Foreign Affairs recently carried an essay from Boston College professor Robert Ross that’s worth your time. Ross pronounces the Obama administration’s “pivot” to Asia “unnecessary and counterproductive.” The Wall Street Journal quotes him as contending that Washington is attempting “changes in the status quo” that compromise China’s security while “stoking the fires of nationalism.” Pushback from Beijing is a predictableand needless result in his view.
Two quick comments. One, from time to time Toshi Yoshihara and I have jousted with Ross about the operational, tactical, and technical dimensions of China’s maritime rise. Rather than rehash that debate in detail, I would just add that he holds forth on scientific-technical matters—ranges, payloads, surveillance and targeting infrastructure—far more confidently than I or any other sea-service professional I have encountered would. For example, he states—as fact, not as one possibility among many—that China “has not yet mastered the technology” to deploy anti-ship ballistic missiles. He contends that the PLA Navy “has only just begun constructing a next-generation guided-missile destroyer.” That’s true if you focus solely on the Type 052Ds whose existence was confirmed this year—and overlook the DDGs that naval experts in China have been billing as Aegis equivalents for almost a decade now. And so forth.
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