Element of surprise
When it comes to conflict with the U.S., Chinese military analysts favor age-old schoolyard wisdom: Throw the first punch and hit hard.
“Future conflicts are likely to be short, intense affairs that might consist of a single campaign,” Cliff said. “They’re thinking about ways to get the drop on us. Most of our force is not forward-deployed.”
China’s experts concede its army would lose a head-on fight, with one senior colonel comparing such a scenario to “throwing an egg against a rock.” Instead, the Chinese would attempt what Rand calls an “anti-access” strategy: slowing the deployment of U.S. forces to the Pacific theater, damaging operations within the region and forcing the U.S. to fight from a distance.
“Taking the enemy by surprise,” one Chinese military expert wrote, “would catch it unprepared and cause confusion within and huge psychological pressure on the enemy and help [China] win relatively large victories at relatively small costs.” Another military volume suggests feigning a large-scale military training exercise to conceal the attack’s buildup.
The Dragon’s Lair
Striking U.S. air bases — specifically command-and-control facilities, aircraft hangars and surface-to-air missile launchers — would be China’s first priority if a conflict arose, according to Rand’s report.
U.S. facilities in South Korea and Japan, even far-south Okinawa, sit within what Rand calls the “Dragon’s Lair”: a swath of land and sea along China’s coast. This is an area reachable by cruise missiles, jet-borne precision bombs and local covert operatives. Air Force bases within this area include Osan and Kunsan in South Korea, as well as Misawa, Yokota and Kadena in Japan.
This scenario reflects what I've written in that I think China would hit hard and move fast to win a war quickly. I don't necessarily buy that all the tricks the monograph sets forth will work, but at least some Chinese authors believe they will work. The key point is that regardless of what specific weapons are used, the thinking behind their use reflects geography and the balance of forces. Overall, we are far superior in military power. But based on geography, China could have an advantage in power in the western Pacific for a short period of time before we can deploy our distant power to the western Pacific.
This is an "anti-access" strategy to deny our forces access to the theater. By delaying our deployment, the Chinese extend their period of advantage long enough to achieve their objective. And then they believe the war ends.
The Chinese hope to beat us before we can shift the balance of forces in the western Pacific, as the RAND publication states:
The net result of these effects could be that the United States would actually be defeated in a conflict with China—not in the sense that the U.S. military would be destroyed but in the sense that China would accomplish its military and political objectives while preventing the United States from accomplishing some or all of its political and military objectives. Moreover, even if Chinese antiaccess measures did not result in the outright defeat of the United States, they would likely make it significantly more costly for the United States to operate in the region, and these costs could even rise to the point at which the United States was unwilling to pay them. Finally, even if Chinese antiaccess strategies did not result in the United States being unwilling or unable to defeat China, Chinese decisionmakers might convince themselves that they would cause the United States to be unwilling or unable to intervene successfully. If the decisionmakers then chose to take actions that would cause China to come into conflict with the United States, the result would be a costly and bloody war that would not otherwise have occurred.
This also raises the point that I've made in the past that that if Chinese leaders believe that they can win because they've found our weak point to defeat us, that we can't move fast enough to effectively enter the fight, or that we won't risk a major fight because we are too afraid of casualties, the Chinese will risk war with America.
So discussions of China's vulnerability to a blockade of their energy imports and manufactured exports as a reason why China wouldn't dare risk a war with us fall flat when you realize that China does not share our assumption. They may very well believe that we simply cannot or will not fight a war long enough to impose a blockade. By assuming a short war, the Chinese leaders have eliminated the chance that they could be brought to their knees by a blockade--or that they might have to use nuclear weapons to get us to end our blockade.
The RAND study does not write about what the Chinese would do with the advantage they gain from a first strike. I have to wonder, given the Chinese assumptions in play about our will to fight, whether the rulers of China have even given much thought to what happens after their initial strike.
Too many here think that the threat from dragons is a myth. But that's our logic. But if you believe you are a dragon, you will fight like a dragon, no matter how illogical that might seem to us.
