Can America Compete with China’s Great Military Leap Forward?
Is the technological arms race offered by the third offset strategy desirable or even winnable?
Invisibility cloaks? Mako anti-antisubmarine drones? Robotic “lobsters”? Stims? F-40 Shrike fighters? Imaginative science fiction or harbingers of the future? In his recent novel Ghost Fleet, Peter Singer, one of Washington’s most influential technologists, has written a fictional account of a future war with China that has caught the attention of national security geeks. With co-author August Cole he crafts a dystopian view of America’s wartime prospects against a fictional Chinese Directorate that allies Big Business and the PLA. It features capabilities and weapons at the far edge of the current science and technology spectrum but with just enough reality to provoke strategists and planners worried about the future of conflict. The tale is all the more credible for having been written by a Brookings Institution analyst with two big technology-centric books on drones and cyberwar under his belt, a daunting speaker’s schedule, and, presumably, an insider’s access to the latest thinking about military technologies.
If timing is everything, Singer and Cole have hit the proverbial jackpot. Ghost Fleet arrives just as the Office of the Secretary of Defense is pushing to implement former Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel’s “third offset strategy,” intended to “sustain and advance America’s military dominance for the 21st century.” Along these lines, Secretary Hagel announced the Defense Innovation Initiative. Our current secretary of defense, Ashton Carter, as well as Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work are now pushing the Pentagon’s bureaucracies to bring Hagel’s vision to reality.
Even if these initiatives are successful, however, the third offset strategy may not achieve its intended effects. China is a formidable commercial competitor, the American economy’s ability to support a technological arms race is in doubt, and the nation’s allies may not be able to keep up.
Which technologies will underpin the third offset remains mired in the Pentagon’s planning, programming, and budgeting processes. Everything from robotics, autonomous systems, cyber capabilities, resilient basing, counter-sensor weapons, and more have been floated. Whether subsequent technological innovations, new warfighting concepts, advanced gaming techniques, and defense reforms follow the long-standing concepts associated with AirSea Battle global precision strike, or another yet-to-be-invented overarching idea, it is important to begin considering how the third offset strategy will affect the strategic dynamics in the Asia-Pacific.
Why the Asia-Pacific? Because, the Asian littoral out to the so-called first island chain is the first and most significant area of operations for peacetime military competition between China and the United States as well as the most likely flashpoint for direct conflict between the two. If the third offset strategy is successful, it will help the United States to remain a net security provider in the region while thwarting China’s effort to assert its primacy from the East China Sea to Southeast Asia and beyond to the Indian Ocean.
Chinese Military Modernization
Modern China, unlike most post-Cold War American adversaries, is technologically advanced and someday relatively soon may even approach or exceed American capabilities in select modern military systems — missiles, space-based, and undersea systems, for example. The trend line for China’s own military technological progress is positive, despite significant but well-known weakness and failures. Where China cannot match American capabilities in the short to intermediate term, it has invested heavily in asymmetric technologies and doctrines intended to counter existing American capabilities.
Many analysts believe that China has developed sophisticated anti-access/area denial strategies (A2/AD) intended to prevent the U.S. Navy and other forces from operating close to China’s territorial waters Using a wide variety of approaches, from threat of long-range precision strike to mine warfare systems, China hopes to limit American freedom of action in the littorals and perhaps beyond the second island chain. If Chinese efforts are successful, American joint and combined military forces may not reach their full combat potential or incur great losses for trying.
Peacetime Competition
The most basic assumption underlying the third offset strategy is that the economic, industrial, and technological strengths of the United States can and should be harnessed to overcome the advantages of potential adversaries and the inherent difficulties associated with projecting military power to the far reaches of the globe. Some advocate that the United States adopt competitive strategies, which self-consciously impose costs on adversaries and potential adversaries by re-setting the pace with innovative military technologies.
Yet the United States might not be able to sustain a high-technology strategy and, in the long run, China may be better positioned in a long-term race. Despite recent setbacks to its economy, China is still able and willing to invest major resources into military modernization. Numerous accounts document how the Chinese defense industry has increased its capacities, at least in part, by using cyber espionage to steal American and Western technologies and reverse engineering weapons and systems. Many Americans, on the other hand, remains uncertain about the economic future, tired of the post-9/11 increase in national security spending, and, by some accounts, supportive of domestic infrastructure investment to ensure long-term prosperity. In short, pursuing a strategy that depends on out-innovating and outspending rivals, presents political risks for American leaders.
