March 2010 April 2010 May 2010 June 2010 July 2010
August 2010
September 2010 October 2010
November 2010
December 2010
January 2011
February 2011 March 2011 April 2011 May 2011 June 2011 July 2011 August 2011 September 2011 October 2011 November 2011 December 2011 January 2012 February 2012 March 2012 April 2012 May 2012 June 2012 July 2012 August 2012 September 2012 October 2012 November 2012 December 2012 January 2013 February 2013 March 2013 April 2013 May 2013 June 2013 July 2013 August 2013 September 2013 October 2013 November 2013 December 2013 January 2014 February 2014 March 2014 April 2014 May 2014 June 2014 July 2014 August 2014 September 2014 October 2014 November 2014 December 2014 January 2015 February 2015 March 2015 April 2015 May 2015 June 2015 July 2015 August 2015 September 2015 October 2015 November 2015 December 2015 January 2016 February 2016 March 2016 April 2016 May 2016 June 2016 July 2016 August 2016 September 2016 October 2016 November 2016 December 2016 January 2017 February 2017 March 2017 April 2017 May 2017 June 2017 July 2017 August 2017 September 2017 October 2017 November 2017 December 2017 January 2018 February 2018 March 2018 April 2018 May 2018 June 2018 July 2018 August 2018 September 2018 October 2018 November 2018 December 2018 January 2019 February 2019 March 2019 April 2019 May 2019 June 2019 July 2019 August 2019 September 2019 October 2019 November 2019 December 2019 January 2020 February 2020 March 2020 April 2020 May 2020 June 2020 July 2020 August 2020 September 2020 October 2020 November 2020 December 2020 January 2021 February 2021 March 2021 April 2021 May 2021 June 2021 July 2021 August 2021 September 2021 October 2021 November 2021 December 2021 January 2022 February 2022 March 2022 April 2022 May 2022 June 2022 July 2022 August 2022 September 2022 October 2022 November 2022 December 2022 January 2023 February 2023 March 2023 April 2023 May 2023 June 2023 July 2023 August 2023 September 2023 October 2023 November 2023 December 2023 January 2024 February 2024 March 2024 April 2024
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24
25
26
27
28
29
30
News Every Day |

America Can Turn China’s Love for A2/AD Against Beijing

James Holmes

China,

Chinese grand strategy is indeed a strategy premised on negotiating or wresting open access to distant seas and shores.

Here's What You Need to Remember: To channel Mahan, sealing the straits permitting passage through the island chain would be like cutting the roots of a plant. It would deny the Chinese merchant fleet and PLA Navy access to the oceanic thoroughfare on which they rely to ply their trades. China’s import and export traffic—crucial to its prosperity, and thus to fulfilling the China Dream—could shrivel and die.

The Pentagon released two appraisals of China in swift succession. The first, issued by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), goes by the title China Military Power and is patterned on the old-school Soviet Military Power tomes beloved by those of us of a vintage to have battled godless communism during the 1980s.

People’s Liberation Army (PLA) specialists will find little new or eye-popping in China’s Military Power, but it does make a worthy refresher for oldtimers and primer for newcomers to the field. Read the whole thing.

If the DIA report gauges Chinese power, the second Pentagon document, awkwardly titled “Assessment on U.S. Defense Implications of China’s Expanding Global Access,” explores the purposes for which Beijing harnesses power. It evaluates Chinese “grand strategy,” in other words, even though the phrase never appears in the document.

This one’s worth your time as well. And it’s short!

English soldier-scribe B. H. Liddell coined the phrase “grand strategy” in his masterwork Strategy (1954). In Liddell Hart’s telling, grand strategy is the art and science of choreographing the use of diplomatic, economic, cultural, and military implements of power to improve the “state of peace” for one’s country—preferably without resort to arms. Grand strategists take the long view from thirty thousand feet.

The framers of “China’s Global Access” are right to accent the word “access.” They deploy it dozens of times. Chinese grand strategy is indeed a strategy premised on negotiating or wresting open access to distant seas and shores. Like other trading nations, China depends on waterborne transport to move bulk goods hither and yon. Its merchant fleet needs ready admission to harbors overseas to unload cargo for sale or load raw materials to carry back home.

Hence the nautical tinge Chinese strategy has taken on in recent decades. After all, maritime strategy is the saltwater variety of grand strategy.

For Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan, one of the godfathers of Chinese maritime strategy, access is both the goal of and the prime mover driving any maritime strategy worth the name. America’s sea-power evangelist contends that commercial, political, and military access to important trading regions—in that order of importance—constitutes the aim of maritime strategy.

