The idea that Chinese strategists are too limited in their thinking to have a world-straddling navy is misplaced, argues James Holmes.
My colleague Prof. Bernard ‘Bud’ Cole doubts China’s People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLA Navy) can transform itself into a global force by mid-century, realizing founding father Adm. Liu Huaqing’s vision of a navy that commands an expanding belt of offshore waters before taking its place alongside the U.S. Navy as a world-straddling fleet. Writing in the Naval Institute Proceedings, Cole—a veteran U.S. Navy surface warfare officer and author of The Great Wall at Sea—deems Chinese maritime strategy “antithetical to historic naval strategic thinking, whether formulated by Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan, Sir Julian Stafford Corbett, or any other maritime strategist of note.”
I’m not so sure. Importing ideas from abroad is never straightforward, but Chinese strategists read the classic works attentively—more so than their contemporaries in the West. They have fused concepts drawn from the greats of sea power with China’s land-warfare traditions. Chinese maritime strategy is an alloy between East and West, land and sea power. To me it’s almost beside the point whether the PLA Navy grows into a global force. Beijing sees pressing interests at stake in the Western Pacific and the Indian Ocean. So does Washington, judging from its current maritime strategy, which vows to stage “credible combat power” in these two oceans for the foreseeable future. These are the theatres that matter—for both nations.
An Intellectual Shortfall?
As Bud sees it, an intellectual deficit fetters China’s maritime ambitions. It takes two closely related forms. First and foremost, China, a continental power steeped in land warfare, thinks in terms of “defending fixed and limited areas at sea.” As Cole tells it, Liu urged the PLA Navy to construct forces “capable of exerting sea control out to the First Island Chain, defined by a line drawn from the Kurile Islands, through Japan and the Ryukyu Islands, then through the Philippines to the Indonesian archipelago.” He envisioned consummating this first phase of naval development by 2000—a benchmark the navy conspicuously failed to meet.
“By 2020,” continues Cole, the PLA Navy should be able to “exert sea control out to the Second Island Chain, defined by a line drawn from the Kuriles, through Japan and the Bonin Islands, then through the [Mariana] Islands, Palau, and the Indonesian archipelago,” enclosing much of the Western Pacific and the South China Sea within a zone of Chinese maritime supremacy. The fleet would commence global operations by 2050.
Cole points out that Liu made a career move unthinkable in the U.S. armed forces, ascending the army ranks before assuming command of the navy in the 1980s. According to Cole, the first two phases in the PLA Navy chief’s strategic design “reflect a traditional continentalist view: armies operate in and across solid geography, cued to lines of defense, advance and withdrawal, and logistics lines…There are no lines at sea, however, which calls into question both the maritime applicability of his theory [and] the ultimate goal of his eloquent plan for modernizing the Chinese navy” (my emphasis).
Second, Cole faults the PLA Navy for overreliance on “anti-access” and “area-denial” weaponry to shut adversary forces—chiefly the U.S. Navy—out of East Asian waters during a Taiwan contingency or some other clash along China’s nautical periphery. He suggests this constitutes a static, passive approach inimical to global navies. Under Beijing’s anti-access strategy, diesel submarines, anti-ship ballistic missiles (ASBMs), stealthy catamarans, and other short-range or shore-based weapons erect a dense, “layered” defense against forces that venture into China’s geographic environs. By pummeling forces steaming westward across the Pacific, PLA defenders could ratchet up the costs of intervention so high that a U.S. president would hesitate long enough for Beijing to accomplish its goals. Better yet, Washington might desist from a rescue effort altogether.
Bud interprets anti-access as proof that “current Chinese naval strategic thinking remains based on defending limited areas at sea…and that the [PLA Navy] is intending to draw lines at sea.” This intellectually barren approach deprives the Chinese fleet of the “core value of naval forces: mobility and flexibility.” This adds up to a damning indictment of China’s navy, and of Chinese thinkers’ strategic fluency. Furthermore, the implications for fellow Asian powers are sweeping. If Liu’s geographically minded program appears predestined to fail, dulling Chinese minds in the process, the United States and its allies have less to worry about than many analysts think. They can take a relatively laid-back approach to China’s maritime rise.
