Pentagon Report: China Military Build-up in Preparation for War Over Taiwan

Dec 14, 2011 47 Comments ›› Toro520

Generational Dynamics:

One of the saddest things that I’ve had to report on my web site is China’s rush towards total war with the United States. I’ve been describing this for years, but it was always in the distance. A new report by the Pentagon makes it clear that this war is no longer distant, and an attack within the next 12-18 months is a reasonable expectation.

On Wednesday, the Pentagon issued its annual report on China’s military, Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China 2011 (PDF).

This report was supposed to be issued five months ago, but it was apparently delayed until mid-August, with Congress out of town, at a time when it was less likely to alarm people. The report contains euphemistic phrases like, “China’s military is modernizing, but the Chinese government needs to be more forthcoming on why it needs these new capabilities.” But if you actually read the details of China’s preparations for war, you get a very stark reality.

The Taiwan Scenario

The report details China’s border disputes in central Asia, especially with India, as well as China’s aggressive claims to practically everything in the South China Sea and East China Sea, including many islands that are considered sovereign territory of other countries.

But the really big focus is Taiwan. There’s never been any doubt that China has been focused for years on invading and taking control of Taiwan. They said that themselves many times, as I’ve reported in dozens of reports on this web site. Furthermore, the Chinese consider a preemptive invasion of Taiwan to be a “defensive” military action.

But the difference is that China now has the military capacity to do that, despite defense by the U.S., according to the report:

“Although the PLA [People's Liberation Army] is contending with a growing array of missions, Taiwan remains its main strategic direction. China continued modernizing its military in 2010, with a focus on Taiwan contingencies, even as cross-Strait relations improved. The PLA seeks the capability to deter Taiwan independence and influence Taiwan to settle the dispute on Beijing’s terms. In pursuit of this objective, Beijing is developing capabilities intended to deter, delay, or deny possible U.S. support for the island in the event of conflict. The balance of cross-Strait military forces and capabilities continues to shift in the mainland’s favor.”

The reports describes deployment of thousands of missiles specifically directed as U.S. naval capabilities in defending Taiwan, including numerous ballistic and cruise missile programs that can attack Taiwan and attack and disable any aircraft carriers or other U.S. naval vessels in the region.

China has deployed dozens of surface and submarine naval attack vessels, supported early-warning aircraft, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), and other surveillance and reconnaissance equipment, capable of launching nuclear missiles from the sea.

China has also deployed space and cyber warfare capabilities. China has developed the capability to attack and kill America’s communication satellites. Each week there are news stories about Chinese “hackers” stealing enormous amounts of military technology and defense-related secret information.

(There have been recent news stories that General Electric Corp. is planning to partner with Chinese firms and provide them with a great deal of American aerospace technology that will also have military use. This deal by GE is going to be a disaster.)

In addition, China is developing a number of capabilities that can directly attack the U.S.:

“China is modernizing its nuclear forces by adding more survivable delivery systems. In recent years, the road mobile, solid propellant CSS-10 Mod 1 and CSS-10 Mod 2 (DF-31 and DF-31A) intercontinental-range ballistic missiles (ICBMs) have entered service. The CSS- 10 Mod 2, with a range in excess of 11,200 km, can reach most locations within the continental United States.”

This is the fulfillment of several threats made by China in years past. In 2005, top-level Chinese army officer General Zhu Chenghu threatened America with nuclear war if America interfered with Taiwan:

“If the Americans are determined to interfere [then] we will be determined to respond. We … will prepare ourselves for the destruction of all of the cities east of Xian [a city in central China]. Of course the Americans will have to be prepared that hundreds … of cities will be destroyed by the Chinese.”

In 2005, Zhu’s remarks were an empty threat. Today, they’re a real threat.

And, as I reported in 2006, Sha Zukang, the Chinese ambassador to the U.N., furiously and harshly threatened the U.S. over Taiwan. I transcribed the words that he literally screamed in an interview with a BBC reporter:

“The moment that Taiwan declares independence, supported by whomever, China will have no choice but to [use] whatever means available to my government. Nobody should have any illusions on that. …

It’s not a matter of how big Taiwan is, but for China, one INCH of the territory is more valuable than the LIVES of our people.”

[With regard to the U.S.'s constant criticism of China's rapid militarization:] It’s better for the U.S. to shut up, keep quiet. That’s much, much better. China’s population is 6 times or 5 times the United States. Why blame China? No. forget it. It’s high time to shut up. It’s a nation’s sovereign right to do what is good for them. But don’t tell us what’s good for China. Thank you very much.”

