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Posing Problems Thomas J The MIT Press Journals http://mitpress.mit.edu/journals This article is provided courtesy of The MIT Press. To join an e-mail alert list and receive the latest news on our publications, please visit: http://mitpress.mit.edu/e-mail Posing Problems Thomas J. without Catching Up Christensen China’s Rise and Challenges for U.S. Security Policy Posing Problems without Catching Up Since the early 1990s, American scholars and strategists have debated whether the People’s Republic of China (PRC)will pose a security threat to the United States and its regional interests in East Asia in the next few decades. Although many have focused on intentions as well as capabilities, the most prevalent component of the debate is the assessment of China’s overall future military power compared with that of the United States and other East Asian regional powers. So conferences have been held and papers written discussing whether China would become a “peer competitor” or “near peer competitor” of the United States in the military arena, or a “regional hegemon” towering over its cowed neighbors and threat- ening American interests in a region of increasing importance to the United States.1 Thomas J. Christensen is Associate Professor of Political Science anda member of the Security StudiesPro- gram at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. An earlier version of this article appears on the web site of the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), Johns Hopkins University, as “SAIS Policy Forum Series Report No. 14, December 2000,” and was sponsored by SAIS’s Paciªc at the Dawn of the 21st Century Project. I am grateful to the participants in the Asian Security Breakfast Seminar at SAIS and espe- cially Frederick Brown, Julia Collins, Karl Jackson, and Martin Lasater. For helpful comments and critiques of earlier drafts, I also thank Bernard Cole, Aaron Friedberg, Paul Giarra, Michael Glosny, Paul Godwin, Peter Halpern, Alastair Iain Johnston, Carl Kaysen, Michael McDevitt, Eric McVadon, William Pendley, Christopher Twomey, Allen Whiting, and anonymous review- ers for International Security. Douglas Fuller and Christopher Twomey provided expert research assistance. 1. The peer competitor debate was the focus of two major conferences in 1993–94: one at Harvard University’s Fairbank Center for East Asian Research, entitled “The China Threat?”; and the other at the Army War College, Carlisle Barracks, entitled “China: Strategic Partner or Peer Competi- tor?” For examples of concerns about China’s rise to great power status, see Nicholas Kristof, “The Rise of China,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 72, No. 6 (November/December 1993), pp. 59–74; and Denny Roy, “Hegemon on the Horizon? China’s Threat to East Asian Security,” International Security, Vol. 19, No. 1 (Summer 1994), pp. 149–168. Richard Bernstein and Ross Munro even predict that China will become a global rival of the United States in the next two decades. See Bernstein and Munro, “Coming Conºict with America,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 76, No. 2 (March/April 1997), pp. 18–31; and Richard Bernstein and Ross Munro, The Coming Conºict with China (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997). For predictions of China as a peer competitor in line with previous power transitions in his- tory, see Peter T.R. Brookes, “Strategic Realism: The Future of U.S.-Sino Security Relations,” Strate- gic Review, Summer 1999, pp. 53–56; Fareed Zakaria, “China: Appease or Contain? Speak Softly, Carry a Veiled Threat,” New York Times Magazine, February 18, 1996, p. 36; and Stephen Götz Rich- ter, “Repeating History: In Dealing with China, the United States Can Learn a Great Deal from International Security, Vol. 25, No. 4 (Spring 2001), pp. 5–40 © 2001 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 5 9 International Security 25:4 6 The debate was hottest in the immediate aftermath of the Cold War era. In the early 1990s, the American economy was suffering and the American mili- tary downsizing, while China’s economy was growing quickly following the brief post-Tiananmen slump. Moreover, in those years China began increasing its military spending signiªcantly for the ªrst time since 1978. As a result, con- cerns were expressed about America’s ability to maintain its global military presence and supremacy, particularly in East Asia. However, despite a turn- around in the American economy, a slowdown in defense cuts, and the clear persistence of American alliances and internationalism, the question of whether China will become a peer competitor or near peer competitor of the United States in the next few decades still motivates the thinking of many American strategists today.2 The debate about China as a peer competitor revolves around simple realist notions of how international politics work: Power is what matters; and what matters in power is one’s relative capabilities compared with those of others, especially other great powers. For the pessimists, the Chinese military of the twenty-ªrst century is replacing