{"id":48914,"date":"2019-07-06T06:00:05","date_gmt":"2019-07-05T20:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=48914"},"modified":"2019-07-05T18:44:11","modified_gmt":"2019-07-05T08:44:11","slug":"china-cant-discount-americas-resolve-in-asia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/china-cant-discount-americas-resolve-in-asia\/","title":{"rendered":"China can\u2019t discount America\u2019s resolve in Asia"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figure>\n

Hugh White\u2019s How to defend Australia<\/em> shows a master storyteller at work. It\u2019s part of a debate Australians must have.<\/p>\n

While the book starts that debate, its core judgements shift from possibilities to certainties, and its assumptions shift and expand without explanation. This undercuts its conclusions\u2014including its proposals for Australia\u2019s defence strategy and forces.<\/p>\n

In the Indo-Pacific, along with China, India\u2019s power will grow, as will Indonesia\u2019s. Japan will remain a major power, with a growing willingness to use that power for regional security.<\/p>\n

White assesses China only wants to resume \u2018its rightful place as East Asia\u2019s leading power\u2019, and that \u2018China for all its potential strength, will not become predominant beyond East Asia and the Western Pacific, because it will be resisted by India, Russia and Europe as well as America\u2019.<\/p>\n

So, the argument continues, America won\u2019t \u2018accept the costs and risks of trying to prevent China from dominating East Asia\u2019 because \u2018America\u2019s own security does not depend on this\u2019. And America does not have the resolve to fight a war with China that might involve nuclear weapons, while China\u2019s leaders do.<\/p>\n

If this is right and the authoritarian Chinese state\u2019s ambition is restricted to wanting to dominate East Asia, then Australia and the other countries in greater Asia\u2014and the Indo-Pacific\u2014have nothing to fear from the enormous strategic shifts we\u2019re living through.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d like to believe that \u2018we might expect, and certainly hope, that China\u2019s leaders, who are keen students of history, recognise that they would be better off exercising primacy with a light touch, as America has done so successfully\u2019.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, the evidence we have of Chinese President Xi Jinping\u2019s use of power makes this unlikely. A majority<\/a> of Southeast Asian policymakers, business people and academics think China wants to be the dominant power in Asia, and only 9% of them think that China would be a \u2018benign hegemon\u2019. The people of Hong Kong and Taiwan also don\u2019t believe in Beijing\u2019s light hegemonic touch.<\/p>\n

The book stretches assessment of relative Chinese and American power and resolve much further than East Asia, though, saying America will cease playing a significant strategic role in Asia at all, with \u2018US leadership gradually fading away and China\u2019s influence expanding to take its place\u2019.<\/p>\n

The scenario this paints for Australia is stark: \u2018we really will be on our own\u2019. It leads to a proposal for a new type of defence force requiring funding worth 3.5\u20134% of GDP.<\/p>\n

All this relies on the idea that if the US can\u2019t dominate Asia by itself, it will leave Asia. America is Lego Batman: \u2018I work alone\u2019. If that doesn\u2019t work, it\u2019s back to the Batcave to sulk.<\/p>\n

This is caveated by acknowledging that America \u2018will retain important interests in Asia that it will seek to uphold\u2019, but in a classic case of damning with faint praise, goes on to say that \u2018America will never disengage entirely from Asia\u2019. Which has the effect of leaving exactly that idea of entire disengagement in the reader\u2019s mind.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a bad fit for the world we live in\u2014even one in which Donald Trump, perhaps the most instinctively isolationist US president for decades, occupies the White House. His signature foreign policy initiative has been his engagement of China\u2019s leadership because core American national interests are bound up in Asia\u2014and in China in particular. He\u2019s also spent lots of political capital on North Korea, again because America\u2019s interests are engaged fundamentally there.<\/p>\n

If Trump judges American interests are deeply engaged in Asia, it\u2019s a reasonable assumption future US presidents will too. As Arthur Culvahouse, America\u2019s ambassador to Australia, has noted: \u2018This region is fundamental to the United States\u2026.and we are committed to the region as much as we have ever been\u2019.<\/p>\n

