Countering China’s Maritime Coercion

Is China-U.S. competition for primacy in Asia this century’s greatest threat to peace? Some analysts think so. But in leaping from Sino-American competition to potential world war, they miss the obvious: Chinese leaders probe, seize opportunities, and challenge the international system with creeping assertions of sovereignty in the East and South China Seas. Yet they have no intention of sparking war, and they know that American, Japanese and other leaders are equally averse to risking so much over something as arcane as maritime boundaries and rights.

We need to reframe the problem. As important as it is, the potential for war is not the sole reason to pay attention to China’s actions. We must also attend to China’s pressing challenge to rules, rule making, and rule enforcement short of war. In other words, the China challenge is not only the avoidance of major power war (as crucial as that is, it is not as likely as some suggest), but also how to counter Beijing’s growing assertiveness in maritime Asia short of war.

China does pose a challenge. Its rapid power gains coupled with its maritime saber rattling are riddling the region with a profound sense of insecurity. A redistribution of power is occurring, to be sure. Change is unavoidable and a rising China must be accommodated. There is no guarantee that a more Sino-centric regional order will protect the rights of China’s neighbors. In fact, there is ample reason to be skeptical about China’s future intentions.

One does not have to argue that China has a coherent grand strategy of regional dominance to see that there is a problem and the system is under stress. Towering ambitions to rejuvenate China, make it a maritime power, and achieve the “China Dream” notwithstanding, Xi Jinping may not harbor long-term imperial ambitions. Still, why should neighbors hitch their security to a state with a long history of thinking of itself as the Middle Kingdom, and one in which anti-corruption and censorship campaigns leave individuals totally exposed to the caprice of an unelected Communist Party cadre?

Grey-Zone Contests

Between fears of Finlandization and the specter of World War III, there is a vast middle ground. Much of it is increasingly a series of grey-zone contests. The postwar order is under daily assault, but because the attacks are so small (they don’t call it “salami slicing” for nothing) there appears no recourse in the face of bullying. China is counting on regional paralysis. But by not wanting to upset trade for security, neighboring states are risking the basic rules of the road, such as norms that insist on the peaceful resolution of dispute and demand that military forces conform with basic operational safety.

U.S. leadership has been pivotal to post-World War II regional stability and prosperity. American leadership remains vital today, and it is the surest way to perpetuate a system predicated on freedom of navigation, freedom of the seas, and freedom of access to the wider global commons. Yet the diffusion of power requires the United States to work with local actors more than it has in recent decades. It requires a more proactive Japan, a more cohesive and results-oriented Association of Southeast Asian Nation (ASEAN), and the support of other major regional actors such as Australia, India, and the Republic of Korea

China’s salami-slicing technique is manifest through a variety of coercive actions. China’s reclamation of land features in the South China Sea is creating a set of artificial islands to substantiate its nine-dash line claim and potentially project military power throughout the entire body of water. The engineering effort may also presage a future declaration of an Air Defense Identification Zone in the South China Sea, following the one Beijing declared in November 2013. More concerning, however, has been China’s willingness to harass aircraft and ships operating in international waters and airspace. While China is entitled to advocate its definition of international law as essentially allowing total control over one’s Exclusive Economic Zone (and not just territorial waters and airspace), it has no right to fly dangerously close to patrol aircraft, cut survey cables, and ram ships. 
Stepping back for a minute, it is important to keep China’s challenge in global perspective. China’s gambit is not as overtly threatening as Vladimir Putin’s seizure of the Crimea and irregular military campaign in eastern Ukraine. And the Chinese, however much they prefer non-representative Communist Party rule, embrace modernity and are simply not comparable to deranged individuals seeking to build a caliphate through sheer barbarism. Just the opposite is the case. Thanks in no small part to America’s desire to ensure an inclusive regional system and safeguard freedom of commerce, China is integral to the global economy and the American economy. China owns roughly $1.5 trillion of America’s $18 trillion public debt. So let us keep the China challenge in context: There are many reasons no one wants a war with China.

But letting China roll over the region to create its own rules, impose its own version of history, build its own exclusionary system where access to the global commons requires capitulating to Beijing’s demands, could devolve to an Asian type of Finlandization. That is why China complains every time its neighbors augment their national security and leverage their relatively limited capabilities by seeking security cooperation with others. Conversely, China defends its decades of double-digit defense budget growth as a natural byproduct of China’s reemergence. That bromide is getting harder to sell as China’s defense spending remains high despite a slowdown in economic growth.

