Growing concern down under

Posted By Tom Mahnken Wednesday, February 9, 2011 - 12:09 PM Share

The past two months have witnessed a series of revelations regarding China's growing military power. In December 2010, Admiral Robert Willard, Commander of U.S. Pacific Command, declared that the aircraft carrier-killing DF-21D anti-ship ballistic missile had achieved initial operating capability. Last month, photographs and video of the J-20 fifth-generation stealth aircraft, a plane considerably more advanced than observers expected of China, appeared on the internet.

On Monday, Ross Babbage, the founder of Australia's respected think tank, the Kokoda Foundation, issued a monograph, Australia's Strategic Edge in 2030 that examined the changing military balance in the Western Pacific and its implications for Australia. It is a report that demands the attention of policy makers in Washington.

Babbage argued that China's aggressive military modernization is rapidly undermining the pillars that have supported American presence in the Western Pacific for more than half a century. As he puts it, "China is for the first time close to achieving a military capability to deny United States and allied forces access to much of the Western Pacific rim." He catalogues China's anti-access efforts, which include cruise and ballistic missiles that can attack ships and fixed targets; a massive investment in cyber-warfare capabilities, with reports of tens of thousands of Chinese cyber intrusions daily; new classes of both nuclear and conventionally powered submarines; a substantial increase in the Chinese nuclear stockpile; a huge investment in space warfare; and a massive increase in fighter bomber and other airborne strike capabilities.

Babbage argued that Australia will need to take drastic action in order to protect its interests in a region increasingly dominated by China. These include acquiring a fleet of 12 nuclear-powered attack submarines (the report hinted at leasing or purchasing Virginia-class SSNs from the United States), developing conventionally armed ballistic and cruise missiles, increasing Australia's investment in cyber warfare, and hosting American forces on Australian soil.

Australia is one of America's closest allies. When Canberra expresses such concerns, Washington should listen and take action. Specifically, the United States should seek ways to shape Chinese military modernization in ways that reduce the threat Beijing can pose to the United States and its allies. It should also look for ways to strengthen its key alliances in Asia, including that with Australia. Babbage's paper offers useful ideas on both counts.

First, the United States should offer to lease or sell Australia Virginia-class SSNs. These submarines have the speed and endurance that Australia needs to protect its maritime interests. Moreover, such a move would offer a way to broaden and deepen the U.S.-Australia alliance. It's a bold, even radical, idea, and there are plenty of barriers to it, but it is one that is well worth pursuing.

Second, the United States should consider developing a coalition intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance network in the Western Pacific to reassure our allies and friends and generate collective responses to crisis and aggression. By networking together U.S. and allied airborne sensors, participants would build a common picture of activity in the region. Such an approach could also represent a significant deterrent to hostile action. It would be harder for an aggressor to act without being caught, and an attack on the network would amount to an attack on all its members.

Third, the United States should harden and diversify its network of bases in the Pacific. The United States should protect and defend its bases to deter an attack upon them. Moreover, the Defense Department should examine a much broader and diverse set of bases in the region, to include stationing U.S. forces on Australian territory, if the Australian government so desires.

Finally, as I have previously argued, there is more that the U.S. armed services need to do to posture themselves to compete with China over the long term. That includes bolstering U.S. long-range strike and undersea warfare capabilities.

As Babbage's report made clear, Chinese military modernization is reshaping the strategic environment. Safeguarding American and allied interests in the region will require concerted action, but we are fortunate to have allies who recognize the challenge.

LARRY DOWNING/AFP/Getty Images

EXPLORE:PACIFIC, SOUTHEAST ASIA, AUSTRALIA, CHINA, INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, MILITARY, NUKES, OBAMA ADMINISTRATION, SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY, SECURITY, U.S. FOREIGN POLICY
 

MARTY MARTEL

9:31 AM ET

February 10, 2011

Australia also embraced China with gusto

Australia is part of same Western democracies who facilitated the rise of China to a super power status when they all embraced China with gusto following Nixon’s 1972 visit.

Just like other Western democracies, Australia’s trade with China also expanded by leaps and bounds following that Nixon embrace.

Now China is Australia’s biggest trading partner, just like it is of US, Japan, EU and the list goes on.

