[Kabar-indonesia] 2 of 2: China's "Caribbean" in the South China Sea

[Joyo at aol.com]

-2 of 2-

China's "Caribbean" in the South China Sea
continues...

Policy Implications and Recommendations

China presents the United States with a host of
challenges as it turns its attentions and energies
seaward. The first of these is intellectual. In order
to gauge the potency of Alfred Thayer Mahan's appeal
in Beijing today, American scholars and strategists
should reexamine the historical record to identify any
factors common to the cases in which rising powers
have embraced Mahanian sea-power theory, to assess the
extent to which these factors apply to today's China,
and to consider how the United States ought to respond
should Beijing indeed embark on a Mahanian maritime
strategy.

Some questions they should ponder: What was it about
sea-power theory that so beguiled strategic thinkers
in these countries? Why did Germany and Japan
interpret Mahan so as to justify belligerent
strategies, while the United States and Great Britain,
countries where Mahan was at least as influential,
managed to avoid the apocalyptic naval war Mahanian
theory seemed to dictate? Which path is China likely
to follow? How can Washington nudge Beijing toward a
less virulent reading of Mahan, and toward a grand
bargain along the lines of the one Britain and the
United States struck at the turn of the 19th century,
when Britain withdrew its American squadron in
exchange for a U.S. pledge to guard British interests?

While it is clear that an influential segment of the
Chinese policy community has embraced sea-power
theory, it is far from clear just how large the
Mahanian school of thought is in China and whether it
will be able to maintain the level of influence
evidenced by China's National Defense in 2004.
Ascertaining who are the leading proponents of Mahan
within the Chinese state, how they exert influence on
Chinese foreign policy and strategy, and how they
interpret and apply Mahan's works would shed new light
on the future of Chinese maritime strategy in the
South China Sea. It would also help Washington devise
a strategy to help influence key Mahanian thinkers and
policymakers, weaning them away from the fixation on
Trafalgar-like fleet engagements that characterized
Imperial Japan and Wilhelmine Germany. Prospects for
Sino-American cooperation would brighten.

Another challenge will be to discern the
force-structure implications of a Mahan-inspired
Chinese maritime strategy. If China sets out on a
Mahanian strategy in the South China Sea, it will
return to Mahan's formula for sea power: commerce,
bases, and shipping. Some of the weapons systems the
PLA has been adding to its arsenal for a Taiwan
contingency—tactical aircraft, Russian-built diesel
submarines, air-defense destroyers—would be suitable
for the South China Sea as well, provided they could
be based in the southern reaches of the sea, along the
approaches to the Strait of Malacca. Although the
South China Sea has no counterpart to Cuba or
Jamaica—measured by the Mahanian indices of position,
resources, and defensibility—countries that covet good
diplomatic and, in particular, good economic ties with
China have much to offer. China might build demands
for basing rights in Singapore, or perhaps even at Cam
Ranh Bay in Vietnam, into the broad-based charm
offensive it has conducted toward its neighbors in
recent years.

A China seeking command of the South China Sea also
would bolster the PLA's arsenal of long-range ships
and aircraft. Even without bases near Malacca, for
instance, a force of nuclear attack submarines would
allow Beijing to mount sea-denial operations in the
region. One of the purposes of "Peace Mission 2005,"
the massive Sino-Russian military exercise that took
place this past August, was reportedly to showcase the
capabilities of long-range Russian bombers for
prospective Chinese buyers. If the PLA Navy builds up
its combat logistics fleet and learns techniques for
refueling and rearming combatant vessels
underway—duplicating a capability essential to the
U.S. Navy's preeminence since World War II—it will be
able to project force further from China's coasts,
even if Beijing is unable to obtain bases near the
Strait. Acquiring such capabilities and positioning
them in the South China Sea in large numbers would
provide tangible evidence that China intends to back
up its Mahanian rhetoric with steel.

