US Navy is not in the ‘peaceful coexistence’ business in Asia any more
Over at Foreign Policy, J. Randy Forbes, Representative, Virginia, and Chairman of the
Seapower and Projection Forces Subcommittee of the House Armed Services
Committee, opined on June 17 : “As of now, the military component to the
rebalance amounts to shifting 2,500 Marines to the region while increasing
America’s naval presence by three ships per year, to a total of 67 ships by the
end of the decade. That response is so modest that, even if it is
achievable, it is more a sign of weakness than strength.”
As to what an adequately muscular response would
be, on June 23 Mark Thompson, Time magazine’s national
security correspondent tweeted: “Navy finally decides how many ships it needs.”
And he reproduced testimony from Rear Admiral Paul Fanta before Forbes’
committee: “If we had a choice, we would walk across the Pacific on
the deck of a destroyer, occasionally stubbing our toes stepping down onto a
submarine, and up onto an aircraft carrier.”
US, not PLAN, warships, it’s safe to assume. Indisputably, the
pivot is the Navy’s chance to shine and justify its massive Asian footprint by
doing something bigger and better than facing down Kim Jung Il and chasing
tsunami and typhoon relief.
As part of the new pivot regime, the new head of PACCOM, Admiral Harry
Harris, has ditched the conciliatory stylings of the previous
office-holder, Admiral Locklear, in favor of a more pro-active middle-finger
posture to emphasize that the US Navy is not in the “peaceful coexistence”
business in Asia any more.
The Marines also have a big pivot role thanks to their
island-assaulting-and-conquering experience in the Pacific. Even though
the U.S. Marines are compared to the Harlem Globetrotters in terms of their abilities to run
rings around their opponents in the amphibious warfare biz, there’s always
cause for concern and room for improvement, per Reuters : “With some
80,000 personnel or almost half its strength in Asia, the U.S. Marines are the
biggest amphibious force in the region. Most are based on Japan’s Okinawa
Island on the edge of the East China Sea. …With around 12,000 marines, China is
a formidable potential foe, say military experts.”
How to deal with this “formidable potential foe”? More funding
needed, as their commandant, General Joseph Dunford, stated : “Of particular concern
is the disaggregation of forces in the U.S. Pacific Command area of operations.
Once the ‘preferred laydown’ in the Pacific is fully implemented, the Marines
will have a presence on mainland Japan and the island of Okinawa, South Korea,
Guam and Australia – all falling under the 3rd Marine Expeditionary Force
structure.
“On a day-to-day basis, that kind of distribution will provide us more
effective theater security cooperation, working with our partners and so
forth. But conversely, providing the lift capability so the Marines aren’t
stranded on an island will be a challenge, given the shortfall in amphibious
ships.
“My priority right now would be, we’ve got over a thousand Marines in
Australia; I would like them to have routine access right now to a platform
that they can use to conduct engagement in the area,” he continued. “But it
isn’t just about one ship and it’s just not about one location; it’s about
dealing with a logistics challenge, a training challenge, a war-fighting
challenge in the Pacific with a shortfall of platforms.”
Unsurprisingly, Commandant Dunford was sharing his anxieties with the
Congressional Shipbuilding Caucus.
The Air Force would also like a word, per a Reuters article under the
heading ‘China aims to challenge U.S. air dominance: Pentagon’ : “China is mounting a serious
effort to challenge U.S. military superiority in air and space, forcing the
Pentagon to seek new technologies and systems to stay ahead of its rapidly
developing rival, Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work said on Monday.
“The Pentagon’s chief operating officer, speaking to a group of military
and civilian aerospace experts, said China was ‘quickly closing the
technological gaps,’ developing radar-evading aircraft, advanced reconnaissance
planes, sophisticated missiles and top-notch electronic warfare equipment. Work
said the United States has relied on technological superiority for the past 25
years, but now ‘the margin of technological superiority upon which we have
become so accustomed … is steadily eroding.'”
If the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is as big a boondoggle as its critics
say, and its best use will be as a gravity bomb dropped from a USAF dirigible,
maybe our air superiority is really eroding. However, if the PRC stealth
fighters are really built on a foundation of stolen F-35 technology, maybe we
don’t have that much to worry about.
And the Army, too?
Actually, General Brooks was talking up mil-mil engagement with the PLA,
not another land war in Eurasia, a good thing since the Army’s over-the-top
mission-and-budget hogging over the last two decades is apparently a source of
some jealousy and resentment in the other uniformed services.
And the chances that the PRC will continue its island-building ways
until the South China Sea is paved over so the U.S. Army can drive an armored
division across it seem rather remote.
There are, I think, three factors at work here.
First, everybody likes money. Now that the PRC has been officially
designated as the big threat, it’s time to muscle up to the
“better-safe-than-sorry” limit in Asia, it’s up to the Pentagon to grow the
budget pie, and it’s up to every armed service to fight for the biggest
possible slice.
Second, threat and budget-inflation imperatives aside, the PRC is big
and it’s getting bigger. Right now, the US occupies 22 percent or so of
global GDP, and the PRC’s down at 14 percent. Unless the PRC
spectacularly and catastrophically falls on its behind, those numbers will
flip-flop and the PRC’s economy will account for 20 percent of the world’s GDP
in 2050, as opposed to 14 percent for the US.
Keeping up with PRC military expenditures in its own backyard will be
expensive for Mr. and Mrs. American taxpayer over the next few decades, so
better get used to it.