But, as ESPN sportscaster Lee Corso likes to say, “Not so fast, my friend!” There’s more texture to sea-power theory, and more to Chinese strategic thought about the sea, than Cole allows. Beijing can never escape the exigencies of land defense, but it isn’t captive to the nation’s continental past and traditions. Mahan beguiles Chinese strategists in part because he too applied concepts from land warfare to the sea. He had to; the field of maritime history remained a backwater when he got his start in the late 1800s. He was fond of quoting Napoleon’s maxim that “war is a business of positions.” And he called Baron Antoine Henri Jomini, a continental thinker of considerable renown—a commentator with an intensely geospatial view of combat that emphasized topography, positions, and lines—“my best military friend.” Mahan ratifies, complements, and shapes China’s approach to strategy.
Let’s take Cole’s geographic argument first. It’s true in a narrow sense that there are no lines on the high seas. The open sea resembles a featureless plain for mariners plying the oceans far from land—which is why mathematicians such as myself typically enjoy navigation. Seafarers use nautical charts to plot courses from place to place, paying scant heed to underwater topography. They use “maneuvering boards” based on polar co-ordinates and vector mechanics to manage the relative movement of ships within formations. Where else can you put classroom learning to everyday use?
Mahan recognized all of this. Not for nothing did he ascribe the strategic value of the Hawaiian archipelago to its lonely position amid an empty maritime plain. Hawaii represented the only convenient stopping place for ships bound from North America to Asia or the reverse. Sea-power theorists like Mahan and Corbett also observe that the oft-used term “sea lanes” is a misnomer on the high seas. For instance, shipping commonly follows a “great circle” path from seaport to seaport, if possible. Such a course traces the shortest distance between two points on the globe, thereby saving on fuel, steaming time, and wear-and-tear on crews and machinery. But there’s no geographic reason skippers can’t plot more roundabout courses between the same origins and destinations if they accept the extra costs. Mahan and Corbett both point out that all one fleet can know for sure about another is its point of origin. If commanders can learn their adversary’s destination, so much the better. Their other option is to loiter near “focal points” or “chokepoints”—think straits like Malacca or Gibraltar that provide access from one body of water to another—in hopes of picking up the trail.
But this all breaks down when a fleet closes in on land—as it ultimately must to make a difference. Corbett depicts maritime strategy as the art of using seagoing forces in concert with armies to influence events ashore. Since wars are fought on land, that’s where navies must make their presence felt. Mahan pays less attention to “joint” use of land and sea forces, locking his gaze squarely on sea combat. On the other hand, he pays far more attention to geography than do Corbett, Wolfgang Wegener, and other sea-power theorists.
That’s because—contra Cole—Mahan designed his maritime strategy with the goal of empowering the United States to command the confined waters of the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico. Lines on the map abound in such enclosed “Mediterranean” seas, as well as other coastal zones. Indeed, Mahan got his start appraising the strategic features of the Gulf and Caribbean—the “fixed and limited” sea areas the United States had to dominate to keep European navies from establishing bases menacing the approaches to a Central American canal, America’s “gateway” to the Pacific Ocean. And riverine warfare represented a decisive part of the Union victory in the American Civil War. The Confederates “admitted their enemies to their hearts” by surrendering command of the Mississippi River and other inland waterways.
The United States’ sea-power “evangelist,” then, repeatedly accentuates the strategic worth of shorelines, lines of islands, and other strategic barriers—much as Chinese strategists ponder how to cope with Asia’s offshore island chains. Geographic analysis came first for him. “In considering any theater of actual or possible war,” he wrote in Naval Strategy precisely a century ago, “the first and most essential thing is to determine what position, or chain of positions, by their natural and inherent advantages affect control of the greatest part” of that theater (my emphasis).
And like Chinese maritime strategists today, Mahan drew explicitly on traditions of land combat to fashion a theory of warfare at sea. “The same processes” used to analyze the value of land positions “are suitable to the study of a maritime strategic field.” He was enamored of the writings of Archduke Charles of Austria, who depicted the stretch of the Danube River between Ulm and Regensburg as “the controlling military feature” of Germany despite the passage of two thousand years and dramatic changes in technology and tactics. Posts along the river controlled the movement of armies—just as navies based on seacoasts or islands could control the movement of fleets. Proclaimed Mahan, “geography underlies strategy.”
Here’s what Mahan had to say about the Gulf and Caribbean. Together these expanses constituted “a kind of inland sea, or Mediterranean” whose boundary lines are traced by the Florida peninsula, Cuba, Haiti, and the Lesser Antilles, or Windward Islands, on the one side’ and by the land masses of North, Central, and South America on the other. He estimated the value of passages that provided access to these bodies of water. “The military importance of such passages or defiles depends not only upon their geographic position” but also upon their width, their length, any underwater topography or hydrographic conditions that complicated transit through them, and the availability of nearby alternatives should they be closed to shipping. The “entire sweep from Haiti to Trinidad” was “traversable at so many points as to be practically a continuous stretch of water,” but a fleet approaching from the Atlantic would have to make a long voyage to pass through this permeable barrier.
