Source: Asahi Shimbun
The U.S. military capacity to deter China and assure countries in the Western Pacific could diminish, if China successfully deployed new missiles, submarines and other weapons in those waters.
So says Michael Swaine, a prominent American analyst in Chinese security studies who is a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Swaine led a group of U.S. Asia experts, who together published a long-term study, titled “China’s military & the U.S.-Japan alliance in 2030,” which he describes, as the first and only unclassified assessment of the future impact of China’s growing military power on Japan and the Japan-U.S. alliance.
In an interview with The Asahi Shimbun, Swaine said an “eroding balance” between the United States and China is already happening and that “the United States probably is going to have to accept certain limits on its capacity to operate” in the region over the long term.
He also said a significant reduction in U.S primacy along China’s maritime periphery will likely result in movement toward “a more equal leadership position” in Asia between the United States and China.
In contrast, Japan tends to be reactive to the actions of the other two powers, he said, in emphasizing the need for Tokyo to “get serious about how significant a role it wants to play with the United States, not just militarily but politically, in Asia.” Excerpts of the interview follow:
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Question: Why did you decide to do this report?
Answer: This report has been several years in the making. And it really came about because of awareness in 2008-09 that Japan was not really showing much of a response, in the security realm, to China’s emergence as a major power.Public concern was mainly toward North Korea. And yet, we saw that China’s capability to influence the security environment around Japan was growing very much, in light of the accomplishments it’s made regarding Taiwan. It’s put in place military capabilities that are applicable for Japan as well.
Q: So, it was before the emergence of “assertive China” in 2009?
A: It was really before you saw this whole series of events happen, to do with the maritime disputes, the Senkakus/Diaoyu, and all that. But we thought we needed to really have a better handle on how China is affecting Japan and the alliance with the United States. We saw a need for a longer-term assessment of Japan’s ability and willingness to respond to China’s growing capabilities on the military front. Here we saw a lot of limitations. So, that was one reason.
And then the other reason was the general sense that China’s emergence as a regional power, from a security point of view, is really all about the Western Pacific. It’s not about challenging the United States as a global military power. And Japan is a major power and a key U.S. ally in that part of the world, Northeast Asia.
Q: So what are the headlines, or the main findings of the study?
A: I would think an appropriate headline is, “A Major, Long-Term Study Says Sino-Japanese Tensions Will Increase,” or “Challenges to the Alliance Will Grow,” something that plays off of the current Senkaku thing and says, basically, “We’re likely going to have more of this. It’s going to, probably, get worse, absent any major policy moves to defuse the situation.” We think that the likelihood of further types of tensions, coming out of China’s military development, and the political process that is involved, on all sides, is likely to produce more motives for miscalculation and for crises. But we’re not predicting China and Japan are going to start a war over the Senkakus. We think the real problem is going to be about managing perceptions of changing power.
China’s presence and capabilities, in the Western Pacific, are almost certainly going to go up. The ability of the United States to deal with those may not be well served by continuing the current strategy, which is one of U.S. naval primacy or predominance, in the Western Pacific. That is what this report calls into question.
Q: You are saying that it’s not sustainable?
A: It’s problematic. In its current form, it probably is not sustainable. But we hedge a little bit about this in the report, because it depends a lot on the U.S. power. And it depends a lot on the Chinese situation. The other main factor, of course, is Japan’s response. As I suggested, what led us into this study was not just China’s emergence, which is obvious; it was also the real limits that exist within Japan on its capacity and its willingness, even in spite of the current Senkaku issue, to actually “step up to the plate” to become a more active security actor in the Western Pacific, outside of defense of the home islands, and specifically to provide more effective support for the U.S. role in nearby areas. That still remains very much a question, as does the issue of exactly what sort of U.S. security role in the region would best provide future stability.
Q: Out of six future regional security scenarios you present in the report, you think “eroding balance” is what is actually happening now and will likely continue over the next 15 to 20 years?
A: “Eroding balance” is basically what looks to be occurring, not just on the military level but also with regard to civilian, paramilitary capabilities, such as the China Maritime Surveillance (CMS) force. I mean, most of these incidents with China are incidents with CMS vessels and fishing boats. They’re not military incidents per se.
Q: If “eroding balance” is the most likely future scenario, are you saying that the U.S. strategic rebalance is not going to work?
A: I don’t want to say, “It’s not going to work.” It’s going to be very much challenged.
Q: Why?
A: Because, I’m not sure that the United States has the capacity to engage in what it would call serious rebalancing in the security sense. That is to say, whether it has enough capacity to sustain its past military advantages in China's maritime periphery from the first island chain to right up to China's 12-mile limit.
