Red Star Over the Pacific

In this vein, we recall Mark Twain’s quip that “history doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes.” So it does. For more than a decade, Western scholars and practitioners of statecraft have struggled to chart China’s long-term trajectory. Consonant with Twain’s wisdom, many have looked to history to help forecast the future. European history has colored their thinking, producing both optimistic and pessimistic predictions about China’s ascent to great power.¹ The fate of Imperial Germany, which rose with Prussia’s triumph in the Wars of Unification (1864–1871) and fell with the Treaty of Versailles (1919), has garnered particular attention. China-watchers predisposed to optimism maintain that Beijing is pursuing a benign, low-profile grand strategy reminiscent of Otto von Bismarck’s Germany. Bismarck courted amicable relations with bordering nations, soothing fears of German capabilities and intentions.² Those of bleaker inclinations reply that Kaiser Wilhelm II’s Germany—an industrially mighty, erratic great power situated amid lesser powers—marched Europe over the precipice in 1914. A powerful, revisionist China could do the same, deranging the Asian status quo. Enmity, conflict, and even war are the likely results if fin de siècle Europe is any guide.³

The Chinese themselves have consulted the Imperial German case for guidance, studying it alongside other historical case studies involving rising powers. In 2006 China Central Television, which is run by Beijing’s State Council, produced a twelve-part television—and eight-part book—series titled The Rise of Great Powers. The series includes a particularly instructive episode on Germany, one of the nine countries it examines from the past five hundred years. Credited for securing twenty years of peace for a newly united Germany, Bismarck is held in high if not excessive esteem. The book series showers praise on Bismarck for damping the envy of Germany’s neighbors, enmeshing the nation’s security with that of its neighbors, and holding a vengeful France at bay.⁴ This account holds wide appeal with Chinese audiences who want Beijing to act as a “responsible stakeholder” in the international order.

Accordingly, Tang Yongsheng, deputy director of the Strategy Institute at China’s National Defense University, urges Beijing to pattern its peaceful rise on the Bismarckian model. “Bismarck in Germany drew up a complex geosecurity system,” observes Tang, and “by building a dazzling alliance network with countries on the periphery, he eased the strategic pressure of European powers on Germany, avoided the predicament of having enemies on both sides, and successfully isolated France.”⁵ China, similarly, should anchor itself to a range of multilateral alignments spanning the globe “so as to establish [itself] in an unassailable position.” Other Chinese strategists fervently reject comparisons to Wilhelmine Germany. One scholar deems the likeness “ridiculous” and “based on not knowing anything about China.”⁶ It seems clear, nonetheless, that Chinese strategists are inspecting the German case for lessons, positive or negative.

Given the manifold nautical challenges confronting China—witness Beijing’s dispatch of a squadron for counterpiracy operations in the Gulf of Aden—we expect historically minded Chinese analysts and officials to heed the past successes and failures of maritime powers. The lessons they learn from history may tell us a great deal about their future behavior and the policies they will pursue, both along China’s littoral periphery and on the high seas. Wilhelmine Germany, again, furnishes potentially fruitful analogies. Germany was a continental power struggling to go to sea during the age of British naval dominion, much as land-bound China is bidding for sea power in an Asia where America rules the waves. By discovering the similarities and differences between the German disaster and China’s maritime endeavors, we can catch sight of effective strategic responses.

Such heresy won him few friends in the naval establishment. Admiral Magnus von Levetzow, the last Imperial German chief of naval staff, branded Wegener “a hairsplitter and a professor” obsessed with geography and passive in outlook.⁸ Even so, Wegener’s template offers a useful way to compare Germany then with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) now. We examine the similarities and differences between German and Chinese maritime geography, take the measure of the German and Chinese navies relative to the dominant navies of their day, and evaluate the German and Chinese peoples’ propensity for seafaring. This will illuminate alternative futures for Sino-American interaction on the high seas and, with any luck, will help Washington manage its relations with Beijing cordially.

Geography

It is a natural tendency to reduce geography to an abstract jumble of lines on maps and nautical charts, but strategic geography is an innately interactive field of endeavor. And, like other dimensions of strategy, it cannot be divorced from the human factor. Consequently, it is worthwhile to consider how dominant sea powers of the past have sought to manage the efforts of new entrants into the circle of great powers—powers often set on reordering the prevailing maritime system to their advantage. Great Britain played the role of the preeminent sea power in turn-of-the-century Europe whereas the United States finds itself cast in this role in maritime Asia today. Any patterns of interaction between established and rising sea powers will prove enlightening.

German leaders professed fealty to the ideas of sea-power theorist Alfred Thayer Mahan. As previous chapters observed, Mahan’s ideas about the interaction between human events and the sea were revolutionary—leading commentators to dub him America’s “evangelist” or “Copernicus” of sea power, not to mention a leading proponent of geopolitical thought. The importance of geography was nonetheless lost on Berlin. The theories put forward in Mahan’s The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660–1783 found special favor with Kaiser Wilhelm II. On one occasion the Kaiser reported not just reading but “devouring Captain Mahan’s book and . . . trying to learn it by heart.”⁹ Mahan articulated not only a theory of naval strategy, focusing on the mechanics of combat at sea, but also a “philosophy” of sea power accentuating the geopolitical motives that impel nations down to the sea in ships.¹⁰ For him, sea power was about far more than navies and sea fights. It encompassed international trade and commerce—he regarded a people’s inborn propensity to trade as the keystone of sea power—as well as forward bases to support the voyages of fuel-thirsty, steam-propelled vessels.¹¹

Mahan also declared that a great seafaring nation needed one or two ready outlets to the high seas to prevent a dominant rival fleet from choking off its maritime trade and commerce.¹² The United States, Mahan’s intended audience, enjoyed easy access to the Atlantic and Pacific, and unlike most continental powers, it faced no land threats that diverted resources from seagoing pursuits. Imperial Germany had no such luck. The narrow German seacoast features ports on the Helgoland Bight in the North Sea and at Kiel and Rostock on the Baltic coast, flanking the Jutland Peninsula to the west and east. But whether they originate from the North Sea or the Baltic, ships from German ports must pass under the shadow of the British Isles to reach the Atlantic seaways, and thence the modest colonial empire Germany carved out in the 1880s and 1890s.¹³ Royal Navy men-of-war operating from southern ports could close the Straits of Dover with ease, while vessels based at Scapa Flow, to the far north in Scotland, could cordon off the North Sea from afar—as they did during World War I, enforcing a “distant blockade” of German shipping.