Far better to cross into “America’s Mediterranean,” as Nicholas Spykman later dubbed it, through one of the northern entryways. Jamaica, to the north and west, was ideally situated to guard “a frontier line of over nine hundred miles” against invasion from the broad Atlantic. The island “flanks all lines of communication.” It held the key to the Caribbean, although nearby Cuba—overshadowing Jamaica with its strategic position, natural resources, and defensibility—possessed “the grip that can wrest it away.” Cuba and Santo Domingo formed an 1,100-mile land barrier between the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea. It was “broken in this stretch in only one place, by the Windward Passage,” which was just over fifty miles wide. If a strong fleet held the Windward Passage, it could compel an enemy fleet to make a substantial detour, wasting its fuel and supplies and hindering naval detachments from combining for battle.
Chinese thinking about island chains and other offshore topography, then, is entirely consistent with what the most geographically attuned classical maritime strategist had to say about the topic. What Mahan doesn’t say about lines of strategic positions is as important as what he does say. He didn’t counsel “perimeter defense”, or dispersing forces thinly along a vast frontier to deny an enemy freedom of movement. This was folly. Even the strongest navy had to target finite resources on controlling important passages and moving nimbly to meet adversary fleets. Nor did he see lines on the map as impenetrable barriers. He understood that a thinking, reacting opponent possessed of a mobile, flexible fleet would always have options.
Nor did Mahan regard defensive perimeters as passive defenses. They were staging points from which to constrain and assault enemy navies. The United States had wrested island bases—including strategically located Guantanamo Bay—from Spain in 1898. A modest-sized U.S. Navy—he espoused a fleet of twenty armored battleships with an entourage of lesser craft—could make itself supreme in this crucial inland sea provided it possessed adequate forward bases, and provided its commanders grasped the strategic dynamics imposed by islands, seaports, and maritime passages. “Herein—that is, in the present possession of a continuous line of posts—lies the permanent advantage of the United States, in the West Indies, as compared to European states, which must always have the long exposed transatlantic stretch to cover’ before entering the Gulf or Caribbean.” (my emphasis).
…And Liu Wasn’t Inflexible About Them
If Chinese strategists err by thinking in linear terms about semi-enclosed waters, then, they are in good company. Nor did Liu Huaqing, known in the West as China’s Mahan, think in terms of fixed, passive defenses. In his 2004 memoir, Liu recalled giving a lecture that “stressed the Navy’s operational principle and summarized it as ‘active defense and offshore battles.’” How, and where, should this principle be put into effect? He concedes that a very realistic question was how to unify the understanding of the concept of “offshore.”
As he tells it, the PLA Navy never equated China’s defense perimeter strictly to island chains. “In the past,” he writes, “the Navy had described the seas within 200 nautical miles of our coast as ‘offshore.’” A “unified understanding of the concept” that complied with political guidance from paramount leader Deng Xiaoping encompassed “the Yellow Sea, East China Sea, South China Sea, the seas around the Nasha Islands and Taiwan and inside and outside the Okinawa island chain, as well as the northern part of the Pacific” (my emphasis). For “a relatively long time to come, the main areas for the Navy’s operations would be the First Island Chain and its outside seas as well as the Yellow Sea, East China Sea, and South China Sea” (my emphasis).
Operating zones for the PLA Navy would include “not only the sea areas under China’s jurisdiction as defined by the [UN] Convention on the Law of the Sea, but also the South China Sea islands, which are China’s inherent territories.” Indeed, there’s a striking analogy between U.S. strategy in the Gulf and Caribbean during the age of Mahan and contemporary Chinese strategy in the South China Sea, another Mediterranean sea. “With the continuous growth of our economic strength, the elevation of our science and technology level, and the further boosting of our naval force,” continued the admiral, “our sea-war areas would gradually expand to the northern Pacific and the ‘Second Island Chain.’” Again, the second island chain wasn’t a rigid defense perimeter in Adm. Liu’s vision. “In applying tactics to ‘active defense’ operations, we would act on the guiding principle that we advance if the enemy advances. That is, if the enemy attacked our coastal areas, we would attack the enemy’s rear.” The strategic defensive presented PLA commanders certain operational opportunities.
