a missile buildup that has now made it the most potent conventional missile power in the world.

ET: North Korea is also aggressively developing their missile capabilities, which could be used to deliver their nuclear arsenal. Its economy can only survive because of Chinese support. And this situation could precipitate the occurrence of some of the scenarios you described. Is China using that country as a proxy to test the resolve of, and even wage war against, the U.S. and its regional allies? Or are they equally concerned with what’s going on in Pyongyang?

YT: China is in an unenviable position. China’s prime directive is stability including stability along its periphery. North Korea clearly falls in that category. North Korea has served as a geostrategic buffer on the Korean Peninsula. After all, Mao intervened in the Korea War to prevent a noncommunist power from being established on China’s borders. China abhors the possibility of countless Korean refugees pouring across the border owing to regime collapse or war. Perhaps even worse from China’s perspective is a unified Korea led by Seoul and aligned with the United States.

But, stability has to be balanced against other liabilities. North Korea’s nuclear ambitions could trigger broader regional proliferation across threshold nuclear powers like Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. During different periods of the Cold War, all three powers have considered or pursued an independent nuclear option. North Korea’s actions are putting even more pressure on these countries to revisit the unthinkable option. A nuclear Japan would presumably be a nightmare for China.

ET: It is an odd situation that the U.S. has to deal with serious security concerns engendered by one of its key trading partners, in fact a major supplier of manufactured products. How has the U.S. government reacted to this? President Obama tried that pivot to Asia, which did not seem to be that successful. Do you sense any change in this regard with the new Trump administration?

YT: The United States has long pursued a dual-pronged approach to China. One prong is engagement. For decades, the U.S. has engaged China economically, diplomatically, culturally, and, to a lesser extent, militarily. This can be described as comprehensive engagement with China.

However, engagement is not (or should not be) an end in and of itself. It seems to me the intermediate goal is to make China a responsible stakeholder. In theory, enmeshing China in the U.S.-led liberal international order would give China an ever larger stake in the current order and thus incentivize Beijing to build on and defend the order.  

The other prong is deterrence. Deterrence requires the United States to maintain significant military presence in the western Pacific to deter China from changing the status quo unilaterally. Deterrence helps to lock in the current order and to buy time so that engagement with China can do its work. Engagement and deterrence are thus very much interrelated.

But, the risk is that engagement has made China very wealthy and powerful. If fact, China has become so wealthy that it has acquired the tools, both military and non-military, to unilaterally change the status quo. This is sort of like feeding the beast. And, it undermines deterrence. This dual-pronged approach is thus in tension with each other as well. 

The Obama administration’s pivot to Asia was in part designed to bolster the deterrence piece of the equation even while engaging China. The Trump administration’s strategy toward China is still unclear, but we see glimmers of his approach.  By questioning China’s trade practices and by promising a military buildup, Trump may be revisiting both prongs of engagement and deterrence. It remains to be seen if modifying both prongs will be more effective in managing the relationship between China in the U.S.

ET: Certainly as part of that engagement both countries have deepening cultural ties. Many Chinese students attend American universities, including children of prominent party officials. Likewise, the U.S. has been investing significantly in China on many fronts, including learning institutes. This raises the question of how aggressive China would actually be in all these scenarios. Throughout its extensive history it has never really ventured much beyond its borders, militarily at least. In fact quite the opposite, they have been the victims of invasion, including the Mongols and even several Western powers during the “century of shame”. Can we not say that their geopolitical ambitions are driven more by defensive rather than offensive ambitions?

YT: This engagement strategy has clearly produced a great deal of people-to-people and cultural exchanges. The question is to what extent such exchanges are fundamentally reshaping Chinese perceptions towards the U.S. It is not clear to me that there is necessarily and always a positive correlation. 

Let’s look at history. The UK and Germany prior to World War I were very close. Many members of the German royal family studied in Britain. Kaiser Wilhelm was the grandson of Queen Victoria. There was a great deal of economic, diplomatic, and cultural interchange between the two. Yet, Germany made strategic choices that stimulated a diplomatic and naval rivalry with Britain.

More generally, it is easy to misread the resolve of other nations. Past adversaries have grossly misread the United States.  The notion that you could get the U.S. to back down by giving America a bloody nose informed Imperial Japan’s calculation when it attacked Pearl Harbor and Osama Bin Laden’s calculation when he orchestrated 9/11.

The question is whether these cultural exchanges will dispel Chinese misconceptions and biases about the United States. That’s hard to tell.

Whether China has been defensive historically is a subject of intense debate. But, even if we accept that China is primarily defensive, it is worth considering how China’s neighbors view China’s strategic orientation. Even if China genuinely believes that it is only seeking to defend its interests in East Asia, those inhabiting Asia, like Japan, might draw some very different conclusions about China’s posture.

 ET: When we look back at history one of the major driving factors – and an often forgotten one – is demographics. And China appears to be in trouble here. What are your views here?

YT: As a result of the one-child policy, China is already suffering from rapid ageing and population decline. India will overtake China in terms of population size in the not so distant future. China’s labor force began shrinking in 2012. The elderly population as a percentage of the total population is rising fast. As the cliché goes, China will get old before it gets rich. This is meant as a contrast to Japan, which reached its stage of demographic decline after it had developed into an advanced economy. 

What this means for China’s security is unclear. On the one hand, an aging society might become more risk averse.  In a one-child society, parents may be less willing to risk losing their sole offspring in a bloody conflict. On the other hand, it is plausible that demographics might compel China to act sooner rather than later to resolve disputes before population decline constrains China’s options. In other words, China may feel it needs to hurry to settle security problems before it’s too late. 

ET: The U.S. is also facing some internal issues. As everyone knows its society is incredibly divided today. Both parties can’t even agree on building a wall south of the border, much less on a broader defense policy. Is this undermining the U.S.’ ability to project power and defend its allies in a time of crisis? And how is China viewing all this?

YT: America’s allies and friends in the Western Pacific are watching the United States very closely. While they have always worried about U.S. commitments to the region, political developments in the US have only added to the anxiety.  

China, too, is closely observing the U.S. As I explained earlier, China still needs a stable external environment to grow economically. That means unstable or even hostile relations with the United States could do real harm to China’s long-term goals.    

For the United States, the question is whether it can maintain the longstanding consensus about its power and purpose in Asia. Since the end of World War II, the consensus has been that American primacy in the Pacific disproportionately benefits U.S. economic and security interests. To what extent this consensus will hold will be the question on the minds of everyone on both sides of the Pacific.

ET: Thank you very much for your insightful thoughts.

YT: Thank you.