The South China Sea (38 page)

Even the author of the Air-Sea Battle concept, Bryan Clark, concedes that the Chinese Navy currently poses little threat to the United States: ‘Right now the US can – through electronic warfare or direct kinetic attack or other procedures – defeat all the A2/AD capabilities that are out there.’
¹⁹
At the time of writing, the Dong-Feng-21D anti-ship ballistic missile still has not been tested against a moving target at sea and there's doubt about whether the PLA has the capacity to deploy and integrate the immensely complex sensors and guidance systems – the ‘kill chain’ – that it will depend upon.
²⁰
The Pentagon is confident it can already combat such systems. ‘We've taken
[China's] kill chains apart to the “nth” degree,’ Lieutenant General Herbert Carlisle, the then US Air Force Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations told
Aerospace Daily
in September 2011.
²¹
In January 2014 it emerged that when China sold a different version of the missile to Saudi Arabia in 2007, US intelligence analysts dismantled and thoroughly examined it.
²²

So while the dominant narrative in foreign capitals is about the growing strength of the Chinese military, within the Chinese military the narrative is more about its relative weakness. As one Chinese academic with access to policy-makers told me in Beijing, ‘China doesn't want to see the US block its sea transport lanes but it doesn't have a clear strategy about how to respond. It doesn't know what to do.’ China's leaders are well aware, however, that they are profoundly lucky. Their unprepared military faces no immediate mortal threats and the country has time to build up its economic and military strength to face the challenges ahead. It's enjoying what its ideologues call ‘the period of strategic opportunity’ – our current era of relative peace, stability and prosperity.

In the eyes of the Chinese leadership – civilian and military – the country's entire development depends on extending that period for as long as possible. Hints of this emerge from time to time. On 4 February 2013, at a time when China and Japan appeared on the verge of conflict over the Diaoyu or Senkaku Islands, that message was openly spelled out in black and white in a surprising place. The
Global Times
newspaper is usually full of verbal attacks on the United States, Japan, the Philippines and Vietnam and demands for tough action against those who violate China's sovereignty. So when General Liu Yuan used its pages to tell warmongers to shut up, it caused a stir. ‘China's economic development already has been shattered by war with Japan twice before’, he wrote, and it ‘absolutely must not be interrupted again by some accidental incident’. He hammered home the point in TV interviews too.

General Liu is no dove. He's the son of Communist China's first president, the revolutionary hero (and main victim of Mao's Cultural Revolution) Liu Shaoqi. He's known to be very close to President Xi Jinping and has been tipped for promotion to China's highest military body, the Central Military Commission. He's better known for ‘speeches and essays pushing a form of militant Chinese nationalism that rejects Western notions of political openness and civil liberties’, in the words
of one Western news agency report. In other words, he appears to represent the authentic voice of the Communist military. Why is a man of such apparently hawkish credentials advocating such a dovish approach? The clue lies in the title of his
Global Times
article: ‘Protect the Period of Strategic Opportunity, War is a Last Resort’. Liu's argument is that China's enemies have nefarious plans to lure it into conflict in order to keep it weak. There is little doubt, in the minds of China's military leadership, that if the country were to fight the United States in the next decade or two its armed forces would be humiliated and its economy blockaded and strangled. Even a small setback could cause major problems for a government craving public legitimacy. In the view of the Beijing academic, ‘the Chinese government can't afford even a minor failure in a confrontation’.

But this gives China a major problem. If its neighbours around the South China Sea believe that Beijing will never fight a war, then its strategic influence will be greatly reduced. Somehow the rival territorial claimants must be encouraged to believe that the country might opt for war – regardless of how apparently irrational that might appear. This is the strategic role that China's ‘media hawks’ play. As well as boosting domestic nationalism (as we saw in Chapter 6) they serve a very subtle but critical function in China's strategic manoeuvring. Australian researcher Andrew Chubb has intensively analysed the belligerent language and the timing of statements by the country's best-known military analysts, including Major General Luo Yuan, Rear Admiral Zhang Zhaozhong and Air Force Colonel Dai Xu. He believes they help to inculcate ‘national defence awareness’ among the people (something that has been mandated by law since 2001) but just as importantly they keep up the pressure on China's rivals. By creating the idea of a ‘hardline faction’ demanding ever stronger action from civilian leaders they help reinforce the negotiating position of those leaders. At the same time their rhetoric magnifies the country's capabilities and gives the impression that China is ready to attack. The overall purpose comes straight from Sun Tzu: ‘The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.’