Commerce is king for Mahan. Seafaring governments seek diplomatic access to facilitate commercial access, while military access is necessary to facilitate diplomatic and thence commercial access. Access sets a cycle in motion. Domestic manufacturers sell goods overseas, paying tariffs and thus generating revenue adequate to fund a navy. The navy safeguards those goods during seaborne transit or closes the sea lanes to hostile powers.

Grand strategy relating to the sea involves starting and perpetuating this virtuous cycle among industrial, diplomatic, and military enterprises. Beijing knows this in its marrow.

Access came easy to Mahan’s America by contrast with China. Then as now, political geography exempted the United States from domineering neighbors able to menace its access from Atlantic and Pacific seaports to the high seas. Geography cursed China where it blessed America. Beijing must fret about access from the time a ship casts off lines in Shanghai or Tianjin until it moors at the far end of its voyage.

Why? Because to exit the China seas or return from faraway ports of call, vessels must cross through the “first island chain,” a string of islands undulating from southern Japan through Taiwan, the Philippine Islands, and the Indonesian archipelago. The island chain plays host to powerful U.S. naval and air forces. Its occupants are allies or friends of the United States—meaning they are potential foes of China.

In other words, shipping and aircraft on which China’s economic and geopolitical fortunes depend must pass under the shadow of hostile armed forces whenever they leave or return home. Strategic geography encumbers China’s ambitions to a degree unique among great powers.

Small wonder Chinese strategists from PLA Navy founding father Admiral Liu Huaqing onward have dubbed the first island chain a “metal chain” that China must burst to fulfill its destiny—its “China Dream,” as President Xi Jinping likes to call it. Fracturing the island chain—by seizing part of it, such as Taiwan, or by wooing U.S. allies away from Washington’s embrace through diplomacy—is crucial to strategic success.

Access begets success. This Mahanian idea courses through “China’s Global Access” even though the Pentagon authors do not couch their reportage in grand-strategic parlance.

Historians of colonialism often ask whether the flag followed trade or trade followed the flag for some empire or another. Did mercantile interests obtain access to new trading regions, requiring diplomatic and military protection—the “flag”—or did diplomats and military folk lay a beachhead, making it safe for commerce to follow?

Mahan seems to envisage doing it all at once. He exhorted the United States to build up industry and commerce, lay down merchant and naval fleets, and seek access to distant seaports. He likened commerce, ships, and bases to three “links” in a sea-power “chain.” And he wanted to cast all three links at the same time.

Deliberately or not, the report’s authors intimate that China has departed from strict adherence to the Mahanian script. Beijing is pursuing diplomacy and economic statecraft to gain access to the wider world, but military access tends to trail behind these efforts. For instance, the PLA Navy has maintained a squadron in the Gulf of Aden for a decade and put in appearances elsewhere. Apart from the western Indian Ocean, though, China’s navy has yet to establish a standing presence outside home waters.

Nonmilitary tools represent the vanguard of Chinese grand strategy outside East Asia—for now.

This pattern is probably another product of geography. China can accomplish little in “far seas” such as the Indian Ocean or Mediterranean Sea unless its merchant or naval fleets can get there from the “near seas” washing against mainland shores. Thus far-seas endeavors refocus strategists and practitioners on guaranteeing access from the China seas to the Western Pacific.

Now as in the lifetime of Admiral Liu, the contest for access starts at home.

Intriguingly, though, “China’s Global Access” doesn’t depict the U.S. strategic response as a quest to assure and deny access. But it should, shouldn’t it? Commercial, political, and military access to the Eurasian rimlands has been central to U.S. grand strategy since the days of Mahan—as indeed Mahan said it should be.

That access is now in peril as China, Russia, and other coastal competitors festoon their shorelines with “anti-access” and “area-denial” weaponry reputedly able to hold U.S. naval forces at a distance. America has no meaningful strategic position in the Far East without access to bases in Japan and elsewhere along the island chain.

You’d think the imperative to preserve access would rank uppermost in American military minds.

Meanwhile the Pentagon should fashion access- and area-denial strategies of its own. PLA and Chinese Communist Party thinkers and practitioners obsess over maritime access for a reason: access deniers along the island chain could cut China off from the trading world.

To channel Mahan, sealing the straits permitting passage through the island chain would be like cutting the roots of a plant. It would deny the Chinese merchant fleet and PLA Navy access to the oceanic thoroughfare on which they rely to ply their trades. China’s import and export traffic—crucial to its prosperity, and thus to fulfilling the China Dream—could shrivel and die.

Its geopolitical standing could wilt in the process.

A U.S. access-denial strategy, then, would impose a hard fate on China. Which is the point. Threatening fearful consequences could deter Beijing from aggression tomorrow morning, and the next. If Xi Jinping & Co. wake up and choose forbearance enough days in a row, who knows? China, Asia, and the world could learn to coexist over time.

