Recently, the U.S. Navy and U.S. Strategic Command have produced a series of reports and analyses for decision making around how the U.S. will guard against future Chinese Communist military threats, a matter of great importance to U.S. national security and regional security and stability in East Asia. on February 10, the U.S. Department of Defense specifically established a defense strategy working group against China, the first Time in U.S. history that the U.S. has launched a comprehensive readiness plan against a Red power. These developments deserve full attention.
I. The U.S. Department of Defense Establishes a Specialized Working Group on Defense Strategy for China
The current U.S. China Policy can be divided into military and non-military aspects. Most international media analyze the future evolution of U.S.-China relations at the diplomatic, political, and economic levels. This perspective ignores the deterioration of relations between the two countries triggered by China’s military threat to the United States and the impact of this situation on countries in the Indo-Pacific region, and underestimates the impact of military confrontation between the two sides on the global economy and international political relations, while overestimating the substantive role of diplomatic rhetoric on bilateral relations.
On February 10, the Department of Defense (DoD) announced that Biden, during a visit to the Pentagon that morning, had formally established a 15-member Task Force to develop a U.S. defense strategy against China, comprised of the DoD, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the military services, and military intelligence, to assess DoD military policy toward China and related military programs in response to the Chinese Communist challenge. The Task Force, led by Special Assistant to the Secretary of Defense Ely Ratner, will make specific policy recommendations for the military’s top brass in four months. This is the first time in U.S. history that a military strategy workshop group for China has been established.
U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) sources note that this special task force on defense strategy has a “surprise mission. The Secretary of Defense and Deputy Secretary of Defense believe that China is a “progressive threat” to the United States and that China is attempting to overthrow the existing international rules-based structure of the Indo-Pacific order and is using all means to try to bring the countries of the region into submission. The task force’s mission is to examine the top priorities of U.S. military strategy, force employment, technology application and force configuration, force management and intelligence; to assess U.S. allies and partners and their impact on U.S.-China relations and the U.S. Department of Defense’s relations with China; and to maintain communication with all relevant government departments.
On February 11, the Department of Defense issued another press release stating that the specific mission of the working group is to examine all DoD activities related to the “incremental threat” from the Chinese Communist Party, to prioritize and integrate U.S. military response activities to the greatest extent possible, and to examine whether sufficient resources are available. The initial phase of the working group will be an assessment in which team members will travel throughout the department, visiting and debriefing the services to understand what the components of the military have now identified as indeed their top initiatives and top priorities,” said Ely Ratner, team leader and special assistant to the secretary of defense. The working group then streamlines these issues into discrete top priorities and spends time determining, across relevant scopes, the appropriate mechanisms for presentation, assessment and implementation.”
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin held his first briefing since taking office Feb. 19. Austin said the U.S. is committed to maintaining an international order that China “continues to undermine” for its own benefit, according to the website of Defense magazine. Portraying China as a “primary challenge” to the U.S. Department of Defense, Austin said, “From a Department of Defense perspective, my primary concern and my primary responsibility is to guard this country and protect our interests.”
II. Characteristics of the U.S.-China Cold War Military Confrontation
During the U.S.-Soviet Cold War, although the United States experienced the Cuban Missile Crisis, which pitted it against the Soviet Union, and the Korean and Vietnam Wars, in which the Soviet Union and the Chinese Communist Party were involved, as well as a long confrontation with the Soviet Union in Europe, those were all two-armed confrontations on third-country battlefields. The United States had never considered the possibility of a full-scale war between the United States and the Soviet Union before, knowing that the Soviet Union would not want to provoke a war against the United States that would lead to a nuclear war. Therefore, the U.S. did not have a comprehensive defense preparedness program against the Soviet Union; the U.S. military only had operational plans for the Asian theater (Korea and Vietnam) and defense plans for the European theater, as well as arms race plans for ballistic missiles and Star Wars.
The establishment of this task force on defense readiness now means that the military confrontation between the U.S. and China in the Cold War has further escalated. The danger level of the Sino-U.S. Cold War may be higher than that of the U.S.-Soviet Cold War because the CCP is more aggressive than the Soviet Union while having no qualms about nuclear war, and in this respect it inherited Mao’s nuclear war-loving mindset.
With the vast Pacific Ocean separating the US and China, the Communist army cannot threaten the US with its land forces, and the only thing it can use to threaten the US is its navy. I analyzed this issue in my Feb. 11 article on this website, “U.S.-China Relations in Biden’s First Month in Office”. This military strategy of the Chinese Communist Party has completely changed the definition of the front lines of the U.S.-China Cold War. The front lines of the U.S.-China Cold War are not on the ground or on the surface, but underwater. The waters in which the CCP’s strategic nuclear submarines operate means how much of a CCP nuclear threat the United States faces from somewhere in the ocean. The South China Sea and the waters southwest of Taiwan are important to both the CCP and the U.S. because they are “deep sea bastions” for China’s strategic nuclear submarines and one of the underwater corridors for strikes.