So these Western democracies are shedding crocodile tears when they express such fears of China when they are the ones who facilitated China’s rise.

Had it not been for that Nixon embrace in 1972, China’s rise to super power status would have been far more slower with all the US, West European and East Asian markets closed to cheap Chinese products. Had it not been for that Nixon embrace, China’s technological progress would have been far slower in the absence of West’s technology transfers. Had it not been for that Nixon embrace, China’s military progress would have been far slower in the absence of huge forex reserves that China accumulated from the massive exports of cheap Chinese products and China used those forex reserves to acquire latest military technology.

The second cold war has already started, this time between US and China. And if US had an upper hand against Soviet Union in the first cold war, then creditor China has an upper hand against debtor US in this second cold war.

China’s rise to super power status to challenge US is a fitting monument to the much-celebrated foresight of Nixon-Kissinger to embrace China to counter Soviet Union in 1972 just as 9/11 attacks is a fitting monument to the Reagan embrace of Islamic fundamentalists to counter Soviet Union in 1980s Afghanistan.

 

BOXUAN

11:06 AM ET

February 10, 2011

What a SHOW!

So Australia is worrying about her own interests being threatened by China's rising. Isn't it weird that Australia is actually far from the top of the list that China would possibly try to attack some day? Japan, Both Koreas, Taiwan, India, ASEAN countries, Mongolia, Russia and Central Asian countries all have better reasons to worry about China, but why Australia? Last time Kevin Rudd told the US to attack China first, this time they're vowing to compete in the alleged arm race. The reasons why they're so fervent is that either they're also part of the US arm selling profit chain, or they're responding to higher-level orders in exchange of some head-petting benefits.

 

PUPIL

6:52 PM ET

February 10, 2011

Australia is not the first target in China sight

That's correct, but the rest of your comment is propaganda.

At the very bottom of Australia's concerns is China as not a free country controlled by populace. It has history of mass murder of its people and nationalistic aggression against neighbors, first of all, Taiwan, recently against Japan. China uncompromisingly claims huge disputed land and sea areas as its own, and China clearly intends to grab all of them and drive everyone else out. Such ideological belligerence based on huge superiority-inferiority complex and absence of any internal checks and balances makes it possible for the Chinese rulers to act aggressively within the area of their reach.

At the strategic level the moment when China will move militarily or using successful military intimidation against its immediate neighbors: Vietnam, Korea, Japan, but not directly against Australia, will be a crushing disaster for the country, which will find itself in a half-slavery position, and on the hardly reversible track to complete slavery or suicidal resistance.

That was exactly the intolerable position, in which US found itself by summer of 1941 when over-confident Japan made it increasingly clear that US should either acquiesce to its land grabs and not resist driving the British out of Asia, or prepare for a friendly naval and aerial visit. By the end of year such a visit indeed took place in Pearl Harbor. Bottom line: until China opens itself up for control by its populace and makes the neighbors to understand why it desires to kill US carriers, bomb Taiwan and assault Japanese ships, Australia and all other neighbors should arm themselves. Just in case.

 

PUBLICUS

8:35 PM ET

February 10, 2011

KUMINO & BOXYUAN

Any one who thinks we think the CCP-PRC would, as it's put consistently in Beijing to its sheeple, "obey" the United States doesn't know the first thing about diplomacy, internationa/global relations, but realpolitik especially. If I know the CCP-PRC always speaks in such absolute and defiant zero-sum terms as "obey-disobey," with no middle ground ever, then other Western governments know this too. A post presenting a brief self decided pronouncement on the point is hardly necessary or well considered to make. The Chinese for 5000 years have been win-lose. They are certain they need not listen to or in their mindset 'obey' anyone. There is no compromise in China from its ancient beginnings to the present and into the projected future.

The author, writers he references, many others and myself know that the in essence the statement to contain the CCP-PRC military in its determined advance to realize its plans of aggression means not only arm twisting but requires some good head banging as well. However, you know, I know and others know that even head butting the Chinese doesn't work as their skulls are far thicker than any other people or peoples. The Chinese have shown over thousands of years that they have more exterior skull than soft tissue inside to protect.