The challenge before the Bush administration and its
successors is a tall one: to determine how Chinese
maritime strategy may unfold in the coming years; to
adjust its own force structure and alliances
accordingly, maintaining a deterrent to excessive
ambitions on Beijing's part; to reinforce relations
with the nations along the South China Sea littoral,
many of which tend to favor economic development and
trade with China over military preparedness for a
Chinese threat that they hope will prove ephemeral;
and, perhaps most importantly, to reach out to China,
forging a maritime partnership that assures the
security of the sea-lanes for all Asian powers while
easing suspicions between the long-time master of
Asian waters and a potential rival for naval
supremacy. The time-tested formula—firm, tactful
diplomacy backed up with force sufficient to signal
American resolve—can help the United States fashion a
stable equilibrium in this vital region.

James R. Holmes is a senior research associate at the
University of Georgia Center for International Trade
and Security, Athens, GA, and a former professor of
strategy at the U.S. Naval War College, Newport, RI.
He spent part of 2005 in Taiwan on a visiting
fellowship at National Chengchi University's Institute
of International Relations.

Toshi Yoshihara (MA '98) is a visiting professor of
strategy at the U.S. Air War College, Montgomery, AL,
and a senior research fellow at the Institute for
Foreign Policy Analysis, Cambridge, MA.

--------------

Endnotes

1. Margaret Tuttle Sprout, "Mahan: Evangelist of Sea
Power," in Makers of Modern Strategy: Military Thought
from Machiavelli to Hitler, ed. Edward Meade Earle
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1943), 415–45.

2. Charles Krauthammer, "The Unipolar Moment," Foreign
Affairs 70, no. 1 (America and the World 1990/91):
23–33.

3. For a useful theoretical analysis of geopolitics,
see Mackubin Thomas Owens, "In Defense of Classical
Geopolitics," Naval War College Review 52, no. 4
(Autumn 1999),
http://www.nwc.navy.mil/press/Review/1999/autumn/art3-a99.htm.

4. For a sampling of views proclaiming the death of
geopolitics, see Christopher J. Fettweis, "Revisiting
Mackinder and Angell: The Obsolescence of Great Power
Geopolitics," Comparative Strategy 22, no. 2
(April–June 2003): 109–29; Ivo H. Daalder and James M.
Lindsay, "'For America, the Age of Geopolitics Has
Ended and the Age of Global Politics Has Begun,'"
Boston Review, February/March 2005, and America
Unbound: The Bush Revolution in Foreign Policy
(Washington, DC: Brookings, 2003); Joseph S. Nye,
Power in the Global Information Age: From Realism to
Globalization (London and New York: Routledge, 2004);
and Michael Mandelbaum, The Ideas That Conquered the
World: Peace, Democracy, and Free Markets in the
Twenty-first Century (New York: Public Affairs, 2002).

5. "A Conversation with Tom Friedman, a Columnist for
The New York Times," The Charlie Rose Show, April 5,
2005, transcript available LexisNexis Academic
Database.

6. One analyst has pointed out the striking similarity
between Mahan's notion of sea power and modern
conceptions of globalization. This reinforces our
point that the logic of sea power will shape maritime
security in East Asia on a more or less permanent
basis. Sam J. Tangredi, "Globalization and Sea Power:
Overview and Context," in Globalization and Maritime
Power, ed. Sam J. Tangredi (Washington, DC: Institute
for National Strategic Studies, 2002).

7. Chinese analysts regularly calculate comprehensive
national power (CNP) for China and its competitors,
aggregating measures such as territory, population,
social conditions, and economic and military power.
Notes Michael Pillsbury: "Chinese analysts have
developed their own extensive index systems and
equations for assessing CNP . . . . [T]heir analytical
methods are not traditional Marxist-Leninist dogma or
Western social science but something unique to China."
Michael Pillsbury, "Geopolitical Power Calculations,"
in China Debates the Future Security Environment
(Washington, DC: National Defense University Press,
2000), also available online at
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/report/2000/part08.htm.