Active defense was—well, active. Liu recounts addressing a June 1984 forum. He was gratified that the navy had embraced “a unified guiding ideology for its combat operations. It had made clear the combat principle of ‘active defense, offshore battles’ and the combat forms of ‘positional warfare for firm coastal defense, mobile sea warfare, and sabotage guerrilla sea warfare.’” At a gathering to learn the lessons of the 1990-1991 Persian Gulf War, “I particularly stressed the need to adhere to the strategic principle of active defense…Put another way, our strategy was defensive in general…Of course, our defense wasn’t passive defense, but was active defense. Defense, in itself, should be a combination of defense and attack, I stressed.” Now as during Liu’s tenure, operational and tactical offence within the strategic defensive is a mainstay of Chinese maritime strategy.
The PLA Navy Is No Passive Force
And finally, it’s far from clear that geographic thinking shackles Chinese maritime strategy. Mahan paid tribute to the capacity of land-based or short-range weaponry to deny passage through narrow seas. Such waterways “bear an analogy to bridges over a river.” Wide passages “must be held by an active force instead of by permanent works; for they cannot be closed by fortifications.” The navy, that is, must put to sea to fight for control of broad waterways. But if, for example, “the Windward Channel between Cuba and Haiti were two miles wide…it could be made impregnable by forts and torpedoes against all ordinary attack or passage.” Given the rudimentary weapons technology of Mahan’s day, when effective gunnery range was only a few miles, “natural water bridges of such a character” were few and far between. The Bosporus and the Dardanelles, allowing transit between the Mediterranean and Black seas, were a “conspicuous example of such, and in the hands of a strong nation could not be forced.”
And indeed, scant years later, during World War I, Britain’s Royal Navy tried to force the straits—and suffered an epic defeat at Turkish hands. In this age of land-based anti-ship missiles and tactical aircraft—weapons with range, precision guidance, and hitting power that dwarf the guns of a century ago—far more nautical passages fall within reach of shore-based weaponry. In one sense this helps China. As Mahan observed, narrow seas with difficult hydrographics “correspond precisely to difficult country ashore.” Such districts, he declared, “favor a kind of guerrilla sea warfare.” That’s exactly what access denial—Liu’s offshore active defense—connotes. But in another sense it works against China. Strategic competitors like Japan control passages through which Chinese shipping must pass to reach the Western Pacific and other crucial expanses. They possess anti-ship hardware of their own. Maritime Asia, it seems, is becoming an arena for back-and-forth struggle for strategic advantage. How China, the United States, and other protagonists will fare is anyone’s guess.
Astute PLA Navy commanders backed by shore-based missiles and combat aircraft could give a superior adversary like the U.S. Navy fits. If Beijing can hold U.S. forces off with its “flotilla” of diesel submarines, fast patrol boats, and anti-ship missiles, it can liberate the surface fleet to operate freely under the protective shield provided by access denial. ASBM coverage will extend hundreds of miles seaward if that “bird” lives up to its billing—perhaps even out to the second island chain. A map in the Pentagon’s annual reports on Chinese military power shows the ASBM “threat envelope” covering most of the Western Pacific, the entire South China Sea, the Strait of Malacca, the Bay of Bengal, and parts of the Arabian Sea. That opens up vast maneuvering room for the Chinese fleet, allowing naval commanders to operate with the mobility and flexibility Bud Cole rightly extols, not to mention the confidence that comes with ready fire support from PLA rocketeers based on home soil. A defensive fleet can be a venturesome fleet.
Yogi Berra joked that “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.” Prof. Cole could be correct. Continental thinking could stunt the PLA Navy’s intellectual growth, preventing it from maturing into an oceangoing peer of the U.S. Navy and allied sea services. But even if so, China’s navy could well manage what America’s navy did a century ago. Strategists will study China’s geographic surroundings, fit a strategy to those surroundings, and design a fleet capable of vying for supremacy there. Will the PLA Navy become a global navy? Who knows? But Beijing’s and Washington’s strategic gazes will remain fixed on the same expanses—the Western Pacific and the Indian Ocean—for the foreseeable future. China’s navy promises to pose stubborn strategic problems for the U.S. Navy, even if it confines its endeavors to maritime Asia.
James Holmes is an associate professor of strategy at the US Naval War College and co-author of Red Star over the Pacific, an Atlantic MonthlyBest Book of 2010. The views voiced here are his alone.