To force entry into the Atlantic against a hostile Great Britain, Germany would need a fleet able to overpower the biggest contingent the Royal Navy was likely to station in home waters. Seizing the strategic offensive was no simple matter for the High Seas Fleet. Britain already held the decisive geographic positions at the outbreak of war, and it attached unlimited value to the object of homeland defense—justifying maximum naval measures. Marveled Wegener, Britain “found herself simply in a brilliant strategic position at the outbreak of the war. The arteries of her commerce lay in the Atlantic, unreachable by the German fleet from the Elbe. The German trade routes, on the other hand, could easily be severed in the Channel and off Scotland.”¹⁴

“England,” he concluded, “was ‘saturated’ with command of the sea” at the outbreak of war.¹⁵ By implication, Admiral Levetzow was shortsighted to proclaim that “victorious naval battle is . . . always correct and never wrong strategy—where at sea it will be fought against the enemy’s main force is really immaterial.”¹⁶ If adopted, such a maxim would divorce operations from political purpose. The notion of battle for its own sake has beguiled military thinkers throughout history, but in a sense, this represents an un-German way of thinking. Wegener quoted Carl von Clausewitz, the quintessential German military theorist, who described strategy as the use of battles and engagements for the purpose of the war. Levetzow contradicted Clausewitz, embracing the conceit that battle was an end in itself, strategic and geographic factors aside.

Unless the German navy could outflank the British Isles, improving its strategic position, it stood little chance of furthering overall German strategic success. Tactical sorties from the Helgoland Bight did nothing beyond reinforcing German command of the North Sea, which Wegener pronounced a “dead” expanse. That is, the Royal Navy could seal it off from the high seas, in effect rendering it a strategically useless inland sea. Trying to command the Atlantic commons from the North Sea was like trying to command it from the landlocked Caspian Sea. Germany had three options:

• First, it could content itself with commanding the Baltic Sea, the conduit for Scandinavian ore and other natural resources. Maintaining dominance over the Russian navy detachment in the Baltic would have kept this lifeline open for German industry. Keeping control of the Belts, the narrow seas east of the Jutland Peninsula, would have helped Germany preserve mastery of the Baltic. This strategy, however, had a serious drawback: it would have meant forfeiting German imperial interests, with colonies such as Kiaochow, on China’s Shandong Peninsula, left to wither on the vine.

• Second, the German fleet could force open the “gateway” to the Atlantic to the south. Germany could circumvent the Straits of Dover by seizing ports such as Brest and Cherbourg along the French Atlantic coast (as indeed it did during World War II). Wegener noted that the dead North Sea would have “sprung to life” if the German navy acquired Atlantic footholds. There would have been a vital sea-lane to contest, linking the north German ports with outposts on the Atlantic Ocean. The High Seas Fleet could have brought the Royal Navy’s Grand Fleet to battle over this sea line of communication (SLOC).

• Third, the High Seas Fleet could attempt to force entry into the Atlantic by the northern route. This likely would have involved a sequential campaign, improving Germany’s strategic position in step-wise fashion. The Jutland Peninsula could have been occupied or the Danish government browbeaten into granting access to its ports on German terms. This would have provided the German navy access to the northern SLOC connecting the Baltic with the Atlantic. From there German forces could have seized outposts along the southern Norwegian coast, obtaining a springboard to occupy the strategically placed Shetland or Faeroe islands, or conceivably even Iceland. Assuming that Germany could hold them against British counterattack, these island “gates” would have furnished German shipping the free access to vital SLOCs that Berlin craved. At a minimum, observed Wegener, the Grand Fleet would have been forced to fight to maintain its own strategic position, and to keep the German navy from menacing the British Isles from new points of the compass.

How willing British political leaders would be to scale back their overseas commitments to maintain an acceptable margin of superiority over the German navy—and prevent a German breakout—was one of the central questions in the Anglo-German naval arms race. The naval race saw the British government weigh the importance of colonial interests against homeland defense. Ultimately, defending home waters against a nearby threat superseded British imperial commitments in the New World and East Asia. British statesmen appeased the United States, which agreed to watch over British interests in return for a withdrawal of the Royal Navy from American waters. They struck up an alliance with Japan, supplementing the Royal Navy forces forward deployed along the Chinese coast. Diplomacy thus freed up warships to concentrate in European waters, confounding German expectations that Britain would never draw down its overseas presence for the sake of naval preponderance at home.¹⁷

Like Imperial Germany, China finds itself beckoned in two divergent directions by continental and maritime interests, but on a truly transregional scale. Fourteen land powers share terrestrial frontiers with China while six maritime countries together enclose the entire Chinese coastline. Of these twenty neighboring states, six rank among the world’s top ten in population, eight rank among the top twenty-five in military forces, and four possess nuclear weapons. As Meng Xiangqing of the National Defense University laments, “China fronts the sea with the land on the back, yet it borders on big powers on land and is encircled by an island chain in the sea. Therefore, although it is a large country that is composed of both the land and the sea, China has never been able to enjoy any benefit from having both the land and the sea.”¹⁸ Mahan, who doubted the ability of continental powers to go to sea, would have sympathized with Beijing’s plight.

When geopolitically minded Chinese strategists such as Meng gaze across the seas, many see an island barrier obstructing their nation’s entry into the oceanic thoroughfare. In the eyes of Chinese analysts, the “first island chain” ( 012

) running south from the Japanese archipelago to the Philippines compromises the mainland’s long coastline, restricting Beijing’s nautical activities. A map in the Pentagon’s annual Military Power of the People’s Republic of China reports helps explain the consternation that grips many Chinese thinkers when they look at the map. Japanese territory forms the northern arc of the island chain, which terminates just short of Taiwan, its midpoint and point of closest approach to the mainland coast. The island chain breaks at the Luzon Strait before resuming. It traces southward along the Philippine and Indonesian archipelagoes before looping to the north and terminating off Vietnam.¹⁹ It is worth noting that geography is subjective. Writing in Guofang Bao, Jiang Hong and Wei Yuejiang depict the first island chain as sweeping all the way along the Indonesian archipelago to Diego Garcia in a single grand arc.²⁰ Their choice of Diego Garcia, a British-administered island commonly used by U.S. warplanes, as the western terminus of the island chain can be no coincidence. Extending the island chain into the Indian Ocean puts quite a different gloss on Chinese fears of maritime encirclement and containment.

