This is a good follow-on to our comprehensive "China's Goals, Military Buildups... and Futures" post. Robert Kagan of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace explains why he thinks the idea of 'managing' China's rise is a comfortable fiction:
"The history of rising powers, however, and their attempted "management" by established powers provides little reason for confidence or comfort. Rarely have rising powers risen without sparking a major war that reshaped the international system to reflect new realities of power. The most successful "management" of a rising power in the modern era was Britain's appeasement of the United States in the late 19th century, when the British effectively ceded the entire Western Hemisphere (except Canada) to the expansive Americans. The fact that both powers shared a common liberal, democratic ideology, and thus roughly consonant ideas of international order, greatly lessened the risk of accommodation from the British point of view.
Other examples are less encouraging...
Daniel Starr, who has noted that China's approach to "go to war" decisions is very different from ours, follows up with one set of possible responses Six Ways to Keep China From Making Trouble. As you go down the list, you'll see that many are already underway (including item #6). As LBJ put it: "Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer. Hold 'em so tight they can't wiggle."
If people are interested in the "cheap long-range missiles for deterring China" from an Air Force (as opposed to Navy) perspective, the weapon to watch is the AGM-158 JASSM or Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile, along with its extended-range version. Of course, the real problem is not in developing the new weapon, but in developing a new mindset for Air Force planners.
The Army, Navy, and Air Force are all going through "transformations" of some of their core missions. But I think the Air Force is having the hardest time admitting that it needs to change.
Hmm... I somehow doubt that any of the suggestions for containing China involve putting our government hundreds of billions of dollars in debt to China. I mean, how much of your country to you have to have mortgaged to another before you can confidently say that they have you by the short and curlies?
Want to temper Chinese bellicosity? Help the Japanese go nuclear and beyond. That would terrify China and make it more accommodating.
China is vulnerable to regional breakup like the Soviet Union. The edges of China are booming while the core is rotting. As many as 200 million people are constantly on the move looking for work. China is aging rapidly with its one child policy reaping a harvest of excess males with no extended families. No effort to address the problem of an aging population have been made. Corruption and state-run inefficiencies are enabled by foreign trade surpluses. China is a pyramid scheme.
If I can't make the payments on my $100,000 loan it's my problem. If I can't make them on my $250 billion loan, then it's the bank's problem.
I hate to argue with somebody that knows more than me, but the British didn't "appease" us in the late 19th century; they made us a willing junior partner in their enterprise of keeping the other Europeans (and anybody else) from amassing a rival empire - and they did so in 1823 with the announcement of the Monroe Doctrine.
Sadly, I don't think such an arrangement can be made with China, but it is quite possible with India.
Call it "The Mumbai Doctrine"....
#3 Japan has already gone nuclear. I don't mean that they have the bomb but if they decide to build them than they have an active, missile based deterent within a year. Also most of East Asia thinks that China is right so a nuclear Japan wouldn't really stop China in its pursuits of its rights which it has done by everything except using arms so what do you mean by bellicosity?
India is much more vulnerable to breakup than China and even if China breaks up the resulting pieces will have still have a population greater than the USA. It still doesn't lead to USA, the Hyperpower.
I agree with Jack Lipman - our major China problem is really managing a soft landing when its communist regime goes, and the regime is getting wobbly.
I mentioned how vulnerable China is to a U.S. embargo here and here:
http://www.windsofchange.net/archives/006670.php#c12
http://www.windsofchange.net/archives/006670.php#c51
The vulnerability of the Wilhelmian German economy to British blockade did not deter the Germans from starting World War One, but the British blockade did wreck the German economy as predicted pre-war (though only the last-minute arrival of major U.S. ground forces kept the Germans from winning in 1918 - at that point the German will to fight collapsed as the blockade-induced economic ruin started).
The one thing we can absolutely, positively, count on happening following a Chinese attack on Taiwan is that the mainland's economy and regime would collapse no more than a few years later. Chinese exports to the U.S. would immediately cease from a combination of voluntary and govt. mandated embargoes, sea trade elsewhere would cease for a while due to fear of U.S. anval blockade if not a real one (the latter is likely), Chinese imports of oil would cease in the event of blockade, and its economy in general would tank.
Sure China's communist regime might start a war anyway, but they'd lose power even if they did somehow conquer Taiwan.
But it would be preferable to deter them from trying.
In the long run the communists can't hang on for reasons Jack Lipman mentioned and many others. They're just too corrupt.
