A Japanese View on Conventional Deterrence of China

Sugio Takahashi of the Japan Ministry of Defense’s National Institute for Defense Studies has published an excellent short monograph at the Project 2049 Institute on his government’s conventional deterrence policy evolution with respect to China over the past few years. His explanation of the subtle deterrence policy differences between the 2010 and 2013 National Defense Program Guidelines (Japan’s highest-level defense strategy document) is particularly interesting.

Takahashi notes that the 2010 document defined the Chinese threat as being the opportunistic use of primarily non-military tools of national power to gradually expand the maritime zones under Beijing’s de facto political control. This, he says, led Japan to develop a policy of “dynamic deterrence” that focused more on countering China’s use of low-end salami tactics as it deemed the risk of conventional aggression by the PLA was low. Under its dynamic deterrence policy, Japan sought to use persistent Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) coverage of contested waters such as those surrounding the Senkakus to cue intercepts of Chinese “civilian” platforms by maritime law enforcement assets. Tailored military demonstrations of capabilities and readiness also figured into the policy. As he puts it: 

“…dynamic deterrence is intended to sensitize a challenger to the notion that they are always being watched, and that there are no physical gaps of defense posture, or “windows of opportunity,” for fait accompli or probing.” (Pg. 2)

While the 2013 Guidelines recognized the continuing problem of Chinese salami tactics, according to Takahashi it also recognized China’s increasingly-frequent deployment of maritime law enforcement—and sometimes PLA—assets near the Senkakus following Tokyo’s September 2012 purchase of the islands. As such, the 2013 Guidelines identified the emergence of escalation risks inherent to potential direct contacts between PLA and Japan Self-Defense Force assets in the East China. Maritime ISR still figured in heavily under the new Guidelines, but now had the task of enabling rapid responses by the Self-Defense Force to “deliberate or accidental escalation.” Conventional military considerations also rose in prominence, namely demonstrations of the Self-Defense Force’s ability to quickly and decisively conduct a circumstances-tailored response to any Chinese escalation along the spectrum of conventional conflict. This entailed deployments of Self-Defense Force units to forward positions as deemed situationally appropriate, plus the ability to quickly surge forces forward as required.

Takahashi asserts that the most immediate threat to Japanese interests remains China’s use of coast guard and other “paramilitary forces to challenge the East Asian maritime status quo. With respect to the South China Sea challenge, he correctly observes that:

“…since very few Southeast Asian countries currently have significant coast guard forces, there is a possibility that Southeast Asian countries will mobilize military forces to counter China’s paramilitary force. If that occurs, China can blame those countries as “escalating the situation” and further justify their mobilization of military forces. (Pg. 4)

This is exactly what happened to the Philippines in the 2012 Scarsborough Shoal incident.

Even more interestingly, he implies a Japanese government concern that if the U.S. were to publicly declare that China’s improvements of its nuclear second strike capabilities had led to a state of mutual nuclear vulnerability, it might encourage the Chinese to act more boldly in the conventional sphere. He refers to the stability-instability paradox, or rather the idea that the nuclear equilibrium made possible by a secure second strike capability in turn encourages adventurism at the conventional level.

While I understand Takahashi’s concern, it’s important to note that Cold War deterrence theorists did not believe the paradox was deterministic. As I noted in my SSQ article on conventional deterrence:

Glenn Snyder, an early articulator of the paradox, points out that the interplays between context, specific circumstances, and chance are the keys to its real-world application. In his view, a Soviet conventional offensive against NATO or Japan would have had vastly greater ramifications to US interests and prestige, and therefore more risk of unleashing inadvertent escalatory processes, than one against countries in which U.S. interests were peripheral. Robert Jervis agreed, noting that Schelling’s ill-controlled escalatory process meant nuclear equilibrium hardly created any margin of safety for major conventional provocations or wars.[1] Nevertheless, it is the defender’s inability to confidently know whether the stability-instability paradox will work for or against deterrence efforts at a given point in time that drives the need for a conventional hedging force capable of denying the opponent’s potential fait accompli attempts. (Pg. 154)

And Takahashi does a spectacular job outlining the qualities of such a hedging force. He states that:

“From the perspective of countering the A2/AD threat, however, putting more forces on the frontline would not be wise because these frontline forces could be neutralized or destroyed by Chinese A2/AD capabilities. A light presence on the frontline and a heavier stand-off strike force outside of A2/AD ranges would be better-suited for this environment.”(Pg. 6)

His observation on the need for two forward “echelons,” a “light” one consisting of lower campaign-value assets to fight on the “frontline,” and a “heavy” one consisting of higher campaign-value assets that fight from locations “over-the-horizon,” mirrors my own thinking on this issue. So does his subsequent observation that forward forces must be designed to be resilient against a Chinese conventional first strike, and thereby lower any Chinese incentives to conduct one in a crisis or limited conflict, let alone pursue a major conflict.

