It’s Time to Focus on Preventing War with China, Not Preparing for It

The conventional wisdom in official Washington is that the United States needs to prepare for a potential war with China, either in order to “win” in the event of a conflict or to deter war by convincing Beijing that the U.S. could prevail in such a scenario.

Such is the thrust of a recent piece in Politico entitled “The Pentagon is Freaking Out About a Potential War With China (Because America Might Lose).” As the title suggests, the piece spends the bulk of its time amplifying the views of Pentagon officials, ex-military leaders and analysts at arms contractor funded think tanks to the effect that America has either been a asleep at the wheel and/or too distracted by the war on terror to adequately prepare for what the Pentagon now calls the “pacing threat” posed by China.

The solution? More Pentagon spending, a supersized defense industrial base, and (perhaps) a shift in the type of weaponry the Department of Defense invests in going forward. The article is an accurate depiction of the views of the officials consulted for the piece, but it fails to question the underlying assumptions of what foreign policy analyst Van Jackson has described as the “preparing for war with China industry.”

Jackson gets to the heart of what is wrong with the views expounded in Politico:

“[N]obody can ‘win’ in a war between nuclear powers. The idea that ‘America might lose’ implies that America can win. The United States actually has a terrible track record of ‘winning’ anything other than World War II through the threat and use of force.”

Jackson takes the next logical step when he notes that “if you’re worried about war with China – and especially losing a war with China – the greater portion of your efforts should be going into war prevention, not war optimization.”

Dan Grazier underscores the folly of current U.S. military strategy towards China in a new report from the Project on Government Oversight. He begins his piece by suggesting that “the plans put forward by civilian and uniformed defense officials to defend against China . . . make little sense. The United States is foolishly building a strategy and force to attack where this potential adversary is most fortified.”

The thrust of Grazier’s analysis, which is worth reading in its entirety, is that the Pentagon is building the wrong weapons to fight the wrong war at immense and unnecessary expense. The Pentagon’s emphasis on building more aircraft carriers and stealth bombers to “project military power right up to the coast of mainland China and into its interior” amounts to funding “vanity projects” that are untethered from any realistic approach to an actual conflict with China. A defensive strategy designed to deter China from taking military action outside its immediate defense perimeter would be cheaper, more effective, and less provocative, in Grazier’s view.

A similar theme has been struck by a task force organized by my home institution, the Quincy Institute, which proposes a strategy of ‘active denial’ towards China. U.S. policy towards China should be a mix of military deterrence and diplomatic reassurance. Unfortunately, at the moment the military element is being overplayed while the reassurance aspect is underdeveloped. Active denial involves raising the cost to China of any military intervention in the region by arming allies with appropriate defensive systems and crafting a distributed force posture in the region that is less threatening to Beijing but will still serve as a deterrent against potential Chinese aggression.

But a shift in military strategy alone can not ensure that the U.S. and China don’t drift into a conflict that will inflict devastating losses on all concerned, up to and including a possible nuclear war. There needs to be a meaningful diplomatic track to cool temperatures between the two nations. My colleague Michael Swaine has underscored this point in his analysis of how to prevent a conflict over the status of Taiwan:

“The only logical solution to this problem is for Washington and Beijing to explicitly agree on a set of reciprocal, credible assurance measures that will breathe life back into their original understanding regarding Taiwan. To keep the peace across the Taiwan Strait, there is no viable alternative to exchanging clear, credible assurances of U.S. limits on relations with Taiwan and its implacable opposition to any unilateral move toward Taiwan independence, with China reciprocating by reiterating assurances that it rejects any timeline for unification and will end its military exercises near the island of Taiwan.”

It’s time for elected officials, policy analysts, journalists, and pundits alike to present a more balanced view of U.S. policy options vis-a-vis China rather than taking the “prepare for war” crowd at face value.