Photo Credit: U.S. Navy
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Liang1a
Qauote from the article:
My colleague Prof. Bernard ‘Bud’ Cole doubts China’s People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLA Navy) can transform itself into a global force by mid-century, realizing founding father Adm. Liu Huaqing’s vision of a navy that commands an expanding belt of offshore waters before taking its place alongside the U.S. Navy as a world-straddling fleet.
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Mid-century means 2050 or some 40 years from now. I think China can deploy a global navy by 2025 or 15 years from now if not sooner. China already has several aircraft carriers under construction that have been revealed. It may have even more bigger carriers under construction that nobody knows anything about. These will be operational within 5 years. So by 2015 China could have maybe 3 to 5 aircraft carriers operational. By 2020 China could have as many as 10 aircraft carriers operational with hundreds of advanced fighters ready to take off from them. China is also ready to build many more attack nuclear subs that can go anywhere in the world. 10 aircraft carrier groups and 200 nuclear attack subs might cost around $850 billion. Spread over 10 years that would be some $85 billion per years. At the PPP valuation of 3 yuan per dollar that is 2.5 trillion yuan. Putting this in perspective, China exports some $1.5 trillion of products per year. This is almost 10 trillion yuan at the current rate of exchange. Therefore, China can easily reduce exports by some 25% and shift those energy and resources to expanding its military while maintaining or even expanding China’s GDP. Once China has succeeded in deploying 10 aircraft carrier groups with all its fighters and attending naval vessels both surface and subsurface and 200 nuclear attack subs that can sink any ship anywhere, then it has achieved a navy with global reach.
I think what foreign strategists say about “intellectual deficit fetters China’s maritime ambitions” and “overreliance on “anti-access” and “area-denial” weaponry to shut adversary forces—chiefly the U.S. Navy—out of East Asian waters” are essentially irrelevant. China has realized the need to protect its foreign assets, foreign markets, and foreign sources of resources. Therefore, China will respond to those needs by deploying the navy to protect them. It is unbelievably closed-minded and short-sighted for foreign strategists to base China’s military strategies on decades old strategies that hark back to the 1970s when China could not look beyond taking Taiwan. This is why foreigners are now behind times and need to pull their heads out of the hole in the ground and see the new China. In the end, China’s navy will be determined by China’s needs and China’s economic size and technological level. Since China has the need and has already acquired the technologies and achieved the economic size to deploy a powerful navy with global reach then it will surely deploy such a powerful navy. And I’m sure the rate of deployment of China’s navy will be accelerated with all the increased tension from Japan and the S. China Sea.
I’ve always said that China has millions of genius level people who can be educated and trained into world class scientists and engineers to advance China’s military technologies to the forefront of the world. China also has the ability to achieve a $100 trillion domestic economy by achieving even higher per capita GNP than the US. The combination will allow China to use 3% of its $100 trillion GNP or $3 trillion a year to ultimately deploy a navy with 50 super-carrier groups and 1,000 nuclear attack subs at a cost of some $4.5 trillion over 10 years with no more than just $450 billion a year or just 15% of its $3 trillion per year military budget. Given the above projections of $3 trillion military spending per year, it is obviously very easy for China to deploy the most powerful navy in the world. In the end, whether China can or will deploy a global navy depends not on “intellectual deficit” or “anti-access” military philosophies but on whether China has a need for a powerful navy and whether China can afford to deploy a powerful navy. Since China has the need and can afford a powerful navy, it will surely have the most powerful navy in the world.
China’s ultimate navy will not be alongside America’s navy. It will leave it in its wake by a long distance.
Liang1a
Errata:
Spread over 10 years that would be some $85 billion per years. At the PPP valuation of 3 yuan per dollar that is 2.5 trillion yuan.
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$85 billion per year actually means 255 billion yuan and not 2,500 billion yuan. My mistake. This means that all the calculations can be reduced by 10 times. This makes it even easier for China to deploy a modern navy of global reach. China needs to reduce its foreign trade by only 2.5% per year instead of 25% over 10 years to deploy its global navy of 10 aircraft carrier groups and 200 nuclear attack subs. Obviously this makes it 10 times easier than what I had calculated.
Tom
Paul!!
you are so right in saying that china can and probably will surpass America in its quest for a global naval force, but, at what cost and just how far will it to protect, not just its interest, but also its veild quest for economic and possibly military dominance??. I think that maybe we are all fogetting that germany and in particular JAPAN, had similar ambitions, but was ultimately defeated by the right to a free world. So’ i guess what i am trying to say is, that, no matter how powerfull china becomes, the will to live in a free world will never let them succeed. Japan and Germay should serve as a warning to any country that thinks it can impose its power on members of the free world.