The United States has also failed multiple times to reform its defense acquisition system in order to reduce costs, respond more quickly to the needs of warfighters, and field advanced systems more rapidly. The relationship between defense officials, the military services, the U.S. Congress, and the largely private defense industry is famously convoluted. While the traditional defense industry remains able to meet the nation’s defense procurement needs, the current focus on improving the nation’s cyber capabilities operations and protecting the highly networked military systems may require a hybrid cyber–military–industrial sector. Yet this hybrid appears far in the future, despite the Obama administration’s focus on cyber security and the relative growth of “cyber” as a component of recent defense budgets.
Minding the Gap
Another challenge for the third offset strategy is that American allies and coalition partners will find it difficult to keep pace with American military innovations. As Theo Farrell and Terry Tariff have observed about the most recent period of American military transformation,
European states have simply been unable to match the level of US investment in new military technologies and so for some time critics have warned of a growing “transformation gap” between the United States and the European allies.
A similar dynamic may develop in the Asia-Pacific. Relatively few regional partners are likely to match the United States as it adopts innovative but expensive technologies. Clearly some states, like Japan, South Korea, and Singapore may choose to match American military investment in innovative technologies, while others with less robust economies or very different strategic cultures and circumstances (i.e., India) may choose not to or will try but fail. Japan’s defense spending remains limited by its constitution; India is still buying capabilities reminiscent of the Cold War (aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines), and the smaller states across the Asian littoral have been reluctant to invest in militarily capabilities that support but do not duplicate those of the United States.
Unless the U.S. military and intelligence communities can somehow overturn the laws of physics, economics, and geography simultaneously, America remains at a disadvantage relative to China in terms of the fundamentals of military conflict in Asia. The United States is attempting to project power against a continental-sized power half a world away. It therefore must expend vast resources to bring its military power to bear across the Pacific Ocean and rely heavily on allies for everything from bases to diplomatic support.
The third offset strategy will have far-reaching effects on American allies, friends, and adversaries. Not all of the effects will be positive from the perspective of individual countries or the regional security environment. American policymakers, of course, recognize that the third offset strategy will impact the rest of the world, but they appear relatively sanguine about the results. Undersecretary Robert Work has spoken directly to this issue: “[w]hile the Defense Innovation Initiative and a third offset strategy is a U.S. initiative, it will also require a deliberate, aggressive effort on the part of our allies.”
And, of course, Chinese officials themselves are well aware of both their military strengths and American vulnerabilities; hence the intense pursuit of A2/AD capabilities. There is little reason to believe that the newly confident and relatively wealthy China will not adjust to the third offset strategy. If we are to believe futurists like Peter Singer and August Cole, China may well out innovate and out invest the United States. How else would China achieve technological breakthroughs in autonomous “quadcopter” search-and-destroy drones, the neuroscience of memory and cognition, ubiquitous anti-satellite weapons, and space-based sensors capable of detecting nuclear reactors deep undersea? While some of these capabilities are at the far edge of American capabilities, others have not been invented or would be so expensive as to preclude large scale deployments. Is such a technological arms race desirable or even winnable? It well might be that strategic adjustments in American ends and ways could help both side avoid such an unproductive allocation of national resources and a costly great power war.
Peter Dombrowski is a professor in the Strategic Research Department at the Naval War College. The opinions here are those of the author alone and do not reflect the positions of the Naval War College or any other government agency. This essay is a shortened version of a brief written for the Military Transformations Program at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS).
Photo credit: Mass Communication Seaman Natasha R. Chalk, U.S. Navy
John King 
caljackson 
S. Mahmud Ali 
Nosugar 
Pete Dombrowski poses some great questions. But some of what the U.S. should do is more traditional. Example, once the numbers of Chinese ballistic missile and attack submarines are up, they undoubtedly will be deploying their “peacetime” forces along the western U.S. seaboard, particularly outside of major navy bases and major cities (Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles) using a “hold hostage” strategy to make it costly for aggressive American strategies in the western Pacific. China’s $3+ trillion in foreign currency reserves and enormous technical talent pool permit them to leap straight into an equivalent technology, same size military as the U.S., countering anything the U.S. believes gives it an advantage. So not all those increased Pacific Pivot forces should be deployed forward towards China.
