Is America Courting War with China?

Ever since it staged Operation Chimichanga, a dress-rehearsal of a stealth, first-strike attack to take out Chinese air defences, America has been treading gingerly along what may be the road to war.

Chinese J-31 Stealth Fighter

China has been busy responding with its own stealth fighters, anti-satellite space weaponry, an array of cyber-warfare technologies, development of aircraft carrier capability, new and stealthy submarines and ballistic anti-ship missiles specifically designed to kill American carriers.   All this coupled with home-field advantage presents a formidable challenge to America's military domination of the southeast Asia region.

Carrier Killer

Foreign Policy magazine questions whether America needs to look for other options instead of just the Air-Sea Battle strategy that may lead America into outright war with China.

"...while the proponents of Air-Sea Battle are careful to say that the strategy isn't focused on one specific adversary, we shouldn't kid ourselves: The Chinese see it as aimed at them. Then-Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta said as much in the 2012 defense strategic guidance: "States such as China and Iran will continue to pursue asymmetric means to counter our power projection capabilities.... Accordingly, the U.S. military will invest as required to ensure its ability to operate effectively in anti-access and area denial (A2/AD) environments."

If That Looks Like the Coast of China, It Is

 To do that, according to Air-Sea Battle, U.S. forces would launch physical attacks and cyberattacks against the enemy's "kill-chain" of sensors and weaponry in order to disrupt its command-and-control systems, wreck its launch platforms (including aircraft, ships, and missile sites), and finally defeat the weapons they actually fire. The sooner the kill-chain is broken, the less damage U.S. forces will suffer -- and the more damage they will be able to inflict on the enemy. Therein lies both the military attractiveness and the strategic risk of Air-Sea Battle.

...civilian and military leaders alike need to understand that Air-Sea Battle suggests the United States would strike China before China strikes U.S. forces. That could precipitate a spiraling, costly, and destabilizing arms race and make a crisis more likely to lead to hostilities. The United States needs options to facilitate crisis management, deter aggression, and protect U.S. forces that do not require early attacks on Chinese territory.

...Air-Sea Battle's targets would have to be struck before they could do significant damage to U.S. forces. With the exception of ships at sea and satellites in orbit, the targets that comprise China's kill-chain -- air and naval bases, missile launchers, land-based sensors, command-and-control centers -- are in China itself.

Attacking Chinese territory would have serious geopolitical consequences. China isn't the menacing, isolated Soviet Union. ...Moreover, 2013 is not 1980: Information technologies -- for targeting, networking, and cyberwar -- are advancing rapidly, and China is more capable of competing technologically than the Soviet Union ever was. 

Given all these concerns, what does Air-Sea Battle contribute to U.S. security?  ...as the Chinese see it, Air-Sea Battle could render China extremely vulnerable to U.S attack.

...it also has the potential to deepen Chinese fears of U.S. intentions, cause the Chinese to re-double their A2/AD effort -- which they see as essential for national defense -- and even make conflict more likely. Importantly, the advent of Air-Sea Battle should not divert the United States from developing other capabilities that could serve the same ends without destabilizing Sino-U.S. relations. 

Here's the problem, in a nutshell:

Feelin' Lucky, Stranger?

Air-Sea Battle increases the odds that a crisis will turn violent. Already, the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) leans toward early strikes on U.S. forces if hostilities have begun or appear imminent (this inclination is a first premise of the Air-Sea Battle concept). Given that, to be most effective, Air-Sea Battle would need to take down Chinese targeting and strike capabilities before they could cause significant damage to U.S. forces and bases. It follows, and the Chinese fear, that such U.S. capabilities are best used early and first -- if not preemptively, then in preparation for further U.S. offensive action. After all, such U.S. strikes have been used to initiate conflict twice in Iraq. This perception will, in turn, increase the incentive for the PLA to attack preemptively, before Air-Sea Battle has degraded its ability to neutralize the U.S. strike threat. It could give the Chinese cause to launch large-scale preemptive cyber- and anti-satellite attacks on our Air-Sea Battle assets. Indeed, they might feel a need, out of self-defense, to launch such attacks even if they had not planned to start a war. It is a dangerous situation when both sides put a premium on early action.

Most distressing, from a strategic perspective, is that Air-Sea Battle addresses how a war with China could begin, but it begs the questions of what course such a war could take, where it would lead, and how it could be ended on terms favorable to the United States. It is one thing to attack Iraq or Libya (or even Iran). It's quite another to attack the world's second most powerful state.   

In essence, it is the lack of strategies other than Air-Sea Battle that ramps up the risk of inadvertent war between America and China from both sides.  The report suggests an alternative - the development by America of its own, regional A2-AD networks.  The idea is to deter aggression, not by threatening first-strike attacks, but by establishing defensive, anti-access and area denial capabilities where and as they're needed.

As Mark Twain put it, "To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail."  The Air-Sea Battle strategy is just that, a hammer, and, with it, China looks just like a nail.

There's an important message for Canada in all of this.  The F-35 is purpose-built for the Air-Sea Battle strategy.  Its presence was factored into the Operation Chimichanga simulation.   It is designed for that stealth, first-strike to take down critical enemy communications and defence systems.  The Air-Sea Battle strategy underlies America's "pivot" to Asia that former defence minister Peter MacKay was so enthusiastic that Canada should join.

The F-35 is Canada's admission ticket to America's Air-Sea Battle strategy and for that reason alone we should say thanks, but no thanks.