A small state like isreal was eventually able to defeat egypt and syria, and these are countrys.
regards
Tom
Richard Kithil
Prof. Bud Cole must review history. China already has enjoyed global maritime mastery. Admiral Zheng He’s six expeditions, 1405 to 1419, established extensive international trade. The naval fleet dwarfed those of all other nations. China has 5000 years of experience and the patience to think strategies over hundreds of years. The West has neither.
Paul
Admiral Zheng He’s fleets were one-off extravagance that lasted as long the force of his personality and connections could make it so. It was also a huge financial boondoggle…i.e. the Chinese lost money at it instead of making any. All those impressive fleets were the original Apollo program: A one-generation stunt too inefficient and useless to maintain despite lofty pretensions of grandeur.
You could say the Chinese exposed their lack of naval chops in being unable to ‘convert’ naval dominance into anything enabling or useful or profitable for their society. It’s a bad strategy, a lack of strategy, from which such strong hands are squandered.
They didn’t even claim Taiwan as their sovereign territory until AFTER the Dutch had. Duh. The Chinese had to kick the Dutch(giggle) of all people out of Formosa like in the sixteenth or seventeenth century. In the wars against Toyotomi Hideyoshi it was Koreans alone who could take on the Japanese on the drink with brilliant ships, tacticians, and strategies. The two Chinese built (and Mongol-commanded) fleets that sailed for Japan? Blub-blub. Cue a violin.
Matter of fact, the whole historical motif of ‘China at Sea’ is not exactly millennia of inscrutable Asian genius at work as you allude. This is not to say the Chinese can’t pick it up quick – the Japanese sure were fast learners – but there is no great naval legacy in Chinese history.
Sinodefender
My thoughts are that Zheng He’s voyages were more to impress others about the wealth of the son of heaven and coerce states to recognize Ming as suzerain and pay tribute(if all else failed a hand on approach using troops to force entities to submit was used),not to blockade or colonize foreign states. Taiwan was “discovered” by Chinese during the three kingdoms by Wu,however it was only an expedition that resulted in the capture of aboriginals,during Tang there was little settlement then during Song(southern),part of it was administered,however it seems like either Chinese forgot or pirates did their part. Zhengchengong(Konxinga) the Ming loyalist used Taiwan and established the kingdom of Tungning only to have it crushed when after Zheng Jing’s death due to succession issues Shi Lang defeated them,Kangxi incorporated the region for fear of uprising,though mostly it was a place to send prisoners. False,otherwise there wouldn’t be naval commanders for the Ming army or Ming troops on Korean ships… Chinese built ships during the Mongol invasion failed because some were more suited for rivers not seas and they were hastily built by Kublai Khan’s order,there was also Korean ships that had the same result. I don’t have enough knowledge to debate to you whether China established a significant presence in the South China Sea,however I understand that some of those islands were under Chinese jurisdiction.
a_canadian_observer
@Paul: Not to mention, Zheng He was an enuch, of half-Arabic decendent and a Mongolian subject during the Yuen dynasty. He possess navigational skills, that was why china’s Ming dynasty retained him for the purpose.
ari
Meester Paul, where did you get the idea that Zheng He’s fleet was a once-off extravagance? You have no facts and you have no idea, just bias. A very bias opinion and not a learned and balanced viewpoint.
Larry Dunbar
““antithetical to historic naval strategic thinking, whether formulated by Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan, Sir Julian Stafford Corbett, or any other maritime strategist of note.””
But it is not “antithetical” to Chinese history.
Genghis Khan couldn’t take China, but his son did by becoming more “Chinese” than those, at the time, in power in China.
China is Co-opting the US Navy through industrialization (military, industrial complex), through its global form, globalization. The Chinese military is taking on the same structure as the US military, without having to go through that “historic” thing.
Think of cell phones in the 3rd world as by-passing the need to hang telephone lines around the country. With the use of anti-area missiles and the world economy, China is simply replacing (replicating) the US Navy, one ship at a time.
Maybe that is what this writer talks about, I haven’t got time to read it anyway.
Paul
One thing that won’t change – but is so very different than back in G. Khan’s day – are nukes. You can’t have total wars like the Khan boys could, because that means nuke-time and nuke-time is unhappy for everyone, including the likes of people who start wars instead of just fight and die in them. For most folks, the battlefield map looks different when their house and kids is on it, too. Suddenly war looks no fun.