Of course Australia is not a prime target of the CCP-PRC's advancing military machine. The CCP-PRC are not Showa Japan that precipitated the Asian-Pacific holocaust of World War 2 and their own destruction. The CCP is focused on the United States. Destroy the US and the world is the oyster of the CCP-PRC - Australia and the rest simply will fall under the control of the CCP-PRC. Then, to settle old scores as many Chinese like like to think of and say, destroy Japan for its past 'transgressions' against the innocent peace loving Chinese.

The fact is both writers under discussion here implicitly and clearly refer to using the hammer against the CCP-PRC. The only single thing the Chinese have understood for thousands of years is a good zero-sum, win-lose hammering. Rudd knows of that which he speaks.

 

TECHGUY222

12:18 PM ET

February 10, 2011

War between US and China is

War between US and China is unlikey, but war between China and Australia even more so. Australia is dependent on China as a buyer of commodities and China is dependent on Australia as a market for its exports, neither desires an arm race .

 

XTIANGODLOKI

3:36 PM ET

February 10, 2011

Someone check how much defense industry lobbyists paid this guy

Since the soviets went down and Iraq/Afghanistan wars showing that expensive weapon systems don't do diddly squat to help conquering nations, the defense industry desperately need the new bogeyman. Politicians like this Australian guy are nothing more than puppets of the military industrial complex. Afterall, the biggest threat to the defense industry is not China but that tax payers money going into infrastructure or education or healthcare instead.

If China wanted to bring down other nations why would it go through the military route? All it needs to do is to mess with their economies. On the other hand, even if China gets aggressive militarily, there are enough nukes aimed at China and vise versa to blow up this planet many times over. Who would want that?

 

PUBLICUS

9:00 PM ET

February 10, 2011

The China Complex

Gen Chi Haotian the Air Force general then in command of the military of the CCP-PRC stated on June 6, 2006 (WW2 D-Day in Europe) that, "War is not far from us and is the midwife of the Chinese century." This is the Hitler type of mindset right down to the racism. The CCP-PRC is, as were Hitler and Tojo - Hannibal and all the rest of them throught history. The CCP-PRC has fallen for the well known historical mistake, indeed fantasy, that Beijing can and will win a quick and 'clean' war against the United States. After that the world will of course follow as China's rightful tributary states. The thinking is rather clean and neat, but a proven and guaranteed loser. The problem in the nuclear world and with terrorists abounding, is at what present cost to life on earth

Beijing's coming 'clean and quick' war plan is essentially to disable US military and civilian satellites in inner space, to knock out all US cyber capabilities, then to destroy the US Navy on the high seas. This is the quick and clean 'midwife' belief in Beijing.

Beijing is impatient. Deng Xiao Peng started ten years ago to be nothing more than an empty iconic name as Beijing since has abandoned all that Deng had said about stealth, preparing and operating silently and out of the limelight, keeping a friendly and non-aggressive low profile about all growth to include that of the military especially. It's indeed fortunate that the boneheads in Beijing don't know Lao Tzu from Hitler because the clarity coming out of Beijing is more than helpful to knowing and understanding the CCP-PRC and its impatient nefarious schemes and designs.

Quit playing the panda because inside the panda constume is a dragon. I'm a St George man myself.

 

THIRDWORLDCHARLIE

7:15 PM ET

February 10, 2011

Check America's Bank Balance First

Mr. Babbage should first check America's bank balance first, minus the Chinese deposits. Australia the Satrap of South Seas is terrified that Asians (brown, yellow) covet the vast empty, but rich continent. They even come by boats, just as penal pioneers did. Australian anxiety is so much that they now want to be known as 'Asian". Mahatir put an end to this charade.

 

PUBLICUS

9:08 PM ET

February 10, 2011

Controlling and directing the CCP-PRC

XTIANGODLOKI I and others refer you to the CCP-PRC State-Corporate-Military Complex that makes the decisions on the mainland and which decides the direction of present day China. It is uncheked, unlimited, unrestrained in the one party state that China is. Led by the fenquig, China's 21st century KKK, everyone is in for a very bad trip into the beginnings of the next 20 years nevermind the next 100.

 

GRANT

9:42 PM ET

February 10, 2011

Is it really in Australia's

Is it really in Australia's best interests to set itself directly against China? It's one thing to join a regional consensus that an increasingly aggressive nationalist power needs to back down, it's another to decide that you are the enemy of a country.

