 |
| PLA Navy Ships on patrol (File Photo) |
By James R. Holmes
The PLA already contests maritime Asia with the United States.
Korea-based magazine Global Asia is back with an issue on the geopolitics of Asia. Featured are articles from well-known commentators such as Boston College professor Robert Ross and diplomatic historian extraordinaire Walter Russell Mead. It’s a refreshing read for anyone fascinated by the bareknuckles interactions that ensue when political calculations meet human passions meet geographic facts of life. The Naval Diplomat was jazzed after browsing through.
But (And you knew a but was coming) let me zero in on Professor Ross, who lodges several misleading claims in his tour d’horizon of geopolitical competition in Asia. For one, he starts a discussion of naval trends in the region by contending that the “Chinese Navy cannot yet challenge the U.S. in maritime East Asia.” Really? The People’s Liberation Army, including its seagoing arm, has been mounting a challenge against the U.S. Navy for some years now. It clearly can if it already is. Whether its challenge will succeed remains to be determined. Either way, long-term strategic competition has been joined.
Now, it may be that Chinese sea power—meaning not just the PLA Navy but the shore-based component of Chinese maritime strategy, manifest in land-based anti-ship missiles and tactical aircraft flying from airfields ashore—cannot yet defeat the American naval contingent forward-deployed to Asia in a pitched battle. In a sense, though, that’s beside the point. Four decades back Edward Luttwak affirmed that peacetime “naval suasion” is more about optics than slugging it out with enemy fleets. It’s about displaying ships, warplanes, and armaments in a manner that convinces important audiences your navy would triumph in combat on the high seas.
Armed suasion, then, is about managing perceptions. Physical implements are implements of political discourse. In other words, writes Luttwak, whoever a critical mass of observers thinks would have won an actual battle does win in peacetime encounters, where rival forces face off without actually exchanging fire. Appearances sway observers one way or the other. Perception is king. Outwardly impressive ships, aircraft, and weaponry can make an outsized impression on lay audiences—potentially skewing the results of a peacetime showdown in favor of the lesser contender. To wit, China.
Read the full story at The Diplomat