U.S. Navy Will Drill With Southeast Asian Navies

By Mike Ives

A United States Navy reconnaissance plane on Okinawa, Japan, after a mission last year over the South China Sea. Some analysts say America’s military posture in the disputed sea has hardened under President Trump.

HONG KONG — Southeast Asian countries tend to be deeply reluctant to collectively challenge China’s growing military and economic prowess in their region.

But this week, they appear to be doing just that — by holding their first joint naval drills with the United States Navy.
The drills, which will take place partly in the South China Sea, a site of geopolitical tension, began on Monday. 

They were not expected to focus on lethal maneuvers, or to take place in contested waters where China operates military bases.
But the maneuvers follow similar exercises held last year by China and the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations in an undisputed area of the sea, making them a riposte of sorts to Beijing.
During a summer of heightened tensions over territorial claims, plus an escalating trade war between China and the United States, the drills are being closely watched as the latest move in a high-stakes geopolitical chess match between the superpowers and their shared regional allies.
Some analysts see the drills as part of an incremental hardening of America’s military posture in the South China Sea under President Trump, a strategy that has not been accompanied by additional American diplomacy or incentives for its partners.
“The United States is taking a risk both that its partners will be less inclined to work with it because they are nervous about signaling security cooperation when there’s nothing else there, and that China will continue to advance in the places in which we are absent” on diplomatic and economic fronts, said Mira Rapp-Hooper, an expert on Asian security affairs at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.

United States Navy sailors monitoring radar and other instruments aboard the guided-missile cruiser U.S.S. Chancellorsville in the South China Sea in 2016.

“So from a basic balance-of-power perspective, we are not holding the line nearly as well as we should be,” she added.
The United States Navy declined to comment on the record ahead of the drills, citing operational sensitivities.
But in a statement late Sunday, the Navy said the drills would include “a sea phase in international waters in Southeast Asia, including the Gulf of Thailand and South China Sea.” 

It said they would focus partly on “search and seizure,” “maritime asset tracking” and “countering maritime threats,” among other subjects.
The statement said the drills would include eight warships, four aircraft and more than 1,000 personnel. 

It said the American military hardware included a littoral combat ship, a guided-missile destroyer, three MH-60 helicopters and a P-8 Poseidon plane.
The Poseidon is a type of reconnaissance aircraft that the United States has used to conduct surveillance flights over the South China Sea, including around disputed reefs that China has filled out and turned into military bases.
The drills were scheduled to begin on Monday at Sattahip, a Thai naval base, after “pre-sail activities in Thailand, Singapore and Brunei,” and to end in Singapore. 

The Navy’s statement did not say when the drills would end.
Many of the drills will take place this week off Ca Mau Province, on the southern tip of Vietnam, said Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a Thai political analyst. 

He added that the drills would “reinforce the view that geopolitical tensions are shifting from land to sea.”

An MH-60 helicopter preparing for to take off from the U.S.S. Chancellorsville in the South China Sea in 2016.

The timing is ideal for Vietnam, which is deeply worried about a state-owned Chinese survey ship that has been spotted this summer in what the Vietnamese regard as their own territorial waters. 

Last month, the State Department called the survey ship’s movements an effort by Beijing to “intimidate other claimants out of developing resources in the South China Sea,” including what it said was $2.5 trillion worth of unexploited oil and natural gas.
“Vietnam should be happy” that the drills are taking place given China’s recent “aggression in its waters,” said Luc Anh Tuan, a researcher at the University of New South Wales in Australia.
“Hanoi nevertheless will manage to downplay the significance of the drill because like other ASEAN fellows, it does not want to create an impression of a coalition against China,” added Tuan, who is on educational leave from the Vietnamese Ministry of Public Security.

The Vietnamese Foreign Ministry confirmed in an email last week that the drills were happening, but declined to answer other questions.
Beijing’s actions in the sea are hugely sensitive for Hanoi because it is under heavy domestic pressure to be tough on China, its largest trading partner and former colonial occupier. 

But Vietnam is also racing to find new energy sources to power its fast-growing economy.
In a sign of those tensions, there were rare anti-Chinese riots in Vietnam in 2014, after a state-owned Chinese company defiantly towed an oil rig into disputed waters near the Vietnamese coast, prompting a tense maritime standoff. 

Three years later, Vietnam suspended a gas-drilling project in the sea by a subsidiary of a Spanish company because the project was said to have irritated Beijing.

The Chancellorsville in the South China Sea in 2016, with a Chinese Navy frigate in the background.

ASEAN countries will be more concerned about China’s reaction to the drills than they were about the American reaction to last year’s drills with China, said Gregory B. Poling, an expert on Southeast Asia at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. 

He said that was especially true for countries, such as Thailand, that had no territorial disputes in the sea with China.
“They don’t want to do it in a way that upsets the apple cart” of trade with China, he said of the Thai authorities. 

The Thai Navy declined to comment.
The United States Navy said in its statement that its joint naval drills with ASEAN were first proposed in 2017 and confirmed last October. 

That is the same month that China held its first joint naval drills with ASEAN, off its southern coast.
In a telephone interview, Kasit Piromya, a former Thai foreign minister, downplayed the risks for ASEAN of holding naval drills with the United States. 

“From Thailand’s point of view, it’s still an open sea,” he said, adding that any such exercises with any outside partner should be neither aggressive nor defensive.
But Beijing’s territorial claims in the sea have no legal basis, he added, echoing the conclusion of an international tribunal that ruled against China three years ago. 

He said a key question now was whether Southeast Asian leaders could summon the “guts” to confront China’s construction of artificial islands and military bases in the sea, even though some of them have been “kowtowing to Chinese pressures and financial generosity.”
“I would urge the ASEAN leaders, the 10 of them, to get together and speak in a black-and-white manner to the Chinese leadership without being blackmailed or bought out by China’s financial offers,” he said.

Stopping the Chinese Bully

U.S. Navy again sails through Taiwan Strait

By Idrees Ali

The Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Preble (DDG 88) transits the Indian Ocean March 29, 2018. Picture taken March 29, 2018. 

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. military said it sent two Navy ships through the Taiwan Strait on Wednesday, its latest transit through the strategic waterway.
Taiwan is one of a growing number of flashpoints in the U.S.-China relationship, which also include a trade war, U.S. sanctions and China’s increasingly muscular military posture in the South China Sea, where the United States also conducts freedom-of-navigation patrols.
The voyage will be viewed by Taiwan as a sign of support from the Trump administration amid growing friction between Taipei and Beijing, which views the island as a breakaway province.
The transit was carried out by the destroyer Preble and the Navy oil tanker Walter S. Diehl, a U.S. military spokesman told Reuters.
“The ships’ transit through the Taiwan Strait demonstrates the U.S. commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific,” Commander Clay Doss, a spokesman for the U.S. Navy’s Seventh Fleet, said in a statement.

Taiwan’s Defense Ministry said the two U.S. ships had sailed north through the Taiwan Strait and that they had monitored the mission.
Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen said there was no cause for alarm.
“Nothing abnormal happened during it, please everyone rest assured,” she wrote on her Facebook page.
U.S. warships have sailed through the Taiwan Strait at least once a month since the start of this year. The United States restarted such missions on a regular basis last July.
The United States has no formal ties with Taiwan but is bound by law to help provide the island with the means to defend itself and is its main source of arms.
The Pentagon says Washington has sold Taipei more than $15 billion in weaponry since 2010.
China has been ramping up pressure to assert its sovereignty over the island, which it considers part of “one China” and sacred Chinese territory, to be brought under Beijing’s control by force if needed.
Beijing said a recent Taiwan Strait passage by a French warship, first reported by Reuters, was illegal.
China has repeatedly sent military aircraft and ships to circle Taiwan on exercises in the past few years and worked to isolate it internationally, whittling down its few remaining diplomatic allies.
The U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency released a report earlier this year describing Taiwan as the “primary driver” for China’s military modernization, which it said had made major advances in recent years.
On Sunday, the Preble sailed near Scarborough Shoal claimed by China in the South China Sea.

Military Sealift Command fleet replenishment oiler USNS Walter S. Diehl (T-AO 193) pulls alongside hospital ship USNS Mercy (T-AH 19) to deliver supplies and mail by a connected replenishment in the South China Sea August 15, 2016. Picture taken August 15, 2016. 

The Necessary War

Chinese are convincing themselves they can launch surprise attacks on the U.S. Navy and kill thousands of Americans

by Gordon G. Chang

“The United States is most afraid of death,” said Rear Admiral Luo Yuan on December 20, 2018, to an audience in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen. 

“We now have Dong Feng-21D, Dong Feng-26 missiles. These are aircraft carrier killers. We attack and sink one of their aircraft carriers. Let them suffer 5,000 casualties. Attack and sink two carriers, casualties 10,000. Let’s see if the U.S. is afraid or not?”
Luo, who has a history of bellicose statements, is nonetheless seen as reflecting thinking in the senior ranks. 