At a casual glance, let alone the close scrutiny afforded geostrategy by Chinese analysts, it appears that nature has imposed severe handicaps on Chinese access to the sea. Given that China has been able to settle twelve of fourteen land border disputes to the mutual satisfaction of all parties involved, anxieties over perceived encirclement at sea now predominate. Writing in the prestigious journal China Military Science, Senior Colonel Feng Liang and Lieutenant Colonel Duan Tingzhi of the Naval Command College depict the apparent island encirclement of China in graphic terms, observing that “these islands obstruct China’s reach to the sea. . . . The partially sealed-off nature of China’s maritime region has clearly brought about negative effects in China’s maritime security.... Because of the nature of geography, China can be easily blockaded and cut off from the sea, and Chinese coastal defense forces are difficult to concentrate.”²¹

In a pithy summary of Beijing’s dilemma, Gong Li, deputy director of the Institute of International Strategy of the Central Party School, finds the “predicament of ‘having seas but not the ocean’” fundamentally intolerable for a serious maritime power such as China.²² Drawing an explicit parallel between Imperial Germany’s unenviable position and China’s geographic predicament, Jiang Yu states:

The Chinese navy, in its efforts to develop a far-seas fleet, must confront the existence of the island chain as a geographic disadvantage. If it cannot overcome the island chain blockade, even a very powerful naval force would be unable to contribute much. No matter how strong a navy becomes, if it cannot first genuinely face the ocean or resolve obstacles to its exits to the sea, then it is difficult for it to be considered a far-seas navy. In coping with the problem of island chain confinement, the Chinese navy cannot blindly develop large fleet formations for far-seas combat. Otherwise, it can easily follow Germany’s doomed path during World War I when its High Seas Fleet was sealed off in the near seas. As a consequence, the [German] fleet that was built through the concentration of massive capital and national power was unable to exercise its capabilities in the contest for sea power.²³

The author astutely identifies a dilemma confronting China. A powerful fleet may be the only tool that can pierce the island barrier, or “island chain blockade,” as he terms it. Yet the risk that a sizable and capable naval force—constructed at great expense—still might not be strong or battleworthy enough to cruise beyond the island chain at will could deter Beijing from attempting the buildup in the first place. These writings collectively bespeak an insistent desire to break out of the island-chain straitjacket, ensuring unfettered Chinese access to vital waters and frustrating what they see as an American antiaccess strategy in the China seas.

In their search for an opening, geostrategists have fixed their attention on Taiwan. Much as Wolfgang Wegener believed that Germany needed to occupy the Faeroes, Shetland, or Iceland to wrench open the gates to the Atlantic, Chinese thinkers view Taiwan, if or when it is returned to Beijing’s possession, as the lone geographic asset that would grant China direct access to the Pacific. As Zhan Huayun observes, the East China and Yellow seas are bounded by Japan’s four main islands whereas the South China Sea is enclosed by the nations of Southeast Asia. As such, “Taiwan’s ocean facing side on the east is the only direct sea entrance to the Pacific.”²⁴ Dubbing the island the “Gibraltar of the East,” Li Yuping depicts it as a “critical strategic thoroughfare” and a “springboard” to the Pacific.²⁵ As we pointed out in chapter 2, the highly regarded Chinese volume Science of Military Strategy is emphatic about this. Gong Li graphically describes the geostrategic value of Taiwan, proclaiming that “if the Taiwan problem is resolved, the door to the Pacific Ocean will be opened for mainland China, thus breaking the first island chain.”²⁶

Lin Sixing, a professor from the Research Institute for Southeast Asian Studies at Joining University, is even more categorical about the importance of Taiwan. Declares Lin, “A China without Taiwan will not be able to break out of the ‘first island chain’ and be denied entry into the Pacific, so much so that its southeastern territory will be devoid of any security.”²⁷ The southeastern coastal provinces over which the author frets form the epicenter of China’s economic miracle. Lin is clearly referring to the risk that potential adversaries, including Taiwan, might threaten Chinese sources of prosperity militarily in order to deter or coerce Beijing.

Beyond Taiwan’s value as a point of entry into the Pacific, possession of the island would bestow geostrategic advantages on Beijing, ensuring access to China’s historic periphery as well as safe passage for commercial shipping on which the nation’s economic fortunes hinge. As Wang Wei states: “If Taiwan is returned, then it is only there that China can build absolute control over the adjacent sea areas. From this perspective, Taiwan would undoubtedly be the most reliable thoroughfare into the Pacific Ocean for the Chinese navy. As such, it is not difficult to appreciate the importance of Taiwan in the development of China’s near-term maritime strategy” ²⁸ (emphasis added). The notion that the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLA Navy) would attain overbearing Mahanian command by projecting power from Taiwan conforms to the thinking of many Chinese sea power advocates, as described in chapter 2. In an article laced with terms and concepts that would have delighted Mahan, Jiang Yu describes the island chain as a “shackle” (枷锁) that poses a “serious hidden threat” (心腹之患) to the Chinese navy. He argues in surprisingly candid terms how the “return” of Taiwan to the motherland would benefit the PLA’s position. He explains:

If China can retrieve Taiwan—the mid-section of the island chain—through military or political means, then the midpoint of the entire island chain would be severed in geographic terms. The Chinese fleet and naval aviation units can then use Taiwanese bases to directly enter the Pacific, making Taiwan island a major base and a harbor of refuge favoring both the offense and the defense for China’s far-seas fleet. Moreover, the sea and air combat radii from bases on Taiwan would reach the flanks of Japan and the Philippines. The mainland and Taiwan would form a T-shaped battlefield position able to deter the periphery through semi-encirclement. Recovering Taiwan not only distinctly improves the security environment for China’s littoral defense, but it would completely resolve the geographic limits set on Chinese naval power’s eastern entry into the Pacific Ocean.²⁹

Some observers go even further, depicting Taiwan as a platform from which to attack the U.S. position in the Pacific. They pay particular attention to the “second island chain,” which stretches from the Aleutians to Papua New Guinea. Guam, a major hub for American power projection, occupies the center of this outer island chain. The flagship publication of the Chinese navy’s political department declares, “Taiwan also controls advantageous routes to the interior waters of the second island chain and the quickest pathways to the open seas. Thus, if we resolve the Taiwan question, it would also represent a fundamental transformation in our ability to break through the second island chain.”³⁰ The author presumably anticipates using Taiwan to launch offensive, perhaps preemptive, strikes against U.S. military forces based on Guam in wartime.

Hyperbole aside, what analytical or comparative value do such views hold? First, the Chinese may have painted an overly pessimistic geostrategic picture for themselves. While the first island chain looks like an imposing barrier on the map, closer examination suggests that Beijing enjoys a menu of options for breaking out of the China seas. The Luzon Strait is one prominent passageway in and out of the South China Sea that catches the eye of Chinese analysts. To Yu Fengliu, the strait represents “a maritime area with extremely high economic, military, and political value worth the weight in gold, a nautical zone boasting important strategic meaning in the Western Pacific, and also a channel for China to go past the first island chain worthy of close attention.”³¹

Because the Luzon Strait is at once the largest “gap” in the first island chain and presents complex maritime terrain for the U.S. Navy to control, Yu contends that Chinese air and naval assets could sortie independently through the strait, even without shore-based cover. Such confidence speaks volumes about the strategic significance of Sanya, the newly unveiled naval base on Hainan Island. In times of conflict, it is conceivable that China would feint, staging a breakthrough along the first island chain to distract its adversaries while mounting its main effort elsewhere, perhaps well to the north. The luxury of stretching an adversary’s defenses and striking at weak points—a luxury Germans certainly did not enjoy—bestows greater flexibility on Chinese strategists. Those who hype China’s poor strategic position, then, are obscuring promising alternatives.