Lions need not lie down with lambs. Uneasy peace will do. Rediscovering the pivotal role of access will illumine the way.

James Holmes is J. C. Wylie Chair of Maritime Strategy at the Naval War College, coauthor of Red Star over the Pacific (new in print last month), and author of A Brief Guide to Maritime Strategy (forthcoming this November). The views voiced here are his alone.​ This article is being republished due to reader interest.

Image: Reuters.

VIP

Она видит ложь: ТВ-3 начал съемки сериала «Лиса» с Олесей Фаттаховой

Geri Halliwell & Christian Horner ‘in talks’ to make fly-on-the-wall Netflix doc as couple move on from sexting scandal

Laura Dern Is the Star of Roger Vivier’s New Short Movie

Shamil Musaev def. Logan Storley at 2024 PFL 3: Best photos

Scheduling Alignment Is More Important Than Strength of Schedule For The Chicago Bears In 2024

Ria.city






Read also

An awful idea

Five takeaways from the Pennsylvania primaries

Indigenous people march in Brazil to demand land demarcation

News, articles, comments, with a minute-by-minute update, now on Today24.pro

News Every Day

Laura Dern Is the Star of Roger Vivier’s New Short Movie

Today24.pro — latest news 24/7. You can add your news instantly now — here


News Every Day

Laura Dern Is the Star of Roger Vivier’s New Short Movie



Sports today


Новости тенниса
WTA

WTA сообщила о достижении Рыбакиной после победы над Швентек



Спорт в России и мире
Москва

Баскетболист ЦСКА Хэнлан назвал Москву лучшим местом для жизни



All sports news today





Sports in Russia today

Москва

МФК «Динамо Пушкино» вошел в топ-8 команд Всероссийского футбольного турнира «Кубок Казани»


Новости России

Game News

Видеоновости: ЗБТ Zenless Zone Zero и Dark and Light Mobile, Cat Quest III на iOS, мобильные Олимпийские игры и другое


Russian.city


Москва

Обвиняемый убийстве из-за парковки пытался добиться домашнего ареста


Губернаторы России
Спартак

Московский «Спартак» разгромил «Ростов» со счетом 5:1


Владимир Путин поздравил ветеранов с 50-летием начала строительства Байкало-Амурской магистрали

Почта выпустила марку к 70-летию присоединения России к ЮНЕСКО

Замена труб водоснабжения в Московской области

Замена труб канализации в Московской области


Дистрибьюция Музыки. Дистрибьюция Музыки в России. Дистрибьюция музыки в вк. Яндекс музыка дистрибьюция. Цифровая дистрибьюция музыка. Дистрибьюция музыки под ключ.

Леонардо ДиКаприо может сыграть Фрэнка Синатру в новом байопике Мартина Скорсезе

Анна Пересильд, Леон Кемстач, Светлана Иванова, Яна Чурикова, Саша Стоун и другие гости «белой вечеринки» в рамках ММКФ

Своим трудом: Келли Осборн отрицает, что похудела с помощью препаратов


Елена Рыбакина стала чемпионкой турнира WTA-500 в Штутгарте

Рыбакина назвала свое преимущество над Швентек

Кудерметова и Хао-Чин вышли в финал турнира WTA в Штутгарте в парном разряде

Пятая ракетка мира Пегула не выступит на турнире WTA 1000 в Мадриде



Разработчик гиперконвергентной платформы vStack и «Системный софт» подписали соглашение о партнерстве

Замена труб канализации в Московской области

Шапки женские вязаные на Wildberries, 2024 — новый цвет от 392 руб. (модель 466)

Питерским генералам сидеть в столице // Экс-начальника ГУ МВД по Санкт-Петербургу и его подчиненных хотят судить за взятки в Москве


Концерт "Настроение - весна!"

Доходность инвестиций в недвижимость в Пскове составляет 10%

Итоги дня в РПЛ: «Сочи» вырвал ничью у «Урала», «Спартак» разгромил «Ростов»

Подмосковный «ЭкоЛайн» и «Сбер» начали сотрудничество


Холодильный склад появится в Московской области

Синоптики сообщили о теплой и сухой погоде в Москве 24 апреля

Опубликовано видео смертельного ДТП с летающей иномаркой в Богородском округе

«Май подкинет горючего в огонь». Синоптики дали новый прогноз на конец весны



Путин в России и мире






Персональные новости Russian.city
Елена Маркелова

Продолжается реализации проекта - победителя 1 конкурса 2024 года Фонда президентских грантов «Интеграция в общество детей и подростков с ментальными особенностями методами адаптивной гимнастики»



News Every Day

Geri Halliwell & Christian Horner ‘in talks’ to make fly-on-the-wall Netflix doc as couple move on from sexting scandal




Friends of Today24

Музыкальные новости

Персональные новости