He was the second Chinese military officer in December, just days before the fortieth anniversary of America’s recognition of the People’s Republic on January 1, to publicly urge an unprovoked attack on American vessels.
In China, there is war talk, and not just from the officer corps. 

“ China’s hottest new read ” at the moment is a re-issuance of a collection of 1938 speeches of Mao Zedong. 

On Protracted War warned a country then in the midst of both civil and external strife that the Chinese people would have to endure long hardships before prevailing over enemies.
At a time Chinese state media is full of venom for the United States, the current popularity of Mao’s message is a warning. 

It is possible Chinese leadership figures are talking war as a way to prevail in factional infighting.
The Party, in any event, looks to be in turmoil. 

Its Central Committee, composed of the organization’s top 380 officials, did not hold its Fourth Plenum of the 19th Congress this year as expected.
Observers in the fall had thought that, given the severe challenges facing the Chinese economy, ruler Xi Jinping would call the Fourth Plenum before the end of the year to take up pressing issues of structural reform.
And there was one more reason for the Central Committee to hold the plenum. 

“U.S. policy on China has markedly shifted from engagement to competition, a development that threatens the regime survival,” noted the always interesting SinoInsider site in late October. 

“Thus, Xi Jinping has a need to assemble the Party elites at a plenary session to get them on the same page to cope with internal and external crises.”
So why was there no Fourth Plenum? 

“My guess is that Xi has completed his power concentration and simply does not care about convening another plenum to avoid making unnecessary waves,” a prominent China watcher e-mailed me this week, writing on condition of anonymity. 

“He alone can decide all things. This is exactly what Mao Zedong did, i.e., holding plenums very sporadically when he had total control and very frequently when he wanted to purge his comrades.”
As Xi is known to be an admirer of Mao and a copier of his stratagems, it is plausible that China’s leader is fully in control.
Most China watchers, however, subscribe to the opposite narrative, that Xi’s position is increasingly precarious. 

As SinoInsider observed early this month, “If no Fourth Plenum is held, this means that the factional struggle is extremely intense and Xi is in grave danger.”
“Some analysts,” writes leading China watcher Willy Lam of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, “believe that Xi’s unpopularity among regional officials could be one reason why he has decided not to convene the Fourth Plenum of the Central Committee this year.”
This explanation is consistent with the many observations that Xi’s opponents are blaming him for policy failures, like the quickly slowing economy and trade friction with the United States. 

Having accumulated almost-unprecedented power, the “Chairman of Everything, Everywhere, and Everyone” has no one to blame.
It’s not surprising then, that on December 18, 2018 Xi gave a contentless speech marking the fortieth anniversary of the Third Plenum of the 11th Central Committee, the event considered to be the start of China’s “reform era.” 

He had little of substance to say, many think, because the Party is so divided. 

And there was an additional sign of division: neither Jiang Zemin nor Hu Jintao, Xi’s two immediate predecessors and still rivals, attended his 13,000-character, nearly 90-minute oration.
Whether or not the Xi-is-falling theory is correct, it’s clear the failure to hold the Fourth Plenum is significant.

Even after Xi’s assumption of power at the end of 2012, the Party operated with monotonous regularity. 

National Congress meetings were convened every five years and plenums, held between the Congresses, occurred in a predictable pattern.
Many fans of the Party—and some of its critics like Columbia University’s Andrew Nathan—hailed the regularity, saying the ruling organization had developed rules and norms and had solved the problem of succession, the key weakness of authoritarian regimes. 

For instance, Nathan is famous for many reasons, including coining the phrase “authoritarian resilience.”
But the Communist Party is pattern-bound—and resilient—no more, however. 

This year, the Third Plenum, usually reserved for matters of economic reform, was held not in the fall, as custom dictated, but in February. 

Xi, it appears, hijacked it to talk about governance issues, perhaps his removal of the term limit for the state presidency. 

And, as noted, the Fourth Plenum, meant to cover the issues normally taken up by the Third, was not convened at all.
It’s bad enough that Chinese military officers are regularly threatening to attack the U.S. Navy, but it’s worse they are doing so at a time of evident turbulence at the top of the Communist Party. Outsiders may not know what is happening in Beijing, but everybody can see the symptoms of distress in senior circles.
And this distress should lead Washington to fundamentally rethink relations with the communist superstate. 

While some Americans will celebrate the fortieth anniversary of ties, disagreements inside the Communist Party will almost certainly drive relations with Washington in unwelcome directions, especially when those disagreements are in part about relations with America.
The Trump administration has begun to shift its approach to Beijing, issuing, for instance, the National Security Strategy last December. 

In that landmark document, China is labeled, along with Russia, a “revisionist power.” 

That’s a start toward a more realistic view, but the Chinese state appears far less stable and much more aggressive than the document portrays. 

It’s possible, for instance, that a failing China will lash out.
That’s an especially disturbing possibility now that belligerent Chinese officers are convincing themselves they can launch surprise attacks on the U.S. Navy and kill thousands of Americans.

Two U.S. Navy ships pass through Taiwan Strait, opposing China

Reuters

WASHINGTON -- The United States sent two Navy ships through the Taiwan Strait on Wednesday in the third such operation this year, as the U.S. military increases the frequency of transits through the strategic waterway despite opposition from China.
The voyage will be viewed in self-ruled Taiwan as a sign of support from U.S. President Donald Trump’s government amid growing friction between Taipei and Beijing.
“The ships’ transit through the Taiwan Strait demonstrates the U.S. commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific,” U.S. Pacific Fleet said in a statement.
“The U.S. Navy will continue to fly, sail and operate anywhere international law allows.”
It said the passage was carried out by the destroyer USS Stockdale and the Pecos, a replenishment vessel.
Taiwan’s defense ministry said it was a normal transit through international waters in the Taiwan Strait and Taiwan forces had monitored the passage of the ships.
China’s foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said at a regular briefing on Thursday that Beijing had expressed its concern over the passage to the United States.

The U.S. patrol comes ahead of an expected meeting between President Trump and Chinese dictator Xi Jinping this week in Argentina on the sidelines of a G20 summit.
The U.S. Navy conducted a similar mission in the strait’s international waters in July, which had been the first such voyage in about a year.
The latest operation shows the U.S. Navy is increasing the pace of strait passages.
Washington has no formal ties with Taiwan, but is bound by law to help it defend itself and is the island’s main source of arms. 

The Pentagon says Washington has sold Taiwan more than $15 billion in weaponry since 2010.
Over the weekend, Taiwan’s ruling pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party suffered heavy losses in mayoral and county elections to the China-friendly Kuomintang, which has been welcomed by Beijing.
Taiwan is one of a growing number of flashpoints in the U.S.-China relationship, which also include a trade war, U.S. sanctions and China’s increasingly muscular military posture in the South China Sea, where the United States also conducts freedom of navigation patrols.

In South China Sea, a display of U.S. Navy strength — and a message to Beijing

By Shibani Mahtani

A U.S. Navy plane is seen at the hanger below the deck of the U.S.S. Ronald Reagan, where dozens of fight jets, helicopters and other aircraft are stored and maintained. 

ABOARD THE USS RONALD REAGAN — As fighter jets roared off the flight deck and darted above the South China Sea, visitors onboard the carrier USS Ronald Reagan raised their phones for the inevitable selfies.
Among those clicking souvenir images was a lieutenant general from the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, who was part of a VIP guest list as the carrier moved through contested waters.
The carrier — which docked last week in Hong Kong in a good-faith gesture from Beijing — also offered a snapshot into challenges for the Pentagon in the Asia-Pacific region as China builds up its own naval prowess and ramps up efforts to solidify territorial demands.
The United States seeks to keep its place as the dominant naval power across East Asia, where Washington and its allies believe Beijing is trying to reorder international rules and military alliances in place since World War II.
But Washington also has to contend with China’s fast-growing military reach. 

That includes investments to its navy and missile systems to directly counter American military might.
Few places display Beijing’s ambitions more clearly than in the South China Sea.

China has built a number of artificial structures and begun to militarize them. 

Western military analysts say China is able to position missiles that could destroy American aircraft carriers and other warships.
China claims it has historic rights to these waters, a crucial waterway where one third of global trade flows.
The United States and its allies, meanwhile, view the South China Sea as a vital international maritime corridor. 

Nations bordering the sea, including the Philippines, look to the U.S. Navy to help defend their access.
The United States has historical alliances in the Pacific that offer some advantage. 

But the Belt and Road Initiative — a grand plan of investment and construction across Asia and beyond — is widely seen as a way to chip away at the U.S. bonds in the region by trading economic favors for influence.
Trade issues are expected to dominate planned talks later this week between President Trump and Chinese dictator Xi Jinping on the sidelines of a summit of Group of 20 industrialized nations in Buenos Aires this week.
But military concerns, including China’s expansion into the South China Sea, have raised alarm in Washington. 