Takahashi raises the question of whether the best approach for structuring the “frontline” forces within a peacetime-contested zone is to employ tactical dispersal of lower-campaign value conventional forces in order to counter primarily military threats, employ primarily coast guard assets in order to counter salami tactic threats, or a mix of the two. I frankly believe a mix is the right way to go, with the non-military forces in the “area of contact” and the military forces latently backing them from a distance determined by the specifics of the situation. Takahashi is absolutely right that U.S. and Japanese leaders will need to work together to sketch out the “right capability portfolio and institutional division of labor,” not only between non-military and military forces but also the Japanese and U.S. contingents. His monograph provides a terrific starting point for that exact discussion.

The views expressed herein are solely those of the author and are presented in his personal capacity. They do not reflect the official positions of Systems Planning and Analysis, and to the author’s knowledge do not reflect the policies or positions of the U.S. Department of Defense, any U.S. armed service, or any other U.S. Government agency.

---

[1] See 1. Glenn Snyder. Deterrence and Defense. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961), 225-26; 2. Glenn Snyder, “The Balance of Power and the Balance of Terror,” in Balance of Power, ed. Paul Seabury (San Francisco: Chandler Publishing Co., 1965), 199; and 3. Robert Jervis. The Meaning of the Nuclear Revolution. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989), 21-22, 105.

Air-Sea Battle and Offshore Control are not Mutually-Exclusive: Part 2

Yesterday we summarized the main arguments surrounding Air-Sea Battle and Offshore Control. We also noted several variables that thus far have been largely overlooked in the debate: the belligerents’ characterization and valuation of their political objectives, and a confrontation’s unique political and strategic circumstances. Over the next two days, we will use plausible interactions between these variables to outline how relevant elements of Air-Sea Battle and Offshore Control can be integrated within a single strategic concept that covers the full spectrum of potential conventional Sino-American conflicts.

Scenario #1: High-End Salami Tactics

Let’s suppose that Chinese leaders sought to extract some political concession(s) by forcibly blockading one of a U.S. East Asian ally’s populated maritime territories or seizing one of its remote, unpopulated/sparsely-populated maritime territories. Let’s stipulate, though, that the initial Chinese actions did not result in direct hostilities with the U.S. ally’s military forces, and that any clashes were limited to exchanges between the belligerents’ constabulary forces such as coast guards or national law enforcement agencies.

The U.S. response in such a contingency would likely involve positioning and posturing its in-theater conventional forces in order to latently support allied constabularies’ or military forces’ efforts to counter or delegitimize the Chinese actions, not to mention deter Chinese escalation. Some lower-campaign value American forces might overtly line up alongside the ally’s frontline defenders to show solidarity and create a latent tripwire threat; this kind of response would be very desirable for accompanying vessels running through a Chinese blockade. Heavier U.S. forces latently backing this frontline from ‘over the horizon’ would likely take measures to conceal themselves from Chinese maritime surveillance and reconnaissance; their aim would be to severely limit Chinese opportunities for an effective preemptive first strike and thus enhance crisis stability as well as U.S. deterrence credibility. As U.S. political leaders would likely strive to avoid placing U.S. military units in situations where they would risk setting use-of-force precedents themselves, it seems unlikely the U.S. would impose any kind of distant blockade against China at this stage. Instead, information operations and diplomatic maneuvers to build regional and global opposition (or at least disengaged neutrality) to China’s actions would likely dominate the U.S. grand strategic response.

It is important to note, however, that the absence of direct military action in the physical domains almost certainly would not extend into the cyber and electromagnetic domains. It is quite likely that there would be extensive cyber and Electronic Warfare (EW) skirmishing as both sides jockeyed for situational awareness advantages, harassed each other’s forces, or attempted to manipulate third parties’ perceptions. Both would accordingly face the challenge of waging this cyber-electromagnetic warfare without precipitating accidental or inadvertent escalation.