What it will come down to is how far one side can go on the other before nuke-time shows up. Even cut to down to two hundred W88′s in Obama NPT dreamland, that is still 20-30% of China or America’s population in countervalue targeting. Taiwan will be interesting times to live in, as they say back in China. But multipolar world means multipolar nukes and that is going to be bad days ahead no matter what.
davelnaf
Granted that the US military will never fight a land battle near China after hostilities with the same begin it is just as obvious that China is assuming some things about its capabilities, particularly naval, that are not realistic when viewed in the absence of any significant combat experience. The truth is that China’s navy may never get the chance to pay these dues, and in the process obtain the kind of experience that goes way beyond ‘how-to’ manuals and books. Japan was good at the start of the Pacific war because it had deliberately pursued policies that gave it combat experience in all branches of its military. Ironically, in an increasingly ‘globalized’ world opportunities to gain that kind of experience are difficult to come by when you are nominally on the side of the world’s bad actors and don’t need to go after them on occasion. A navy with a deep reservoir of combat experience is worth far more in aggregate terms when measuring seaman for seaman and ship for ship against an adversary that does not. Theorist should not take China’s theorizing too much to heart, but look at its real capabilities and assume that it has a different game in mind.
ari
Ultimately any sea-air battle depends on the chess-playing ability of the respective admirals, technology, knowledge and information. While the U.S. may have an edge in these presently, there is also an element of luck involved. Whichever, do not forget Washington strategy is to bring the war to Asia’s doorstep. Is that necessarily to its advanatage? It may not.
BubaRooni
I think they are on to something.
They need to come up with a new way to challenge the prevailing naval king.
The Germans and Russians both tried with subs.
The Chinese see a new way due to advances in technology. The ASBM is an evident example. I think the J-20 is a first step at another try. Though a bit underpowered and of dubious stealth value, I see it as a first try at a platform to carry a BrahMos, Sunburn type of armament
It’s large airframe if married to the right engines, avionics and suitably stealthed would make it a potentially potent area denial system.
Mazo
“It’s large airframe if married to the right engines, avionics and suitably stealthed would make it a potentially potent area denial system.”
That is until they encounter F-35s with next-generation BVR missiles and standoff weaponry, then they become liabilities. Plus, no matter how solid the Chinese “area denial systems”, a few SSGNs launching a massive barrage of Tomahawks could easily cripple significant portions of these static defenses opening the way for aircraft carriers and other surface combatants to strike deep.
Like they say in football, there is no substitute to offense.
John Chan
@Mazo,
There are plenty information regarding the shortcomings of F-35; at the same time making blank statements without understanding the reality, only proves the blogger’s ignorance, damaged ego, and nothing else. It’s better to educate oneself before displaying oneself naked in knowledge in front of the public.
As the old folks said, there is no unstoppable spear and there is no impenetrable shield.
ari
You seem to forget numerical superiority when passed the tipping point, more than offsets the U.S. technological superiority. The number of missiles Beijing can muster can be akin to the Aegis system. America would be unwise to try.
Scott A.
Even with the development of today’s aircraft and ASBM, a basic point of naval strategy remains the same in regard to the global economy. The global economy is as reliant on maritime trade, including China, as ever in the functioning of today’s economy. The author noted the cost overruns in regard to redirecting merchant traffic, but even then a conflict could still spill over to who-knows-where. The amount of issues regarding “commerce-raiding” as Mahan called it, in regarding neutral shipping, insurance rates, widespread inflation, and shortages would cause trouble for nearly everybody. The lifeblood of the entire global economic system runs through commercial vessels. Perhaps in another article, I would like to see this issue addressed. Also, who has the capability to build large enough merchant fleets to counter any such losses. I also don’t buy the notion that access to the rest of the Asian continent would somehow offset the cost of closing of all Chinese ports enough.
Lew Glendenning
Amazingly foolish debate.
First, serious intelligence people deal with capabilities, not intentions, much less world-views of next-generation leaders. I can’t predict my world-view 20 years in the future, much less my son’s.
Second, given serious anti-ship missiles and nuclear warheads, a navy is a fine way of providing the enemy un-defendable targets.
In fact, if we really understood US interests, instead of Navy interests, we would sell the entire Navy, nuclear aircraft carriers and all, to the Chinese. It would take them 20 years to master operations, during which they would be no threat. At the end of the 20 years, the US’s economy might have recovered (iff we can get the government back inside the Constitution and the military/intelligence/police/prison industry under control) and we could go on being a neutral country, let the Chinese screw up their society and economy via empire for a while.