8. Chen Jian, The China Challenge for the Twenty-first
Century (Washington, DC: U.S. Institute of Peace
Press, 1998), 4–8. Chen examines China's conception of
itself as the "central" nation in Asia but
distinguishes usefully between centrality and
dominance.

9. See for instance David Hale, "China's Growing
Appetites," National Interest 76 (summer 2004):
137–47. At least some Chinese officials believe China
will exhaust its domestic oil supplies by 2020. Author
interviews, Taipei, July 2005.

10. Alfred Thayer Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power
upon History, 1660–1783 (Boston: Little, Brown, and
Company, 1890; reprint, New York: Dover Publications,
1987), 71.

11. Alfred Thayer Mahan, The Problem of Asia (New
York: Harper's New Monthly Magazine, 1900; reprint,
Port Washington: Kennikat Press, 1970), 15.

12. Notes one analyst of Mahanian theory, "Central to
the theory of sea power was the expectation of
conflict. When a nation's prosperity depends on
shipborne commerce, and the amount of trade available
is limited, then competition follows, and that leads
to a naval contest to protect the trade." George W.
Baer, One Hundred Years of Sea Power: The U.S. Navy,
1890–1990 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994),
12.

13. Mahan, Problem of Asia, 33.

14. Ibid, 124.

15. Ibid, 26, 124.

16. Alfred Thayer Mahan, The Interest of America in
Sea Power, Present and Future (Boston: Little, Brown,
and Company, 1897; reprint, Freeport: Books for
Libraries Press, 1970), 198.

17. Mahan, Influence of Sea Power, 138.

18. Bernard D. Cole, "The PLA Navy and 'Active
Defense,'" in The People's Liberation Army and China
in Transition, ed. Stephen J. Flanagan and Michael E.
Marti (Washington, DC: National Defense University
Press, 2003), 129–38. See also Bernard D. Cole, The
Great Wall at Sea: China's Navy Enters the
Twenty-first Century (Annapolis: Naval Institute
Press, 2001).

19. Author discussions with Chinese analysts and
officials, April 13–14, 2004.

20. Wang Zaibang, "Opening Remarks" (Symposium on
Sea-lane Security, Beijing, China, April 13, 2004).

21. Jiang Shiliang, "The Command of Communications,"
China Military Science, Oct. 2, 2002, 106–14,
FBIS-CPP20030107000189.

22. Zhang Wenmu, "China's Energy Security and Policy
Choices," World Economy and Politics, May 14, 2003,
11–16, FBIS-CPP20030528000169.

23. Cole, "PLA Navy and 'Active Defense,'" 129–38.

24. Jeffrey B. Goldman, "China's Mahan," U.S. Naval
Institute Proceedings, March 1996: 44–47; Jun Zhan,
"China Goes to the Blue Waters: The Navy, Sea Power
Mentality, and the South China Sea," Journal of
Strategic Studies, September 1994: 189–91; Alexander
Chieh-cheng Huang, "The Chinese Navy's Offshore Active
Defense Strategy," Naval War College Review 47, no. 3
(Summer 1994): 18.

25. In 1995, for instance, Chinese president Jiang
Zemin delivered a speech titled "Continuing to Strive
toward the Reunification of China" that vowed to
strike at "foreign forces who intervene in China's
reunification." See "Jiang Zemin on Taiwan Straits,"
http://www.chinataiwan.org/web/webportal/W5097695/A5111811.html.
During 
the 1995–96 Taiwan Strait crisis, Foreign
Minister Qian Qichen likewise warned "foreign forces,"
meaning the aircraft-carrier task forces the Clinton
administration had dispatched to the area, to steer
clear of the island. Andrea Koppel and Tom Mintier,
"China Demands 'Foreign Forces' Stay Away," CNN.com,
March 11, 1996,
http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/9603/china_taiwan/11/.

26. On China's fears of containment and encirclement,
see Willy Lam, "Hu's Central Asian Gamble to Contain
the U.S. 'Containment Strategy,'" China Brief 5, no.
15 (July 15, 2005), 7–8; and "Hu Seeks Breakthrough in
Forthcoming Summit with Bush," China Brief 5, no. 18
(August 16, 2005), 1–3.

