Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s comment during his confirmation hearing that the United States would deny China access to its man-made island bases in the South China Sea caused a predictable furor.
However, few people seriously think the US is going to blockade the islands. This is a poor option anyway.
China’s military is not going to be rolled back and abandon the islands. It can’t. Beijing’s leadership has proven it is no better at running an economy than anyone else in human history. That only leaves restoring China’s grandeur to justify Chinese Communist Party rule. Backing down in the face of US pressure would be humiliating and possibly threaten regime survival.
Even if the US has few decent options for direct military pressure on existing Chinese-held island bases, Tillerson’s comments and subsequent statements by Trump Administration officials suggest an abrupt change in longstanding US policy towards China.
One might now anticipate an end to accommodationist (some would say, appeasement) policy under which the norm was ‘de-escalation’ whenever China did something provocative.
While the US more or less stood by, the People’s Republic of China has come close to establishing de facto control of the South China Sea and greatly expanded its position inside the entire so-called 1st Island Chain. China’s military can make an opponent’s operations inside the chain extremely difficult – and this will become even more the case as the People’s Liberation Army’s capabilities increase.
However, China’s leaders might ask themselves, ‘now what…?’
China’s strength inside the 1st Island Chain may not be the strategic advantage it seems – now that the United States appears willing to defend its interests.
Geography class
Regional geography is an unchanging variable and not in China’s favor in this case as it leaves open the possibility that if push comes to shove, the US and its partners could hem Chinese forces inside the 1st Island Chain. And, if necessary, make life exceedingly difficult for Chinese forces operating inside the chain.
The geography makes the 1st Island Chain effectively a barrier. There are relatively few ‘access (or exit) points’ through the chain that stretches all the way from Japan in the north down past Taiwan, the Philippines, and Indonesia, and over to the Straits of Malacca in the south.
Access points can be easily defended against an adversary seeking to transit such channels. All can be covered and blocked using a combination of land and sea-based anti-ship missiles and long-range precision artillery, sea mines (‘dumb’ mines will do nicely, and ‘smart’ ones do even better), anti-aircraft systems, anti-submarine weapons, and the like.
Most of these weapons also can reach well inside the 1st Island Chain – and one should not forget Vietnam’s ability to ‘reach in’ from the West. Japan has already started installing such a defensive network in its Ryukyu Islands.
The aforementioned ‘asymmetrical’ weapons do not take into account the considerable resources of the US (and other nations) in the form of naval combatant ships, submarines, airpower, Marines, and surveillance resources that can be used to block the 1st Island Chain.
With a newfound US backbone, particularly if solidly linked operationally and politically with Japan and its considerable, if latent, military resources other regional nations might feel more confident about asserting their own interests.
Much of the intellectual work for an efficient strategic defense centered on defending from the 1st Island Chain and making use of economic pressure has already been done by retired US Marine Colonel, TX Hammes – whose ‘Offshore Control’ concept is a useful initial blue-print the Trump Administration would do well to consider.
China’s miscalculation?
President Xi and his immediate predecessors perhaps didn’t think through the geography angle as much as they might have. And China tipped its hand too soon in 2009 when it ended its so-called charm offensive, which was indeed lulling to sleep regional nations (and even many Americans), and started throwing its weight around.
Nowadays, almost nobody in Asia who isn’t on the Beijing payroll, or hopes to be, sees China as benign. The more prevalent view is one of an acquisitive bully.
Scratch the surface even in Malaysia and the Philippines and there is plenty of resentment toward the People’s Republic of China. And President Xi managed to do the near impossible by making Japan take its defense more seriously — something successive American administrations couldn’t achieve.
The Chinese thinking appeared to be that after absorbing everything inside the 1st island chain and intimidating Japan, the 2d Island Chain would be next, as China moved from strength to strength – with nobody able or willing to resist.
Beijing perhaps had reason to believe the US ‘wouldn’t do anything’ – and US behavior after the Scarborough Shoal standoff in 2012 between Philippine and Chinese vessels bore that out, as did successive invitations to RIMPAC while the island building effort was in full-swing. Add to that mix the United States’ scant support for the Philippines after the Permanent Court of Arbitration ruling on the South China Sea in 2016.
So, for a scheme ultimately dependent on American acquiescence, Donald Trump’s election threw a wrench into the works.
As welcome as a change in US policy might be, dealing with China’s attempts to dominate East Asia will not be not be easy nor risk-free, unless one wishes to cede everything inside the 1st Island Chain in what would uncomfortably look like a reprise of the Sudetenland in 1938.
Things might get frightening as Chinese invective kicks in – and the inevitable physical confrontation – involving the US or one of its regional friends comes along.