Now, the political geography that separates the U.S. and China from each other is so far away that the U.S. advantage in preventing war no longer exists. The U.S. faces a defense situation that is completely different from that of the U.S.-Soviet Cold War and the Pacific War. The Chinese Communist Party seeks to gain complete control of the deep waters in the eastern and southeastern South China Sea near the Philippines, Malaysia, and Indonesia so that its strategic nuclear submarines can lurk safely and strike quietly. This exposes the United States to the threat of a nuclear strike by long-range submarine-launched intercontinental missiles at any time. The new Cold War implication of the nuclear submarine threat era is that the 7,000-kilometer-range long-range nuclear missiles of the Chinese Communist Navy’s strategic nuclear submarines could launch a full-scale nuclear strike against the United States from anywhere in the Eastern Pacific. Therefore, the U.S., for the sake of national defense security, must advance the focus area for reconnaissance and defense against CCP strategic nuclear submarine activities to the waters surrounding the so-called First Island Chain, which extends from Japan to Taiwan, the Philippines, and then to Indonesia. The U.S. military can only do so because the islands in the second island chain are far away, the waters are wide, and the underwater terrain is conducive to submarine concealment; once the CCP’s strategic nuclear submarines break through the first island chain and enter the deep waters of the Central Pacific, the U.S. military will no longer be able to effectively prevent and block them.
An op-ed by the commander of U.S. Strategic Command warns of the nuclear threat from the Chinese Communist Party
Prior to the establishment of the U.S. Department of Defense, Admiral Charles Richard, commander of U.S. Strategic Command, published an article in the February issue of Proceedings, the U.S. Navy’s leading magazine, on Feb. 3. He said there is a real possibility of a nuclear war between the United States and China.
U.S. Strategic Command is one of the U.S. military’s joint warfare commands, responsible for space operations, information operations, missile defense, intelligence reconnaissance and surveillance, global strike, strategic deterrence, and weapons of mass destruction. It was formed in 1992 and succeeded the U.S.-Soviet Cold War-era Strategic Air Command. Strategic Command is responsible for countering the threat of intercontinental nuclear missiles from communist countries, and is to counter and destroy all nuclear missiles from land-based, air-launched, ship-based, and submarine-based sources. Admiral Richard served as Commander of the U.S. Submarine Force and Commander of the Allied Submarine Forces in Europe. Having an admiral in command of Strategic Command indicates that the U.S. military is now most concerned about the threat to the United States from the Chinese Communist Party’s strategic nuclear submarines.
In the article, Admiral Richard notes that since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the U.S. Department of Defense no longer considers the possibility of a nuclear crisis or direct armed conflict with a nuclear power; however, the current environment has changed and the potential risk of a major power crisis or direct armed conflict is far-reaching. The U.S. military must think carefully about how to compete with and deter adversaries, while ensuring its allies. We are not “in a Cold War,” he said, but a more serious threat than the Cold War. Over the past few years China has begun to use the threat of force to actively challenge international norms and global peace in ways not seen since the U.S.-Soviet Cold War. If left unchecked, it increases the risk of a great power crisis or conflict. We must compete aggressively to stop their aggression; to give in to them could further encourage them.
With China, he argues, more weight must be given to its actions than to its stated policies. Although China has claimed “no first use of nuclear weapons” since the 1960s, this policy could change in the blink of an eye. Beijing has been expanding its nuclear attack capabilities, including first-strike capabilities. The United States must act now to prepare for the future in the face of China’s growing threat and its activities in gray areas; it must maintain strategic deterrence in crises and conflicts. The U.S. military must shift its primary assumptions about nuclear war from the “impossibility of using nuclear weapons” of the U.S.-Soviet Cold War to the current “very real possibility of using nuclear weapons” and act to deter that reality. The U.S. military must reconsider how it assesses strategic risk, concluding that a crisis or conflict with a nuclear weapons adversary could lead to the use of nuclear weapons by the other side. U.S. Strategic Command has begun to revise its procedures for assessing the “risk of failure of strategic deterrence” and will be prepared to take appropriate action if strategic deterrence fails.
Three U.S. Army Reports on Naval Preparedness Ideas
The U.S. Navy, which bore the burden of national defense during the U.S.-China Cold War, recently released three consecutive reports. One is China Naval Modernization: Implications for U.S. Navy Capabilities-Background and Issues for Congress (China Naval Modernization: Implications for U.S. Navy Capabilities-Background and Issues for Congress), rescheduled for January 27 of this year; another published by the Department of Naval Operations (i.e., U.S. Navy Warrants) on January 11, titled, “The Secretary of Operations’ Maritime Operations Plan, 2021 (CNO NAVPLAN 2021)”; and a Navy study, “Maritime Dominance: Fully Integrating (Advantage at Sea: Prevailing with Integrated All-Domain Naval Power), completed last December. These Navy military reports are not normally available to the public and foreign countries, but are now available to the U.S. public and foreign countries. These three Navy reports provide insight into how the U.S. Navy assesses the severity of the situation and future direction of the U.S.-China naval confrontation.