It appears from a link in one of Dan Starr's web pages that I might have grossly underestimated the proportion of China's GDP which is based on exports. I had thought it was 30%. The People's Daily says it was really 50% in 2002. Here's the URL:
http://english.people.com.cn/200311/18/print20031118_128493.html
This is from defense and the national interest. It gives a more nuanced view of what the PRC will do if pushed. One, is the idea of nationalism is not about handling internal dissesion but based on the idea that China has always been spun apart such that there is not territorial integregity. Two, the use of nuclear weapons to achieve this goal.
http://www.d-n-i.net/lind/lind_5_18_05.htm
The CIA Factbook indicates that I was also wrong about the proportion of Chinese exports going to the U.S. I had thought it was 45% - 50% but the Factbook says it was 21.7% for calendar year 2004.
So overall we're back to what I orginally suspected - loss of the U.S. market would whack China's GDP back by about 10% - 15%, only instead of exports to the U.S. being half of 30% (15%), it's 21.7% of 50% (10.85%).
The major difference is that it will be much easier for the Chinese to find substitute markets for most of 21.7% of their exports than of 50%.
But 13.6% of Chinese exports go to Japan, and 17.4% to Hong Kong. A significant proportion of exports to Japan (say 20%), and a large proportion of exports to Hong Kong (say 30%), are really of subassemblies in products destined for the U.S. market. We're looking at a ballpark figure of say 6.8% more (4.3% - 8.3%) of Chinese exports dependent on the U.S. market, so I suspect about 25% - 30% of Chinese exports - some 15% of its GDP - is dependent on the U.S. market.
So American use of non-violent means alone (voluntary or govt. mandated embargo) would hut China but possibly not effectively smash its economy.
As a practical matter, Japan would join in any peaceful embargo, and has said it would participate in hostilities with China, as a U.S. ally, in the event China attacks Taiwan. The E.U. would at least go protectionist and limit Chinese exports to Europe to pre-war levels, as the European version of an embargo.
It is therefore likely that a non-violent embargo of Chinese exports by the U.S. and Japan, with some but not much European support, would crash China's economy within a few years of a Chinese attack on Taiwan.
An American naval blockade, even a distant one against oil tankers alone, would, however, most definitely crash China's economy almost immediately no matter what else is going on or not going on. China is just too dependent on foreign oil and the exports required to pay for it.
My original conclusion stands - China would suffer almost certain economic collapse and termination of its communist regime withing a few years after China attacks Taiwan. This might happen in less than a year.
We should not, however, rely on this deterring Chinese communist rulers from trying it. They might not care due to greater fears of losing power anyway (possibly to another communist faction), because the concepts here are outside their frame of referenc, or any & all of a considerable number of other reasons.
I can easily see how China might disintegrate into several smaller fiefdoms if the central government loses its economic grip. Hong Kong rests very uneasily in the arms of the authoritarian regime. Several other regions might begin thinking how nice life would be without Beijing looking over their shoulders.
Overseas Chinese may have nationalistic feelings, but they do not necessarily want to bow to the communist simpletons who maintain putative control of "China." The new factor is that more mainland Chinese are beginning to feel the same way.
Just as an item of interest, I had the dubious pleasure to be in the test force for the Skybolt missile in the early 1960's. The Skybolt was an IRBM (nominal 1500NM range) which was designed to be carried and launched by the venerable B-52. In fact, the BUFF could carry four Skybolts on intermediate wing stations.
Altogether we launched about ten Skybolts, of which nine were abject failures, while one, the last, flew a perfect trajectory. It was later found that the nine all failed because of a cost saving decision to use a programmer from the Vanguard program for the early launches instead of the advanced inertial guidance package designed for the system.
The one succesful launch just happened to be the first guided launch, and it occurred just after the program was cancelled by JFK. Rumor had it that Jack just didn't want the Brits to have an independent nuclear capability. (It was a joint program with the RAF, to be carried on Vulcan and Valiant, as I recall) I will have to admit that the test program did not do well, however.
I guess that the point of these ramblings is that the AF has, in fact pursued air launch missiles since back in the cold war days.
Robert,
It's an option that can't be discounted, given that Chinese decision-making doesn't follow the same logics and patterns. I read D-N-I regularly, though I usually find that they have no real understanding of how this administration is thinking. This seems like another case of that - but here's the live link if folks want to check it out
As Tom points out, a program of choking China's oil access by submarine would deftly neutralize even the "nuclear at sea from the outset" strategy that Lind suggests. So it's a high-stakes gamble with no certain payoff even if it succeeds.
And if Japan and Korea aren't nuclear before that happens, you better believe they are a year later... with Vietnam ginning up a program of its own. China could take Taiwan and find a pyrrhic victory inside a ring of nuclear fencing, esp. given the certain economic consequences if they use nukes for anything.