Flash point?
One bellwether may be at Scarborough Shoal and the US response to a Chinese effort to ‘fill’ the shoal and build on it. Taiwan is also in for a hard time – not least given its strategic position on the 1st Island Chain, which potentially gives the mainland a foothold to ‘break’ the chain and have unfettered access into the Pacific.
Taking some risk on behalf of US interests is unavoidable – and at long last imposing some risk on China is called for – as Professors Toshi Yoshihara and James Holmes at the US Naval War College have advocated.
China needs to decide if potentially taking on the full might of the United States — to include serious economic costs (which the US is capable of inflicting) — is worth the effort and the drain on resources of continuing its drive to dominate East Asia and international waters and ocean territory of other nations.
With the right approach on the part of the US and like-minded nations, China may find that after all its effort to build island bases — ruining its image in the process and motivating Japan to take its defense seriously — it has merely done the 1917 equivalent of moving the Western Front a mile to the east – at great cost, but with few prospects for further advances.
Grant Newsham is a senior research fellow at the Japan Forum for Strategic Studies and a retired US Marine Officer.
Yaaaaaaawnnnn, all I could see were the words "PSYOP" painted all over the place.
Good article, and Yes China is facing an era of much lower economic growth just as other Asian economies have once they reach more advanced level of development. Peking University Professor Michael Pettis outlines the challenges to China’s debt-fueled growth in "The Great Rebalancing". He has accurately predicted China’s slowing growth and forsees a 3% growth over the next decade. Meanwhile the US has a more assertive government with the desire to rebuild it’s military. US growth is on the rise, It’s population is headed for 400 million while China’s declines. China will likely never catch the US in regards to economic output, it’s still far behind in terms of applied military technology.
The US also has long standing alliances in the region with capable and wealthy East Asian nations that provide additional resources and advanced military bases. The US and it’s allies are quite capable of containing Chinese expansionist dreams if they are forced to do so by Chinese territorial aggression
THEY ARE PLANNING A WAR WITH CHINA , DONT KID YOURSELF. THE US IS NOT GOING TO JUST GIVE IT UP , AS THEY SAY. TRUMP HAS ORDERED AN EXPANSION OF THE NAVY FLEET. THEY ARE NOT GETTING QUIETER THEY ARE GETTING LOUDER.
BUT THE US DOSE EXPORT WAR, ITS ALL IT IS CAPABLE OF IS WAR AND SELLING WEAPONS TO ITS ALLIES AND CONTRIES UNDER ITS INFLUENCE , THE SAUDI ARE ONE , WHO TRAIN AND RECRUIT ISIS TO BE USED AS PROXY FOR US INTERESTS. THE US ALSO GETS TO GO IN AN GET CONTRACTS TO REBUILD IN THESE COUNTRIES IT DESTROYS. TRUMP WILL BE NO DIFFERANT AN TALK IN THE BACK ROOM IS HE MAY VERY WELL BE WORSE.
Thomas Daniel Kuhn YES EXACTLY, AND HAVING SAID SO. IT IS WHAT SEEMS TO BE THE PROBLEM AT ITS UTMOST BASICS. US CAPITALISM IS DIEING AN IT IS TRYING TO OFFSET IT BY NOT ALLOWING CHINA TO RISE. THERE IS NEVER ANY TALK OF THE ISLAND EXPANSION THE VIETNAM AND PHILIPINES ARE DOING IN OTHER OFFSHORE ISLETS. THIS GUYS CREDENTIALS SHOW HE IS CRIPPLED WITH BIAS TOWARD THE US AND PROBABLY JAPAN. WHICH IS ALSO ISLAND BUILDING. THIS IS JUST ANOTHER ARTICLE LACED WITH WESTERN MENTALITY .
Michael Chan The defense contractors and war mongers are looking after their own interests to serve the ruling powerful elite who want oil at low prices but sell high on the domestic market. To send standing armies to seach and destroy Osama bin Laden was a miscalculation of Mr. Bush and the Pentagon. It would have been more effective to conduct covert operations using special operation forces which was used to bring bin Laden to justice by the Obama administration.
Thomas Daniel Kuhn American paper money is recognized as a medium exchange on the international market.So there has to be some kind of value to support its worth. Should there be war between China and the United States, it would be a no win situation. However, even if war should break out over a few rocks in the ocean, China can afford to lose 500 million people, the United States cannot.
Nanson Hwa
They have accunulated paper money. If China were to choose to answer US agression with the nationalization of all American Industries inside China today, all those billionaires would suddenly be pennyless. Trump wants war with China, who do you think the big loser os going to be?
USA has 2 options, to engage war with China or to keep quiet, period !