 

JOHN MILTON XIV

8:35 AM ET

February 11, 2011

To Publius or anyone else who can help me out.

I came to this discussion very late and so probably wouldn't have my questions answered.

You obviously know a great deal more about this than me. Thanks very much for the info. but if I can just ask the following:

1/The strategy you describe was called in some quarters the "Assassin's Mace", yes? Knock out the enemy's comms and then hit him in the dark. But wasn't this primarily an asymmetrical or *defensive* posture??

Of course, defense can easily become attack, but then the USA could do this too and surely China knows this.

2/ Especially given the neo-con debacle and quagmire in Iraq and Afghanistan, are the Chinese really so dumb as to think in terms or the "quick, clean, and easy" victory??

Sun Tzu's very famous first line "To win without fighting is best."

Are we somehow to assume that the Chinese have forgotten this in a frenzy of madness and have instead fallen in love with Rumsfield??

3/ (I'm relying now on Arrighi's recent "Adam Smith in Beijing". )

John Mearsheimer has a "competitive" model of IR. He therefore compares the relation of the USA to Japan and Germany of the early 20th century.

Arrighi, in contrast, puts forward the possibility of a "cooperative" model. He considers the transition from one world hegemon- Britain - to the next, the USA.

He notes that whilst previously USA/British relations were competitive and antagonistic, at the time of hegemonic transition, they were instead cooperative.

Xenophobia aside, is it absolutely impossible for USA/China relations to be cooperative in what may be similarly a period of hegemonic transition??

(I have a some difficulty with sticking to this "hegemonic" model, and incline instead to the "multi-polar" one, but leaving that to one side)

We hear a very great deal about what the USA lectures to China.

Human rights and "democracy-deficit". Fair enough and good call.

But this "currency issue" has always struck me as containing a very great deal of BS.

In other words, how much advice could China have to tell the USA?? Get your own house in order, stop blowing your budget on your gargantuan military, and address your own trade deficit, WITH US THE CHINESE.

At the risk of seeming pollyanna, about all this, surely then it is in interests of both sides to *cooperate* rather than the *compete*.

FP's own D. Drezner speaks about the end of "compellance" power and the vacant field being left to "deterrence".

A post-hegemonic, multi-polar world will likely be very chaotic.

Is *cooperation* then a simply a pipe-dream??

 

JOHN MILTON XIV

8:38 AM ET

February 11, 2011

Correction

"John Mearsheimer has a "competitive" model of IR. He therefore compares the relation of the USA to Japan and Germany of the early 20th century."

should read

"John Mearsheimer has a "competitive" model of IR. He therefore compares the relation of the USA to China of today to the relation of USA to Japan and Germany of the early 20th century."

 

PUBLICUS

9:29 PM ET

February 11, 2011

Well, John XIV

John Milton is a bit too passe' in his religious thinking and writings than would interest me in the contemporary world, in the godless CCP-PRC in particular and especially. My minor in English did not include much more of Milton than I considered I minimally needed. My two simultaneous Bachelor degrees in Sociology and Political Science - Political Sociology - and the past 36 consecutive months of living and working on mainland CCP-PRC give me a certain perspective, as do my years of working as professional staff in the Congress in Washington. And let's not forget the cultural aspect of my varied experience of the past 39 years of a professional career and its diverse original observations. So I might be a bit more hardnosed than you are in realpolitik.

When you request assistance in these matters, you unduly humble yourself. For instance, the attempt which you reference to try to compare China today to the Germany of the turn of the 20th century is well known and much hashed over, just as are Milton and his works. The CCP-PRC are racist, even more so than Germany ever became, but other differences exist between then and now such as Beijing redefining fascism in 21st century terms, i.e., reactionary (censoring) towards free speech and IT and elevating the state above all other considerations and factors, which we know to be in direct contravention to all that Marx argued and envisiged,

You note that your rely on many sources, authors, different works and different/varied bodies of thought. That certainly is more than obvious in your posts. In contrast, however, at least for the moment, is my single and sole suggestion to you that at this point you Google the word "Fenqing." Once a highly literate and intellectually capable person such as yourself is introduced to the fenqing, China's globalist 21st century KKK, I think you would gain more insight and understanding, comprehension, of the CCP-PRC than by reading 100 books about present mainland China, or by considering passe' historical comparasons and contrasts, or by citing theoretical analytical models, or by trying to find reason or rationality in the motives and actions of people such as those on the mainland of China who, when asked the why of something - anything and everything - blast back at you that there is "No why!"