Pete’s point that our allies can’t keep up in valid, but only because they have smaller economies and discretionary resources. To partially offset the higher cost of a third offset, the U.S. can simply leverage that by taking 20% R&D contributions from them (which is the business model the U.S. used for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter development), and delivering finished products at near cost in an integrated defensive strategy where the U.S. leads a new NATO-Pacific.
Last, not all the military advantages from any third offset will come from modern/advanced technology applied to the military. Most of it will come from peacetime activities that stabilize the western Pacific, much of which requires the U.S. to “burden share” with China. That will require a large dose of trust as we transition China into accepting its international responsibilities supporting commerce and trade, maybe through joint U.S.-Chinese navy deployments.
In an environment where technology changes rapidly, we should relook at our land ownership constructs, maybe creating joint economic control of some areas, like those rock islands the Chinese are “rehabilitating.” Are they really so important we’d go to war over? I think not. So figure it out and stop all the spoiling-for-a-fight PR campaign, which is more targeted to getting Americans to pay for a larger defense budget than is really necessary.
That is a rhetorical question, right? If not, you’ve got to be kidding. We’re facing another government “shut down” October 1. The leading Republican presidential candidate says his military high school gave him more military training than military folk get. Our ISIS intel has been fudged. The Chinese seem to have command of our Federal IT systems better than we do (a la OPM, State Department, etc.). “Subduing an enemy without fighting is supreme excellence” (Sun Tzu). The Chinese are doing to us what we did to the Soviets, albeit on a more discreet and deliberate pace. They have virtually won already.
Professor Dombrowski’s illuminating commentary should wake the Beltway illuminati corps up. It may be possible for the US economy to challenge the laws of geography and bring its two-dozen-odd (counting the USMC LHAs and LHDs) carriers into the Western Pacific, destroy China’s counter-intervention systems, penetrate AD/BMD layers with global precision strikes, neutralise PLA cyber and space systems and eliminate the PRC as an effective state actor. The USA would then reign supreme as the sole-superpower at the core of a unipolar system.
This hegmonic primacy would be extended into the indefinite future with no further challenges ever to threaten America’s overwhelming all-domains superiority. Pax Americana would last as long as humanity existed.
It is possible that global dominion would enable America to perform and sustain this miracle for ever. The only problem apparent at this stage is that Washington would have to acquire global domination first to enable it to acquire a semblance of global domination before it can sustain that domination. However, even a cursory reading of history appears to challenge the assumptions upon which such fictional dreams are founded.
Those who describe the USA as Heaven on Earth, a view strongly supported by the millions who would, had immigration restrictions not existed, have flooded the land, fit for planetary emulation, miss a few points. The economic superpower remains iniquitous – just check the inner-city education and health stats; socially, it remains combustible – remember Ferguson? Politically, it is divided – following the Iran nuclear deal debate? And militarily, it has virtually been defeated by the ragtag bands claiming to resist US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. US direct and indirect interventions in Libya and Syria have helped to destroy these former states and effectively rendered these lands uninhabitable stretches of sand and rock.
This quality of reverse Midas’ touch could also destroy the People’s Republic of China, even if the PLA stopped some of the DoD’s third-offset strikes and its second-strike ability worked partially. However, as the steady flow of Afghans, Iraqis and Syrians into Europe demonstrates, post-US intervention, targeted societies are eviscerated beyond recovery. Even if the PLA’s counter-strikes entirely failed to evaporate a single US city, would anyone be willing, or able, to absorb or mitigate the consequences of the flight of possibly hundreds of millions of post-destruction survivors from the PRC? And to what end? How would planetary well-being or stability be served or aided by sustained US systemic primacy if this is cost of sustaining it?
Beltway strategists could do worse than thinking through these questions.