Scenario #2: Limited War in the Contested Zone

Now, let’s examine a scenario in which initial Chinese actions did lead to direct hostilities between the PLA and the U.S. ally’s forces at sea or on the territory in question. Let’s also assume that the PLA did not escalate by striking civil, economic, or military infrastructure located within the ally’s homeland ‘core.’ Let’s additionally stipulate that in its ‘first move’ the PLA neither struck U.S. forward bases and forces in the region, nor deployed to interdict America’s maritime lines of communication with the ally. We could therefore conclude Chinese leaders valued their political objectives highly enough to resort to direct military force, but that the limited scope of those objectives encouraged them to adopt strategically-significant degrees of restraint—at least during the conflict’s opening phase.

The American military response under such conditions would likely lean closer towards Offshore Control’s concept of a limited war within the contested zone, as U.S. political objectives would center upon arresting the Chinese aggression and eventually restoring the status quo ante without escalating the conflict unnecessarily. This means the U.S. war effort would likely be structured to conform to China’s precedent-setting actions in the conflict. Of course, nothing would preclude U.S. political leaders from determining that their own objectives and the conflict’s circumstances necessitated the setting of selected precedents by U.S. forces as well.The bias against doing so would nonetheless be high.

U.S. war strategy would be based around the use of sequential (and sometimes parallel) Joint conventional combined arms campaigns that gradually attrited the PLA’s offensive capabilities within the bounds of the contested zone while dislodging Chinese forces from any territorial spoils. Unlike Offshore Control, though, the U.S. strategy would not strive for persistent denial of a sizable majority of the East and South China Seas to the PLA. Nor would the U.S. strategy strive for permanent absolute control of the oceanic approaches to East Asia. Sea control and denial of these magnitudes and durations are neither necessary nor practicable, as Julian Corbett observed a century ago in his masterwork Some Principles of Maritime Strategy.

Consistent with Corbett’s logic, U.S. forces would instead strive to deny the PLA’s ability to transit or occupy selected maritime areas for discrete periods. Short-duration denial efforts might entail concentrating U.S. air and naval power in time and space against PLA forces once the latter were detected at, over, or under the sea. Longer-duration denial efforts could take the form of leveraging pre-deployed land-based anti-ship/anti-air missile batteries as well as offshore minefields to protect friendly territories and chokepoints. Offensive minelaying in the approaches to Chinese naval bases would also be an option for longer-duration sea denial.

Similarly, U.S. forces would strive to control only those maritime areas that it and allied forces (as well as protected commerce) would need to traverse in order to achieve U.S. political objectives, and only for the periods of time necessary to do so. One could picture this type of control as a purpose-defined ‘moving bubble’ of superiority in time and space centered on the military force or commercial convoy in transit. Longer-duration (but not permanent) control over fixed areas would only be necessary in the maritime approaches to U.S. and allied territories, or otherwise in the areas surrounding PLA-occupied allied territories if U.S. and allied forces were engaged in forcible entry operations.

The U.S. and its embattled ally could also conceivably allow the PLA to seize and occupy one or more contested territories of relatively low military-strategic value, as that might induce China to excessively allocate scarce materiel and vulnerable forces in order to hold onto its spoils. Chinese assets exposed in this way could be subjected to withering and incessant attacks that would help gradually reduce the PLA’s quantitative advantages in theater. This might have the secondary effect of drawing Chinese attention and resources away from more important U.S. or allied operations elsewhere in the theater.

It is additionally possible U.S. political leaders might order some form of cumulative campaign to provide indirect support to the conventional campaigns and perhaps pressure the Chinese economy at the margins. This might include a distant blockade (as feasible given available forces and supporting infrastructure), plausibly-deniable special or irregular operations against Chinese economic interests in other countries, severing countries or foreign companies that attempt to engage in proscribed trade with China from access to the U.S. financial system, or other measures. U.S. political leaders would obviously have to weigh how these kinds of coercive actions might detrimentally provoke China as well as third parties to the conflict.