The only "why" in China is the answer that they are the Chinese. Period. The Chinese believe 100% that they alone among all of humanity come from the stars. So check out the fenqing, okay? Then kindly do get back to me.

 

JOHN MILTON XIV

11:19 PM ET

February 11, 2011

smile and then very concerned frown

I like John Milton 'cos he was a pretty learned dude, and the poetry has resonance with me at least. Downsides?? Quite a few but let's try: Massive ego - esp. when cf. with say his contemporary Bunyan. Most of his fellow Christians/Protestants were extremely humble and admitted of their sins. Milton always considered himself to be basically spotless. Maybe then he was in the final analysis actually a very *Irreligious* man as was say, his contemporary Spinoza?? Association with Cromwell does no one any credit, but then that wasn't his fault.

Meanwhile, back in the real world....

Ok. Thanks very much for all this important info. and the benefits of your impressive experience. And above all for this sobering and chilling reminder to me of the real world of realpolitik.

Yeah, nothing much to say but the obvious: the fenqing are shit-scary.

"...by trying to find reason or rationality in the motives and actions of people such as those on the mainland of China who, when asked the why of something - anything and everything - blast back at you that there is "No why!""

Once again if I could humbly ask the naive question, What then is to be done?
(Sorry to burden you with this impossible question, and I think the outline of the answer to my question is already contained in your previous posts.)

Maybe, a bit like the Japanese ultra right "Emperor-worshipers", the fenqing are just as much a liability as they might be sometimes useful? The Japanese LDP used these ultra-rightists when it suited them but employing fanatics is surely a fraught business.

But of course your point is that the fenqing are only *one* manifestation of an
overall totalitarian system.

Ok and thanks again. I'm scared now and surely fear, sobriety and forewarning are properly realistic attitudes.

 

PUBLICUS

4:56 PM ET

February 13, 2011

What is to be done about the Chinese fenqing?

Well, a CCP mouthpiece in a state organ, the China Daily, recently wrote an article which was also published in a number of other English language newspapers around East and South East Asia in which he stated that the fenqing are "defending the honor" of China. The 'writer' is shameless but he himself is well aware of the fact.

Most fenqing are members of the 75,000,000 member Chinese Communist Party. They are the vanguard of a large state organization and force that is quantitatively unmatched in the world.

Hitler had his vanguard SS blitzkrieg units which were apart from the regular Nazi army; Hitler had his Gestapo which too was separate and distinct. The racist Nazi Party fanatics alone did humongous damage to life and limb leading up to and during WW2. The fenqing are ready to take on their own particular global task as the CCP's 21st century KKK.

The fenqing speak to me of "secrets" which are in fact well known to the US and Western Intelligence services, it's just that the fenqing haven't the intellegence or the cultural capabilities to know that which we others know about the fenqing and the global strategic and military plans and purposes of the CCP and its Central Military Commission. One such supposed fenqing "secret" is the plan of the CCP-PRC to disable all US military and civilian inner space satellites as part of the plan to destroy the United States (after which of course the world would be China's oyster). Such ignorance coupled with blind abolute certaintly is always a fatal cocktail - the only question is how many hundreds of millions will perish as the direct consequence of this latest 'master plan.'

US and Western intelligence, and elected policy makers, openly wring their hands about the (culturally retarded) fenqing because we know there isn't anything we can do about this creation of the CCP from among the CCP created subcultural sheeple of the PRC. The CCP every day is in process of creating new fenqing. I've tried to discuss matters with fenqing but every one invariably shouts to "Shut the fukc up!" then immediately storms out shouting never to have any contact with him again.

There's just not much to work with there. In fact, nothing at all.

 

Shadow Government is a blog about U.S. foreign policy under the Obama administration, written by experienced policy makers from the loyal opposition and curated by Peter D. Feaver and William Inboden.

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