Pondering War With China - Commentary & Reply

Parameters, Winter, 2001

To the Editor:

Lieutenant Colonel Roy C. Howle's article, "An Evitable War: Engaged Containment and the US-China Balance" (Parameters, Autumn 2001), is troubling. While the author appears realistic regarding the PRC leadership's ambitions, he seems to be unrealistic about what US policy short of war can accomplish in preventing PRC aggression and what the most likely place is for a US-PRC confrontation. The author states that China's leaders have the ambition to achieve regional hegemony and that they believe the United States is the principal obstacle to this. What the author fails to do is (1) follow these facts to their logical conclusion--that PRC leaders must find some way of deterring the United States from intervening to stop their expansion; (2) recognize that the most important of their ambitions (to both the PRC and the United States) must be the reunification of China; and (3) recognize that the United States is not merely an "obstacle." Rather, deterring US intervention is itself part of achieving hegemony.

The author also seems unaware of at least two basic historical realities. First, he seems to believe that "economic ambitions [can] take precedence over military ambitions." The truth is rather different. The rise of Imperial Germany, for example, demonstrates that economic growth can give rise to political and military ambitions.

As for "engaged containment," it has a long history of failure. Geoffrey Blainey points out how three of its most prominent advocates would have been dead wrong in their predictions regarding fall 1914: "If [Henry Thomas] Buckle and [J. E.] Cairnes and Albert the Good had lived to glimpse the crowded channel steamers ... in June, 1914... or... the warehouses of German goods by the canals of Manchester and St. Petersburg, they would probably have prophesied a peaceful autumn for Europe." (Blainey, 1973, p. 25.)

The point is that economic engagement cannot substitute for military deterrence. Neither can economic growth nor the promise of economic favor or punishment substitute for or deter the fulfillment of politico-military ambitions.

The third problem with the author's argument is his selection of the Spratly Islands as the most likely location for a "defining moment" for the United States and China. A "defining moment" seems to occur when conventional wisdom regarding a nation's place in the power hierarchy is proven wrong. The author's chief example is the Spanish-American War. In that war the United States defeated Spanish ground and naval forces. The United States demonstrated that Spain was not a great power and, in addition, that the United States was, perhaps, more powerful than many in Europe had thought.

The problem with postulating a "defining moment" in the Spratlys is the low probability of direct conflict between the United States and China over those islands. The United States, at least at the moment, does not have any firm commitment, by treaty or otherwise, to defend the Spratlys or either of the parties (the Philippines or Indonesia) contesting ownership of the Spratlys with China. The author states that we would be fighting for "stability." Based on the Gulf War, I don't believe many Americans will be interested in sending their young men and women to die for "stability." Thus, we are exceedingly unlikely to go to war with China (or anyone else) over the Spratlys. Clearly, the real place for a confrontation is over Taiwan. It will also be extremely difficult for the United States to make a compelling case for intervention there. Legally, the United States has signed up to the "one-China" doctrine. As a result, legally speaking, a war between Beijing and Taipei would be in the nature of a civil war, i n which our intervention would have to be judged legally to be interference in the internal affairs of the PRC.

Intervention by the United States against China would constitute an act of war by the United States against the PRC. Such an action would legally justify any counteraction the PRC wished to take against the United States. US bases, carrier battle groups, forward-deployed air wings, and Army and Marine Corps units would cease to be potent weapons of war and instead become highly lucrative targets for PRC theater/tactical nuclear weapons. Further, not only would the United States be unable to retaliate in kind for such attacks--as we have retired to storage our entire arsenal of theater/tactical nuclear weapons--but threats to escalate to the use of so-called "strategic" weapons would be extremely risky since, to paraphrase one Chinese general's comment to Joseph Nye, "We know you will not intervene because you want to keep Los Angeles." Thus, under these circumstances, we would be able to deter an unprovoked nuclear attack by the PRC, but attempting to "extend" our nuclear deterrent to cover Taiwan would be f raught with grave risks to the US homeland given our lack of theater/tactical nuclear systems.

Should the PRC leadership decide for war with Taipei, there are three possibilities for the United States, none of them good. First, the United States engages in a useless economic blockade or embargo which, in the end, only proves once again how impotent such tactics are and, indeed, how powerless the United States really was to stop the PRC from taking Taiwan by force. Second, the United States goes to war with the PRC, taking very high losses in people and materiel but in the end achieving strategic victory by preventing the PRC from taking Taiwan (a replay of the Battle of the Coral Sea with fantastically higher US losses). Whether this changes judgments regarding the power hierarchy in the Pacific is not predictable, since it will depend on just how Pyrrhic our victory is and how good a face we can put on it afterwards. We can predict, however, that with Chinese possession of theater/tactical nuclear weapons and our lack of them, it won't be a walkover.