Thinking about China and War

Aerospace Power Journal, Winter, 2001 by Jeffrey Dr. Record

During the Korean War, however, the United States refrained from attacking targets in China. (The Truman administration was feverishly rearming the United States and did not wish to escalate a war in Asia at a time when Europe remained defenseless against a possible Soviet invasion. Thus, it rejected MacArthur's call for what amounted to a limited war against China itself in place of the limited war being waged against Chinese forces in Korea.) Could an effective defense of Taiwan or freedom of navigation be mounted without attacks on mainland targets? Obviously, Chinese naval and air units approaching Taiwan or operating in the South China Sea could be attacked separately. But what about their operating bases on the mainland? And what about missile launch sites, especially in the absence of effective Taiwanese theater missile defenses? In circumstances of air and missile attacks on Taiwan, military and political pressures for counterattacks against associated targets on the mainland would likely prove irresi stible. But such counterattacks, in turn, would invite Chinese escalation against US bases in the western Pacific and perhaps even terrorist assaults on population targets in the United States itself. How would an American president respond to a Chinese-suspected-but-not-provable biological or chemical attack on an American city?

The Last Sino-American War

China and the United States last warred in Korea from 1950 to 1953, and although each country's knowledge of the other has greatly expanded since then, cultural and historical barriers to effective communication remain formidable enough to provide grist for war via miscalculation. Henry Kissinger's depiction of the two countries' differing approaches to policy bears quoting at length:

China's approach to policy is skeptical and prudent, America's optimistic and missionary. China's sense of time beats to a different rhythm from America's. When an American is asked to date a historical event, he refers to a specific day on the calendar; when a Chinese describes an event, he places it within a dynasty. And of the fourteen imperial dynasties, ten have lasted longer than the entire history of the United States.

Americans think in terms of concrete solutions to specific problems. The Chinese think in terms of stages in a process that has no precise culmination. Americans believe that international disputes result either from misunderstandings or ill will; the remedy for the former is persuasion--occasionally quite insistent-- and, for the latter, defeat or destruction for the evildoer. The Chinese approach is impersonal, patient, and aloof; the Middle Kingdom has a horror of appearing to be a supplicant. Where Washington looks to good faith and good will as the lubricant of international relations, Beijing assumes that statesmen have done their homework and will understand subtle indirections; insistence is therefore treated as a sign of weakness, and good personal relations are not themselves considered a lubricant of serious dialogue. To Americans, Chinese leaders seem polite but aloof and condescending. To the Chinese, Americans appear erratic and somewhat frivolous. (19)