Speaking at a regional summit in Singapore this month, Vice President Pence said these seas do not “belong to any one nation” and reaffirmed American military commitment to the region — but analysts say this is getting harder to do as China builds up its own arsenal.
“There’s a need for the U.S. to recognize that China’s growing diversity and range of missiles is going to complicate anything we seek to do in any contingency, be it in the South China Sea, or with Taiwan or North Korea,” said Derek Grossman, a senior defense analyst who specializes in the Indo-Pacific region at the Rand Corp.
A recent Rand study found the Chinese navy during the past two decades caught up to the United States by modernizing “extraordinarily quickly by any reasonable historical standard.”
“In basically every category, China has narrowed the gap [with the United States] significantly,” Grossman added.
A bipartisan committee created by Congress also concluded in a report that the United States has lost its military edge and could lose in a potential war with Russia or China.
In a speech Nov. 17, Adm. Phil Davidson, commander of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, identified China as the greatest challenge to the “long-term stability” of the region. 

He referred to Beijing’s infrastructure building across Asia as “insidious” debt-trap diplomacy and accused China of intimidating countries in the region by militarizing these seas.
China, he added, has built a “Great Wall of SAMs” — surface-to-air missiles — that has the “potential to exert national control over international waters and airspace.”
These have been built on artificial islands China constructed in the South China Sea, where the Philippines, Vietnam and others also have claims of sovereignty, backed by international law.
China has rejected a 2016 ruling by an international court that invalidates its claims to the sea. 

At the same time, Beijing has long objected to this heavy American military presence in these waters.
As the USS Reagan and another aircraft carrier were conducting drills off the coast of the Philippines last week, a spokeswoman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry said pointedly that military actions under the “pretext freedom of navigation” undermine the sovereignty of countries around the South China Sea.
Aside from land missiles, China is developing its own aircraft carriers — a move directly aimed at competing with the United States, which has 11.
But it has a long way to go.
The one Chinese aircraft carrier in service, the Liaoning, is under maintenance.
A second is conducting trials, and a third is in the pipeline.
“We have been operating aircraft carriers for an awful long time; we’re pretty good at it,” Rear Adm. Karl O. Thomas, commander of the Reagan strike group, said in an interview.
“It will take [the Chinese] some time to get there,” he added.
Collin Koh, an expert on Chinese maritime strategy at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University, said the Chinese navy continues to face difficulty in recruiting pilots.
“The U.S. Navy carrier has been a result of decades of experience; it is a gap that China can’t necessarily bridge within a short span of time and hone it to a level comparable to the U.S.,” he said.
The Chinese navy, he adds, has had no combat experience for three decades, and technology such as its anti-ship ballistic missiles has not been tested.
The Chinese lieutenant general invited on board, Tan Benhong, the commander of the PLA garrison in Hong Kong, had an amicable exchange with his counterparts.
“We had a great meeting with them when they came onboard,” said Thomas.
“We have the opportunity to show our contemporaries how we operate our aircraft carrier.”
But just last month, a Chinese warship came within 45 yards of a U.S. destroyer as it sailed past the Chinese-claimed Spratly Islands in the South China Sea, almost causing a collision.

Sina Delenda Est

With Ships and Missiles, China Is Ready to Challenge U.S. Navy in Pacific
By Steven Lee Myers

China’s first aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, at sea in April. First launched by the Soviet Union in 1988, it was sold for $20 million to a Chinese investor who said it would become a floating casino, though he was in reality acting on behalf of the People’s Liberation Army Navy.

DALIAN, China — In April, on the 69th anniversary of the founding of China’s Navy, the country’s first domestically built aircraft carrier stirred from its berth in the port city of Dalian on the Bohai Sea, tethered to tugboats for a test of its seaworthiness.
“China’s first homegrown aircraft carrier just moved a bit, and the United States, Japan and India squirmed,” a military news website crowed, referring to the three nations China views as its main rivals.
Not long ago, such boasts would have been dismissed as the bravado of a second-string military. 

No longer.
A modernization program focused on naval and missile forces has shifted the balance of power in the Pacific in ways the United States and its allies are only beginning to digest.
While China lags in projecting firepower on a global scale, it can now challenge American military supremacy in the places that matter most to it: the waters around Taiwan and in the disputed South China Sea.
That means a growing section of the Pacific Ocean — where the United States has operated unchallenged since the naval battles of World War II — is once again contested territory, with Chinese warships and aircraft regularly bumping up against those of the United States and its allies.
To prevail in these waters, according to officials and analysts who scrutinize Chinese military developments, China does not need a military that can defeat the United States outright but merely one that can make intervention in the region too costly for Washington to contemplate. 

Many analysts say Beijing has already achieved that goal.
To do so, it has developed “anti-access” capabilities that use radar, satellites and missiles to neutralize the decisive edge that America’s powerful aircraft carrier strike groups have enjoyed. 

It is also rapidly expanding its naval forces with the goal of deploying a “blue water” navy that would allow it to defend its growing interests beyond its coastal waters.
“China is now capable of controlling the South China Sea in all scenarios short of war with the United States,” the new commander of the United States Indo-Pacific Command, Adm. Philip S. Davidson, acknowledged in written remarks submitted during his Senate confirmation process in March.
He described China as a “peer competitor” gaining on the United States not by matching its forces weapon by weapon but by building critical “asymmetrical capabilities,” including with anti-ship missiles and in submarine warfare. 

“There is no guarantee that the United States would win a future conflict with China,” he concluded.
Last year, the Chinese Navy became the world’s largest, with more warships and submarines than the United States, and it continues to build new ships at a stunning rate. 

Though the American fleet remains superior qualitatively, it is spread much thinner.
“The task of building a powerful navy has never been as urgent as it is today,” Xi Jinping declared in April as he presided over a naval procession off the southern Chinese island of Hainan that opened exercises involving 48 ships and submarines. 

The Ministry of National Defense said they were the largest since the People’s Republic of China was founded in 1949.
Even as the United States wages a trade war against China, Chinese warships and aircraft have picked up the pace of operations in the waters off Japan, Taiwan, and the islands, shoals and reefs it has claimed in the South China Sea over the objections of Vietnam and the Philippines.
When two American warships — the Higgins, a destroyer, and the Antietam, a cruiser — sailed within a few miles of disputed islands in the Paracels in May, Chinese vessels rushed to challenge what Beijing later denounced as “a provocative act.” 

China did the same to three Australian ships passing through the South China Sea in April.
Only three years ago, Xi stood beside President Barack Obama in the Rose Garden and promised not to militarize artificial islands it has built farther south in the Spratlys archipelago. 

Chinese officials have since acknowledged deploying missiles there, but argue that they are necessary because of American “incursions” in Chinese waters.
When Defense Secretary Jim Mattis visited Beijing in June, Xi bluntly warned him that China would not yield “even one inch” of territory it claims as its own.
Ballistic missiles designed to strike ships on display at a military parade in Beijing in 2015.

‘Anti-Access/Area Denial’
China’s naval expansion began in 2000 but accelerated sharply after Xi took command in 2013. 

He has drastically shifted the military’s focus to naval as well as air and strategic rocket forces, while purging commanders accused of corruption and cutting the traditional land forces.
The People’s Liberation Army — the bedrock of Communist power since the revolution — has actually shrunk in order to free up resources for a more modern fighting force. 

Since 2015, the army has cut 300,000 enlisted soldiers and officers, paring the military to two million personnel over all, compared with 1.4 million in the United States.
While every branch of China’s armed forces lags behind the United States’ in firepower and experience, China has made significant gains in asymmetrical weaponry to blunt America’s advantages. 

One focus has been in what American military planners call A2/AD, for “anti-access/area denial,” or what the Chinese call “counter-intervention.”
A centerpiece of this strategy is an arsenal of high-speed ballistic missiles designed to strike moving ships. 

The latest versions, the DF-21D and, since 2016, the DF-26, are popularly known as “carrier killers,” since they can threaten the most powerful vessels in the American fleet long before they get close to China.
The DF-26, which made its debut in a military parade in Beijing in 2015 and was tested in the Bohai Sea last year, has a range that would allow it to menace ships and bases as far away as Guam, according to the latest Pentagon report on the Chinese military, released this month. 

These missiles are almost impossible to detect and intercept, and are directed at moving targets by an increasingly sophisticated Chinese network of radar and satellites.
China announced in April that the DF-26 had entered service. 

State television showed rocket launchers carrying 22 of them, though the number deployed now is unknown. 

A brigade equipped with them is reported to be based in Henan Province, in central China.
Such missiles pose a particular challenge to American commanders because neutralizing them might require an attack deep inside Chinese territory, which would be a major escalation.
The American Navy has never faced such a threat before, the Congressional Research Office warned in a report in May, adding that some analysts consider the missiles “game changing.”
The “carrier killers” have been supplemented by the deployment this year of missiles in the South China Sea. 