The result is an unholy triangle linking the Chinese hawks delivering their sabre-rattling quotes as part of the PLA's political warfare, international media outlets who know that bellicose talk of confrontation attracts valuable audiences and American hawks who seize upon each piece of new
evidence of the ‘China Threat’ to justify increased spending on the armed forces and the targeting of China. That, in turn, gives the PLA hawks more evidence of the nefarious plans of the United States and bolsters their position with their domestic audiences. As the Beijing academic confided with a smile, ‘So many people believe in conspiracy theories in China that we just assume they are acting deliberately to lure us into a trap.’ Another Chinese academic, Professor Zha Daojiong of the Center for International and Strategic Studies at Peking University, told me that his biggest worry is that ‘the Chinese military could believe the American rhetoric and embark upon an arms race and follow the Soviet Union to the same end. I try to advise them against that. The risk is that the military will grow too big, get too much budget and too much power within China.’ The battle for access to the EEZs of the South China Sea is fundamental to the global balance of power. The world could end up with security policies determined by the most hawkish sectors of the US and Chinese political classes in a self-perpetuating and potentially self-destructive struggle for supremacy.

For the time being there is very little chance that China will deliberately seek open military conflict: the consequences for itself would be too costly. A defeat by the US could irreparably destabilise the leadership. China may have the ambition to drive the United States away, but does not have the military capacity to do so – for now. Gradually, however, the gap between the two sides will narrow and the chances of conflict will grow. In the meantime each military will play up the threat from the other and enjoy the benefits of budgetary support that follow. The danger is that the two confrontations taking place in the South China Sea – one between China and the United States over access and the other between China and its neighbours over territory – will interact in unpredictable ways.

It's unlikely that China will pick an overt fight with a Southeast Asian military. Even if the Chinese prevailed, the country's diplomatic legitimacy would be destroyed: its professed policy of peaceful coexistence would be proved a lie. But all options short of conflict remain on the table. Some incidents, such as the Philippines losing Scarborough Shoal or the confrontation in mid-2014 when China placed an oilrig inside Vietnam's claimed EEZ near the Paracel Islands, get wide publicity. Others, involving Indonesia and Malaysia for example, are kept quiet. In each case China used force but not direct military force. As Huang Jing, the director of
the Center on Asia and Globalization of Public Policy in Singapore, told the
New York Times
in 2013, ‘What China is doing is putting both hands behind its back and using its big belly to push you out, to dare you to hit first’.
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But the net result is the same: Southeast Asia isn't prepared to take Beijing's soothing words on trust. They are preparing for the worst, just in case.

* * * * * *

A company of US marines crouched in the tree line: partly for camouflage, partly for shade. The dry season temperature was building and, weighed down by their battlefield burdens, they were glad of the chance to rest. Thai marines, more used to the heat and dust of this part of Southeast Asia, took cover nearby. From high above, the valley looked green but down below the landscape was parched. A few tall trees disguised the desiccation. Beneath their branches, last season's grasses had turned to tinder. Cracked paddy fields awaited the rains, their farmers long gone. Even the birds had fled, alarmed by the tactical movement on the ground. They flapped up to the high limestone crags that dominated the flat valley floor. All was silent.

A pair of planes screamed over the heads of the marines: Thai F-16s. Their target lay at the base of those cliffs. Forward air controllers guided them in, painted their objective with lasers and waited as the 500-pound bomb fell away from the belly of the jet. Everyone in the valley was about to learn the real meaning of the word ‘impact’. A brief flash of orange flame and for a few seconds it wasn't clear if the strike was a success but when the sound of the explosion arrived, it was immense: ear-splitting even for those well outside the safety perimeter. As the column of smoke grew taller, the second plane delivered its bomb, even closer to the cliffs: another flash and another clap of deafening thunder. Then two US marine FA-18s joined in: two more 500-pounders. The targets were obliterated.

