U.S. MUST MAINTAIN MILITARY DOMINANCE OVER CHINA

A Council on Foreign Relations task force has recommended that the United States must be ready to defeat China swiftly and decisively in any military conflict.
In order to do that, the US will need to expand its forces in Asia and shift the balance of its naval and maritime powers from the Atlantic to the Pacific. It will also have to invest heavily in new technologies appropriate for a naval and air battle with the Chinese.
The recommendations were delivered in a report written by a panel of experts led by retired Admiral, Dennis C. Blair whose distinguished career included commanding missile destroyers in the Atlantic and Pacific and leading the Kitty Haw Battle Group. The panel suggested it was time for the US to “sustain and selectively enhance its force posture in East Asia, ensuring its capabilities were commensurate with the region’s growing importance to the US economy and other vital national interests.”
The task force report made it clear that the US should continue to upgrade its large military base on Guam because maritime interests in the years ahead will undoubtedly be in the Asia-Pacific Theater. It will therefore be vital for the US to maintain the naval, as well as and air and space superiority it has had over the Chinese since the end of the Second World War. To that end the US military and its intelligence component will have to improve its intelligence targeting of China and employ more Chinese language specialists.
The report noted that while China was spending billions of dollars modernizing its armed forces, many of its neighbors were doing likewise including Japan and South Korea:
“Japan has significantly upgraded capabilities over the past fifteen years, deploying the Aegis radar system and accompanying missile systems for its navy and advanced fighter aircraft armed with advanced air-to air missiles. Japan is working in partnership with the United States to develop theater missile defenses, primarily oriented against the North Korean threat, but with the obvious application in the event of any conflict with China.”
The report identified the fact that South Korea was purchasing advanced weapons systems from the US that would have a high level of operability with US systems in the event of a conflict with China. In a section of the report dealing with China’s neighbors, the task force made the point that even though Russia was China’s largest military supplier, Russia was using its vast oil wealth to modernize its own armed forces. As a consequence, Moscow’s growing military capabilities could eventually complicate China’s defense planning and force posture because it would have to “keep a war eye on its 4,300 kilometer border with Russia.”
On the volatile issue of Taiwan, the report stated that while China’s military modernization was proceeding at a fast pace, Taiwan was lagging behind. During the 1990s Taiwan in response to China’s build up had responded by purchasing early warning aircraft systems and several hundred advanced aircraft from the US and France. More recently defense spending actually decreased and the Taiwanese government failed to find $18 billion to pay for arms authorized in 2001 by President Bush. The arms package was to include submarines, anti-submarine aircraft and missile defense systems. The task force panel pointed out that Taiwan was now trying to come up with $3 billion to replace its ageing F-5 fighters with sixty new F-16s but had again failed to find the cash, even though it had been urged to do so by Washington. It was made it clear to Taiwan that it could not make any more requests for weapons until it had resolved previous requests. Nevertheless, despite Taiwan’s failure to keep pace with China’s military modernization, the US was moving ahead with its own military upgrades in the region.
“For its part the United States is upgrading forward deployed naval and air forces in the Pacific theater (especially on Guam) and will for the first time base a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier in Japan. The United States is improving interoperability with its major Asian allies, staging more realistic and complex multilateral training exercises. The United States is also expanding military cooperation with India, Mongolia and Indonesia,” the report concluded.
The panel however conceded that American air and maritime forces were one to three generations ahead of China’s and that US military spending remained eight times that of China. The US also had a major advantage over China because its forces had “significant, large scale combat experience” and had mastered joint, integrated operations. The US also had a big maritime edge over its rival because it continued to dominate the region’s sea lanes which represented a life line for China’s supplies of oil and other commodities needed for the expansion of its economy.
One of the matters the report seemed unable to resolve satisfactorily was the actual amount China spends on its military. A previous Council on Foreign relations task force ran into the same problem, noting that “it all depended on which figures” one was prepared to rely on. Beijing has only admitted to spending between $30 billion to $35 billion annually whereas most experts agree the true figure is closer to $65 billion. The Pentagon is prepared to go higher, citing a figure of $170 billion. But even that is dwarfed by the 2006 US defense budget of $240 billion which is roughly equivalent to the combined defense spending of the rest of the world.
Much of China’s defense spending is directed at the purchase of long and short range missiles, cruise missiles and submarines. Presently, it has upwards of 800 short range missiles ready at any time to strike Taiwan. Some experts believe China’s military procurements represent a message to the US that it would be foolish for it to intervene to defend Taiwan if China should ever fulfill its threat to invade the island. The Pentagon believes China’s military posturing towards is Taiwan is now “shading beyond deterrence into coercion, trying to force Taiwan to negotiate on China’s terms and to deter a US response to a Taiwanese crisis.”
The most troubling aspect to China’s increased defense spending build up is that it has gone hand in hand with a more assertive claim to oil and gas exploration in the Pacific. Some Pentagon experts argue that China is not too many years away from using its armed forces to challenge US dominance in Asia. They point to China’s increasing numbers of intercontinental ballistic missiles and submarines as a strategy to “project force outside Asia.”
In contrast, Pentagon critics believe no one can really be sure what China intends to do and at any rate it is not capable of confronting the US militarily. Instead it needs a good relationship with the United States if it is to continue to build its economy and some day reach superpower status.
Some critics have even suggested that US hegemony in the region is the real problem. It has not only drawn Russia and China closer together but has encouraged both nations to modernize their armed forces. Additionally the US policy of forming closer military relationships with China’s neighbors – India and Japan – has forced China into a more military competitive posture, all of which justifies the Pentagon spending hundreds of billions of dollars each year on a projected war with China.
Pentagon advocates respond that projecting threats into the future is what the Pentagon is required to do. Should it fail to accomplish that duty and a war broke out with China, people would ask why it had not anticipated it and planned for it. One of the Pentagon’s recent concerns is the future threat from the SCO –Shanghai Cooperation Organization. It is comprised of China, Russia and several Central Asian countries like Uzbekistan, has been organizing joint military maneuvers. All its members have publicly voiced their disapproval of the US presence in the region.
The Council on Foreign Relations task force offered the following advice on what it saw as the overall message it wanted to confer on Sino-American relations:
“While the United States should not turn a blind eye to the economic, political, and security challenges posed by China’s rise and should be clear that any aggressive behavior on China’s part would be met with strong opposition, US strategy towards China must focus of creating and taking advantage of opportunities to build on common interests in the region and as regards a number of global concerns.”