The weaponry includes the new YJ-12B anti-ship cruise missile, which puts most of the waters between the Philippines and Vietnam in range.
The Chinese military is preparing for a limited military conflict from the sea, according to a 2013 paper in a journal called The Science of Military Strategy.
Lyle Morris, an analyst with the RAND Corporation, said that China’s deployment of missiles in the disputed Paracel and Spratly Islands “will dramatically change how the U.S. military operates” across Asia and the Pacific.
The best American response, he added, would be “to find new and innovative methods” of deploying ships outside their range. 

Given the longer range of the ballistic missiles, however, that is not possible “in most contingencies” the American Navy would be likely to face in Asia.

Soldiers with the People’s Liberation Army Navy patrolling Woody Island in the disputed Paracel archipelago in 2016.

Blue-Water Ambitions
The aircraft carrier that put to sea in April for its first trials is China’s second, but the first built domestically. 

It is the most prominent manifestation of a modernization project meant to propel the country into the upper tier of military powers. 

Only the United States, with 11 nuclear-powered carriers, operates more than one.
A third Chinese carrier is under construction in a port near Shanghai. 

Analysts believe China will eventually build five or six.
The Chinese military, traditionally focused on repelling a land invasion, increasingly aims to project power into the “blue waters” of the world to protect China’s expanding economic and diplomatic interests, from the Pacific to the Atlantic.
The carriers attract the most attention but China’s naval expansion has been far broader. 

The Chinese Navy — officially the People’s Liberation Army Navy — has built more than 100 warships and submarines in the last decade alone, more than the entire naval fleets of all but a handful of nations.
Last year, China also introduced the first of a new class of a heavy cruisers — or “super destroyers” — that, according to the American Office of Naval Intelligence, “are comparable in many respects to most modern Western warships.” 

Two more were launched from dry dock in Dalian in July, the state media reported.
Last year, China counted 317 warships and submarines in active service, compared with 283 in the United States Navy, which has been essentially unrivaled in the open seas since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Unlike the Soviet Union, which drained its coffers during the Cold War arms race, military spending in China is a manageable percentage of a growing economy. 

Beijing’s defense budget now ranks second only to the United States: $228 billion to $610 billion, according to estimates by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
The roots of China’s focus on sea power and “area denial” can be traced to what many Chinese viewed as humiliation in 1995 and 1996. 

When Taiwan moved to hold its first democratic elections, China fired missiles near the island, prompting President Bill Clinton to dispatch two aircraft carriers to the region.
“We avoided the sea, took it as a moat and a joyful little pond to the Middle Kingdom,” a naval analyst, Chen Guoqiang, wrote recently in the official Navy newspaper. 

“So not only did we lose all the advantages of the sea but also our territories became the prey of the imperialist powers.”
China’s naval buildup since then has been remarkable. 

In 1995, China had only three submarines. 

It now has nearly 60 and plans to expand to nearly 80, according to a report last month by the United States Congressional Research Service.
As it has in its civilian economy, China has bought or absorbed technologies from the rest of the world, in some cases illicitly. 

Much of its military hardware is of Soviet origin or modeled on antiquated Soviet designs, but with each new wave of production, analysts say, China is deploying more advanced capabilities.
China’s first aircraft carrier was originally launched by the Soviet Union in 1988 and left to rust when the nation collapsed three years later. 

Newly independent Ukraine sold it for $20 million to a Chinese investor who claimed it would become a floating casino, though he was really acting on behalf of Beijing, which refurbished the vessel and named it the Liaoning.
The second aircraft carrier — as yet unnamed — is largely based on the Liaoning’s designs, but is reported to have enhanced technology. 

In February, the China Shipbuilding Industry Corporation disclosed that it has plans to build nuclear-powered carriers, which have far greater endurance than ones that require refueling stops.
China’s military has encountered some growing pains. 

It is hampered by corruption, which Xi has vowed to wipe out, and a lack of combat experience. 

As a fighting force, it remains untested by combat.
In January, it was embarrassed when one of its most advanced submarines was detected as it neared Japanese islands known as the Senkaku. 

The attack submarine should never have been spotted.
The second aircraft carrier also appears to have experienced hiccups. 

Its first sea trials were announced in April and then inexplicably delayed. 

Not long after the trials went ahead in May, the general manager of China Shipbuilding was placed under investigation for “serious violation of laws and discipline,” the official Xinhua news agency reported, without elaborating.

Fiery Cross Reef in the South China Sea. The deployment of missiles on three man-made reefs in the disputed Spratly Islands — Subi, Mischief and Fiery Cross — has prompted protests from the White House.

Defending Its Claims
China’s military advances have nonetheless emboldened the country’s leadership.
The state media declared the carrier Liaoning “combat ready” in the summer after it moved with six other warships through the Miyako Strait that splits Japan’s Ryukyu Islands and conducted its first flight operations in the Pacific.
The Liaoning’s battle group now routinely circles Taiwan. 

So do Chinese fighter jets and bombers.
China’s new J-20 stealth fighter conducted its first training mission at sea in May, while its strategic bomber, the H-6, landed for the first time on Woody Island in the Paracels. 

From the airfield there or from those in the Spratly Islands, the bombers could strike all of Southeast Asia.
The recent Pentagon report noted that H-6 flights in the Pacific were intended to demonstrate the ability to strike American bases in Japan and South Korea, and as far away as Guam.
“Competition is the American way of seeing it,” said Li Jie, an analyst with the Chinese Naval Research Institute in Beijing. 

“China is simply protecting its rights and its interests in the Pacific.”
And China’s interests are expanding.
In 2017, it opened its first overseas military base in Djibouti, on the Horn of Africa, saying that it will be used to support its participation in multinational antipiracy patrols off Somalia.
It now appears to be planning to acquire access to a network of ports and bases throughout the Indian Ocean. 

Though ostensibly commercial, these projects have laid the groundwork for a necklace of refueling and resupply arrangements that will “facilitate Beijing’s long-range naval operations,” according to a new report by C4ADS, a research organization in Washington.
“They soon will be able, for example, to send a squadron of ships to somewhere, say in Africa, and have all the capabilities to make a landing in force to protect Chinese assets,” said Vassily Kashin, an expert with the Institute of Far Eastern Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow.
The need was driven home in 2015 when Chinese warships evacuated 629 Chinese and 279 foreigners from Yemen when the country’s civil war raged in Aden, a southern port city.
One of the frigates involved in the rescue, the Linyi, was featured in a patriotic blockbuster film, “Operation Red Sea.”
“The Chinese are going to be more present,” Mr. Kashin added, “and everyone has to get used to it.”

Fighter jets on the Liaoning in the East China Sea in April.

America Just Backed Down Against China Again

When China complained about a plan for the Navy to make port calls in Taiwan, Congress listened.
BY JULIAN G. KU 

Three Taiwanese submarines at the Tsoying navy base in Kaohsiung, southern Taiwan, on Jan. 18. 
In June, the Senate Armed Services Committee passed an amendment to the fiscal year 2018 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that would require U.S. Navy warships to conduct port calls in Taiwan — that is, to regularly dock, contrary to current practice, at Taiwanese ports for extended visits. 

The Chinese government quickly indicated its opposition: The amendment drew “solemn representations” from the ministry of foreign affairs, which denounced the U.S. government’s “erroneous actions on Taiwan-related issues.”
I have previously written about how, as a matter of law, Congress almost certainly lacks the constitutional authority to require the president to send the U.S. Navy on port calls to particular countries. 

But on merit, such port calls are a good idea since they would reassure Taiwan of the U.S. commitment to its security while placing China, which claims Taiwan is part of its own sovereign territory, on the defensive. 

A U.S. aircraft carrier visiting a Taiwanese port for an extended visit would be a tangible demonstration of the U.S. Navy’s commitment to maintaining a presence in and around Taiwan in the face of growing Chinese naval strength.
So there was plenty of reason to support a House version of the 2018 NDAA that would have simply required the secretary of defense to submit a report by fall 2018 on the feasibility of such Taiwan port calls. 

Such a provision is perfectly constitutional and would send a useful signal to China that the United States takes Taiwan port calls seriously.
But China’s opposition may have led to Congress further dilute the already watered-down House version of the “port calls” language. 

The Senate recently passed a final version of the 2018 NDAA that no longer requires a report but merely expresses the “sense of Congress” that the U.S. should “consider the advisability and feasibility of reestablishing port of call exchanges between the United States navy and the Taiwan navy.” 

A sense-of-Congress statement is not nothing, but it represents a substantial climb-down from mandating port calls or requiring the Pentagon to report on a plan for them.
Port calls in Taiwan are not going to make or break U.S.-Taiwan policy. 

But it’s notable that Chinese government opposition may have convinced Congress to back off its more aggressive support for this idea; it should remind us of the difficulty of managing foreign policy from the legislative branch. 