Second, unlike the North Sea, an expanse that held little value for the British, the bodies of water bounded by the first island chain are integral to the globalized order underwritten by U.S. and allied naval power. These waterways convey the lifeblood of economic vitality to all regional economies, including China’s. To complicate matters, Asian allies and friends along the island chain play host to U.S. bases and facilities that are critical not only to sustainable, credible American power projection but also to efforts to deter or reverse aggression. American command of the East Asian commons, then, constitutes the sine qua non of regional stability. Indeed, Western-style economic integration and political liberalization would have been impossible across much of Asia absent the international public good of U.S.-supplied maritime security.

Free navigation cannot be sustained for long without the security guarantees that only the U.S. Navy can furnish, as it has done for more than six decades. If China were to challenge U.S. sea control, the United States would find itself compelled to choose between rising to the challenge and abdicating its long-held position. In short, Beijing can induce Washington to commit militarily in ways the Germans simply could not vis-à-vis Great Britain. Three recent events underscore China’s ability to draw in the United States, whose assets operate along the Chinese littoral on a daily basis: the 2001 collision between a Chinese fighter jet and a U.S. EP-3 surveillance plane over the South China Sea, a Chinese Han-class nuclear attack submarine’s breach of Japanese territorial seas in 2004, and Chinese vessels’ “harassment” of the survey ship USNS Impeccable in 2009, south of Hainan Island. There is nothing dead about the China seas. They are vital to all maritime actors in East Asia.

Third, the proximity of the North Sea to British home waters guaranteed that London would pay close scrutiny to Berlin’s nautical ambitions. It would have been next to impossible to separate the German naval threat from British homeland defense. Unsurprisingly, then, the British mounted a vigorous buildup of their own against Germany, maintaining an insurmountable lead in capital ships and barring the gates to the Atlantic commons. In contrast to a Britain “saturated” with sea control, American rule of Asian waters comes neither naturally nor cheaply. On the operational level, forward-deployed U.S. expeditionary forces must conquer the tyranny of geography through the complex web of mutually supporting bases, logistical arrangements, and at-sea sustainment that anchors Washington’s presence in the region. Politically speaking, American voters and officials would find it hard to see a remote trend such as China’s naval buildup as a mortal threat to the United States.

However imposing, the PLA Navy remains abstract to citizens occupied with daily pursuits. This makes it hard for political leaders in Washington to summon public support for an expedition to defend faraway lands of which Americans know little. Short of a Sino-U.S. cold war, then, it is difficult to imagine how Chinese naval modernization could bring forth an American response approximating Britain’s feverish naval construction. This is especially true in light of the ambiguity surrounding the purposes and magnitude of Chinese sea power—ambiguity exacerbated by the vast distances involved and by Chinese efforts to calm misgivings about its maritime rise. The likely mismatch between political determination on each side of the Pacific, which favors Beijing, suggests that Washington may find it increasingly tough to keep a firm grip on the trident.

Fleet Building

Naval strategy is as interactive an enterprise as strategic geography. Germany faced a Great Britain that was not only blessed by geography—First Sea Lord Jacky Fisher christened Britons “God’s chosen people” for this reason—but that deployed a “brutally superior” Royal Navy astride German maritime communications.³² Threats consist of capabilities and intentions, but military strategists generally plan against rivals’ capabilities and leave the task of judging intentions to politicians. This division of labor makes sense from combat leaders’ standpoint. After all, intentions can change quickly whereas designing and building weaponry takes years in an industrial age. Admiral Tirpitz saw a dominant British Navy standing athwart German SLOCs as intolerable, despite scant evidence of British enmity toward the Reich.³³

Shortly after assuming duties as state secretary for the navy in 1898, Tirpitz informed Kaiser Wilhelm that the military situation against Britain demanded “battleships in as great a number as possible.”³⁴ For Tirpitz, winning Germany’s rightful “place in the sun” of empire meant stationing a fleet of sixty-one capital ships at German seaports by the 1920s.³⁵ It meant exempting naval procurement from parliamentary oversight and continually upgrading the fleet. Tirpitz wanted automatic replacement of German capital ships after twenty-five years of service life—a figure he lowered to twenty years after 1906, when the Royal Navy commissioned the Dreadnought, an all-big-gun, oil-fired, turbine-driven battleship that rendered virtually obsolescent battleships that were on the vanguard of naval technology only a short time before.³⁶ In a real sense, the naval arms race began anew when the Dreadnought slid down the ways.³⁷

Tirpitz calculated the optimal size of the High Seas Fleet by studying British martial traditions and the politico-military configuration of late-nineteenth-century Europe. The conclusions he reached were on the flimsy side. He postulated, first, that Germany could accomplish its purposes with a fleet smaller than the Grand Fleet that defended the British Isles. In part this was because he believed Germany could offset numerical inferiority with superior ship design, constructing vessels able to stand up to battle damage and mete out punishment better than their British counterparts.³⁸ And the navy secretary saw little need to match British numbers. Notes Holger Herwig, “Citing British naval history, Tirpitz argued that Britain would always be the attacker in war and, consequently, would require 33 percent numerical superiority; conversely, Germany would have to construct a fleet only two-thirds the size of the British, a ‘risk’ fleet . . . that London would hesitate to challenge for fear of losing its global possessions in a naval Cannae in the North Sea.”³⁹

Cannae was a battle from Roman antiquity in which the Carthaginian general Hannibal’s army encircled and annihilated a Roman army—giving European strategic thinkers schooled in the classics part of their vocabulary for debating military affairs. A more recent, and more commonly invoked, indicator of future British behavior was the Battle of Trafalgar, the decisive 1805 clash in which Lord Horatio Nelson’s outnumbered fleet crushed a Franco-Spanish fleet off the south Iberian coast. Though he seldom agreed with Tirpitz, Wegener too maintained that British mariners had been on the strategic offensive for centuries, bettering Britain’s strategic position and commercial interests in wartime and peacetime alike. This was the essence of British maritime strategy. If so, it appeared reasonable to forecast that the Grand Fleet would stand into the North Sea at the outbreak of war, offering battle on German terms.

The other premise underlying Tirpitz’s vision of German naval development was that fellow European powers such as France would bandwagon with Germany to escape British maritime dominance. The High Seas Fleet would form the nucleus of an “alliance fleet” that would match or surpass the Grand Fleet in numbers. But the Kaiser had systematically alienated prospective allies since dismissing Chancellor Bismarck in 1890, making him an unlikely leader for an anti-British naval coalition.⁴⁰ Worse from Berlin’s standpoint, the Royal Navy supplied the international public good of maritime security, benefiting all seafaring nations. British high-handedness rankled with continental Europeans from time to time, but European leaders preferred the British devil they knew to the German devil they didn’t.⁴¹ Great Britain posed too small a menace to bind together an opposing coalition.