the Soviet military of the pre-Gorbachev years and the Japanese economy of the 1970s as the next big purported threat to American global leadership. The optimists disagree, arguing that the United States is safe from the largely hyped “China threat.” The same underlying logic of the peer competitor debate is often found in discussions of future security relations across the Taiwan Strait. These discussions frequently focus on the British-German Relations in 1880,” July 11, 2000, http://www.theglobalist.com/nor/news. For counterarguments emphasizing China’s persistent weaknesses in comparison to the United States and other militaries, see Michael C. Gallagher, “China’s Illusory Threat to the South China Sea,” International Security, Vol. 19, No. 1 (Summer 1994), pp. 169–194; Paul Godwin, “The PLA Faces the Twenty-ªrst Century: Reºections on Technology, Doctrine, Strategy, and Operations,” in James R. Lilley and David Shambaugh, eds., China’s Military Faces the Future (Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 1999), pp. 39–63; Robert S. Ross and Andrew J. Nathan, The Great Wall andthe Empty Fortress: China’s Search for Security (New York: W.W. Norton, 1997); Robert S. Ross, “Beijing as a Conserva- tive Power,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 76, No. 2 (March/April 1997), pp. 33–44; and Russell D. Howard, The Chinese People’s Liberation Army: “Short Arms andSlow Legs,” Institute for National Security Studies Occasional Paper 28, Regional Security Series, U.S. Air Force Academy, Colorado Springs, Colorado, September 1999. 2. See, for example, Thomas E. Ricks, “For Pentagon, Asia Moving to Forefront: Shift Has Implica- tions for Strategy, Forces, Weapons,” Washington Post, May 26, 2000, p. 1. Timothy Thomas, an ana- lyst at the U.S. Army’s Foreign Military Studies Ofªce, argues that information warfare techniques might “enable China to catch up with the West in both strategic military and international status.” See “Analyst Warns of China’s Aggressive Approach to Info Warfare,” Inside the Pentagon, Novem- ber 30, 2000, p. 2. For a recent article that focuses critically on such thinking in Washington and ar- gues that the People’s Liberation Army will continue to “lag behind the U.S. military,” see Bates Gill and Michael O’Hanlon, “China’s Hollow Military,” National Interest, Summer 1999, pp. 55–62. 10 Posing Problems without Catching Up 7 overall balance of power across the strait and the prospect of mainland China closing the gap with the technologically more sophisticated military of Taiwan (or Republic of China [ROC]). An oft-discussed scenario in these discussions is the mainland’s future ability or inability to conquer and occupy Taiwan in a traditional D-Day style invasion.3 There is little doubt that it is useful to determine whether China is catching up with the United States or other states in overall military power or whether the mainland will be able to invade and occupy Taiwan effectively and with ease. The world would be a fundamentally different place if the answer to ei- ther question were afªrmative, just as it would if America’s global lead were declining and multipolarity were just around the corner.4 But although realist analysis raises important questions, the answers to those questions often have only limited utility. In this article I discuss why such debates miss many of the important questions regarding a China with increasing, but still limited, mili- tary capabilities. My thesis is that with certain new equipment and certain strategies, China can pose major problems for American security interests, and especially for Taiwan, without the slightest pretense of catching up with the United States by an overall measure of national military power or technology. I ªrmly agree with those who are skeptical about China’s prospects in signi- ªcantly closing the gap with the United States. I believe, however, that certain Chinese military capabilities combined with the political geography of East Asia, the domestic politics of mainland China, and the perceptual biases of Chinese elites can pose signiªcant challenges for American security strategy in the region—the basic elements of which are deterring attacks on allies and friends; maintaining East Asian bases for global power projection; and pre- venting spirals of tension among regional actors whose relations are plagued by both historical legacies of mistrust and contemporary sovereignty dis- 3. For a discussion that focuses on invasion scenarios, see Michael O’Hanlon, “Why China Cannot Conquer Taiwan,” International Security, Vol. 25, No. 2 (Fall 2000), pp. 51–86. For a balance-of-forces analysis arguing that Taiwan will be safe from mainland attack long into the future, see James Nolt, “The China-Taiwan Military Balance,” January 7, 2000, http://www.taiwansecurity.org. For a counterargument that, over the course of the next decade, the balance of power will shift gradu- ally but decisively from Taiwan’s favor to the PRC’s favor, see David Shambaugh, “A Matter of Time: Taiwan’s Eroding Military Advantage,” Washington Quarterly, Vol.
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