As I observed earlier this year, Congress has usefully intervened on Taiwan policy with several bills, including the Taiwan Travel Act and the Taiwan Security Act. 

But given Congress’s many legislative priorities, these bills are likely to languish in committee. 

The NDAA, by contrast, must pass every year to authorize military operations, which is why it is so disappointing the more aggressive port call provisions were removed.
On the other hand, just as Congress backs off its effort to manage Taiwan policy and push port calls, the Trump administration’s China team may finally be coming together behind the idea. 

After all, the individual most responsible for promoting the idea of U.S. Navy port calls in Taiwan, Randall Schriver, is likely to soon be confirmed to the position of assistant secretary of defense for Asia-Pacific affairs. 

In prepared answers to policy questions at his confirmation hearing in November, Schriver reiterated his support for port calls in Taiwan, even though the Pentagon has been neutral on this issue so far:
Since we reserve for ourselves the right to define our own One China Policy, commencing U.S. ship visits to Taiwan and vice versa can be included. 

The benefits of U.S. port calls to Taiwan would fall into the traditional justification for port calls to any other friendly country in the world — rest and relaxation for the sailors (which aids in recruitment and retention); minor repair and maintenance; port familiarization to assist in planning for a known contingency; and to support our political goals of supporting Taiwan and deterring China. 

If there are alternate views in the Department of Defense, I look forward to learning more about the counter arguments.
We will see whether Schriver’s views prevail within the U.S. government, where the pro-China State Department is likely to provide an opposing view in deference to what are likely to be vigorous Chinese government protests. 

But the baton on port calls, and Taiwan policy as a whole, is probably being handed over to the executive branch. 

For those of us outside the administration, whether such port calls happen will be an interesting signal of Schriver’s influence in shaping U.S.-China policy — and the ultimate direction of that policy in the Trump administration.

The Necessary War

China Won’t Hand the U.S. Navy Victory Like Japan Did
BY JAMES HOLMES

Otto von Bismarck once reportedly quipped that Providence favors “fools, drunkards, and the United States of America.” Exhibit A: the Battle of Midway.

That’s the June 1942 high-seas clash in the Pacific Ocean where the U.S. Navy reversed the six months of disaster that followed the Imperial Japanese Navy’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbor.
There’s nothing wrong with ballyhooing the 75th anniversary of Midway. 

An inferior American force steamed into battle and won big, preparing the way for ultimate victory. But make no mistake: The U.S. Navy was both fortunate in its Japanese foe during World War II and the beneficiary of farsighted political leadership at home.
Neither condition holds today. 

If America were to be involved in a major naval battle in the Pacific today, it would likely be with a decaying fleet, against a more evenly matched opponent such as China, and the result could easily turn out differently. 

Midway thus represents a warning as well as a cause for celebration.
A quick recap: The battle took place northeast of the Midway Islands, about halfway in the Pacific between Asia and North America. 

It culminated six months to the day after the Japanese sent the same fleet to pummel the American battle line at Pearl Harbor. 

At a critical moment, dive bombers flying from the USS Enterprise, Yorktown, and Hornet swooped from Pacific skies on the morning of June 4, raining death on Japan’s Kido Butai, or carrier strike force. 

Aviators set three of four Imperial Japanese Navy, or IJN, carriers ablaze within a span of eight minutes. 

The fourth was a smoking ruin before the day was through. None survived.

Japanese naval aviation suffered a hammer blow from which it never fully recovered. 

Midway hurt the IJN far worse than Pearl Harbor hurt the U.S. Navy. 

After all, the Japanese raid struck mainly at American battleships — platforms in the process of being superseded by carriers as the core of naval warfare. (The attack missed the U.S. carriers, which were at sea on Dec. 7, 1941.) 

By contrast, the Kido Butai was the principal striking arm of the IJN, with an unblemished combat record.
Midway gutted Japanese sea power, and the island state’s industrial capacity was too sparse to permit swift construction of new carriers. 

The battle thus doomed Japan’s campaign of Pacific conquest, forcing it onto the defensive. 

If you map Pacific military actions up to June 1942, the arrows all point outward from Japan — but they turn inward after Midway, pointing back at the heart of Japan’s doomed empire.
So we should rejoice in the naval aviators’ heroics and celebrate the tactical artistry of Adm. Ray Spruance, the cerebral commander of Task Force 16, and on and on. 

But it’s tough to imagine any future foe displaying the same strategic and operational indiscipline as Imperial Japan, which frittered away scarce military resources all over the map.
By the spring of 1942, in the months leading up to the fateful battle, the leadership of the IJN was debating what to do next, having already accomplished all its previous goals. 

One faction pushed for the Midway gambit, which envisioned luring out and destroying the carriers that had struck at Tokyo during the Doolittle Raid that April. 

Another wanted to grab parts of the Aleutian Islands. 

Still another clamored to go after Port Moresby, a harbor in New Guinea. 

As my new colleague Craig Symonds points out, rather than choose among these courses of action, the leadership opted to do everything nearly simultaneously.
It started off on the Australian coast. 

An IJN detachment fought the Battle of the Coral Sea in May 1942 and saw one of the Kido Butai’s fleet carriers damaged. 

That carrier, Shokaku, retired to Japan to refit — reducing the carrier fleet’s strength for Midway. 

The Kido Butai went into Midway with a 4-3 carrier advantage rather than the 5-3 advantage it might have commanded had the leadership exercised some operational prudence. 

At the same time as the Kido Butai was headed for Midway, another IJN naval force was headed to seize the Aleutian Islands near Alaska, further dividing Japan’s strength.
And if that wasn’t enough, Japanese commanders broke the Midway fleet into four separate forces and positioned those forces too far from one another to render mutual support. 

Worse, the “Main Body” of battleships and its retinue of lesser warships maintained radio silence throughout the encounter. 

Far from the fighting in the super-dreadnought Yamato, the Main Body’s centerpiece, Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto couldn’t even issue orders to the fleet he was commanding. 

In short, Japanese commanders were culpable for disaster — and should have seen it coming.

Such a conflict is conceivable once again. 

China is mounting a challenge to the U.S.-led international order put in place after the overthrow of Imperial Japan in 1945. 

Beijing claims sovereignty over most of the South China Sea, the same expanse Japan coveted for its natural resources.
Under the law of the sea — of which the United States is the chief guarantor despite lawmakers’ refusal to consent to it — no one is sovereign over waters and skies beyond 12 nautical miles from coastal states’ shorelines. 

This air and sea space represents a commons; it belongs to everyone and no one.
China, moreover, is contesting Japan’s administration of the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea.
It wants to upend a status quo dating to Tokyo’s annexation of the archipelago in 1895. 