For an officer obsessed with a rival navy’s capabilities, Tirpitz was conspicuously oblivious to the diplomatic signals his own helter-skelter shipbuilding efforts sent. Tirpitz intended to threaten the Royal Navy in home waters, so German shipwrights fitted German vessels with heavier armor, offering greater protection against British gunfire. Rugged construction added weight, consuming additional fuel and cutting their range. Since German battleships’ cruising radius was too short to let them operate beyond the North Sea, it was plain to British observers that the High Seas Fleet was aimed squarely at Britain. Indeed, Paul Kennedy aptly describes the German battle fleet as a “sharp knife, held gleaming and ready only a few inches away from the jugular vein” of the premier sea power of the day.⁴² This was not a force built for colonial and SLOC defense but for decisive battle in European waters. Self-defeating though such behavior was, declares Herwig, Tirpitz’s strategic ideas hardened into “dogma, inviolable and sacrosanct,” by World War I.⁴³

Alfred Thayer Mahan hints at the dangers of obfuscating about maritime strategy. In commentary on Berlin’s 1900 Navy Law, Mahan observes that the law set forth a principle that was to govern German naval development “over a term of many years,” namely “that it was essential to possess a navy of such force that to incur hostilities with it would jeopardize the supremacy of the greatest naval power” of the age.⁴⁴ This was lawmakers’ way of designating Great Britain as the primary foe and as the benchmark for German shipbuilding while remaining coquettish about the true purposes of the High Seas Fleet. Without “transparency” (to use today’s parlance for openness in large institutions) about the motives for German naval armament, the British were forced to judge German intentions by German capabilities. A fleet of short-range, heavily gunned, thickly armored warships stationed just across the North Sea could have only one purpose: to dispute the Royal Navy’s control of European waters. Net assessment, then, was the prime mover for the British naval buildup.

Today, both the United States and China are guilty of this kind of evasiveness to one degree or another. As chapter 8 will show, the American sea services steadfastly refuse to name an opponent in their 2007 “Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower,” the most authoritative statement of how they see the world and the proper strategic responses to it. By agitating for a big, high-tech fleet while insisting the United States currently faces no conventional naval threat, the strategy forces Chinese naval strategists to read between the lines—and to devise their own strategy based on U.S. capabilities rather than official statements of intent.

The reverse is true. The Pentagon hectors the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) ceaselessly over its lack of transparency, questioning the purposes of the impressive fleet China is assembling. And indeed, Beijing is prone to use such formulas as “a certain country” to refer to the United States, rather than frankly stating its views. Washington, too, must plan against Chinese capabilities since evidence about Chinese intentions remains nebulous. Fudan University scholar Shen Dingli frankly declares that “we compete.” One could wish for more of Shen’s brand of outspokenness in Sino-American relations. Theodore Roosevelt wisely advised statesmen to speak softly in diplomacy, but by that he did not mean they ought to dissemble. Candor is a virtue—even, or perhaps especially, with prospective opponents.

It is unfair to condemn German thought or actions without identifying strategic alternatives that were open to Berlin. As noted earlier, the German naval command made no effort to outflank Britain in a geographic sense, improving Germany’s strategic position. Nor did the naval leadership apply much effort to developing an asymmetric strategy that employed new technology. Early on, in fact, Tirpitz ruled out the strategy of the lesser naval power championed by French thinkers since midcentury. In essence, a “jeune école” strategy relied on cruiser warfare overseas rather than a head-on confrontation with a superior fleet composed of “capital ships.”⁴⁵ For Mahan, “the backbone and real power of any navy are the vessels which, by due proportion of defensive and offensive powers, are capable of taking and giving hard knocks.”⁴⁶ That meant either battleships or battlecruisers, the battleships’ faster, more lightly armored (and more vulnerable) brethren. Cruiser warfare, in short, was an asymmetric strategy that assailed an enemy’s maritime traffic while avoiding that enemy’s strength—a dominant battle line.

This sort of indirection was anathema to those intent on decisive fleet encounters.⁴⁷ Partisans of the jeune école presumably would have applauded the asymmetric means under development in various countries during the years preceding World War I. The German navy, however, did not build its first submarine until 1906, largely because Tirpitz feared that undersea warfare would siphon resources away from battleship construction. Mine warfare and torpedo boats lagged as well. As a result, Germany entered into a symmetrical arms race it could not win at acceptable cost, and it shunned unorthodox means that might have let Berlin dispute vital expanses. In short, its delay in exploring new technologies such as U-boats, mines, and torpedoes represented a major lost opportunity for the German naval command.⁴⁸

Steeped in China’s sparse maritime tradition, its weakness at sea during the post–World War II period, the legacy of Mao Zedong’s guerrilla strategy, and the influence of Soviet naval doctrine, the PLA Navy embraced a minimalist posture from its inception.⁴⁹ For decades, the Chinese navy was considered a minor player against foreign invasion, at most an adjunct to the ground forces. The Chinese navy, accordingly, consisted of submarines, torpedo boats, and frigates that hugged the coast. Not until the late 1970s, amid Deng Xiaoping’s reform and opening campaign, did Beijing begin to articulate a more expansive vision of sea power. Urged on by PLA Navy commander Admiral Liu Huaqing, the Chinese leadership directed the navy to develop offensive capabilities for forward defense of the mainland, both within and beyond the first island chain.

Even so, the service’s brown water mentality—that is, its ingrained habit of thinking in terms of defending waters just offshore—and force structure persisted well into the early 1990s. To this day, the PLA Navy devotes substantial resources to missile boats useful for coastal defense, albeit in stealthier, more lethal forms.⁵⁰ This apparent handicap in strategy is in fact a blessing in disguise. Unlike Imperial Germany, which rushed into building a top-heavy naval force structure that still proved no match for its main antagonist, the Chinese have approached sea power in a methodical, sequential manner. Indeed, the defensive-mindedness of early PLA naval doctrine—admittedly a product of necessity rather than choice—applied a catalyst for imaginative thinking about how to beat a technologically superior foe at sea.

Chinese planners long assumed, correctly and realistically, that the PLA Navy would fight from a position of weakness should it be deployed against the United States. Accordingly, they sought to apply Chinese comparative strengths against critical American vulnerabilities, evening the odds. PLA strategists hit upon what the Pentagon terms an “antiaccess strategy,” covered in detail in chapter 4. Antiaccess strategy combines military and nonmilitary measures in an effort to delay the arrival of U.S. and allied forces in a particular Asian theater of operations, preclude or disrupt the use of regional bases that are critical to sustaining U.S. military operations, and hold U.S. power-projection assets as far from Chinese shores as possible.⁵¹

By selectively developing inexpensive, readily available weapons systems such as submarines and cruise missiles (or purchasing them abroad), and by tailoring operational concepts to China’s local circumstances, the PLA may have already put itself in position to execute an antiaccess strategy. If so, Beijing could contest American command of the commons, in effect creating a no-go zone for U.S. forces along the East Asian seaboard. Disputed command, either real or perceived, weakens American political will and forecloses certain U.S. military options. It also frees up maneuver room for the Chinese, improving the likelihood that the PLA can stage a breakout from the first island chain under the protective umbrella of antiaccess forces. Shackled by geography and relatively short-range weaponry, Imperial Germany enjoyed no such strategic option in the North Sea.