This is not sentiment. It\u2019s because economic interests drag in strategic interests. As Culvahouse says, America is the leading investor in and deep economic partner of Australia and many Asian states, while China is its major trading partner. And, as we have seen with North Korea, countries which can reach America with nuclear weapons\u2014as China can\u2014get American leaders\u2019 attention.<\/p>\n

A core judgement here that Australian policymakers have to continue to get right is about American resolve to use its power to protect its interests in Asia.<\/p>\n

The good news is that America\u2019s national interests remain deeply woven in with Asia\u2019s security and prosperity. The darker news is that this means American resolve to protect those interests will remain strong\u2014up to and including using its nuclear arsenal in a war with China.<\/p>\n

White assumes leaders in Beijing will use nuclear weapons on American cities. But no leader in Beijing can afford to discount the prospect that in a major war, America would destroy Beijing, Shanghai and other iconic Chinese mega cities. America is the only state that\u2019s ever used nuclear weapons in war\u2014and it did so in East Asia.<\/p>\n

On top of this, White says, \u2018America shall remain a very powerful country, with the world\u2019s second- or third- biggest economy, a huge population, immense resources of talent and energy and formidable instruments of influence, including its armed forces\u2019. In fact, America is an outlier in the developed world by having a growing and relatively young population, which is a source of continuing economic and national power.<\/p>\n

China\u2019s best demographic days<\/a> are behind it. Its population will decline by some 60 million by 2050, and its working-age population will shrink by about a third. And its need to devote huge resources to maintain internal control is clear both on the streets of Hong Kong and in its spending on internal security, which is higher than its massive military spending.<\/p>\n

So, Australia is unlikely to be living in an Asia without America. And Asia is very likely to have powers who share interests with Australia\u2014including constraining an assertive, authoritarian China.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s fortunate, because a \u2018fortress Australia\u2019 strategy that seeks to sink Chinese ships and shoot down aircraft attacking Australia has enormous conceptual gaps. It requires assuming China would only use a tenth of its military might against Australia. White argues that \u2018happily, long-range ballistic missiles are expensive and hardly make sense to deliver conventional warheads\u2019, even though \u2018defence against intercontinental range missiles is not practicable\u2019.<\/p>\n

Chinese leaders won\u2019t send a just-the-right-size conventional force for the 200 fighters and 24 submarines White says Australia should have to sink, but not use missiles to destroy our ability to do so because of the cost. They\u2019d also attack critical vulnerabilities like our unprotected international supply lines\u2014without which we have only 25 days\u2019 fuel. Thinking otherwise would be a happy, but fanciful expectation.<\/p>\n

How to defend Australia<\/em> portrays powers like India, Indonesia and Japan as both potential adversaries and potential partners of Australia. It\u2019s simply bad strategy to tell such partners that one reason we\u2019re building a large, capable defence force is in case we have to fight them, while also seeking to work with them in regional coalitions in the face of aggressive Chinese power.<\/p>\n

Good strategic policy from Australian\u2019s current and future leaders must revolve around thinking of these three nations as strategic partners. And that means acting accordingly, including before any war, as Australia\u2019s military chief, Angus Campbell, recently observed<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Good policy in a multipolar Asia also means having more independent capability of our own, using the best technology we can get our hands on\u2014notably American.<\/p>\n

As my colleague Rod Lyon has observed, Australia has never gone to war alone. If we ever did have to fight a major power\u2014including China\u2014we would do it as we have in previous wars: with partners. A key one being the United States of America.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hugh White\u2019s How to defend Australia shows a master storyteller at work. It\u2019s part of a debate Australians must have. While the book starts that debate, its core judgements shift from possibilities to certainties, and …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":766,"featured_media":48917,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[44,279,21],"class_list":["post-48914","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-australian-defence-force","tag-force-structure","tag-strategy-2","dinkus-defending-australia"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nChina can\u2019t discount America\u2019s resolve in Asia | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/china-cant-discount-americas-resolve-in-asia\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"China can\u2019t discount America\u2019s resolve in Asia | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Hugh White\u2019s How to defend Australia shows a master storyteller at work. 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