The PRC's Military Stance: Migraine or Mirage?

I've been listening avidly via podcast to a weekly series of discussions that Hugh Hewitt has been having with author and geopolitical/military strategist Thomas P.M. Barnett covering one chapter per week from Barnett's best-selling (2004) book, "The Pentagon's New Map". Highly highly recommended for a rich, smart discussion offering perspective several levels above the typical MSM, blog or talk radio fare... which is not to say that they agree all the time--or that I do either--but it's got a high signal-to-noise ratio.

I've met Barnett on several occasions and dined with him once. (OK, it was at a big table filled with high-level Pentagon folk and business executives but we did get a chance to talk one-on-one at some length after the meal.) He's a super-sharp guy not easy to categorize politically. Liberals think he sounds too much like a neo- or even a paleo-con, while the 'cons think he sounds too Clintonian. What he really is though is a deep thinker and incredibly prolific blogger who can see and debate strategically way above the day-to-day wrangling of partisan politics... which is not to say that he's naive or apolitical. (He voted for Kerry in 2004, though in reading his books it's not entirely clear why. That's another story altogether, somewhat orthogonal to his professional craft, namely geopolitics and military strategy.)

The reason for mentioning Tom Barnett here is that he's been at the center of a long-running debate inside the Pentagon (pretty much ever since the end of the Cold War) over how to think about China--the two major options being "the new USSR" (i.e., a potential superpower rival) or an economic ally not likely to bother going to the trouble and expense of projecting military power outside Asia. Barnett is firmly in the latter camp and has good reasons for getting there, though I remain skeptically on the fence. His is an economics-uber-alles argument that glosses over the nasty fact of the PRC being a repressive Communist regime.

His argument in chapter two of TPNM says, essentially, that China is mostly interested in ensuring that it would be very very costly for the U.S. to defend Taiwan. That may be a fine option to consider in thinking about them, but in looking at events like this, one has to ponder whether such a view might be better categorized as wishful self-deception.

The prospect of "Star Wars" between China and the West loomed last night after Beijing used a ballistic missile to destroy a satellite in space. The missile, which hit a 4ft-wide obsolete Chinese weather satellite 530 miles above the Earth, is thought to have been launched from the Xichang space centre in China's Sichuan province. It suggests that the Chinese have developed a major new capability that underscores the communist regime's desire to use its military might as well as burgeoning economic power to expand its influence. [emphasis added]

"The US believes China's development and testing of such weapons is inconsistent with the spirit of co-operation that both countries aspire to in the civil space area," said Gordon Johndroe, spokes-man for the US National Security Council, yesterday. "We and other countries have expressed our concern regarding this action to the Chinese." It is understood that Australia and Canada have also protested to China.

The ability to destroy satellites with such precision could undermine the US National Missile Defence programme, a network of rocket interceptors, computers and satellites intended to protect America and its key allies from nuclear attack.

In a word: oops. It hardly needs to be pointed out that the ability to destroy a satellite might not only be used to wipe out a missile shield in advance of a nuclear attack. Rather, it is a generic capability equally applicable to wiping out say, the satellites that support global GPS capabilities, critical military wireless communications and surveillance.

In other words, China has just announced that it has the power to veto any U.S. military action it doesn't like by setting our advanced information-age military capabilities back to Vietnam-era stance in a matter of hours. And that would in turn demand we have more collective willpower (and adequately but not superbly trained bodies) to throw at a military challenge. And those things are clearly in short supply for us in the current pansy-a$ed political climate.

China's anti-satellite capability could be used to deter a U.S. defense of Taiwan. It could also be used to deter a U.S. defense of Israel, render ineffective any action we might take against Iran (or North Korea) and pretty much anything else China might prefer we not do. An anti-satellite action by China would not be without diplomatic and military consequences of its own but those could (they might reason) be handled later. ("We're sorry. We won't do it again. No, you can't have Taiwan back.") It is, in essence asymmetric: bringing us down to their level in a hurry rather than spending the time and cash it would take to come up to ours.

Captain Ed's take:

Does China intend on striking our sensitive military satellites? Perhaps not. This seems more like a pressure tactic by Beijing to get the US to change policy on space weapons...However, the test ...explosion left a lot of debris... Satellites are remarkably delicate instruments, and having them peppered with shrapnel could knock several of them out...

True, their intent right now may not be to strike our satellites. That doesn't mean that having the capability doesn't now give them leverage, forcing us to re-shape how we think about deploying our forces. A new risk has been introduced: the risk that those technologically advanced forces will be rendered blind, deaf and dumb on the field of battle, giving a distinct advantage to the nation with the massive numbers of men with lesser equipment. Nothing from Austin Bay yet. Barnett's take is here ("Infantile U.S. Strategy on China"):

A shocking surprise to some, but to me this is part and parcel of China's modernization effort designed to threaten our high-tech ability to threaten their somewhat lower-tech ability to threaten Taiwan's lower-tech ability to make good on their threat to declare independence.

Not sure how we get from there to 'infantile' (hey, in a relativistic world, everything is the U.S.' fault, right?), nor how he can skirt the issue of Taiwan being free and prosperous and the PRC being... well... neither of those things. (Their prosperity is only notable in comparison with their sordid past and in anticipation of its long-term potential. In absolute terms it is still marginal.)