Q: The other likely scenario you list is “limited conflict.” What is it?
A: It’s not an all-out war, or even small-scale military conflict, but rather a situation in which U.S. primacy near Japan is seen to erode significantly, with an increased chance of severe confrontations with China based upon a crisis like Senkaku, that gets out of hand. In other words, the Chinese government, because of a perception of a shifting military balance in the region, is likely to take more risks than it would otherwise do, in pursuing its position in this area or other areas, including possibly greater efforts to intimidate Japan or other countries, based upon a preponderance of military power. That’s actually the thing that people in the Ministry of Defense of Japan worry more about; a gradual accretion of Chinese leverage, that flows, in part, from their military, but that is exerted in a range of areas, political, economic, you name it, and that Beijing, basically, out-maneuvers Japan in the region, so that Japan feels on the defensive, and isn’t really able to protect its interests well enough.
Q: What does your report say about the future of China?
A: We lay out a series of possible trajectories for China, the most likely being one in which China maintains at least moderate levels of economic growth, something closer to 7, 8 percent, but still enough to fund significant amounts of military development, particularly near Japan.
We also assume that there’s going to be increasing difficulty in dealing with domestic problems, social inequality, pollution, and all these things that are going to require more complex debates about certain policy issues. It’s likely that you’re going to see continued Chinese military developments. The question will become, “How high, in what area?” Under the most likely trajectories for China, it will have a greater capacity to be present in the air and waters around Japan to do things, and that could increase the likelihood of accidents, miscalculations, you name it, again absent significant security assurances.
Q: And Japan?
A: What it says about Japan, I think, is that Japan itself has to work harder with the United States to make certain fundamental assessments about its long-term strategy. It has to really get serious about how significant a role it wants to play, with the United States, not just militarily but politically in Asia. And the question is; is there a strategy that it can develop that will ensure a maximum posture, position, for Japan in this situation that reflects its interest in productive and stable relations with both Washington and Beijing? Japan doesn’t really engage in that kind of strategic thinking, as I see it. It tends to be reactive. It tends to be highly driven by domestic politics. And it tends to be much driven by what the United States thinks.
I think there has to be a larger assessment about where you want the region to go, longer term, with Japan and the alliance continuing. And it means reassessing some of the fundamental assessments about how the U.S.-Japan alliance operates and what it serves. And that means the Guidelines for Japan-U.S. Defense Cooperation, diplomatic and political coordination, efforts to try to develop a multilateral security assurance sort of security structure that goes outside the limits of the bilateral alliance. All of those issues, I think, are important.
Q: What does the report say about the United States, in 20 or 30 years down the road?
A: It says that it’s more likely than not that the United States is going to avoid the worst-case scenarios we examine, including, withdrawal, hollowing out, and a truly major decline in the economy. The United States will have some version of a very decent capacity to operate, still, as a major power in the Western Pacific. It might not be able to operate as the kind of dominant power it had been in the past, and this report suggests that the United States will likely need to make some serious choices about the kind of power relationship with China it thinks is going to be sustainable in the region over time. Does that require a more fundamental reassessment about how it operates militarily and politically, within the first island chain in particular? Because the Chinese are not going to indefinitely accept the past level of U.S. predominance, up to the 12-mile limit, that the United States has enjoyed, and they will likely have a much greater capacity to challenge that predominance. And the question is how you adjust to that situation. It doesn’t necessarily mean you get into a zero-sum competition, but it does mean that the United States probably is going to have to accept certain limits on its capacity to operate, in some ways, and in order to make that less destabilizing, that means it has to have a larger strategy in place, in dealing with the Chinese, and with other countries in the region that can reassure others that this is not going to happen at the expense of security.
A big, underlying, question on the military level is, “Is it realistic to assume that the U.S. aircraft carriers can continue to play the dominant role in the Western Pacific, for American power?” I mean, the report suggests that carriers are not going to be able to function and operate as freely as they could have in the past, if China fields an effective anti-ship ballistic missile (ASBM) system, with a lot of launchers, and it has a significant number of submarines operating in the Western Pacific. The capacity of the United States to use its carriers to reassure Japan and others, and to deter the Chinese, could very well diminish.
What do you do if that’s the case? Do you continue to operate them anyway? Or do you transition to some other kind of strategy?
Some people believe that ballistic missile defense simply cannot work well enough to protect U.S. naval and air bases in Yokosuka and Kadena, against a Chinese missile barrage. So, how do you conceive of that alternative? I mean, is it Guam?
