China’s seizure of seven islets and reefs in the South China Sea, and its ongoing conversion of these features into military installations, complete with evolving port facilities and a 10,000-foot runway, makes clear that this territorial seizure is of far greater significance than media coverage and administration comments would suggest. In fact, China’s actions have military, economic, diplomatic and energy components, each of which is of great importance to the United States, its regional allies and partners, and every nation whose seaborne commerce traverses the South China Sea.
A Los Angeles-class, fast attack submarine USS Hampton moors alongside the submarine tender USS Frank Cable in Hong Kong waters May 17, 2011, on its way to deployment to the Western Pacific. REUTERS/Vincent Yu/Pool
Here are the five questions that every presidential candidate should be asked about US military engagement in the region:
1) What is the significance of the South China Sea to the US, its regional allies, and to China?
It is difficult to overstate the importance of the South China Sea to all nations concerned. One of America’s vital national interests is the ability to transit and trade in international waters and the other international commons. Nowhere is that interest more at stake than in the South China Sea, which encompasses an area about twice the size of Alaska, and which is a critical transit region for all of our regional allies, trading partners, and, of course, for the US.
The economy of every nation in the region depends on the unimpeded flow of commerce through this body of water. The volume of that commerce is enormous: about one-half of all ship-borne commerce when measured in gross tonnage, one-third when measured in monetary value. Approximately $1.2 trillion in US trade flows through the SCS annually. If any one nation were to control it, it would become a military and commercial chokepoint. China is positioning itself to possess that capability.
2) What significance do you place on China’s seizure of terrain features in the SCS and their ongoing conversion of those feature into military installations?
China’s seizure of these terrain features, and their ongoing conversion, operates on multiple levels: military, economic, energy, diplomatic, domestic politics. It’s a brilliant move, both offensively and defensively – like a skillfully executed move in chess – as it looks both outward and inward towards Taiwan.
China first occupied Mischief Reef in the South China Sea 20 years ago. They’ve observed that three American presidents spanning nearly six terms have done nothing more than object rhetorically. And now they’re converting those fabricated islands into military installations.
Following Lenin’s dictum of the bayonet – to probe with the bayonet, to withdraw when you encounter steel, to continue when you encounter weakness — Xi Jinping is probing. He is sizing up his American counterpart, while President Obama, his political priorities elsewhere, continues to avoid the matter. Not only do these men abide by different rules. They’re playing entirely different games.
While these islets are very small – about three square miles total in area – their possession potentially affords Beijing profound influence over regional shipping lanes. As the PACOM commander, Admiral Harry Harris, recently stated, there is already a 10,000-foot runway, revetments to protect fighter aircraft, and evolving port facilities. Given these facts, it remains to be seen how many platforms and capabilities they forward-base. Do they plan a second round of seizures? Will President Obama respond in some meaningful way, if at all?
China’s seizure and militarization of these features is a direct challenge to America’s post-WWII policy of managing the commons, a policy which accrues commercial and security benefits to all nations, mainland China included. In addition, China is clearly repudiating the norm-based international system, via which nations relate to each other according to rules, rather than relative power and use of force.
In this light, China’s rulers are saying that territorial expansion is about reordering the international system with China at its center. It’s also about regime survival: the Chinese Communist Party bases its legitimacy in part on its claims of reasserting China’s traditional status as the Middle Kingdom in Asia.
3) What are your views on the security component of President Obama’s rebalancing to Asia, sometimes known as the Pacific Pivot?
The president’s stated policy at least modestly acknowledges the need to increase our force levels in the Western Pacific. However, in comparison with China’s naval program and its overall military expansion, the numbers on the US side are entirely inadequate. The Administration proposes to have 67 ships assigned in the Western Pacific by 2020. This will be but a small fraction of the PLAN fleet we’ll see by the end of the decade.
America’s military capabilities are a major component of its overall ability to shape events around the world. As events in the South China Sea show, without possessing these capabilities in sufficient capacity, the efficacy of America’s diplomacy and economic power is substantially reduced.
While passing the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement is an important step towards improved regional cooperation and sustained American economic competitiveness, the president’s insistence on holding defense spending hostage to his domesticagenda undercuts US efforts to retain the needed level of influence in the region. Maintaining a sufficient naval force in the Western Pacific simply isn’t a priority for the president, or Congress either.
4) How do you understand the scope of China’s military expansion and modernization, particularly its naval buildup?
China’s military expansion and modernization is comprehensive in nature: naval power, ballistic missiles, a growing land- and sea-based nuclear forces, demonstrated anti-satellite capabilities that will in short order be capable of destroying our satellites in every orbital regime, and demonstrated and powerful cyber capabilities. For the sake of brevity, let’s focus on their naval program.
Twenty years ago, China’s Navy was capable of little more than coastal defense. By 2020, its navy will number between 325-350 vessels, nearly all of them modern and multi-mission capable. By the end of the decade, the ratio of American to Chinese vessels will work out to approximately five PLAN vessels for every one US Navy vessel.
China’s naval expansion is not without historical peacetime precedent. Over the past century, we’ve seen military expansions on this scale at least twice. The first was the expansion of the Imperial German Navy in the years preceding WWI. Fortunately, the British Royal Navy under the leadership of then First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, was determined not to allow Germany to achieve naval parity either quantitatively or technologically. The second example was the growth of the Imperial Japanese Navy in the 1930s.
5) What should the correct US South China Sea policy look like?
The military component of America’s rebalance must be driven by an honest assessment of the threat and of needed capabilities when considered alongside allied and partner forces in the region.
To protect its interests in the South China Sea, the United States must maintain sufficient forward presence to convey American commitment. The size and configuration of that forward-based fleet must also respond to the expansion of potential adversaries. Finally, the remainder of the fleet must be of sufficient size and maintained at a sufficient level of readiness to reinforce in the Western Pacific and elsewhere if ordered to do so. The United States is quietly failing on all counts.
The US Navy, under funding levels mandated by the Budget Control Act, will shrink to between 240-260 ships over the next several years. It is important to understand that, at any given time, only about one third of the fleet is deployed. That means 80-90 ships will be available for global duty. Of that number, 67 are to be assigned in the Western Pacific by 2020, with the remainder of the fleet weeks away given transit times.
The administration’s planned assignment of 67 ships will be wholly inadequate to support American policy in the region. Numbers matter. At some point, if it hasn’t already, the military balance will shift towards the Chinese.
The short answer is that the US must substantially increase its shipbuilding budget and encourage our allies to do likewise. The exact plan can be debated, but it should include the Virginia-class submarine and high-end surface combatants; the idea of deploying a number of ASCM-equipped corvettes is also attractive.
Finally, the expansion of US naval forces in the Western Pacific mustn’t come at the expense of our already-deficient presence in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf/Indian Ocean.
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