Beyond the potential operational advantages, Chinese investments in access denial promise flexibility and efficiency in terms of force structure and costs. Until very recently, Beijing eschewed an overtly symmetrical buildup of naval forces, including prohibitively expensive big-deck aircraft carriers. In contrast to Tirpitz, the Chinese seem unfazed by lopsided force ratios since antiaccess involves qualitatively different measures of effectiveness. At the same time, the PLA Navy’s refusal to run a one-to-one arms race has removed the pressure from the Chinese naval command to compete numerically. This affords the navy the luxury of testing and refining its surface and subsurface combatants, producing a new ship class every few years without committing to serial production. This leisurely but fruitful process is ideal for fleet experimentation.

Strategic Will

As Carl von Clausewitz puts it, war—or, we might add, any competitive human endeavor—involves an interactive clash of wills. Drawing on British maritime history, Alfred Thayer Mahan pronounced “national character” and the “character of the government” two critical determinants of a nation’s suitability for sea power.⁵² For Wolfgang Wegener, the final element of sea power—the enabler for the fleet’s quest for strategic position—was a nation’s “strategic will” to the sea. Wegener evidently imbibed this concept from Friedrich Nietzsche’s writings on the will to power. The German thinker’s appraisal of British maritime culture helps explain why German shipbuilding drew forth an indefatigable response from Britons: “The English have the sea in their veins owing to their centuries-long [naval] tradition; and [sea strategy] has been instinctively ingrained in their senses, just as we have absorbed the traditions of land warfare.”⁵³

But “as the lost war showed,” the German navy “remained intellectually a coastal navy” despite its tactical proficiency.⁵⁴ This cultural mismatch implied that Germany was unprepared to undertake an effort of the same magnitude and duration as Great Britain, which made the conscious political choice to uphold its maritime preponderance, whatever the cost.⁵⁵ And indeed, declared wartime prime minister David Lloyd George, “Every Englishman would spend his last penny to preserve British supremacy at sea.” Winston Churchill, who served as first lord of the Admiralty starting in 1911, may have put it best: “With every rivet that von Tirpitz drove into his ships of war, he united British opinion throughout wide circles of the most powerful people in every walk of life and in every part of the Empire. The hammers that clanged at Kiel and Wilhelmshaven were forging the coalition of nations by which Germany was to be resisted and finally overthrown.”⁵⁶ In short, Britons’ will to the sea should have given German leaders pause. They should have reconsidered Alfred von Tirpitz’s judgments of British operational traditions as well. German commanders’ reading of British history led them to exaggerate the Royal Navy’s lust for decisive battle. As we have seen, German fleet-building and strategy were predicated on Tirpitz’s assumption that the British battle fleet would assume a “rigorous offensive” at the outbreak of war, sallying into the North Sea in search of an apocalyptic fleet action.

In short, Berlin did enough with its shipbuilding program to provoke a determined response from the British people, government, and navy, setting off a process of interaction that contributed to the outbreak of war. But the German leadership balked at the massive investment required for Germany to wrest naval superiority from Britain. The opportunity costs in terms of land defense were presumably too steep, and German commanders were curiously reticent about taking the strategic initiative at sea. A shortfall in strategic thought about the sea was partly responsible for this, as was German leaders’ whimsical attitude toward sea power. If the fleet represents a flight of fancy, then dismal strategic results are apt to follow.⁵⁸

Unlike Berlin, Beijing suffers from no such leadership deficit. China has prudently nurtured the national will and developed the naval capabilities to support its long-term naval ambitions without attracting unwanted attention or countermeasures. Faithful to Deng Xiaoping’s decades-old injunction to maintain a low international profile, Beijing has framed its maritime interests and endeavors in strictly defensive terms.⁵⁹ Since its inception over a quarter-century ago, the concept of “offshore defense,” which instructs the nautical services to employ highly offensive operations and tactics to obtain strategically defensive aims, has remained the cornerstone of Chinese naval doctrine.⁶⁰ In Orwellian fashion, accordingly, Quan Jinfu of the Naval Command Academy subtly couches his call for enhanced power projection into the Pacific and Indian oceans in doublespeak: “The Chinese navy . . . will inevitably develop into a formidable maritime deterrence force that possesses high seas defensive operation capabilities. This navy will be able to effectively conduct strategic defensive operations and counter-threat struggles in the vast strategic defense depths to stop or strike at any one who [dares] to invade or seize China’s strategic interests.”⁶¹ How much strategic depth analysts such as Quan covet is anyone’s guess. The point is that his studied understatement contrasts starkly with the reckless posturing that typified Imperial Germany. Indeed, Beijing’s offshore defense doctrine has deprived the United States and China’s neighbors of overt evidence of a Chinese threat, and thus of any pretext for alarm or vigorous countermeasures. For example, while Beijing defines its maritime objectives in fairly sweeping terms, in effect claiming its economic exclusive zones as territorial seas, Chinese diplomats uniformly insist that disputes be resolved by peaceful means. To date this approach has tempered the potential for overreaction in Asian capitals and Washington.

At the same time, policymakers at the highest levels of government have publicly and aggressively sought to harness Chinese national will for maritime ventures. None other than President Hu Jintao has spearheaded efforts to galvanize the PLA Navy and the public at large. At the tenth Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Congress of the PLA Navy in December 2006, Hu exhorted the service to “forge a powerful people’s navy that meets the demands of carrying out our army’s historic missions in the new century” and to “spur the all-round transformation of navy building in line with the demands of the revolution in military affairs with Chinese characteristics.”⁶² According to three scholars at the Dalian Naval Academy, Hu is keen on “raising the offshore comprehensive operational capability of the navy within the first island chain” and “raising mobile operational capability on the distant sea.”⁶³

In other words, the top leadership is casting its seaward gaze much farther into the distance. In Qiushi, an official journal of the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Committee, Admiral Wu Shengli, the commander of the PLA Navy, echoes and amplifies President Hu’s directive, proclaiming that China is an “oceanic nation” whose bequest from nature includes a long coastline, many islands, and a massive sea area to protect. Wu recalls the dynastic neglect of the oceans and the century of humiliation that followed, during which Western encroachment without exception came oversea. With the resurgence of China, the admiral believes it is high time to reverse past misfortunes, achieving “the great revitalization of the Chinese nation [ 013

]” and fulfilling the nation’s maritime destiny.⁶⁴ The interplay the admiral depicts between destiny and choice for the future of Chinese sea power would have been instantly recognizable to Mahan. Simply put, his article represents a masterful effort to reorient the national consciousness toward the seas.