In brief, China sees a vital interest in overturning the international order while the United States sees a vital interest in preserving that order — presumably by force of arms.
Still, it’s doubtful that China — the most probable candidate to play the part of Imperial Japan today — would succumb to the strategic overreach of the IJN.
Beijing has exercised impressive restraint amid its rise in recent decades, keeping its foreign-policy ambitions within its military and economic means.
While its navy has made tentative forays into the Indian Ocean and other waterways, China has mostly kept its naval forces concentrated in the China seas, where it sees vital interests at stake.
It deploys distinct superiority over fellow Asian states as a result of its self-restraint.
Yet it has refrained from directly challenging the U.S.-Japan alliance, which operates a powerful combined fleet and enjoys a backstop in the form of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, based in Guam, Hawaii, and West Coast seaports.
But if a battle were to break out, there’s no telling how it would turn out.
It would depend on whether China fragmented its navy into small detachments that attempted to fulfill every commitment Beijing has undertaken, all at the same time, or stayed focused and did one thing at a time — devoting the bulk of available resources to doing that one thing before moving on to the next.
If the People’s Liberation Army leadership does the latter, it could be hard to beat; if the former, the Chinese challenge ought to prove manageable, much as it was in the case of Imperial Japan.
It is certainly possible that the leadership would act unwisely, breaking up its naval resources in an effort to do everything, everywhere, more or less concurrently.
China divides the People’s Liberation Army Navy into three fleets scattered up and down the Asian seaboard in peacetime. (It also backs up those fleets with shore-based firepower in the form of aircraft and missiles. That’s an equalizer that was unavailable to IJN forces fighting in the Central Pacific, thousands of miles from home.)
Chinese commanders might keep the navy divided in wartime, and they too might yield to the temptation to try to do everything at once.
But it would be imprudent for U.S. naval commanders to bank on it.
Better to assume opponents will fight wisely and chart strategy accordingly.
That will require political leadership — specifically, congressional leadership — of the sort the U.S. Navy benefitted from enormously at Midway.
By 1940, long before the United States entered World War II, lawmakers like Rep. Carl Vinson pushed through the Two-Ocean Navy Act.
What that means, in effect, is that shipbuilders commenced bolting together a second — not to mention bigger and badder — U.S. Navy before the outbreak of war.
The republic deployed what amounted to one complete U.S. Navy in the Atlantic Ocean and another in the Pacific.
In short, Vinson & Co. gave the Navy a head start on World War II.
The two-ocean Navy was destined to arrive in the Pacific theater starting in 1943.
It would arrive in overwhelming numbers and capability — and the masterminds of the Midway operation knew the shiny new fleet was on its way. 
Consequently, Adms. Spruance, Frank Jack Fletcher, and Chester Nimitz could afford to be venturesome with the battered fleet left to them after Pearl Harbor.
It’s easy to gamble with a tool when you have a spare.
Today’s U.S. Navy enjoys no such luxury.
Washington infighting has left the U.S. Navy a force in decay.
Midway was an aircraft carrier battle.
How well positioned is today’s carrier fleet to fight such an action?
Well, delays in routine upkeep and overhauls have struck hard at the Navy’s 10 nuclear-powered carriers.
Most of the fighter jets that operate from their flight decks are grounded at present for want of maintenance.
The Navy’s margins have gotten mighty thin, with just 275 ships in the inventory, commitments across the globe to fulfill, and “near-peer” troublemakers such as Russia and China to stare down. Each asset appears precious when you have so few.
That’s doubly true of carriers, where the latest model, the USS Gerald R. Ford, will set taxpayers back almost $13 billion — not counting airplanes, stores, and everything else an aircraft carrier requires to do its work.
Commanders might find it tough to hazard such a vessel in combat, knowing they could lose such a pricey asset — and 10 percent of the nation’s carriers — in an afternoon.
America, it seems, will go to war with the Navy it has — and might prove risk-averse about fighting it.
Nor has the nation’s political leadership acted to fix the shortfall.
The Navy leadership has gone on record favoring a 355-ship fleet, the Donald Trump administration espouses 350, and think tanks have compiled “fleet architecture” studies bumping the figure as high as 414.
As yet, though, little has happened on the shipbuilding front.
No counterpart to the Two-Ocean Navy Act of 1940 is in the works.
The administration’s 2018 budget proposal keeps procurement rates flat.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates the soonest a 355-ship fleet could be at sea would be 2035 — and that’s if resources start flowing this year.
This makes for a pale imitation of the World War II buildup.
Where’s Carl Vinson when you need him?
Midway was a damned close-run thing as it stood.
Seventy-five years on — with a leaner U.S. Navy facing more formidable foes — a Pacific encounter could go another way altogether.
Some introspection should quiet the chest-thumping about U.S. naval prowess that has been heard of late.
Taking competitors lightly is no way to prepare for serious strategic competition.
It’s also slipshod politics. Could Vinson have rammed the Two-Ocean Navy Act through Congress after disparaging the Japanese and German menaces?
Doubtful.
Tell elected representatives China or Russia remains a second-rate competitor and they’ll fund a second-rate U.S. Navy to handle the challenge.
China may remain the weaker antagonist in the Pacific, but look at the U.S.-China competition in relative terms.
Japan had to slay a giant to prevail in the Pacific War.
China merely needs to outface a somewhat stronger adversary operating thousands of miles from home while operating in Beijing’s own backyard.
Its strategic and operational predicament, then, is far more manageable than Imperial Japan’s.
As a great man once counseled, don’t do stupid shit and you may go far.
So Bismarck may have been correct.
Providence may smile on America.
But dourer commentators such as yours truly might append a corollary to his wisecrack.
Namely, that Providence helps those who help themselves.
And the United States has done precious little to help itself in naval affairs.
Midway represented a sensational triumph, and all honor to the warriors who brought it about.
Now let’s start re-creating the industrial and military preconditions that made victory possible.
Let’s help ourselves — and win back fortune’s favor.

Chinese Aggressions

No freedom of navigation operations yet: Trump administration wrestles with posturing in the South China Sea
By Christopher Diamond

Since Donald Trump took over as commander in chief, the U.S. Navy has not sailed within 12 miles of China’s man-made islands in the disputed South China Sea. 

But a top U.S. Navy commander in the Pacific says that doesn’t mean Navy ships are reluctant to confront China and exercise the right to sail in international waters, reports Bloomberg.
“We just went through a change in administration,” Pacific Fleet Commander Adm.​ Scott Swift said at a Monday briefing in Singapore. 

“I am not surprised that process has continued in a dialogue as the new administration gets its feet on the ground and determines where would be appropriate to take advantage of these opportunities and where we may want to wait.”
Freedom of navigation operations have not been conducted in the South China Sea since ​Trump took office. 

FONOPS — routine under President Barack Obama — were intended to assert that waters remain open despite a growing Chinese military presence on the disputed islands. 

As the U.S. has put its presence in the disputed territory on hold, China continues to build airstrips on the islands, even launching its first domestically built aircraft carrier last month.
For months, the Navy's leadership has wanted to take a more aggressive stance and test China’s claims in the region. 

The carrier Carl Vinson and its strike group were originally being considered by the Navy for operations in the South China Sea before making news as part of the U.S. response to further nuclear weapon and long-range missile tests by North Korea.
In March, U.S. Pacific Command requested permission for a Navy warship to sail within 12 nautical miles of Scarborough Shoal, a disputed reef in the South China Sea that has been claimed by both China and the Philippines. 

But the March request, as well as two similar requests made in February, were turned down by Pentagon officials without ever making it to the White House, according to The New York Times.
“We just present the opportunities when we have a ship in the area and there is an area of interest,” said Adm.​ Swift, adding that there has been “no change in policy” regarding the territorial disputes.
The lack of action in the region has caught many off guard as it seemed clear that the Trump administration wanted a tough stance toward Beijing.

Then-candidate ​Trump criticized President Obama on the campaign trail for being weak on China in the South China Sea.
During Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s Senate confirmation hearings, he stressed that China needs to be denied access to the islands. 

But China’s actions remain unchallenged as the White House has turned to Beijing for assistance amid growing tensions with North Korea.
An unnamed official from the U.S. Defense Department told The New York Times that they believed a request for ​naval operations within 12 nautical miles of the artificial islands was exactly the kind of thing Trump would be looking for. 

The same official went on to say Defense Secretary​ James Mattis is putting the FONOPS on hold as part of a broader review of “the American security posture around the world.”
The Spratly and Paracel island chains in the South China Sea have been at the center of territorial disputes from 1947. 

In recent years, China, Vietnam and the Philippines have claimed territory in the region, while the United States has allocated significant military resources towards upholding free navigation of the waters.
While it seems clear that the White House is looking to work with Xi Jinping on a range of geopolitical issues, it remains unclear whether the administration will respond to the ongoing territorial disputes.

Chinese Aggressions

The Navy is planning fresh challenges to China's claims in the South China Sea
By: David B. Larter

U.S. Navy and Pacific Command leaders want to ratchet up operations in the South China Sea by sailing more warships near the increasingly militarized man-made islands that China claims as sovereign territory, according to several Navy officials.
The freedom of navigation operations, also known as FONOPS, could be carried out by ships with the San Diego-based Carl Vinson carrier strike group, which is in the Pacific Ocean heading toward the South China Sea, according to three defense officials who spoke to Navy Times on condition of anonymity to discuss operations in the planning phase.
The military's plans likely call for sailing within 12 nautical miles of China’s newly built islands in the Spratly and Paracel islands, a move that would amount to a new challenge to Chinese territorial claims there that has raised tensions between Washington and Beijing in the recent past.
The plans are heading up the chain of command for approval by President Donald Trump, and set the stage for a transnational guessing game about what the Trump administration wants its Asia policy to be.
For years, the Obama administration curtailed the Navy’s operations around contested areas like the Spratly Islands, an archipelago of uninhabited islands and reefs that China has built up in recent years. 

China has installed military-grade runways on the islands and could deploy surface-to-air weaponry.
U.S. Navy leaders believe that the FONOPS help clarify rights under international law and secure U.S. influence in the region. 

China, however, views the U.S. operations there as a provocative challenge to Beijing’s effort to claim the territory and the fishing rights and any oil or natural gas reserves in the surrounding waters.
“The Trump administration has to decide what it wants to achieve,” said Bonnie Glaser, director of the China Power Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.
“I doubt it it's possible to compel China to withdraw from its newly built islands in the Spratlys. But the U.S. could develop a strategy aimed at preventing more land reclamation, capping militarization and deterring China from using its new outposts to intimidate and coerce its neighbors,” Glaser told Navy Times in an interview.
News of the military’s planned FONOPs in 2017 track with reports in the Japanese press that Defense Secretary James Mattis, in closed-door meetings during his recent trip to Asia, assured Japanese officials that the U.S. military was planning an assertive approach towards China in the South China Sea.

Ships from the George Washington and Carl Vinson Carrier Strike Groups are underway in formation.

'It’s what we do' 

For years, U.S. military leaders such as Adm. Harry Harris, head of U.S. Pacific Command, 
have sought a more aggressive approach towards China in the South China Sea. 