People have been known to do dumb things in history, but overall, nuclear strikes at sea looks like a dumb thing from China's point of view.
Of course, another conclusion is also possible in response to the strategy Lind discusses: quietly encourage Taiwan, Korea, and Japan to go nuclear before a scenario like this happens, thus deterring something that has the potential to escalate into full nuclear war involving the USA.
Lind didn't mention THAT one, but it's every bit as valid as his appeasement approach for addressing the problem, and would largely keep war with China off of America's radar screen.
power to the people now make this year of 2005 the end of capitalist sept 23 2005 worldwide
only the truth is revolutionairies
the forest preced man the desert follow him
humanity wont be happy till the last capitalist is hung with the guts of the last bureaucrat
a single nonrevolutionaries weekend is infinitely more bloody than a mouth of total revolution
religion is the ultimate con to be free in 2005
is to participate.
obedience begins with consciousness
consciousness start with disobedience
Well, it's not an insurgency, as the Bush regime is
NOT legitimate. An insurgency is defined as those who
resist an established government. Hence, they need to
be referred to as 'resistance fighters,' as in Iraq.
remove "any bureaucratic obstacles that may be
preventing us from achieving our goals". [Yes, please
remove yourselves.]
Boredom is counterrevolutionary.
We want to live.
In a society that has abolished every kind of
adventure
the only adventure that remains is to abolish the
society.
The liberation of humanity is all or nothing.
Those who make revolutions half way only dig their own
graves.
No replastering, the structure is rotten.
The revolution is incredible because it’s really
happening.
Run, comrade, the old world is behind you!
Live in the moment.
Down with the state.
When the National Assembly becomes a bourgeois
theater, all the bourgeois theaters should be turned
into national assemblies.*Referendum: whether we vote
yes or no, it turns us into suckers.
Let’s not change bosses, let’s change life.
Nature created neither servants nor masters.
I want neither to rule nor to be ruled.
We will have good masters as soon as everyone is their
own.Don’t be taken in by the politicos and their
filthy demagogy.
We must rely on ourselves.
Socialism without freedom is a barracks.
All power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely
Politics is in the streets.
Never work
The boss needs you, you don’t need the boss.
By stopping our machines together we will demonstrate
their weakness.
Humanity won’t be happy till the last capitalist is
hung
with the guts of the last bureaucrat.
A single nonrevolutionary weekend is infinitely more
bloody than a month of total revolution.
We refuse to be highrised, diplomaed, licensed,
inventoried, registered, indoctrinated, suburbanized,
sermonized, beaten, telemanipulated, gassed, booked.
The forest precedes man, the desert follows him.
Coming soon to this location: charming ruins.
A revolution that requires us to sacrifice
ourselves for it is Papa’s revolution.
Revolution ceases to be the moment it calls for
self-sacrifice.
I take my desires for reality because I believe
in the reality of my desires.
Be realistic, demand the impossible.
Power to the imagination.
Those who lack imagination cannot imagine what is
lacking.
Imagination is not a gift, it must be conquered.
Action must not be a reaction, but a creation.
Action enables us to overcome divisions and find
solutions.
The enemy of movement is skepticism. Everything that
has been realized
comes from dynamism, which comes from spontaneity.
We refuse the role assigned to us: we will not be
trained as police dogs.
We don’t want to be the watchdogs or servants of
capitalism.
Take revolution seriously, but don’t take yourself
seriously.Religion is the ultimate con.
Neither God nor master.
If God existed it would be necessary to abolish him.
Can you believe that some people are still Christians?
I suspect God of being a leftist intellectual.
Revolutionary women are more beautiful
Burn commodities
You can’t buy happiness. Steal it.
To be free in 2005 means to participate.
The golden age was the age when gold didn’t reign.
“The cause of all wars, riots and injustices is the
existence of property.”
*The definition in Bierce’s Devil’s Dictionary is
actually: “Amnesty: The state’s
magnanimity to those offenders whom it would be too
expensive to punish.”]
Abolish alienation.
Obedience begins with consciousness;
consciousness begins with disobedience.
First, disobey; then write on the walls.
Freedom is the right to silence.
Talk to your neighbors.
Don’t get caught up in the spectacle of opposition.
Oppose the spectacle.
Down with journalists and those who cater to them.
Freedom is the crime that contains all crimes. It is
our ultimate weapon.
Open the gates of the asylums, prisons and other faculties.
http://www.loveandfearlessness.com
Hmmm. "Open the gates of the asylums, prisons and other faculties."
If this comment is anything to go on, someone just did.