Some great points, but I would offer a couple thoughts. First, many of our allies are unwilling, not unable, to invest in their own defense. Second, while we have great challenges with the tyranny of distance, China’s geographic position is unenviable. Surrounded by historical enemies and very few places to go, we may want to look at this from a strategic perspective (crazy, I know). Yes, they are big and have a large population, but is anyone talking about fighting a land war with China? The issue is, their areas of expansion are limited and would come at a high economic, political, and military cost if the assume the risk. I am not wishing away the growing threat, but I would not trade places with them going forward – they are boxed in, have no allies and their dependence on imported oil and other key resources is growing.
I agree completely. The PRC is, and will always be, primarily a land power. The need to maintain the massive PLA, in addition to a massive an unwieldy internal security apparatus, will always be a major financial barrier to the PLAN’s long term goals for true blue water capability. Additionally while the US does have to project power across an ocean, it does it with the combined resources and basing of a significant alliance network. Japan, if it felt militarily threatened enough, could spend $100bn USD on defence p.a., constitutional constraints notwithstanding. Thus, much like in WW2, though US power does have to cross an Ocean, it does so to a large, powerful , secure and geographically convenient ally, which is more than capable of defending itself. Operationally, US power will projected from Japan, not CONUS.
As for not wishing a growing threat away, I agree that is something to be avoided. But personally I fear that in the drive to not minimise the nature of the threat, many tend to overestimate it, based on little more than exponential trend lines which take 5 years and project them to infinity – with no analysis of base drivers or growth, technological, economic or otherwise – and conjecture.
I too agree. China has two great threats:
(1) Its potential enemies are also its customers. In the long run China may be able to turn its populace into buyers, but right now it is forced to rely on the rest of the world. Any war with the West would certainly destroy the Chinese economy.
(2) Although China has seen amazing economic growth in the last 40 years, it still has a significant part of its population that lives in poverty. The growing “middle class” has lived with China’s authoritarian government because conditions continue to improve. However, it doesn’t take much of a slow down to create social unrest. The Chinese economy has slowed down to 7% GDP growth (a number that would be envied by many countries) and while social unrest is in no way out of control, the number of citizens protesting has increased significantly around the country. In addition, if China cannot continue to lift the remaining populace out of poverty, conditions could deteriorate quickly. The threat could rapidly become internal rather than external. There is always the possibility that China could counter an economic crisis through nationalism and projecting power regionally, but that would isolate China economically, exasperating internal problems and making such a plan less than a sure bet.
Hi Brad,
1) If you look at the numbers the vast majority of growth in the PRC since 2008 has been in government directed – either directly or through SOE’s – capital investment, in real estate, infrastructure and plant, all fuelled by cheap credit from state owned banks. This has created massive real estate bubbles, the highest debt to GDP ratio ever in china (280% and a rise of $21 trillion in just 8 years), and drastic reduction in the profitability of state owned enterprises (SOE’s). For example, over the last 8 years the Chinese have invested in so much steel production that the global price of steel has crashed, threatening the viability of other steel producers in places like Australia. What do you think that means for the profitability of the Chinese steel industry? And that’s the thing, all this talk of moving to a consumer based economy and using its middle class to consume this production, its bollocks. The retail sector does not consume steel, for example, its infrastructure, real estate and plant that need steel, and there are already literally entire cities full of empty buildings because of massive over-investment.
Additionally, they are also extremely dependant on energy imports, which are primarily routed by sea through the straights of malacca. These are very vulnerable to interdiction. They are working on overland pipelines through central asia, but these would be very vulnerable to strategic air power as well. Thus in any conflict they would be in an energy shortage very quickly, and there is only so much the Russians can provide.
(2) Its very unlikely that the PRC is growing at 7%. The ‘elasticity’ of Chinese economic statistics is well known, and the fact that they always meet their targets, in a nation as large as China, alone should be cause for scepticism. I’ve read a few pieces of analysis which looked at base indicators of activity – electricity consumption, rail and port volume – which indicate a real growth rate of between 0 and 4%.
Internal instability is always a core weakness in China, and it has been exacerbated by rapid economic growth which has created a massive wealth divide. The most destabilising thing about this class divide is the fact that it is geographical; the coastal areas are, as they have been since 1800, far more wealthy than the interior. This means Beijing is fighting centrifugal forces which want to fragment china, its why they are so determined not to let Taiwan declare independence; for Beijing fragmentation is an existential threat.