U.S. Navy officials are quick to point out that the U.S. has been operating there for decades and are maintaining the historic status quo.
But Obama specifically prohibited the Navy from carrying out FONOPS in the South China Sea from 2012 through 2015. 

During that time, China put into overdrive its land reclamation and military construction projects around those reefs and islands.
Obama’s policy of caution, intended to please China, made what was once a standard Navy mission seem aggressive.
“What the Navy wants is for them not to be a news story,” said Bryan McGrath, a retired destroyer captain and consultant with the Ferrybridge Group. 

“The real value in them is that they happen with such frequency that they just become part of the background noise.”
“The more it became a big deal, the more it looked like what we were doing was retaliatory or vindictive. It’s not.” McGrath said. 

“It’s what we do. We say, ‘This is international water and we will proudly sail in it, steam in it, or fly over it to protect our right to do so and others’ rights, as well.”

Making the point, a Navy official pointed to a recent freedom of navigation operation by the cruiser Port Royal aimed at excessive claims made by Sri Lanka, which demands ships transiting its coast obtain prior permission. 

The Port Royal made that transit Jan. 24 under the right of innocent passage, a terms that allows warships to pass through the territorial waters of another country without permission on the condition that the ship not carry out any military operations such as launching helicopters, shooting guns or lighting off any sensitive surveillance equipment.
“FONOPS are a regular, normal and routine occurrence,” the Navy official said.

Likewise, Navy officials sought to downplay the San Diego-base Vinson’s return to the region.
"There is nothing new about U.S. Navy aircraft carrier strike groups deploying to the western Pacific,” said U.S. 3rd Fleet spokesman Cmdr. Ryan Perry.
“Our strike groups have patrolled the Indo-Asia-Pacific regularly and routinely for more than 70 years and will continue to do so. Regional security, stability and prosperity depend on it,” Perry said. 

It is unclear when Vinson and its strike group will enter the South China Sea.
The group includes the destroyers Wayne E. Meyer and Michael Murphy, and the cruiser Lake Champlain. 

Joining Vinson is Carrier Air Wing 2, which is composed of Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron 4; Helicopter Maritime Strike Squadron 78; Strike Fighter Squadrons 2, 34, 137, and 192; Carrier Airborne Early Warning Squadron 113; Electronic Attack Squadron 136; and Fleet Logistic Support Squadron 30.

USS Carl Vinson

Trump’s campaign last year repeatedly accused China of devaluing its currency to disadvantage U.S. goods in international trade markets.

Trump pushed relations to near-crisis levels before his inauguration by taking a phone call from the Taiwanese president, something that no U.S. president has done since the 1970s.
Furthermore, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told lawmakers he’d be open to blockading China from their Spratly Islands claims.
But in recent days the temperature has lowered significantly. 

In a phone call Thursday with Xi Jinping, Trump expressed his commitment to America's existing "One China" policy in regards to Taiwan, which does not officially recognize Taiwan as independent from mainland China. 

Chinese officials were also pleased with a letter from Trump to Xi expressing his desire to have a constructive and mutually beneficial relationship.
Other signs that Trump is seeking a "constructive" relationship with China include the appointment of Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad, a friend of Xi’s, as ambassador to China. 

And Trump’s daughter Ivanka and her daughter also visited the Chinese Embassy in Washington to celebrate the Chinese New Year. 

The Necessary War: Pearl Harbor 2.0

China Is Practicing Preemptive Missile Strikes Against U.S. Bases
By Thomas Shugart,

You’ve probably heard that China’s military has developed a “carrier-killer” ballistic missile to threaten one of America’s premier power-projection tools, its unmatched fleet of aircraft carriers. 

Or perhaps you’ve read about China’s deployment of its own aircraft carrier to the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea. 

But heavily defended moving targets like aircraft carriers would be a challenge to hit in open ocean, and were China’s own aircraft carrier (or even two or three like it) to venture into open water in anger, the U.S. submarine force would make short work of it. In reality, the greatest military threat to U.S. vital interests in Asia may be one that has received somewhat less attention: the growing capability of China’s missile forces to strike U.S. bases. 

This is a time of increasing tension, with China’s news organizations openly threatening war. 

U.S. leaders and policymakers should understand that a preemptive Chinese missile strike against the forward bases that underpin U.S. military power in the Western Pacific is a very real possibility, particularly if China believes its claimed core strategic interests are threatened in the course of a crisis and perceives that its attempts at deterrence have failed. 

Such a preemptive strike appears consistent with available information about China’s missile force doctrine, and the satellite imagery shown below points to what may be real-world efforts to practice its execution.

The People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force: Precision Strike with Chinese Characteristics
The PLA Rocket Force originally focused on nuclear deterrence. 

Since the Cold War, the force has increasingly focused on the employment of precision-guided conventional ballistic and land attack cruise missiles. 

The command now consists of about 100,000 personnel and was elevated in December 2015 to a status co-equal to that of China’s other military services.
In terms of specific missions, Michael S. Chase of the U.S. Naval War College wrote in 2014 that PLA Rocket Force doctrine calls for a range of deterrence, compellence, and coercive operations. 

In the event that deterrence fails, the missions of a conventional missile strike campaign could include “launching firepower strikes against important targets in the enemy’s campaign and strategic deep areas.” 

Potential targets of such strikes could include command centers, communications hubs, radar stations, guided missile positions, air force and naval facilities, transport and logistical facilities, fuel depots, electrical power centers, and aircraft carrier strike groups.
Chase also stated that, “In all, Chinese military writings on conventional missile campaigns stress the importance of surprise and suggest a preference for preemptive strikes.” 

And while most Sinologists discount the idea of a true bolt-from-the-blue attack in a crisis without first giving an adversary a chance to back down, preemptive missile strikes to initiate active hostilities are consistent with China’s claimed overall military strategy of “active defense.” 

As a 2007 RAND study of China’s anti-access strategies explained, “This paradox is explained by defining the enemy’s first strike as ‘any military activities conducted by the enemy aimed at breaking up China territorially and violating its sovereignty’…and thereby rendered the equivalent of a ‘strategic first shot.’” 

China analyst Dean Cheng stated similarly in 2015, “From Mao to now, the concept of the active defense has emphasized assuming the strategic defensive, while securing the operational and tactical initiative, including preemptive actions at those levels if necessary.” 

Thus, China considers a preemptive missile strike as a defensive “counter-attack” to a threat against China’s sovereignty (e.g., over Taiwan or the South China Sea) solely in the political or strategic realm.
If such a strike still seems unlikely, consider that U.S. military and civilian leaders may have a blind spot regarding the capabilities of the PLA Rocket Force. 

The bulk of the PLA Rocket Force — the conventionally armed precision-strike units — have no real counterpart in the U.S. military. 

American long-range ballistic missiles are all nuclear-tipped and therefore focused on nuclear deterrence, and the Army’s short-range tactical ballistic missiles are designed for battlefield use. Also, per the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty with Russia, the United States fields no medium- or intermediate-range ballistic missiles of any kind, nor any ground-launched land-attack cruise missiles (LACMs). 

When Americans think of preemptive strike, they likely think of weapons launched by air or sea-based platforms, discounting the viability of a different paradigm: ground-based precision-strike missiles used for the same mission.

Coming of Age
A 2015 RAND study said that by 2017 (i.e., now) China could field about 1,200 conventionally armed short-range ballistic missiles (600-800 km range), 108 to 274 medium-range ballistic missiles (1000 to 1500+ km), an unknown number of conventional intermediate-range ballistic missiles (5,000 km), and 450-1,250 land attack cruise missiles (1500+ km). 

RAND also estimated that improvements in the accuracy of China’s ballistic missiles may allow them to strike fixed targets in a matter of minutes with an accuracy of a few meters. 

RAND assesses that key U.S. facilities throughout Japan are already within range of thousands of difficult-to-defeat advanced ballistic and cruise missiles. 

Even U.S. bases on the island of Guam are within range of a smaller number of missiles (See Figure 1).

Fig. 1: PLA Rocket Force Missile ranges vs. U.S. bases in Asia.

In recent years, the PLA Rocket Force appears to have been making real the specific capabilities necessary to support execution of the preemptive strike discussed above. 

As examples, a 2009 RAND study of open-source literature suggested that flechette sub-munitions would likely be used against missile launchers, parked aircraft, fuel tanks, vehicles, air defense weapons, and ships in port. 

Penetrating munitions would be used against airfield runways, aircraft shelters, and semi-underground fuel tanks. 

In terms of sequencing, the study suggested that an initial wave of ballistic missiles would neutralize air defenses and command centers and crater the runways of military air bases, trapping aircraft on the ground. 

These initial paralyzing ballistic missile salvos are then followed by waves of cruise missiles and Chinese aircraft targeting hardened aircraft shelters, aircraft parked in the open, and fuel handling and maintenance facilities.
These capabilities may already have been tested at a ballistic missile impact test site (see Figure 2) located on the edge of the Gobi Desert in western China. 