The third, less obvious factor is that the pivot to Asia is, in my mind,
fundamentally flawed because it is built upon the premise of US leadership in
Asian security, and ‘US leadership’ looks to be a wasting asset.
It’s not just the PRC. Everybody’s getting bigger, and the US’s
relative share is shrinking.
PricewaterhouseCoopers took the IMF’s 2014 GDP numbers and
worked the spreadsheet magic using projected growth rates.
In 2050, here’s how they see the GDP horserace playing out, in
trillions: China 61; India 42; USA 41; Indonesia 12; Brazil 9; Mexico 8; Japan
7.9; Russia 7.5; Nigeria 7.3 and Germany 6.3. Poodlicious Euro-allies UK,
Italy, and France will be out of the top ten in 2050. Australia drops
from 19th place to 28th.
Put it another way, the US will have 14 percent of the world’s GDP and
Asia, the region we’re purporting to lead, will have 50 percent.
Don’t just look at the US vs. PRC numbers, 41 trillion vs. 61. Look at
India+Indonesia+Japan+South Korea+Malaysia+Philippines+Thailand+Vietnam, the
‘pivot partners’ actual or aspirational that neighbor the PRC. Their cumulative
GDP today: about the same as the US. In 2050: 77 trillion. More than the
PRC. Way more than the United States.
And no, you can’t add those numbers to the US ‘anti-PRC’ coalition total
for a big, reassuring number. Not even today.
To be unkind about it, the experience of the Middle East has not shown
the US to be a particularly reliable and responsible steward of local well
being in a volatile region. Countries with sufficient wealth and
opportunities are unsurprisingly working to assure their own security futures
instead of relying on the U.S.
All of the pivot partners are already feeling their Asian oats and most
of them are pursuing hedging strategies between the US and the PRC as a matter
of enlightened self-interest. US says ‘TTP’, most say ‘TTP + RCEP’.
They are happy to take arms and military assistance from the US, but they also
buy from Russia and France.
The only country that’s close to all-in on the pivot on the US side is
the Philippines. And it is deepening its engagement with Japan, not just
the United States.
In a Guardian article titled, ‘We have short memories':
Japan unites with former foes to resist China’s empire of sand, a bilateral
Japanese-Philippine patrol in the South China Sea is described and it is clear
— perhaps worryingly clear to US military planners — that the Philippines is
not about to put all its eggs in the American basket:
“The Philippine defence secretary, Voltaire Gazmin, said this week that
Japan should become further involved with Manila’s military, arguing for a
visiting forces agreement which would allow Japanese troops to be stationed in
the Philippines, similar to a deal with Washington, which has naval ships in
Filipino ports.
“It would be ironic if we cannot do exercises with Japanese forces when
Japan is one of the only two countries – the other one being the United States
– which are strategic partners of the Philippines,” Gazmin said on Wednesday.
Japan, the linchpin of the US pivot strategy — and a source of
orgasmic pleasure to US China hawks when it revised its defense guidelines to
permit joint military operations in East Asia with the United States — already
plays its own hand in Taiwan, South Korea, Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, and
Myanmar, as well as the Philippines.
Historically inclined readers might note 1) these are all countries that
Japan invaded and/or occupied as a matter of national interest in World War II
and 2) Japan is run by the spiritual heirs—or in the case of Prime Minister
Shinzo Abe, the direct heirs — of people who ran Japan back then and
implemented that policy until the United States defeated them.
People with long memories will also recall that, when the PRC was a
small, weak player, the justification for the US presence in Japan was to
restrain Japanese militarism for the sake of Asian peace of mind … which is why
the PRC kept harping on the Potsdam Declaration, the World War II victor’s
justice dispensation, and the implications for the US leadership position in
Asia when Shinzo Abe took office for his second term and started nibbling away
at the “Peace” Constitution imposed by MacArthur.
Nowadays, US pretensions to act as “honest broker” in Asia as an alternative
to Japan have been subordinated to the need to construct a PRC-containment
regime. When you anoint Japan as a theater-wide anti-PRC military ally, you’re
not getting the same ally you had when Japan’s main job was hosting US bases
and poking around in its own territorial waters and airspace.
Nope, America’s Pacific Century (Hillary Clinton’s term) is not going to
be pushing around overmatched, grateful, and anxious allies like the UK,
Poland, and Germany while trampling on small borderline failed states in the
Middle East. It’s going to be contending with half a dozen rising Asian
nations, all with experiences of empire and aspirations to at least local
hegemony…and on top of them, there’s China.
So the urgent threat to US leadership in Asia isn’t just rising China;
it’s rising Asia.
And I think US planners have also looked at the numbers and decided there’s a
limited time window for the United States, during which it can use its military
superiority, its wealth, the economic, technological, and cultural vitality of
its system, and its domination of international financial and security
institutions to occupy a central position in Asia…
…and avoid confronting the possibility that the United States will no
longer enjoy recognition as the world’s leading military and economic power, a
title it has enjoyed during the living memory of almost every living person on
the planet, and a role that is an existential folly for any American
politician, pundit, or military officer to question.
But to me, hyping the China threat in order to muscle up the Pacific
presence, leverage American strengths, and prolong US predominance is something
of a Hail Mary. It may postpone the US decline to “one among equals”, but I
don’t think it can prevent it. And it’s going to make the process very
expensive and, perhaps, very messy and painful.
Peter Lee runs the China Matters blog. He writes on the intersection of U.S.
policy with Asian and world affairs.