Plus there is regime legitimacy. Since the abandonment of communist ideology regime legitimacy has been founded on two pillars – economic growth and nationalism. If economic growth fails significantly, and Beijing cannot keep job growth levels high, there’s every chance of another tiananmen square.
Tim. Very good points.
I take any “data” coming from China with a grain of salt, particularly their GDP figures and defense expenditures. I firmly believe that GDP is overstated and defense spending is very understated. I believe their defense spending is probably in the neighborhood of $250B to $300B and that makes for some pretty healthy military growth when you factor in PPP.
Several years ago I spent time in China doing business. Basically, I was helping businesses that had moved manufacturing to China in the late-90s and early-2000s transition back to the U.S. Doing business there is not what it is cracked up to be. Sure, if you’re a car manufacturer or GE, it might be worth your while, but a lot of medium sized manufacturers got burned in what I consider a brilliant PR campaign by China. Businesses moved to take advantage of low labor costs and cheap raw materials, but what they discovered was that labor costs went up, especially if you needed quality and the cheap materials were cheap for a reason: they were crap, with almost non-existent quality control.
Anyway, from the time I spent there, I learned that what most people see is an illusion. A few huge coastal cities, filled with gleaming skyscrapers. Clean streets. Robust night life. But, that was just the marketing to get people to come. Business itself is mired by corruption and bureaucracy. Most of the manufacturing shops had two sets of books. One for outsiders and one for internal purposes. To get things accomplished, it took a lot of “gifts”. Infrastructure is of pretty poor quality (especially outside the center of big cities), and I was amazed at how local governments gave risky loans. I saw business that took a tremendous amount of capital, collateralized it with non-existent properties and inventory, and just walked away with the money, never to be heard from again. I saw shopping malls completely devoid of stores (and electricity) that had parking lots full of cars. When I inquired about the cars, I was told a local manufacturer made them and had a massive surplus of inventory, so they parked them at the only place that had room.
So yes, I think most of your assertions are correct. Of course there biggest disaster is about 15 or 20 years down the road. China’s one child policy and preference for male children has led to the 4-2-1 problem where one employed grandchild is responsible for two parents and four grandparents. What China is facing in the future makes our Social Security and Medicare issues seem trivial. But this is also what makes them a threat to their neighbors, because they may decide to strike while the iron is hot.
I honestly don’t see why US technological advancement would prevent a similar level of technological capability for US allies. The vast majority of systems operated by US allies in the region, from Japan to Australia, were developed by the United States. Take anything you want, AEGIS, F-35, JASSM,SM-6, its all funded and fuelled by US dollars and the US’s world leading R&D capability. Take BMD as an example, developed by the US primarily to counter the PLA’s ASBM capability. US developed technology that no aligned nation in the region could develop unilaterally or in concert (Japan, maybe but with significant outlays). Japan has already invested in the technology, and the RAN has plans to integrate it on its new destroyer program. Why cant the US simply on-sell the systems developed as part of the third offset, just as it did in the second? The primary reason the European allies are falling behind the US is because they insist on developing their own systems across the board, and that just isn’t the case in the Pacific. So basically I think this point is essentially moot, unless I’m missing something.
Also another issue I have with articles like this is they tend to view every investment the PLA has made as almost perfectly targeted to exploit US technological weakness, and everything the US does in mired in red tape and capitol hill politics. The PLAN is still investing heavily in systems such as aircraft carriers which have no place in any potential conflict with the USN.
Finally there is no basis for claiming the Chinese R&D capability is formidable. Even in the private sector only 8 Chinese companies were listed in the top 100 most innovated organisations according to forbes, the same number as Japan. 48 US companies made the list, 8 of which were in the top 10. The US high-tech and R&D base towers over the PRC’s, and that unlikely to change given the inherent structural and political challenges to innovation such as informational controls.
This says nothing of the long term outlook for Chinese economic growth -which is hardly rosy and could be disastrous depending on who you read – or the combined resources of US allies in the region (Japanese and Australian defence budgets combined are ~$70bn UDS p.a.).
So, to sum up, I’m not sure I buy much of the reasoning in this article.