Well, thanks to Ross Babbage for his response to my earlier post. His points help to clarify some key issues in his Strategic Edge report, but I don't think they dissolve my two principal reservations. Let me explain them in turn, and offer some thoughts about how to move this important debate further forward.
Will China become an enemy?
Strategic Edge does not describe China as an enemy, but it promotes an approach to China's growing power that makes no serious effort to avoid a sharp escalation in strategic competition, and therefore makes it much more probable that China will become one. Ross does say that we should do 'all we can' to avoid strategic competition, but he does not clearly explain what we should do. I read Strategic Edge to say that we should not do anything to accommodate China's ambitions. Instead we should insist that China continues to accept the existing US-led regional order in Asia.
This is a common enough view. Many people believe that we should engage China as long as it respects the US-led order, but refuse to accept any Chinese attempt to change that order in its favour. This approach has worked well for many years, because while China was still relatively weak, the costs and risks of confronting it would not have been very high. But China's new strength makes those costs and risks much higher in future, as Ross makes very clear. So we need to ask whether preserving the current US-led order in Asia is still worth the much higher costs which that policy now entails.
Of course, that depends on what the alternatives are. Strategic Edge seems to imply that the only alternative to American primacy in Asia is Chinese hegemony. We can all agree that Chinese hegemony would probably be very dangerous for Australia, and therefore worth the high costs of confronting China to avoid. But that leaves a vital question: are there other alternatives that would be less dangerous than either Chinese hegemony or confrontation with China? My Quarterly Essay argued that there are, and that we should explore them seriously.
I do not think Ross agrees with that, but perhaps I misread him. So just to be clear, let me pose a direct question to him. Do you believe that American primacy in Asia is essential for Australia's security, or do you believe that we should explore options to reshape Asia's order to accommodate China to some extent, even if that means accepting that America will no longer exercise primacy?
Or we could pose the question another way: do you propose that we should prepare to fight China to preserve US primacy, or to prevent Chinese hegemony? Because they are not the same thing.
The way we answer these questions directly affects the probability of war with China. If we decide that US primacy must be preserved at all costs, then the only way to avoid confrontation with China is for China to continue to subordinate itself to US primacy, even as its economy grows to equal and perhaps overtake America's. Ross would agree that China is very unlikely to accept that. The implication is therefore that confrontation with China becomes, if not inevitable, then very probable indeed.
Will deterrence work?
Ross reaffirms his confidence that the best way for Australia to prepare for the possibility of war with China is to build forces that can hit the Chinese leadership's core interests so hard that they would have no choice but submit to our will.
He calls this an asymmetrical and indirect approach, but I do not see what is indirect or asymmetrical about it. The kind of actions he suggests — attacks on trade, cyber-attacks, perhaps even direct strikes on mainland Chinese targets — all seem to me to be exactly the kinds of things that the Chinese could do back to us, and much harder. And it appears certain that they would indeed retaliate very hard to such direct attacks upon them.
Ross' recent post seems to acknowledge this, and suggests that we just need to build forces big and potent enough to dissuade them for retaliating — in other words, to establish escalation dominance over China. But his vivid account of China's future power makes one wonder whether even the US will be able to do this. I'm sure we could not.
Perhaps it would help to clarify these issues if we look at a scenario in which an important Australian strategic interest was under challenge from China. I'd be happy to offer one myself, but I might be suspected of framing it to suit my own argument, so I'd encourage Ross to suggest one — perhaps one of those explored in his high-level workshops. I'm sure it would be possible without endangering national security to explain in broad terms how the deterrence concept would play out in a hypothetical situation, and how problems of symmetry and escalation could be managed. In return, I'd be happy to sketch how my Maritime Denial concept would work in the same scenario.
Photo by Flickr user Today is a good day