The report on China’s Naval Modernization states that in the new era of great power competition, China’s military modernization, including naval modernization, has become a top priority that must be considered in U.S. defense planning and budgeting. China currently has four nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs) and seven nuclear-powered attack submarines (SSNs), and the number of both types of submarines will The number of both types of submarines will increase in the coming years. China’s nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines are equipped with the CHIRON-2 ballistic missile with a range of 7,200 km, which can attack Alaska and Hawaii from the South China Sea and all 50 U.S. states from the Eastern Pacific. The Chinese Navy is seen as a major challenge to the U.S. Navy’s ability to achieve and maintain wartime control of the western Pacific waters, the first challenge the U.S. Navy has faced since the end of the Cold War.
In recent years, the U.S. Navy has taken numerous actions to counter China’s naval modernization deployments. The U.S. Navy has shifted a greater percentage of its fleet to the Pacific; allocated the most capable new ships and aircraft and the best personnel to the Pacific; maintained or increased training and exercises, engagement and cooperation with allies and other navies in the Indo-Pacific region; increased the future size of the Navy; developed new military technologies and acquired new ships, aircraft, unmanned vehicles and weapons; developed new operational concepts (using Navy and Marine Corps forces in integrated operations) to counter China.
The Secretary of Naval Operations’ Operational Plan states that China is our most pressing long-term strategic threat and cannot be viewed with optimism; it is important to recognize that they are a determined competitor and that we must maintain a clear resolve to compete and deter to win. If deterrence fails, we stand ready to face aggression and win the battle decisively, overwhelming our adversary’s defenses and forcing an end to the conflict. Our competitors rely on their ability to overwhelm our defenses with large numbers of missiles. We need fixed and mobile sensors as well as submarines and unmanned platforms to operate within the enemy’s missile defense zones; we also need a variety of defense systems on warships and aircraft to improve the fleet’s defensive capabilities and provide additional offensive firepower, including capabilities such as directed energy and electronic warfare systems.
The report “Integration of the Three Maritime Services” states: Since the turn of the century our three maritime services (meaning the Navy, Marine Corps and Maritime Guard) have been vigilantly watching China’s growing naval power and its increasingly aggressive behavior, and China is the most pressing, long-term strategic threat. It seeks to erode international maritime rules, restrict freedom of maritime traffic, control key points, and supplant the United States. To implement its strategy, China has deployed a multi-layered fleet of naval forces, coast guards and maritime militias to subvert the sovereignty of other nations. It continues to militarize the South China Sea and assert maritime claims that are inconsistent with international law. China has also developed the world’s largest missile force with nuclear capabilities designed to strike U.S. and allied forces in Guam and the Far East. China has also concentrated powerful strategic, space, cyber, electronic, and psychological warfare capabilities.
China’s practices threaten U.S. interests, undermine alliances and partnerships, and weaken the free and open international order; if left unchecked, such trends will catch U.S. naval forces unprepared. Responding to China’s malign behavior without armed conflict requires adequate naval capabilities and a maritime multi-service integration capability with targeted response options. To maintain deterrence and prevent competition from escalating into conflict, we must maintain our critical military edge. Be prepared to wound our adversaries in ways that force them to consider the risk of escalating military confrontation and prevent crises from escalating into war by operating expeditionary in a highly competitive military environment on both sides. Naval and Marine Corps forces need to demonstrate clear combat readiness as well as support deterrence and missile defense capabilities; the Coast Guard provides other means of crisis management.
In times of crisis, alliances and partnerships are true force multipliers. Partner military forces and allied deployments can enhance our deterrence and demonstrate transnational resolve; they can further contribute by providing intelligence, logistics, cyber, and space capabilities; and they can provide special capabilities, such as maritime mine warfare and anti-submarine warfare. Our coalition and partner forces can also help by securing shipping lanes and maintaining global maritime security. If our adversaries choose the path of war, the Navy will fight alongside the Army, Air Force, space forces, our allies and partners to destroy enemy forces and force an end to the war. We will use ballistic missile defense capabilities to protect the United States and our allies, and maintain a continuous strategic deterrent to prevent the use of weapons of mass destruction.
In response to this third report from the U.S. Navy, the South China Sea Institute, a subsidiary of China’s Hainan government, published an assessment and analysis last December 29, titled “The Prelude to Full-Scale U.S.-China Maritime Competition Is About to Begin – A Review of the Latest U.S. Maritime Strategy. The U.S. Navy attached great importance to this article of the Nanhai Research Institute, and on February 19 this year, the full translation of this article from the Chinese Communist Party was published on the official website of the U.S. Navy under the title of “China’s Assessment of the New U.S. Navy Strategy” without comment. Judging from the reactions of both the U.S. and China, each pays high attention to the other’s every move and keeps a close eye on it at all times. This can also be seen as the current rhythm of the U.S.-China Cold War.
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