Commercial satellite images seem to show a range of test targets representing just the sort of objectives discussed in the doctrine above, including groups of vehicles (perhaps representing mobile air and missile defense batteries — see Figure 3), aircraft targets parked in the open (Figure 4), fuel depots (Figure 5), runway cratering submunition tests (Figure 6), electrical power facilities (Figure 7), and the delivery of penetrating munitions to hardened shelters and bunkers (Figure 8). 

Of note, the 2007 RAND study mentioned above stated that submunitions are generally not capable of penetrating the hardened shelters use to house fighter aircraft at many air bases, that China’s ballistic missiles lack the accuracy to ensure a high percentage of direct hits using unitary warheads, and thus, “fighter aircraft in hardened shelters would be relatively safe from Chinese ballistic missile attack.” 

This clearly appears to no longer be the case, and the demonstrated ability to precisely deliver penetrating warheads to facilities such as command centers in a matter of minutes could also provide a key capability to destroy them, with their command staffs, in the initial waves of an attack.

Fig. 2: PLA Rocket Force ballistic missile impact range in Western China.

Fig. 3: Left side – Possible vehicle targets with sub-munition impact pattern, imagery dated Dec. 2013. Right side – U.S. Patriot air and missile defense battery, Kadena Air Base, Okinawa, Japan. Scale of sub-munition pattern overlaid for comparison.

Fig. 4: Parked aircraft target, imagery dated August 2013. Upper left aircraft shaped target, imagery dated May 2012. Lower right – F-22 Fighter Parking Area, Kadena Air Base, Okinawa, Japan.

Fig. 5: Test targets simulating above-ground fuel tanks, imagery dated September 2012. Compared to actual fuel tanks in Japan, similar scale.

Fig. 6: Runway cratering munition testing, imagery dated Sept. 2012.

Fig. 7: Mock electronic substation target, imagery dated July 2013. Note no electrical lines running to or from the target in its very remote location. While no craters are visible, disablement may be planned using other methods, such as dispersal of conductive graphite filaments.

Fig. 8: Hardened aircraft shelter or bunker test targets, imagery dated Oct. 2016. Penetrator sub-munition impacts visible. Lower right: Misawa Air Base, Japan, similar scale.

China has not been shy about displaying the advancing capabilities of the PLA Rocket Force. 

Beijing openly displayed some of its latest missiles (such as DF-26 “Guam-killer” missile) in its 70th anniversary parade in 2015 and painted the missiles’ identification on their sides in western characters, in case anyone missed the point. 

The PLA Rocket Force also put out a recruiting music video and other TV footage showing the employment of multiple coordinated missile launches, as well as the use of submunitions.

Pearl Harbor 2.0
In 2010, Toshi Yoshihara of the U.S. Naval War College wrote that authoritative PLA publications indicated that China’s missile forces might attempt a preemptive strike to knock out the U.S. Navy in Asia by specifically targeting vulnerable carriers and warships in port. 

Yoshihara noted in particular that, “Perhaps no other place captures the Chinese imagination as much as Yokosuka,” the major U.S. naval base near Tokyo home to the U.S. Navy’s sole permanently forward-deployed aircraft carrier, USS Ronald Reagan (CVN 76), as well as other ships and vital support facilities (see Figure 9). 

In 2012, Dr. Yoshihara again stated that: 

The Imperial Japanese Navy’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbor remains a popular, if somewhat tired, metaphor for the dangers of unpreparedness and overexposure to risk… 

But the real possibility that U.S. bases in the Western Pacific could once again be vulnerable… has occasioned little publicity or debate. 

Fig. 9: Home of U.S. 7th Fleet, Yokosuka, Japan.

Evidence that China has been practicing to strike ships in port with ballistic missiles would lend credence to Yoshihara’s concerns. 

And such evidence exists: images taken in 2013 (see Figure 10) show China testing its ability to do so.

Fig. 10: Moored ship and naval facility targets, imagery dated August 2013. Compared for scale with actual U.S. destroyer.

Specifically, the PLA Rocket Force appears to have been practicing on several ship targets of a similar size to U.S. Arleigh Burke-class destroyers moored in a mock port that is a near-mirror image of the actual inner harbor at the U.S. naval base in Yokosuka (see Figure 11). 

Note what looks like an impact crater located near the center of the three ship targets, close enough to have potentially damaged all three ships with submunitions. 

The display of these targets may itself constitute signaling to the United States and its allies as a long-term deterrent effort. 

All the same, it bears considering that the only way that China could realistically expect to catch multiple U.S. ships in port as shown above would be through a surprise attack. 

Otherwise, with clear signs of imminent hostilities, the United States would likely have already sent its fleet to sea. 

Pro-China experts might say that catching the U.S. flat-footed would be unlikely, but history teaches us not to discount the possibility of successful surprise attacks.

Fig. 11: Naval ship and harbor targets, compared to inner harbor at U.S. naval base at Yokosuka, Japan.

The Need for Enhanced Deterrent Measures
U.S. and allied efforts are underway to improve defensive areas such as base hardening and force dispersal, as well as to conduct advanced research into ballistic missile defenses such as high-velocity projectiles, rail guns, and lasers. 

My colleague Elbridge Colby has written with Jonathan Solomon extensively about conventional deterrence and the specific capabilities that the United States can develop in the next few years that will be critical to fielding a force “that can prevail in regional wars while still performing peacetime missions at a reasonable level.” 

The possibility that a threat of preemptive attack from the PLA Rocket Force already exists underscores an urgent need to take further action now.
First, the United States should very publicly deploy the most robust missile defenses that it can to protect its bases in Japan. 

In the long term, technological breakthroughs will be necessary to pace the growing precision-strike ballistic missile threat at a reasonable cost. 

But for now, a layered ballistic missile defense is necessary, as the short-range Patriot air and missile defense batteries currently guarding U.S. and allied bases in Japan seem unlikely to succeed against a mass Chinese raid. 

Such a robust missile defense also requires deployment of the U.S. Army’s Terminal High Altitude Air Defense (THAAD) system to Japan and/or tasking Aegis ballistic missile defense destroyers for duty focused on the defense of U.S. bases. 

Given that U.S. destroyers would likely have other business to conduct in a conflict with China, near-term deployment of THAAD to Japan (which will require tough trade-offs given the current worldwide demand and limited number of available batteries) is necessary to defend U.S. forces. 

Once deployed, U.S. and allied ballistic missile defense forces will need to publicly practice coordinated defense against mass ballistic missile attacks. 

Even well-practiced defenders would face a tough challenge in coordinating a real-world defense against a ballistic missile attack of unprecedented scale from a potentially flat-footed stance, with mere minutes to do so and only one chance to get it right.
Given the difficulty and uncertainty associated with defending against a mass missile raid even with robust, layered defenses, U.S. forces and personnel stationed at bases in Japan and Guam need to practice rapid evacuation of the types of facilities targeted in Rocket Force doctrine. 

Similarly, key U.S. command centers in Japan should practice rapid execution of continuity of operations plans, given that the time available between the first detection of a missile launch by U.S. space-based missile warning sensors to its impact would probably be on the order of 10 to 15 minutes. 

In that short amount of time, U.S. early warning centers would have to detect the launched strike, assess it, and warn U.S. forces overseas. 

Those overseas personnel and command staffs would then need to execute evacuation and continuity procedures in a matter of a few short minutes. 

Similarly, U.S. ships in port in the Western Pacific would need to be able get away from their pier positions in a matter of minutes, and high-value air units in the region would need to be able to quickly move their aircraft from their parked positions. 

In any case, no margin of error will exist for lack of training or proficiency in execution.
The United States should take action now to ensure that China does not think that it can gain the upper hand in a conflict through successful missile strikes against U.S. bases in Asia. 

They must ensure that China is not tempted into making the grave error of trying to knock the United States down, expecting it not to get back up.

World War III Casualties
	2016 Population	Killed		Survivors
CHINA	1 373 541 278	1 057 119 689	77%	316 421 589
UNITED STATES	323 995 528	19 089 783	6%	304 905 745
EUROPEAN UNION	513 949 445	371 356 958	72%	142 592 487
RUSSIA	142 355 415	30 924 816	22%	111 430 599
INDIA	1 266 883 598	1 158 499 174	91%	108 384 424
PAKISTAN	201 995 540	175 747 473	87%	26 248 067
JAPAN	126 702 133	114 241 889	90%	12 460 244
VIETNAM	95 261 021	84 340 688	89%	10 920 333
PHILIPPINES	102 624 209	92 732 902	90%	9 891 307
KOREA, NORTH	25 115 311	21 141 050	84%	3 974 261
KOREA, SOUTH	50 924 172	47 636 302	94%	3 287 870
TAIWAN	23 464 787	22 278 490	95%	1 186 297
	4 246 812 437	3 195 109 214	75%	1 051 703 223