27. Times (London), in Philip A. Crowl, "Alfred Thayer
Mahan: The Naval Historian," in Peter Paret, ed.,
Makers of Modern Strategy from Machiavelli to the
Nuclear Age (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1986), 447.

28. Howard K. Beale, Theodore Roosevelt and the Rise
of America to World Power (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1956), 49–50; Theodore Roosevelt to
Alfred Thayer Mahan, May 3, 1897, in Elting Morison et
al., ed., The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt, 8 v.
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1951–54), vol.
1, 607–08.

29. James R. Holmes, "Mahan, a 'Place in the Sun,' and
Germany's Quest for Sea Power," Comparative Strategy
23, no. 1 (January–March 2004): 27–62.

30. Sprout, "Mahan: Evangelist of Sea Power," 444. On
Mahan's influence in Japan, see Roger Dingman, "Japan
and Mahan," in John B. Hattendorf, ed., The Influence
of History on Mahan (Newport: Naval Institute Press,
1991), 49–66.

31. David Finkelstein, Evan Medeiros, and Michael
Swaine, in Center for Naval Analyses, "Assessing
China's 2004 Defense White Paper: A Workshop Report"
(Alexandria: Center for Naval Analyses, 2005), 1, 5.

32. People's Republic of China, China's National
Defense in 2004, China Military Online Website,
http://english.people.com.cn/whitepaper/defense2004/defense2004.html.

33. Ibid.

34. Center for Naval Analyses, "Assessing China's 2004
Defense White Paper," 1, 5.

35. Barry R. Posen, "Command of the Commons: The
Military Foundation of U.S. Hegemony," International
Security 28, no. 1 (Summer 2003): 5–46.

36. Holmes, "Germany's Quest for Sea Power," 27–62;
Sprout, "Mahan: Evangelist of Sea Power," 440–45.

37. While the PLA Navy's ability to command the seas
remains limited for now, Beijing has at its disposal a
time-honored strategy of the weaker naval power: sea
denial. As the name suggests, sea denial attempts to
prevent a stronger naval power from operating freely
within a given maritime expanse for an extended period
of time. Even today, declares one Western analyst, the
PLA Navy "could perform a successful sea denial
mission in the South China Sea," leveraging its potent
submarine force and the other niche capabilities the
PLA has built up in recent years. Martin Andrew, "The
Dragon Breathes Fire: Chinese Power Projection," China
Brief 5, no. 16 (July 19, 2005), 5–8. For more on
China's undersea-warfare capability, see Lyle
Goldstein and William Murray, "Undersea Dragons:
China's Maturing Submarine Force," International
Security 28, no. 4 (Spring 2004): 161–96.

38. Alfred Thayer Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power
upon the French Revolution and Empire, vol. 2 (Boston:
Little, Brown and Company, 1894). The Influence of Sea
Power upon History, The Interest of America in Sea
Power, and The Problem of Asia are cited above.

39. Beijing's Law on the Territorial Sea and the
Contiguous Zone staked its claim. Bernard D. Cole,
"'Oil for the Lamps of China'—Beijing's 21st-Century
Search for Energy," McNair Papers, October 2003,
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0QZX/is_67/ai_n9480607.

40. Alfred Thayer Mahan, The Gulf and Inland Waters
(New York: Scribner, 1883); Crowl, "Alfred Thayer
Mahan: The Naval Historian," 446.

41. Alfred Thayer Mahan, Naval Strategy, Compared and
Contrasted with the Principles and Practice of
Military Operations on Land (Boston: Little, Brown,
and Company, 1911), 111.

42. Mahan, Interest of America in Sea Power, 65–68.

43. Ibid, 67–68.

44. Ibid, 78–83.

45. Ibid, 277–80.

46. Ibid, 281–82.

47. Ibid, 283–92.

48. It is doubtful whether Japan, the other plausible
candidate for regional maritime supremacy, will summon
the political will to contend with Chinese power.  

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