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03/02/2006
War with China
Retired Lt. Col. Ralph Peters wrote an extensive piece for the
Feb. 6, 2006 issue of The Weekly Standard titled “The
Counterrevolution in Military Affairs.”
“From Iraq’s Sunni Triangle to China’s military high command,
the counterrevolution in military affairs is well underway. We
are seduced by what we can do; our enemies focus on what they
must do .Terrorists, for one lethal example, do not fear
‘network-centric warfare’ because they have already mastered it
for a tiny fraction of one cent on the dollar, achieving greater
relative effects with the Internet, cell phones, and cheap airline
tickets than all of our military technologies have delivered .
“Stubbornly, we continue to fantasize that a wondrous enemy
will appear who will fight us on our own terms, as a masked
knight might have materialized at a stately tournament in a novel
by Sir Walter Scott. Yet, not even China would play by our
rules if folly ignited war .
“There is, in short, not a single enemy in existence or on the
horizon willing to play the victim to the military we continue to
build .
“Not a single item in our trillion-dollar arsenal can compare with
the genius of the suicide bomber – the breakthrough weapon of
our time. Our intelligence systems cannot locate him, our
arsenal cannot deter him, and, all too often, our soldiers cannot
stop him before it is too late .
“The suicide bomber’s willingness to discard civilization’s
cherished rules for warfare gives him enormous strength.”
The main body of Peters’ article is on fighting Islamist
extremists, but I want to focus on his thoughts concerning a
potential conflict with China.
“Even in preparing for ‘big wars,’ we refuse to take the enemy
into account. Increasingly, our military is designed for
breathtaking sprints, yet a war with China – were one forced
upon us by events – would be a miserable, long march .
“Given the comprehensive commitment and devastation required
to defeat strategically and structurally weaker enemies such as
Japan and Germany, how dare we pretend that we could drive
China to sue for peace by fighting a well-mannered war with a
small military whose shallow stocks of ammunition would be
drained swiftly and could not be replaced in meaningful
quantities? Would we try Shock and Awe, Part II, over Beijing,
hoping to convince China’s leaders to surrender at the sight of
our special effects? Or would our quantitative incompetence
soon force us onto the defensive?
“We must be realistic about the military requirements of a war
with China, but we also need to grasp that, for such an enemy,
the military sphere would be only one field of warfare – and not
the decisive one. What would it take to create an atmosphere of
defeat in a sprawling nation of over one billion people? A
ruthless economic blockade, on the seas, in the air, and on land,
would be an essential component of any serious war plan, but the
Chinese capability for sheer endurance might surprise us. Could
we win against China without inflicting extensive devastation on
Chinese cities? Would even that be enough? Without mirror-
imaging again, can we identify any incentive China’s leaders
would have to surrender?
“The Chinese version of the counterrevolution in military affairs
puts less stress on a head-to-head military confrontation
(although that matters, of course) and more on defeating the
nation behind our military. Despite the importance Beijing
attaches to a strong military, China won’t fall into the trap that
snared the Soviets – the attempt to compete with our military
expenditures. Why fight battles you’ll lose, when you can wage
war directly against the American population by attacking its
digital and physical infrastructure, its confidence and morale? In
a war of mutual suffering, which population would be better
equipped, practically and psychologically, to endure massive
power outages, food-chain disruptions, the obliteration of
databases, and even epidemic disease?
“Plenty of Americans are tougher than we’re credited with being,
but what about the now-decisive intelligentsia? What about
those conditioned to levels of comfort unimaginable to the
generation that fought World War II (or even Vietnam)? Would
21st-century suburban Americans accept rationing without
protests? Whenever I encounter Chinese abroad I am astonished
by their chauvinism. Their confidence is reminiscent of
Americans’ a half century ago. Should we pretend that Chinese
opinion-makers, such as they are, would feel inclined to attack
their government as our journalists attack Washington? A war
with China would be a massive contest of wills, and China might
need to break the will of only a tiny fraction of our population. It
only takes a few hundred men and women in Washington to
decide that a war is lost .
“No matter how well our military might perform, sufficient pain
inflicted on the American people could lead a weak national
leadership to a capitulation thinly disguised as a compromise.
Addicted to trade with China, many in America’s business
community would push for a rapid end to any conflict, no matter
the cost to our nation as a whole. [When Chinese fighters forced
down a U.S. reconnaissance aircraft on Hainan Island several
years ago, American-business lobbyists rushed to Capitol Hill to
plead for patience with China – they had no interest in our
aircrew or our national good.]
“The Chinese know they cannot defeat our military. So they
intend to circumvent it, as surely as Islamist terrorists seek to do,
if in more complex ways. For example, China’s navy cannot
guarantee its merchant vessels access to sea lanes in the Indian
Ocean – routes that carry the oil on which modern China runs.
So Beijing is working to build a web of formal and informal
client relationships in the region that would deny the U.S. navy
port facilities, challenge the United States in global and regional
forums, and secure alternate routes and sources of supply.
China’s next great strategic initiative is going to be an attempt to
woo India, the region’s key power, away from a closer
relationship with the United States. Beijing may fail, but its
strategists are thinking in terms of the out-years, while our
horizon barely reaches from one Quadrennial Defense Review to
the next.
“Even in Latin America, China labors to develop capabilities to
frustrate American purposes, weaken hemispheric ties, and divert
our strategic resources during a Sino-American crisis. We dream
of knock-out blows, while Beijing prepares the death of a
thousand cuts. The Chinese are the ultimate heirs of B.H.
Liddell Hart and his indirect approach: They would have
difficulty conquering Taiwan militarily, but believe they could
push us into an asymmetrical defeat through economic,
diplomatic, and media campaigns in the Middle East, Africa,
Europe, and Latin America – while crippling the lifestyle of
America’s citizens.
“It’s become another clich to observe how much of our
manufacturing capability has moved to China while we tolerate,
at our own business community’s behest, Beijing’s cynical
undervaluation of its currency. If you don’t think this matters,
try to go a single week without buying or using a product made
in China. A conflict with Beijing might be lost on the empty
shelves of Wal-Mart. Indeed, Beijing’s most effective
international allies are American corporations. In the Second
World War we famously converted our consumer industries into
producers of wartime materiel. Will a future president find
himself trapped by our defense industry’s inability to produce
consumer goods in wartime?
“A war with China would be a total war, waged in spheres where
our military is legally forbidden to engage, from data banks to
shopping malls. How many readers of this magazine have
participated in a wargame that addressed crippling consumer
shortages as a conflict with China dragged on for years? Instead,
we obsess about the fate of a pair of aircraft carriers. For that
matter, how about a scenario that realistically portrayed the
global media as siding overwhelmingly with China? The
metastasizing power of the media is a true strategic revolution of
our time – one to which our narrow revolution in military affairs
has no reply.
“Oh, by the way: Could we win a war with China without killing
hundreds of millions of Chinese?”
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Hott Spotts will return next week.
Brian Trumbore
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