China’s naval capabilities are an equally impressive benchmark of national will. Over the past decade, China has purchased from abroad or produced an array of naval assets suitable for contesting sea control within and beyond the first island chain. As the PLA Navy retires obsolete submarines en masse, it has introduced three new classes of stealthy diesel-electric submarines. The sudden appearance of the Yuan-class submarine in 2004 reportedly took the U.S. intelligence community by surprise. China also publicly unveiled its second-generation nuclear attack boats and fleet ballistic-missile submarines, presumably as a deterrent signal. In addition to constructing new platforms, the Chinese have devoted substantial energy to honing the operational art of undersea warfare. One worrisome indicator was the 2006 incident when a Song-class submarine reportedly surfaced within torpedo range of the U.S. aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk, which was conducting an exercise. The Office of Naval Intelligence, furthermore, revealed that the rate of Chinese submarine patrols doubled between 2007 and 2008 (albeit from a low operating tempo).⁶⁵

In the domain of surface warfare, China has commissioned four modern warship classes since 1999, including vessels equipped with advanced radars and computers reportedly comparable to the U.S. Navy’s Aegis combat-systems suite, the latest in American air-defense wizardry. The PLA Navy concurrently added to its inventory Sovremennyy-class destroyers purchased from Russia. While tonnage is at best a crude indicator of capability, the new combatants all displace at least six thousand tons, two-thirds the displacement of U.S. Arleigh Burke–class guided missile destroyers. Media reports that the PLA Navy intends to construct two or more medium-sized, conventionally powered aircraft carriers—reports more or less confirmed by Chinese officials in early 2009—have spurred a flurry of international commentary. ⁶⁶ Speculation about Chinese interest in fielding ballistic missiles capable of striking surface ships at sea has alarmed policymakers. Indeed, this prospect dominated discussions at a 2008 conference convened at the Naval War College to examine Chinese aerospace capabilities.⁶⁷ (We return to this subject in depth in chapter 5.)

After condescending to Chinese seafarers for decades, retired and active-duty U.S. Navy officers now pay increasing—if grudging—respect to the PLA Navy’s impressive modernization program. In material terms, the Chinese are clearly on the march. What of American strategic will to the sea? Alfred Thayer Mahan fretted over his countrymen’s indifference to seagoing endeavors, even during the United States’ ascent to maritime prominence. He suggested that, far from following in British footsteps, the United States was a pleasant, resource-rich, continent-spanning nation that might keep its attentions fixed on North America. In this, Mahan speculated, the United States was more like France than Britain. Their strategic geography and the British Isles’ poor resource endowment had driven Britons to the sea in search of trade and prosperity while Frenchmen could provide for themselves from their own resources. Or, America might be like the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic, another power that vied with Great Britain for maritime supremacy yet proved too tightfisted to fund adequate naval preparedness in peacetime.

America’s seagoing culture, fretted Mahan, might be a veneer—however fundamental it was to the politics, society, and culture of the British mother country.⁶⁸ If so, public support for a vibrant U.S. Navy could prove fleeting absent an unmistakable seaborne threat. Today, as in Mahan’s day, America’s strategic will manifests itself in numbers of ships, aircraft, and combat systems. Rising costs have driven the size of the fleet inexorably downward. At 282 active ships, less than half the number of the (almost) 600-ship Navy of the 1980s, the U.S. Navy is the smallest it has been since World War I.⁶⁹ Few scholars or naval officers believe the Navy will manage to rebuild to the 313 ships called for in its shipbuilding plans. While individual vessels pack far more punch than their forebears, quantity still has a quality of its own—especially as prospective antagonists such as the PLA Navy begin to close the qualitative gap. It is here that the U.S. Navy is standing into danger.

Declining numbers have prodded the U.S. sea services down the intellectual pathway once trodden by Jacky Fisher and Winston Churchill. The 2007 U.S. Maritime Strategy declares that the U.S. Navy remains the two-ocean fleet it has been since World War II. But, whereas previous strategies focused on the Atlantic and the Pacific, the sea services have shifted their energies to the western Pacific and the Indian Ocean.⁷⁰ In other words, America’s maritime strategic gaze is now fixed on Asia. Like Britain a century ago, the United States seems to have concluded that it must concentrate in vital theaters, scaling back secondary commitments. In the eyes of naval leaders, apparently, the Atlantic and the Mediterranean are expanses that can be entrusted to European protectors. It nonetheless remains far from clear that the United States will reach the same conscious political choice Great Britain did, continuing to invest in a predominant fleet. If not, China could find itself in a strategic position the Kaiser’s Germany would envy.

The missile-test incident reminded Japanese policymakers how difficult it would be to disentangle Japan from any future cross-strait conflagration while also forewarning Tokyo how uncomfortably close China would be to Japanese-held territory should Taiwan fall into Chinese hands. Indeed, the “day after Taiwan” would strip Japan of a buffer zone in place since it wrested Formosa from the Qing dynasty following the 1895 Sino-Japanese War. A century-long geostrategic advantage would evanesce. For another, Beijing would presumably claim an exclusive economic zone (EEZ) around the island. If recent experience is any guide, Beijing would start asserting legal prerogatives similar to the ones it claims in other EEZs in a bid to transform these waters into de facto sovereign waters. Extending the Chinese periphery three hundred miles offshore—not one hundred—would complicate Japanese maritime defense considerably while raising costs for shippers forced to detour around Chinese-claimed seas.

To complicate matters further, the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyutai islands, to which Tokyo, Beijing, and Taipei lay claim, are sandwiched between the three contestants. Some Chinese strategists appear to believe the Senkakus would no longer be defensible for the Japanese if Taiwan fell under Beijing’s control. As one analyst states: “If Taiwan is in our hands, then hostile countries would quite possibly have to reconsider their policies. If our country establishes powerful naval and air forces on Taiwan . . . then those bases would significantly increase China’s combat and deterrent power.... Under such circumstances, it is possible that the Diaoyu island problem would develop in favor of our country.”⁷² This observation conforms to the notion that Chinese possession of Taiwan would enable Beijing to turn Japan’s southern maritime flank. Tokyo cannot but take an interest in the islands’ fate, and the transpacific alliance would embroil Washington in this reconfigured Asia as well. In other words, even if we concede (for the sake of discussion) that Taiwan is unimportant to the United States strategically or operationally, as many Sinologists insist, its centrality to Tokyo’s sense of security cannot be so easily dismissed. The value Japan attaches to Taiwan will remain a major component of U.S. regional strategy unless Washington is willing to discount Tokyo’s interests, gambling that Japan will greet the day after Taiwan with a shrug. Losing such a wager would likely spell the end of the U.S.-Japanese alliance, the lynchpin of U.S. preeminence in Asia for the past six decades.

