Andrew Browne: Beijing Reaches for Military Upper Hand in Asia A quickly narrowing gap adds risks for U.S. in countering China
http://www.wsj.com/articles/beijing-reaches-for-military-upper-hand-in-asia-1445318222
America was at the zenith of its power, while China was virtually defenseless at sea and in the air, so the Pentagon could afford to act with swagger. A conflict, had China been foolish enough to provoke one, would have exposed its chronic military backwardness. Confronted, Beijing was forced to yield.
Today, a gathering crisis in the South China Sea over China’s massive island building underscores how dramatically the military balance has shifted in East Asia, not just over Taiwan but everywhere within reach of Chinese missiles, fighters and submarines. The U.S. isn’t shying away; it is planning a naval challenge any day now around the Spratly Islands, where China has equipped one of its dredged platforms with a runway long enough to land military jets. But the White House has been agonizing for months about the risks.
Don’t expect aircraft carriers. They’re now targets for the world’s first operational antiship ballistic missiles. Besides, shock and awe isn’t part of any rational game plan these days against China, whose military spending has been growing by an annual average of 11% since 1996, narrowing the military gap with America faster than almost anybody thought possible.
Instead, the Pentagon finds itself in a dilemma: how to deploy the minimum amount of naval power while telegraphing a message of deterrence to Beijing. One option is to send in state-of-the-art but relatively lightly armed littoral combat ships based in Singapore.
Even though the Spratlys are nothing more than a scattering of reefs, atolls and sandbars, they’ve become tokens in a much bigger geopolitical struggle. The credibility of America’s security guarantees to its Asian allies is on the line.
Yet whatever action the Pentagon settles upon will illuminate Washington’s dwindling military options—and China’s ability to shape America’s actions. Over the next five to 15 years, says a recent RAND Corp. study, “Asia will witness a progressively receding frontier of U.S. dominance.”
Indeed, as American military strategists plan a “Freedom of Navigation” exercise by sending vessels within 12 nautical miles of China’s manufactured islands, uppermost in their minds will be how to avoid stumbling into a conflict. That’s not because the U.S. would be in any danger of losing—in almost any nonnuclear scenario, U.S. forces still come out on top against the People’s Liberation Army—but because of the potentially devastating costs.
A conflict with China would be unlike any America has faced since World War II. Not since then has it engaged an adversary able to threaten its aircraft carriers and submarines—twin symbols of American power and prestige.
And the U.S. has never fought an enemy that possesses cyberwarfare capabilities—or nuclear arms.
What’s more, even though America still commands an overall formidable military lead, China holds the trump card: geography. Its proximity to the flash points of East Asia, including Taiwan and the Spratlys, largely offsets America’s technological advantages. Beijing doesn’t have to match the U.S. weapon for weapon to turn the tables on Washington and begin to dominate its own backyard.
To be sure, China’s military has been untested since it invaded Vietnam in 1979, and in critical areas America remains decades ahead. For instance, China has just 10 tanker aircraft used to refuel jets; the U.S. has 475.
But a tipping point is getting closer. A conflict in Taiwan, which is only 100 miles from the Chinese coast but thousands of miles from the U.S. mainland, says the RAND study, would be a “short, sharp and probably desperate affair with significant losses on both sides.”
According to the U.S. Defense Department, China now has at least 1,200 short-range ballistic missiles of the kind it lobbed into waters around Taiwan back in 1996 when the island was preparing to vote in its first democratic elections for president.
Then, Beijing was hoping to frighten voters into rejecting the ruling Kuomintang’s candidate, Lee Teng-hui, who it feared would lead Taiwan down a path to ultimately seek independence. The plan backfired: Mr. Lee took a majority of the ballots cast.
In January, Taiwan goes to the polls again, and once more China is anxious about the front-runner, Tsai Ing-wen, whose party embraces openly pro-independence supporters, even though Ms. Tsai herself has made clear she supports the status quo.
China has so far refrained from bullying tactics toward Taiwan, although it’s ramping up warnings against U.S. naval action in the Spratlys; a commentary by the official Xinhua News Agency said China would respond “appropriately and decisively.” A struggle for mastery in East Asia is under way, and the military trends are all working in China’s favor.
Write to Andrew Browne at andrew.browne@wsj.com
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