But the Chinese now want to range Guam with their missiles. In the report, we discuss alternatives to the current U.S. posture, including a so-called mutual denial concept that envisions a more balanced power distribution in the Western Pacific in which the U.S. continues to operate forward but without a reliance on carriers; you use submarines and smaller vessels. And you use a lot of interruption sort of things, the different--cyber and other things, to try to disrupt China’s military systems. But, you don’t stress forward operations on the surface under this strategy because you can’t, because missile defenses for forward air and naval bases are probably not going to be as effective as people think they will be. This concept is more oriented toward selective and long-range area denial than it is toward controlling the ocean and projecting force onto the Chinese mainland. We also discuss an approach that is based on a reduced level of U.S. primacy and forward presence.
Q: What kind of leadership structure are you contemplating in the Asia-Pacific? Is it still the U.S. primacy?
A: Fifteen to 20 years down the road, I think it will have to be some significant modification of the past U.S.-dominated structure, in the sense that it’s going to have to be a more equal leadership position in the region, between the United States and China.
Q: But if it’s equal, it’s not the primacy of the United States any more.
A: I guess you could say there are different levels of primacy. There is an outright level of primacy, where you can operate with impunity, and everybody knows it, and you’re very strong, very capable, in a whole range of areas. Then there’s what I would call “lesser levels of primacy,” where you have limited ability to ensure certain outcomes in different areas, but if you had a major threat that required the use of military, you still have enough confidence that you would ultimately prevail, even though the costs may be higher.
Q: Which level of primacy does the current U.S. rebalance aim at?
A: I think the current rebalance still orients toward the former, i.e., a clear level of predominance across the Western Pacific.
Q: What do you think about China’s “New Type of Major Power Relations”? Is it compatible with the U.S. rebalance?
A: I think it’s a slogan, right now. I don’t think people know for sure what exactly it means. I think it’s another way of emphasizing that China wants to seek a relationship with the United States that maximizes cooperative ventures, minimizes competitive dimensions in the military sphere, and gets away from this kind of zero-sum thinking. Washington has generally responded positively but cautiously to the concept, because it remains undefined.
Q: The report talks about strategic distrust between China and the United States as being likely to continue. Why?
A: Several reasons. Some of them historical, going back to the history of Sino-U.S. relations and the history of Sino-Western relations. So, fears and concerns about containment, about the West really not having a desire to see China succeed, and to undermine China’s development. And that even extends to the point of being suspicious that the U.S. government ultimately would like to see regime change. Now, you also have a fundamental difference in the political systems between the two countries. That doesn’t obstruct basic cooperation on a whole range of issues, but it does sustain a level of suspicion, and that suspicion has become much deeper since the Tiananmen incident of 1989.
A second basis for continued strategic suspicion is the simple fact that China’s future orientation and its future political relationship to Asia, if not beyond, still remain somewhat uncertain. You don’t know exactly what role China wants to play.
Q: So, what should the China policy of the Obama administration’s second term be?
A: Well, I think there should be a very clear message sent by both sides, largely, probably, through a summit visit between Obama and Xi Jinping, that reaffirms the basis of the relationship, reaffirms the strong commitment of both sides, to peacefully resolving issues in Asia and with each other, reaffirms their commitment to dealing with common problems, and a desire to really try and work out what this new “New Type of Major Powers Relations” concept is.
Q: For the current tension over the Senkakus between Japan and China who is responsible?
A: I think both sides have responsibility. I think Japanese government mishandled it by how it messaged the purchase of the islands. But more importantly, there were probably other possible alternatives to purchasing that could have occurred.
And then China is to blame for the way it handled its response. I think it over-responded, overreacted. Senior members of the Chinese Foreign Ministry used provocative, inflammatory rhetoric, linking Japanese behavior with the right-wing movement in Japan, which in turn was linked to the possibility of a resurgence of Japanese militarism as in the 1930s. I mean, the latter is ridiculous.
Q: What should Japan do, then?
A: I think Japan has to find a way to acknowledge the existence of contention over these issues, without compromising on its basic sovereignty stance, if only to say, “We acknowledge that other people don’t agree that these are, in fact, ours. The fact that they disagree with us indicates that, from their perspective, there is a dispute.” The alternative is to establish a process whereby the two sides fall into a type of behavior that is restrained, and both sides tacitly restrain themselves from allowing people to land, from allowing government ships and aircraft to go in there as frequently, from allowing the press spokesperson making an announcement whenever somebody does something. You just begin to place it on a lower profile.