Far out of sight, howitzers roared. Half a minute later shells slammed into the ledges half-way up the cliff, sending fragments of rock and hot shrapnel ripping through the forest. Aim was adjusted and more shells arrived: more shrapnel and more smoke. Then the bombardment ceased and the marines got the order to move. The Thais took the lead, moving cautiously through the trees and fields behind a creeping barrage of mortar
shells. They reached a pre-planned firing position and let rip with automatic fire. The Americans moved a few hundred metres to one side and joined battle. A pair of armoured vehicles blocked their progress but the marines swung their AT-4 rockets onto their shoulders. Two rockets into each target and the marines could move past the blazing hulks, firing into the vegetation as they manoeuvred towards their ultimate objective. Mission accomplished. High on the hill opposite, shaded in their observation post and well supplied with chilled bottled water, the audience of assorted commanders applauded the efforts of their grunts on the ground.

The battle had lacked only one thing: an enemy. No-one had fired back, the cliffs had been empty of insurgents and the ‘armoured vehicles’ had been a couple of old saloon cars. But everything that had been dropped or fired was deadly real, for this was a CALFEX – a Combined Arms Live Fire Exercise – a chance to practise what marines call ‘warheads on foreheads’. A CALFEX is, by definition, a demonstration of immense trust. Commanders place the lives of their units in the hands of pilots and gunners from each other's militaries. A misplaced bomb or shell could be catastrophic. Those few hours in a remote stretch of Lop Buri Province represented the glue that holds together the military alliance between the US and Thailand.

The combined assault was the finale of the 2012 iteration of ‘Cobra Gold’ – Asia's largest multinational exercise. Seven countries had contributed over 9,000 personnel: 5,300 from the US, 3,600 from Thailand and 300 from South Korea. In a demonstration of the ways that regional tensions are forcing Southeast Asian countries to hedge their security bets, Malaysia and Indonesia were fully participating for the first time, albeit in small numbers. They, Singapore and Japan had each sent about 70 troops. Cobra Gold started as a bilateral US–Thailand event in 1982 but has gradually drawn in more countries from around the region and beyond. In 2012 there were observers from as far away as Sri Lanka and Mozambique. The Chinese military had also accepted an invitation to come and watch. There was a reason why the Americans wanted them to be there.

Cobra Gold has three distinct three parts: on-the-ground training such as the CALFEX, a ‘command post exercise’ or CPX for senior officers, and a ‘hearts and minds’ programme for local communities. What's most remarkable about Cobra Gold is that it's unremarkable. Every year thousands of
American troops turn up in parts of Thailand, practise fighting wars with allies and partners, blow things up and nobody bats an eyelid. The media turn up for the annual beach assault and take snaps of marines drinking snake-blood during jungle training. The US embassy issues press releases about how many schools, orphanages and hospitals the hearts-and-minds forces have built or rehabilitated and then everyone goes home again until the following February. What's it all for?

The CPX was taking place 150 kilometres from the mock battle, in the much more comfortable surroundings of Camp Suranaree, on the outskirts of the unremarkable city of Nakhon Ratchasima. I was prepared to rough it but discovered that these warriors fought with computers and telephones, stayed in hotels and ate in restaurants. The common language was English, which meant everyone could socialise, and after a day of war games there were plenty of other ways to keep playing. Not for nothing have some veterans dubbed the exercise ‘Cobra Golf’: there's one course on the army base and another at the air base right next door.

The work of the CPX was done inside the white two-storey officers’ mess building. Downstairs, a lecture theatre had been turned into the COC – the Combat Operations Centre – with over a hundred work places: white plastic chairs and folding tables in front of laptops plugged into COWAN – the Combined Operations Wide Area Network that underpins the entire operation. All military exercises have a scenario but Cobra Gold's are among the most elaborate. They take place on an imaginary island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, exactly the same size and shape as the American west coast. The towns and cities are in the same locations and even have the same names. The island of Pacifica stretches from just north of Seattle to just south of San Diego and inland as far as Salt Lake City and Albuquerque. The main difference is that Pacifica is divided between the evil-doers of the northern state of Arcadia, the good folks of neighbouring Kuhistan and four smaller countries: Isla del Sol (a severed Baja California), Mojave, Sonora and Tierra del Oro. Complicating the situation are the ethnic Arcadians living in Kuhistan and a host of other regional difficulties.