The China syndrome

FOR the best part of a decade, the demands of industrial-scale counter-insurgency campaigns have determined America's spending priorities and obsessed its strategic thinkers. But now a new military fashion has taken over. Last weekend, at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore for Asian defence ministers, Leon Panetta fleshed out what America's “rebalance” towards Asia will mean in terms of military resources.

The secretary of defence announced that, by 2020, 60% of America's warships, including six aircraft-carrier groups, would be stationed in the Asia-Pacific theatre. In addition, he mentioned a range of other “investments” to ensure that despite China's fast-growing military might, America would still be able to “rapidly project military power if needed to meet our security commitments” in the region. Among them will be new ships that can operate close to an enemy's shoreline, and fast attack submarines; missile-defence interceptors under development with Japan; beefed-up cyber-warfare and communications systems; and a new long-range bomber that can strike deep into enemy territory.

Now that America is leaving Iraq and winding down the war in Afghanistan, as Barack Obama optimistically puts it, the administration has space to worry about the potential of China and (to a lesser extent) Iran to erode America's ability to project force in regions of vital interest. The result is both a diplomatic surge, designed to reassure America's Asian allies that it will do whatever is needed to shield them from Chinese bullying; and the development by the Pentagon of AirSea Battle, a new strategy devised to defeat the so-called anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) capabilities that are being deployed by technologically sharp strategic rivals, above all China.

“Anti-access” is the ability to prevent an opposing force from entering an area of operations; “area denial” is the ability to impose severe costs on the enemy's freedom of action once it has got in. The spread of precision-guided weapons now allows ambitious regional powers to bar nearby seas and skies to an adversary, even when that adversary is militarily stronger.

To that end, the Chinese are spending heavily on anti-ship cruise and ballistic missiles, maritime bombers, missile- and torpedo-carrying submarines and fast patrol boats, all intended to make operations within the “first island chain” (see map) too risky for American carriers. They are also working on anti-satellite and cyber-weapons intended to “blind” the communications networks American forces rely on. Since the end of the cold war, America's troops have relied on operating from bases and carriers that opponents could not threaten. That has now changed.

In spite of this, AirSea Battle and its most recent manifestation, the Joint Operating Access Concept, are controversial. Some critics see it as an attempt by the navy and the air force, after a decade of relative neglect, to grab the lion's share of a shrinking defence budget—already being trimmed by about $480 billion over the next ten years.

Others fear that although the concept does not mention China by name, it is the only opponent with the range of capabilities the new thinking is designed to counter. (Significantly, the Chinese defence minister did not attend the Shangri-La get-together; see article.) And whereas the 1980s predecessor of AirSea Battle, AirLand Battle, was intended to meet the real threat of a thrust by Soviet forces into Western Europe, the threat from China to America and its regional allies is harder to define. In a speech last month at the Joint Warfighting Conference, General James Cartwright, vice-chairman of the joint chiefs of staff until last year, said of AirSea Battle: “To some, it's becoming the Holy Grail…[but] it's neither a doctrine nor a scenario.” Worst of all, said General Cartwright, “AirSea Battle is demonising China. That's not in anybody's interest.”

Nathan Freier, of the Washington-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies, argues in a recent paper that although conflict with China “might be the most lethal set of circumstances from a traditional military standpoint, it is also the least likely and the most speculative.” North Korea, Pakistan and Iran (with their actual or putative nuclear arsenals) and even Syria all represent more realistic A2/AD challenges, which might well require the insertion of the ground forces that AirSea Battle ignores.

Other critics, such as Noel Williams, an adviser on strategy to the marine corps, point to the risk of escalation—because of the dependence on deep strike against Chinese targets on land—and to the absence of ideas about what happens without ground forces once a strike is made.

Colonel Gian Gentile, a professor at the United States Military Academy, complained in 2009 that counter-insurgency campaigns had become “a strategy of tactics”. He meant that the tactical tail was wagging the strategic dog. AirSea Battle is an impressive tactical response to a specific military problem. Whether it addresses the strategic ambiguities inherent in America's complex relationship with China is less clear.