Page 50 - The Economist Asia January 2018

SPECIAL REPORT
THE FUTURE OF WAR

2 in the East China Sea hasbeen goingon formuch longer, and has Power projection
turned a darker shade of grey over time as the country’s confi-
dence and powerhasgrown. Since 2009, when China submitted Stay well back
amap to the United Nationsshowinga “nine-dash line” thatsup-
ported its claim to “indisputable sovereignty” over 90% of the
South China Sea (see map), it has applied what James Holmes of
the US Naval War College has described as “small-stick diplo-
macy” (as opposed to the bigstickofconventional naval power), To counter regional challengers, America needs to
usingitshighlycapable coastguard and militiamen embedded in
its fishing fleet to push other littoral states out ofwaters to which regain its technological edge
it claims ancestral rights. A CRITICAL REASON for the success of Russia’s and Chi-
It has been able to cow most ofits neighbours into sulky ac- na’s grey-zone strategies is that they have invested heavily
quiescence while avoidinga directconfrontation with American in long-range sensor and precision-strike networks as well as
naval ships, which did not want to risk a major incident over cyber and space capabilities that can impose unacceptable costs
what China portrayed as maritime policing. When in 2013 China on America projecting power in their regions. While America
took its provocations a step further by sending civil engineers to and its allies have spent much of the past 15 years fighting wars
the Spratly and Paracel archipelagoes to construct artificial is- againstirregularforcesin the Middle Eastand Afghanistan, itsad-
lands, Xi Jinping said China had no intention of militarising versaries have been studying the vulnerabilities in the Western
them. But in 2017, satellite images released by the Centre for Stra- way of warfare and exploiting technologies that have become
tegic and International Studies showed shelters for missile bat- cheaper and more readily available. They have also benefited
teries and military radar installations being constructed on the from research and development passing from military institu-
Fiery Cross, Mischiefand Subi Reefs in the Spratly Islands. Fight- tions to the civil and commercial sectors.
er jets will be on their way next. Mr Holmes suggests that such Although at the strategic level American military power is
strategic gains cannot now be reversed short of open warfare, still uncontested, its major adversaries’ anti-access/area denial
which means they will almost certainly not be. Unlike tradition- (A2/AD) investment has blunted its technology edge to such an
al warfare, grey-zone strategies will not produce decisive results extentthatitcan no longercounton local dominance in the early
within a defined time frame. But both China and Russia have stages of a conflict. This means that America’s adversaries are
demonstrated that hybrid warfare, if not pushed too far, can able to shelter low-intensity and paramilitary operations by car-
achieve lasting, ifnot costless, results. rying out small-scale but highly accurate attacks against Ameri-
Hybrid warfare is hard to deter unless the target state itself can forces should they attempt to intervene on behalfof an ally.
resortsto hybrid strategies. MrBrandsseesno reason why Amer- It is doubtful that American commanders would recom-
ica and its allies cannot play that game too. America has potent mend such a hazardous mission unless they were given the go-
economic and financial tools at its disposal, along with an arse- ahead to disable their opponents’ A2/AD network (revealingly,
nal of cyber weapons, expert special forces, a network of alli- the Chinese name for A2/AD is “counter-intervention”). That
ances and unmatched soft power. But the West tends to think would require a major commitment of forces to strike targets in-
about conflict in a binary way: you are either at war or at peace; side Russian or Chinese territory, such as ground-to-air missile
you win or you lose. Its adversaries are more attuned to conflict batteries and command, control, intelligence, surveillance and
somewhere between warand peace, and to blurringdistinctions reconnaissance (C2ISR) nodes, which would probably result in
between civil and military assets in pursuit of their goals. So for heavy losses for the Americans. Even more important, such an
opponents of the rules-based system, the grey zone will remain operation would carry a risk so large as to make it infeasible.
Even faced with the much less onerous task of suppressing Syri-
fertile territory. 7
an airdefences in 2012, BarackObama was advised that 200-300
aircraft would be needed foran indefinite period.
N
500 km 1,000 km Russia’s growing A2/AD capability has received less atten-
CHINA tion than China’s, but poses similar problems to America and its
MONGOL IA NORTH Tokyo PA C I F I C
Paracel PHILIPPINES KOREA
AN Islands Beijing Yokosuka OCEAN allies. NATOcommandersfearthatin the eventofa crisis, missile
SOUTH JAPAN systems in the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad and in western
VIETNAM South China KOREA
AJIKISTAN Sea Yellow Sasebo Russia itself could make the Baltic Sea a no-go area for its naval
h
Sea vessels. Similarly, albeit on a lesser scale, Iran can threaten ship-
i Spratly East
h
y Islands Shanghai China First island chain ping in the Gulf, including American carriers, and American air
TIBET CHINA
AUTONOMOUS Sea bases across the water.
REGION MALAYSIA Okinawa
BRUNEI
BHUTAN Taipei Salami tactics
NEPAL
Nine-dash line TAIWAN
Hong Kong Taiwan Second island chain China’s efforts are aimed mainly at degrading America’s
Guam
INDIA Hanoi Strait (to US) sea- and land-based airpowerand thuslimitingthe kind ofwarit
LADESH MYANMAR LAOS Hainan Paracel Philippine can wage. The firststep isto achieve whatthe Chinese call “infor-
Kyaukphyu Islands Sea mation dominance”. That means targeting America’s data and
VIETNAM
Scarborough
Bay of THAILAND Shoal communications networks, especially in space. Physical attacks
Beng al CAMBODIA South PHILIPPINES
China on satellites, including “blinding” them with lasers, would be
Sea
Spratly combined with cyberattackson computersystems.
Islands
BRUNEI To preventAmerica from operatingclose to China’sshore, a
Hambantota bristling arsenal of land-based air-defence and anti-ship mis-
Malacca Strait MAL A Y SIA siles, along with fast missile boats, missile submarines and mar-
SINGAPORE SINGAPORE AUSTRALIA itime strike aircraft, would attack US Navy vessels, as well as at
INDIAN OCEAN I N D O N E S I A
EAST USbasesin Guam and Japan. In particular, China intends to push 1
10 The Economist January 27th 2018