Secrecy and deception

China’s military culture is completely opposite to America’s in the sense that America tries to be as open as possible, while China tries to be as secretive and deceptive as possible until it attacks. This is described in the report:

“PRC [People's Republic of China] military writings point to a working definition of strategic deception as “[luring] the other side into developing misperceptions, and [establishing for oneself] a strategically advantageous position by producing various kinds of false phenomena in an organized and planned manner with the smallest cost in manpower and materials.” In addition to information operations and conventional camouflage, concealment, and denial, the PLA draws from China’s historical experience and the traditional role that stratagem and deception have played in Chinese statecraft.

There is an inherent tension in Chinese strategic culture today, pitting a deep-seated tendency to conceal military capabilities and force development against a partial acceptance that excessive secrecy inflames regional and global anxiety about China’s rising power. For over a decade PRC leaders have identified the so called .China threat theory. as a serious hazard to the country’s international standing and reputation, threatening the development of a persistent alignment of regional and global powers in opposition to China. In addition, extreme secrecy is increasingly difficult to reconcile with China’s role in the integrated global economy, which depends upon transparency and the free flow of information for success.

There is perhaps another source of tension between the emerging reality of Chinese military power and China’s tradition of secrecy, and that is the fact that many of China’s new military capabilities are difficult or impossible to hide. Examples of such capabilities include advanced aircraft, long range missiles, and modern naval assets. Furthermore, missiles, space-based, and counterspace systems must be tested and exercised before being operationally deployed with confidence. The PLA’s growing inventory of these new assets and the ranges at which they operate effectively prevents their concealment.”

Will America abandon Taiwan?

I want to address this problem head on, because dozens of people have suggested this to me over the years — that America can simply abandon Taiwan, let the Chinese have it, rather than risk a major world war.

I want to make it as clear as I can that there is no possibility that America would abandon Taiwan, for several reasons:

Once China attacked, American response would be rapid and automatic, with no time for debate.

China would not target Taiwan alone. China would simultaneously attack America’s “weak points,” its communications satellites and its cyber capabilities, leaving no choice but to respond.

The U.S. has a defense treaties with Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Australia and New Zealand (ANZUS treaty), Israel, Europe, Iceland, and others. All of these countries have cut back on their own military in the last 60 years because they’ve counted on U.S. protection. If the U.S. abandoned Taiwan, then every one of these countries would go into total panic, and war would result anyway.

This last point is one of the great ironies of a type that we often see in generational theory — something adopted early in a generational cycle in order to prevent war later becomes one of the causes of war decades later, during the generational Crisis era. In this case, when these treaties were signed after WW II, when America became policeman of the world, their purpose was to prevent another world war by making it too expensive for anyone to attack a country aligned with the United States. Now that America can no longer provide that level of defense, these treaties guarantee that a war cannot be prevented.

The way the world works

The Pentagon report was mostly ignored by the mainstream media this past week, but there was a little coverage, and one thing that I heard politicians say a couple of times was to the effect: “There’s no danger of war with China, because it will be decades before they have the capability to defeat the United States.” In fact, the Chinese themselves are saying the same thing (consistent, I would add, with their strategy of secrecy and deception).

The world doesn’t work that way. Japan attacked Pearl Harbor when anyone could have told them that they would lose the war. General Beauregard and the Confederates attacked Fort Sumter when anyone could have told them that the South would lose. Logic and rationality are for non-crisis wars. Generational crisis wars are launched on raw emotion, with little logic.

Here’s how historian Wolfgang Schivelbusch describes the beginning of war in his 2001 book, The Culture of Defeat: On National Trauma, Mourning, and Recovery:

“The passions excited in the national psyche by the onset of war show how deeply invested the masses now were in its potential outcome. Propaganda had reinforced their conviction that “everything was at stake,” and the threat of death and defeat functioned like a tightly coiled spring, further heightening the tension. The almost festive jubilation that accompanied the declarations of war in Charleston in 1861, Paris in 1870, and the capitals of the major European powers in 1914 were anticipatory celebrations of victory-since nations are as incapable of imagining their own defeat as individuals are of conceiving their own death. The new desire to humiliate the enemy, noted by Burckhardt, was merely a reaction to the unprecedented posturing in which nations now engaged when declaring war.

