The Coming War in Asia: Why We Need Better Analysts

There has not been a large-scale war in Asia since 1945. Interstate conflicts in the region over the past several decades included the 1962 Sino-Indian War, the 1971 Indo-Pakistani War, the 1979 Sino-Vietnamese Border War, and the 1999 Kargil War. With the exception of the 1971 clash between India and Pakistan (along with the Bangladesh Liberation War), these wars were low in casualties and involved limited military resources.

Nevertheless, the Asia-Pacific region is the most militarized region in the world. According to the International Institute of Strategic Studies’ Military Balance 2017, the three largest defense budgets in the world (the United States, China, and Russia) belong to countries with significant military assets in the region. Six Asia-Pacific powers were among the top ten global military spenders in 2016. The world’s seven largest militaries including China, the United States, India, North Korea, Russia, Pakistan, and South Korea are all (at least partly) found in Asia. Furthermore, six of the seven are nuclear powers, if North Korea’s still-developing program is counted.

While these statistics are nothing new, they are worth restating to illustrate the profound and often neglected dangers that lurk behind increasing militarization of the region, with its numerous territorial disputes on both land and sea as well as frozen conflicts. At the same time, the region lacks a comprehensive security structure and political community akin to, for example, NATO and the European Union in Europe.  The old maxim that if you only have a hammer, sooner or later most problems will look like nails, is particularly pertinent in that respect: Given the growing military arsenals, Asia-Pacific policymakers may be more willing to use military force to achieve political objectives and settle disputes.

This is further accentuated by the fact that while all Asia-Pacific powers are expanding their militaries, no military force save the United States’ has had any extensive combat experience, nor any nation firsthand knowledge of what it means to fight an interstate conflict in the 21st century. Based on historical evidence (e.g. European militaries prior to World War I), this lack of understanding of what it means to go to war, combined with a regional arms race, and various territorial disputes, can create a fertile habitat for strategic miscalculations over the use of military power. 

In his book The End of the Asian Century, Michael R. Auslin outlines a risk cycle that he thinks governs interstate relations in Asia, which consists of three components: uncertainty, insecurity, and instability. Auslin argues that Asian nations have gone through numerous iterations of this cycle (which begins with uncertainty, followed by insecurity, and ends in instability) over the last several decades without, however, ever succeeding in reversing it. As a result, the Asia-Pacific region remains stuck in instability, the last stage of the cycle, which can cause large-scale military conflict. “War is not preordained, but once the risk cycle reaches this last stage, instability, the immediate question is how bad it will become and whether minor flare-ups will turn into serious clashes,” Auslin argues.

The question of whether a small military clash can lead to large-scale war has plagued decision-makers throughout history. Yet, there is particular danger coming from the ongoing instability that prevails in the Asia-Pacific region in our time for those engaged in military and security analysis. Analysts and political observers have become so used to this perpetual cycle of instability and constant confrontations, whether on the Korean Peninsula, in the East China Sea, or along the Indo-Pakistan border that they have lost sight of the inherent danger that these confrontations pose to peace in the entire Asia-Pacific region. Indeed, this perpetual cycle of instability has jaded the imagination and clouded the strategic vision of many analysts and policymakers: One simply cannot do any serious thinking and long-term planning in a permanent state of crisis. As a result, the next war in the Asia-Pacific – like most military conflicts – may come as an apparent surprise for many analysts, in particular when this lack of imagination and vision is accentuated by an overemphasis on legal and technical details pertaining to territorial disputes and frozen conflicts in the region.

For example, in the United States analysts and policymakers spent an extraordinary amount of time publicly arguing back and forth over the U.S. Navy’s so-called Freedom of Navigation Operations (FONOPS) in the South China Sea in response to China’s large-scale land reclamation program in the Spratly Islands. For weeks the debate centered on whether the U.S. Navy claimed freedom of navigation rights or the somewhat less challenging right to innocent passage under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).  While this was without a doubt an important discussion to have had, it diluted the United States’ strategic vision to assess the genuine importance of the South China Sea to U.S. national interests and whether the U.S. Navy would genuinely be prepared to go to war with China over the militarization of the Spratly Islands.

Indeed, one could argue that the lack of a policy debate, free from euphemisms used to justify a particular course of action (e.g., credibility or rule-based order) and legal technicalities, has diluted the U.S. response to Chinese actions and even worsened instability by making it very hard for China to ascertain where the United States has drawn a red line when it comes to Chinese actions with regard to the territorial disputes in the South China Sea.  It remains unclear to this day what precise actions the United States is willing to take in the South China Sea to defend its national interests in the disputed waters (i.e. freedom of navigation and the so-called rule-based order).

Looking at the Korean Peninsula, the lack of imagination is perhaps more acute. Many analysts and experts have become deaf to the common sense Cassandra-like warnings of mass-scale slaughter amidst North Korea’s continues belligerent drumbeat and repeated threats of war. While everyone involved in the political and military stalemate on the peninsula is aware that full-scale war is a possibility, the series of crises and various nuclear and ballistic missile tests have somehow decreased the likelihood of full-scale conflict in the minds of many jaded analysts given that Pyongyang has not followed up its martial rhetoric with concrete military action in the past.

Instead, many analysts, next to spinning regime survival theories, have started to become focused on detailing North Korean military capabilities (an almost impossible task) and analyzing in mundane detail missile types including their likely payload and range, all of which is important; however, not at the expense of long-term strategic thinking and an awareness that the current state of affairs cannot continue indefinitely. For example, to look at it from an American perspective: Is the United States genuinely prepared to sacrifice thousands of American lives for the defense of Seoul? Would it endure the loss of even a single aircraft carrier? Would Washington accept a possible nuclear attack on U.S. soil as a result of its involvement? Is South Korea even strategically important to the United States?

Experts would answer all of the above in the affirmative and brush it off as a given considering treaty commitments and history. However, it is the thorough examination of these essential questions by analysts that may end up making the difference between war and peace, because it reduces the likelihood of miscalculation by all parties involved in a possible military conflict. Analysts need to foster these debates and reinvigorate their imagination and sharpen their long-term strategic vision to better inform policymakers and the wider public of the real dangers in the region. As a first step, they need to accept that the current instability in the Asia-Pacific cannot endure permanently. Second, while policymakers may succeed in extinguishing the sources of instability peacefully, analysts also need to accept that war may very well break out and they need to imagine what shape and form it will take, preferably beyond accepted conventional wisdom of what warfare in the 21st century may look like.