China will just launch a nuclear missile at US Fleet in the middle of their HomeLand ,SouthChinaSea ….President Kim Jong Un will offer another 1 ….
Kin Lun Wong
Americans are in general st*pid people. After all, they sent an army of hundreds of thousand soldiers to look for Bin Laden in Afghanistan, needed more than ten years to find their man, and spent more than one trillion dollars in the process, But Grant Newsham seems to be even more stup*d.
Thomas Daniel Kuhn What the US has lost in terms of manufacturing jobs, pharmaceuticals, assembly and fabrication of high tech products, textiles and clothing is a result of outsourcing, automation, contract labor and government spending money on wars and welfare instead of rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure according to China’s billionaire, Mr. Ma. Wall Street, Silicon Valley, Microsoft, Cisco, Wal Mart, etc have made accumulated more money than the four banks of China.
Just more American bluster.
"What China achieved in thirty years it took the United States sixty years"
That should read what China has accomplished in 30 years the US has lost over the past 60.years.cxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.
Just one more thing the Americans hate a country that is run contrary to the US system of winner take all and to hell with the 99.9%
Rudi Matich
George Carlin said it best when talking about the American Dream. He said " You have to be asleep to enjoy it.
Vamshee Devulapally
The Israelis do it. They don´t even have maps and yet claimed that God gave it all to them and the Americans love the Israelis. Oh thats right the Israelis own the USA so it is a client state of Israel.
A lot of interesting things in this article, worth the debate. Here are my observations:
1) I disagree with the author when he states the CCP "has proven it is no better at running an economy than anyone else in human history". Since the 70s, China has effectively taken the place of the USSR as the successor of the socialist world, in the sense that it could go beyond the limits of Stalinism, which relied on heavy industry, agricultural collectivization and a highly centralized economy, and renew socialism. This leap was made in 1972, when Nixon shook hands with Mao Zedong, giving China the status os preferencial nation.
This might look as something beside the point in this article, but it is the source of many simplifications the author makes in order to make the SCS issue look like an automatic lock for the USA.
2) The author speaks the truth when he states the West Pacific has a natural barrier against China, which is the 1st Island Chain. As things are right now, it’s almost an impassable for China militarily speaking. It is a problem, but I don’t think it was miscalculated by the CCP. It’s a necessary, albeit mortal, step the Chinese must make if they want to become a superpower, because as long as the USA controls Malacca and the countries of the Pacific Rim, it will have control of the supplies of oil and other essential commodities China needs to grow and improve its population’s life quality.
3) The USA can’t go in an all-in war with China because the American elite, since 1972, has been transfering almost all of its productive investments to China, effectively making it the "world factory". That’s where almost all of the household goods and more come for the Americans. A study states Walmart alone is responsible for -0.5% of annual inflation – because it imports from China. Put it in another way, in order to preserve its status as the financial superpower, the USA needs China to maintain its industrial superpower status – at least for the foreseeable future (unless you think tiny Malaysia can take its place).
4) China knows it has a natural disadvantage in the SCS, because of the island chains. That’s why it is also trying to unifiy the country economically, by expanding westwards, with OBOR, thus trespassing the necessity of Malacca. Its alliance with Russia, in this sense, is essential, and Putin has already stated, publicly, that the alliance with the East is the most important thing for Russia for the next century (he stated that after Trump was elected, so he’s not dellusional about the narrative of a honeymoon with the USA).
5) The island nations of the West Pacific have much more complex national interests than the author implies. They don’t want either China, nor the USA, as the sole lords of the region. Instead, they adopt the strategy of using one against the other to achieve some independence. That is the case of the Philippines, which was close to the USA, but now is tilting to China. Don’t expect Vietnam to "attack" China from the west front either: there is a historical rilvalry, but both are socialist countries, their differences are tactical, not strategic.
6) On the purely economic front, those island nations have a development problem: they are poor countries, that desperately need infrastructural investments in order to rise their respective peoples’ life quality. The USA has limited resources (once upon a time it had unlimited resources, in the 19th century, but not anymore, given its bottomless appetite for consumption), and it can’t promise third world countries infrastructural investments because it has a deficit in this capacity (the only excedent it has is weapon manufacturing, but that would mean exporting war and chaos). China has this excedent of industrial output; that’s why OBOR is coming from China, not the USA.
Vamshee Devulapally Didn’t US warships carried Chinese military personnel to receive from Japan and name the islands in SCS after WW2?
You are in a well?
China have a clear plan that they have implemeted right in front of Obama, and Obamas reaction was mere retoric. Now china has made it possible for them to bloackade international waters which would in that case be ileagl as are these Islands.