Second, the United States is not “saturated” with command of the sea, to recall Admiral Wegener’s evocative choice of words, to nearly the same degree Britain was vis-à-vis Germany. While its fleet remains superior for the present, the U.S. Navy cannot bar Chinese access to the high seas with the same ease as the fin de siècle Royal Navy. Neither the United States nor Japan holds positions comparable in strategic worth to the Scotland-Norway gap or the English Channel, from which it can seal off Chinese shipping from sea communications. Chinese warships enjoy ready egress into the China seas from multiple seaports along the coast. Jianggezhuang and Lushun are two bases that provide the North Sea Fleet access to the Yellow and East China seas; the East Sea Fleet is based at ports such as Ningbo and Zhoushan, and the South Sea Fleet operates out of a forward base at Sanya, on Hainan Island. These sites (and many more) easily meet the Mahanian standard for maritime access—furnishing multiple outlets to the high seas. Beijing’s maritime-geographic predicament is not nearly so bleak as Berlin’s.

Third, China holds the advantage (over the United States) of proximity to the theater. To borrow MIT professor Barry Posen’s terms, China is ideally positioned to mount a “contested zone,” leveraging nearby bases and manpower, shore-based armaments, and superior knowledge of the physical, social, and cultural terrain to do serious damage to approaching, even though superior, U.S. forces.⁷³ Transpacific distances attenuate not only American power but also, presumably, the value the American government and people attach to the defense of U.S. interests off Asian shores. By ratcheting up the costs of military engagements in Asia, Beijing can hope to deter or dissuade Washington from acting in ways inimical to Chinese interests.

Here, the likeness to the Anglo-German case breaks down, but the disparities are illuminating. Geography placed the antagonists close to each other during the pre–World War I naval arms race, whereas thousands of miles of ocean separate China from the United States. The U.S. territory closest to East Asia is Guam, in the second island chain; nearly five thousand miles separate Honolulu from Shanghai. From a geographic standpoint, the analogy between Japan and Britain is a far closer fit. The Japanese home islands lie some one hundred miles off the Chinese coast, depending on the latitude. Indeed, Japan constitutes the northern arc of the first island chain, meaning that the Chinese defense perimeter runs along the Japanese archipelago. And unlike China and Japan, Germany had no distant antagonist to worry about—and Great Britain no distant ally to enlist—comparable to the United States.

If Japan is playing the role of Britain and China the role of Imperial Germany, the asymmetries of power sharply favor the land power over the sea power. By the six indices of Mahanian sea power—geographic position, physical conformation, territorial extent, population, national character, and the nature of the government—it seems abundantly clear that the Japanese “whale” is not preponderant over the Chinese “elephant” in East Asia. To make the analogy between the two cases fit more closely, we must think of the U.S.-Japan alliance as a strategic unit, but even then, the strongest partner is located farthest from the arena—introducing strategic asymmetries that did not bedevil British officials and commanders formulating a rejoinder to German naval might.

Fourth, it would be a simple matter (relative to the High Seas Fleet in its heyday) for the PLA Navy to take the strategic offensive in nearby seas. If Chinese naval development keeps tracking along its upward trajectory in fleet size and quality, and if the U.S. Navy keeps dwindling in numbers, the PLA Navy may ultimately accumulate “overbearing power” within the first island chain. It will command the China seas in Mahanian terms. In the meantime, Beijing can hope to deny the U.S.-Japan alliance access to these waters for long enough to realize political goals like wresting Taiwan from its inhabitants. If so, it will be able to wring the initiative from the U.S. Navy in a way the High Seas Fleet never could, compelling America and its allies to fight for maritime access they currently take for granted.

Fifth, from the outset Chinese naval planners wisely took an incremental approach to fleet building, starting out with the jeune école approach before moving on to more advanced, more Mahanian platforms and weaponry. This was political necessity during the Mao Zedong era. The CCP chairman forbade construction of a blue water fleet and, during the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution of the 1950s–1970s, purged the officer corps of much of its expertise and ingenuity in his mania for revolutionary purity. In its founding years, accordingly, the PLA Navy contented itself with lower-end capabilities such as minelayers, missile-firing patrol boats, and diesel submarines. Unlike Tirpitz, the PLA Navy command did not succumb to the allure of extravagant, budget-busting ships such as nuclear-powered aircraft carriers. By Chinese commanders’ logic, a jeune école fleet provided a sound basis for a fleet more symmetrical with that of the United States, should Beijing someday see the need for direct naval competition.

Sixth, despite the comparatively favorable strategic setting, Chinese officials and analysts evince a will to sea power far more relentless than the on again, off-again commitment exhibited by the erratic Wilhelmine German regime. As Mahan observed, sea power in an authoritarian state depends on the steadfastness of autocratic leaders—something in short supply in Imperial Germany but not in the People’s Republic of China. Political support for the fleet can be withdrawn at any time, as it was in France under the rule of the Sun King, Louis XIV. The PRC leadership has displayed impressive determination where Kaiser Wilhelm II vacillated, and Chinese interests depend on the sea far more than German interests ever did. Nor does Beijing need the navy to bind together a new nation. Germany had no national identity or maritime heritage to speak of, so German leaders grasped at sea power as a unifying force. China has a venerable seagoing past. It can look past the neglect of the Qing Dynasty to a golden age when the China seas comprised part of a Sinocentric maritime order in Asia, and Chinese fleets roamed regional seaways at will. In all likelihood, then, the Chinese quest for sea power will have more staying power than the German bid for a place in the sun. Permissive surroundings, burgeoning resources, and strategic resolve will make China a more formidable competitor at sea than Imperial Germany ever was.

And finally, Chinese political and military leaders have demonstrated remarkable diplomatic prudence compared to the mercurial Kaiser and his lieutenants. Beijing has managed its maritime rise carefully to avoid setting in motion a cycle of naval challenge and response like the one that drove Anglo-German enmity. Chinese officials have carefully situated their nautical ascent within an inoffensive, even Bismarckian diplomatic strategy. Chinese diplomacy is replete with phrases like “peaceful rise,” “peaceful development,” and “responsible stakeholder,” designed to convince fellow Asian powers—including the United States—that Beijing has embraced the liberal, U.S.-led maritime order. As chapter 7 will show, Beijing has tailored its message to impress upon foreign audiences that China is an inherently benevolent power. Unlike predatory imperial powers of the past, it can be trusted with a powerful navy and the geostrategic leverage a big fleet imparts.

MEASURING SEA POWER

Geography

Fleet Building

Strategic Will

CHINA’S FORTUNATE STRATEGIC POSITION

SOME PRELIMINARY CONCLUSIONS