The deployment of armies on the battlefield is the classic manifestation of collective self-confidence. If both sides are not convinced of their military superiority, there will be no confrontation; rather, those who lack confidence will simply flee the field. Accordingly, the battle is decided the moment the confidence of one side fails. The will to fight (“morale”) evaporates, the military formation collapses, and the army seeks salvation in flight or, if it is lucky, in organized retreat. The Greek term for this point in space (on the battlefield) and time (the course of the battle) was trope. The victors demarcated the spot with the weapons of the vanquished and later with monuments, yielding the term tropaion, from which we get our word trophy.” (p. 6-7)

The euphoria lasts until something goes wrong. Panic occurs when a military disaster occurs. In his 1832 book, On War, General Carl von Clausewitz describes what happens:

“The effect of defeat outside the army — on the people and on the government — is a sudden collapse of the wildest expectations, and total destruction of self-confidence. The destruction of these feelings creates a vacuum, and that vacuum gets filled by a fear that grows corrosively, leading to total paralysis. It’s a blow to the whole nervous system of the losing side, as if caused by an electric charge. This effect may appear to a greater or lesser degree, but it’s never completely missing. Then, instead of rushing to repair the misfortune with a spirit of determination, everyone fears that his efforts will be futile; or he does nothing, leaving everything to Fate.”

This is what happens when reality sets in — whether by the Bataan Death March or the Battle of Bull Run.

Growing worldwide xenophobia and nationalism

As I’ve written many times, the world has seen a dramatic rise in xenophobia and nationalism in country after country, as the last generation of World War II survivors have been disappearing. In America, this xenophobia has been directed mostly at Muslims and Tea Partiers. But in China, this xenophobia has been directed at Americans.

I’ve been following this issue closely for years, and there is absolutely no question in my mind that the Chinese WILL launch a preemptive attack to acquire Taiwan at some point. This is a highly nationalistic issue for the Chinese, and they will not be deterred. It could happen at any time, but based on the Pentagon report, the next 12-18 months seems pretty likely.

Some people suggest that the Taiwanese people will eventually decide that they WANT to be part of China again. But once again, that ignores the strength of nationalism, this time on the Taiwanese side. Taiwan’s indigenous Hokkein people want no part of Beijing, and Han Chinese on Taiwan moved sharply towards separatism after the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, and after the passing, in the 1990s, of the elderly leaders of the Kuomintang Party who were survivors of Mao’s Communist Revolution. See my 2004 article Taiwan’s Wild Election Battle)

The survivors of World War II understood how dangerous xenophobia and nationalism are, after they’d seen it in Germany’s Naziism, Italy’s Fascism, and elsewhere.

The Chinese learned the same lesson from their own civil war, and from Japanese nationalism and xenophobia. And Hu Jintao, China’s president, is a survivor of Mao’s Communist Revolution, and may well be only person left in China’s government desirous of peace, as I discussed in 2006 in “Eerie similarity: Chinese President Hu Jintao and Donald Rumsfeld.” In that article, I quoted the following analyst description of Hu:

“Yet in this sense, Hu reflects present-day China: As leader, he has not yet found a clear pathway, sources say. His country is at a major juncture of greater expectation, but with no clear direction or footing, socially or politically. Hu is not a zealous ideologue, a visionary economist, nor is he ready to force a war over Taiwan. He is cautious, lawyerly, a survivor, say numerous scholars, diplomats, and party sources. To the Chinese, he is as much a mystery as he is to the foreign community in Beijing. Whether he has yet consolidated power in China’s secretive leadership enclave is still speculated about.”

But Hu’s time is almost gone. In 2012 there will be a planned generational change in China’s leadership, and Hu will be replaced by younger people who ARE zealous ideologues and who ARE ready to force a war over Taiwan.

China’s war with America over Taiwan will not be a rational decision. It will be pursued by a nihilistic younger Chinese generation in the same way that America’s Generation-X pursued the destruction of the global financial system. It will be both immensely destructive and immensely self-destructive.

It’s worth repeating what General Zhu said:

If the Americans are determined to interfere [then] we will be determined to respond. We … will prepare ourselves for the destruction of all of the cities east of Xian [a city in central China]. Of course the Americans will have to be prepared that hundreds … of cities will be destroyed by the Chinese.”

There’s nothing rational about this, but it’s the way the world is going.