A Middle Path

There is a third way, a middle path between capitulation and conflict. There are measures we can and should take to impose costs on coercion, deter intimidation, and offset unilateral changes to the status quo. As colleagues and I will elaborate in a forthcoming Center for a New American Security report, holding ground in the face of tailored coercion requires a combination of carrots and sticks, direct and indirect means, and a great deal of international engagement and cooperation.

First, the United States and its allies and partners should impose costs on all acts that contravene existing international law, norms, or standards. When China violates norms, its actions should not be allowed to go unnoticed. However, most of these costs should come in the form of reputational and legal costs. Aligning regional public opinion, including through like-minded countries and ASEAN-centered institutions, remains a first line of diplomatic defense. The United States and its partners should also impose legal costs by supporting the Philippines in its arbitration case to substantiate and clarify the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.

Second, where possible, the United States, Japan, and other allies and partners should seek to deny and offset gains that China may derive from unilateral changes to the status quo. The denial and offset strategies should again mostly be indirect and non-confrontational – although China will wish to portray them as provocative. These means can be reduced to three categories of defense behavior: advancing shared situational awareness, improving inherently defensive capabilities, and creating a new type of expanded defense cooperation.

Advancing regional situation awareness requires expanded information sharing. The United States and its allies and partners should provide regional maritime transparency to deter naked aggression and raise the transactional costs on coercive behavior. By building a common operating picture among selected allies and partners, while constructing a region-wide information-sharing network for all to consume, the United States can help to hem in salami slicing. These actions will perpetuate an open, rules-based system capable of responding to a range of contingencies, from providing humanitarian assistance and disaster response, to launching search and rescue operations, to preventing illegal fishing and trafficking, to answering more conventional threats. Maritime domain awareness is not a perfect answer but it creates a regional sunshine policy. The goal is to make it more difficult to commit overt aggression.

Building inherently defense capabilities helps regional actors develop their own anti-access and area denial (A2/AD) capabilities. Just as China is seen as pursuing asymmetric means of denying sea control, thereby blocking American power projection in the event, say, of a Taiwan scenario, so, too can Japan, Southeast Asian states, Australia, Korea and India build more cost-effective A2/AD defenses of their own.

Creating a new type of defense cooperation implies several activities. More information sharing will require declassifying some of the tremendous amounts of data currently being collected by proliferating platforms in space, in the air, on land, and undersea. Obviously allies will have access to more information than new partners; but putting more information into the hands of all governments and the public at large can serve a mostly stabilizing effect. New defense cooperation also means altering U.S. defense acquisition, foreign military sales, and provision of excess military articles. It means understanding that although the United States and a select few allies may be able to afford F-35 aircraft and Littoral Combat Ships, most need assistance with coasts guards, inexpensive offshore patrol craft, and especially technical training, exercises and exchanges.

While most of these steps are defensive and indirect, there can and should be some direct challenges to unacceptable behavior. But rather than simply declaring such behavior unacceptable, Washington and other regional capitals throughout the Asia-Pacific must come together quickly to maximize the reputational cost, and they should follow through with multilateral patrols, exercises and occasional shows of force (for instance, to demonstrate the principle of freedom of the seas or airspace). They should also then swiftly announce new bilateral and multilateral defense ties alone the lines mentioned above.

Imposing costs and offsetting and denying ill-gotten gains are only part of a holistic strategy for deterring maritime coercion. Simultaneously, the United States, allies and partners need to be deepening effective engagement with China. Unstinting diplomatic activity, however, needs to be focused on useful results. The United States and China, for instance, are presently negotiating a memorandum of understanding (MOU) on avoiding at-sea collisions with surface ships; China must make good on its commitment to negotiate a similar MOU for avoiding mid-air collisions. These steps can help to manage competition and avoid unnecessary escalation. Over time, perhaps China will see increasing benefit from working with other actors in the region to adapt the current order rather than seeking to create an order on its own.

The United States wants to work with all of its allies and new partners to forge an inclusive, peaceful security system based on the rule of law. Underpinning all of these moves to counter maritime coercion, the U.S. must follow through with its rebalance policy to the Asia-Pacific region. A gradual but persistent increase in comprehensive economic, diplomatic, and military engagement in the Asia-Pacific is ultimately the best way to deter bad behavior.