Anon
@Lew Glendenning
The Earth’s salt oceans make up 71% of the earth’s surface, to believe that the navies usefullness is reduced as such that a country with coastlines such as the US should get rid of theirs is ludicrous based on global geography alone.
Surface fleets will not be replaced by sub surface fleets for the reason that they are not effective projectors of power. The carrier is still by far the most efficient projection of power on the high seas, and proven systems exist which are designed to counter the THEORETICAL ASBM threats, such as the AEGIS.
All this talk about how Surface navies are useless while China is building its own carriers and hasn’t even carried out tests of its missile makes me question the intelligence of certain peoples.
All ASBM’s will do is add more layers to the ‘onion’ that is Carrier defense.
John Chan
Luckily nobody listens to you in the USA.
Cap.Turner, USN.Ret.
I must agreed with your colleague Prof. Bernard ‘Bud’ Cole. China still has far to go to become a blue water Navy.
Brad
With all due respect to your experience (I have never been in the Navy), I would opine you are making the same mistake that the Japanesse made about America before they attacked Pearl Harbor. While the amount and type of ships, equipment, etc the PLAN has right now would make a true blue water navy seem far off, we need to remember they have a massive manufacturing capability that could pour resources in to the Chinese military very quickly.
Brad
I forgot to mention that China’s extensive cyber spying efforts will also help it bridge the training gap faster than expected.
Darren P
I agree with Cap Turner.
While China may be capable of building the ships for a blue water navy pretty quickly, they do not have the skills required to effctivley operate a blue water navy. Acquiring these skills will take decades.
TacoRocco
“I’m not so sure. Importing ideas from abroad is never straightforward, but Chinese strategists read the classic works attentively—more so than their contemporaries in the West.”
That’s why I think that the Chinese have read their Mackinder and realize that their true resource to wealth lies in influence over the Eurasian landmass and in Africa.
The Chinese have nothing to lose if the USA and Allies control sea lanes. The only benefit of the Chinese sea threat is to push the US into increasing its efforts in the Pacific. Now, it is not to contend the US at sea, its:
1. to avert our attention from what really matters, the Eurasian ‘Pivot’ (Russia & the Stans = SCO)
2. The Chinese want to push the US and Allies into a very very expensive effort = Allocation of time, resources, and capabilities for what some are calling now, ‘The Pacific Century’.
a. That’s what I would do if I was the Chinese.
b. Mahan is being quoted alot these days in western publications. I bet Chingis Khan is also being quoted as much in China.
yang zi
Prof. sounds a little defensive.
Of course, China could have a global navy, but strategically, I am not sure it is wise or cost beneficial.
Navy could be the biggest victim of 21th century. It’s usefulness will be greatly reduced. Gunboat will be replaced by long range weapons and gun planes. When Mahan was working on his ocean strategy, airplane didn’t exist. It is only a few years before his death that Wright brothers made the first flight. If he knew planes can have global range, he would’ve revised his theory.
Today’s aviation technology is not yet advanced enough to replace navy, but in 20 to 30 years, global precision strike missiles, real time marine activity monitoring, hypersonic air ships carring deadly lasers or missiles will render navy defenseless.
So why bother invest in a tool that will be obselete ?
Darren P
I disagree with the idea that the usefulness of a navy will be reduced in the decades ahead.
Last century, many people said the same thing after Billy Mitchell’s demonstration of using aircraft to attack ships, and after atomic weapons were introduced. The Navy is not only still around, it proves it’s worth every day.
While the form that naval power will take in the 21st century may change (ie submarine centered battlegroups vs today’s surface battlegroups), the requirement for naval power and force projection will still exist.
As far as airpower goes- while it is almost essential to have it to win wars nowadays; it cannot be relied upon solely to win a war. It must be used in conjunction with strong ground and/or naval forces to be truly effective.
John Chan
As advanced as Star Trek and Star War, human being needs ships to make a presence felt. No presence, no pressure and no leverage. Saying navy obsolete is bolder than Star Trek and Star War, but saying some types of ship are obsolete is entirely possible. I would say US’ LCS is already obsolete.
Yang zi
If you look at history navy ships can attack shores from further and further distance. Eventually you can attack from your own shore. This is the reason Navy’s roles will be limited. Aircraft carrier might still needed, but only as a transport, not a souped up warship. China shouldnt invest in carriers.
Yang zi
If you look at history, ships can attack shore from a further and further distance, eventually you can attack from your own shore. This, plus its vulnerability is the reason navies are less important. China shouldn’t spend money on carriers at all.