Above all, it must be appreciated that the U.S. would be not able to successfully defend a frontline ally in a limited conflict—never mind restore the status quo ante—in the absence of several key factors associated with Air-Sea Battle. For example, doctrine and capabilities that enhance U.S. forces’ resiliency against a conventional first strike are critical to intra-conflict deterrence credibility. The same is true with respect to capabilities that promote latent and highly survivable U.S. conventional escalation dominance such as submarines, long-range strike aircraft, and an intelligently-crafted balance between long-range and short-range guided munitions. Most importantly, U.S. air, ground, and naval surface operations within a contested zone would not be practicable and U.S. and allied intra-theater lines of communication would not be defensible without extensive operations against PLA maritime surveillance/reconnaissance networks. While some Air-Sea Battle critics have asserted such operations would carry the escalatory risk of attacking PLA nuclear forces’ C³ architectures, the former’s maritime sensors and their supporting data pathways outside China’s borders are most definitely not part of the latter. Even so, and depending on the operational and tactical circumstances, deception and concealment in the face of those sensors might be far more effective and impactful than destroying them.

If Chinese restraint held following a U.S. intervention along the lines I’ve suggested, both sides would be able to take advantage of deep operational-strategic sanctuaries for basing and maneuver within the combat theater. The practical result of this might be a protracted conflict that could remain limited unless one of the belligerents’ political objectives and perceptions of the conflict’s circumstances eventually came to demand escalation. Conversely, conflict protraction along these lines and unambiguously strong U.S. and allied resolve might drive Chinese leaders to seek out a mutually-tolerable negotiated settlement if their political objectives encouraged as much. In the second-best outcome, U.S. and allied forces would be able to induce China to break off its aggression and (if applicable) restore the territorial status quo ante in exchange for nothing more than relatively symbolic gestures. The ideal outcome would obviously be convincing Chinese leaders that a limited war within the contested zone would not be quick, cheap, or low-risk, thereby deterring them altogether from seeking one.

Tomorrow, addressing scenarios for major war.

Some Thoughts on Salami Tactics and Diplomatic “Offramps"

My SSQ article on conventional deterrence last winter focused primarily on deterring relatively low likelihood but severe consequence ‘high-end’ contingencies involving Chinese aggression in East Asia. One apt commenter noted that I did not say much regarding deterrence of an opponent’s low-level ‘salami tactics’ that do not cross the threshold into a traditional conventional military offensive. Unlike the theoretical scenarios covered in my article, China is presently and actively using People’s Liberation Army (PLA) forces, coast guard forces, and ‘civilian’ activists such as its state-sponsored (and likely coordinated) fishing fleet to probe its neighbors’ maritime defenses, perform coercive psychological operations, and occasionally seize individual remote shoals. Even so, the extant body of conventional deterrence theory contains little that addresses this segment of the conflict spectrum.

As I mentioned in my article and in another piece here this fall, it would seem that forward-positioned constabulary forces such as coast guards, gendarmeries, or national law enforcement agencies with paramilitary capabilities are central to low-end conventional deterrence. Given China’s use of its sizable fishing fleet as a paramilitary offset against its neighbors’ uniformed maritime constabularies, it might also be reasonable if not necessary for those neighbors to cultivate similar state-controlled paramilitaries within their own respective fishing fleets. Doing so would expand East Asian maritime states’ options for symmetrical responses to Chinese probes, as well as introduce risk variables that they could manipulate to deter further Chinese escalations. Indeed, a defender will seldom want to be the party that sets the intra-crisis precedent of having one of its military assets engage an opponent's constabulary asset or 'civilian' actors. It certainly seems that one objective of China’s salami tactics is to maneuver East Asian states into choices between setting these kinds of provocative and diplomatically-exploitable precedents or otherwise conceding on their claims. This kind of gambit would be even more applicable should Chinese leaders manufacture a maritime crisis in order to induce a neighboring state’s  military into committing an act Beijing could cite as a casus belli.

It must also be appreciated that constabulary and paramilitary forces are more readily configurable and trainable for handling these kinds of ‘grey’ scenarios. Take this year’s Russo-Ukrainian crisis, for example. Just as traditional police are under-armed and under-trained for retaking civil infrastructure sites and the like that have been seized by an adversary’s intelligence operatives, special forces, ‘political tourists,’ or sponsored ‘indigenous’ militias, militaries that are necessarily structured and trained for conventional inter-state warfare are ill-suited for ‘high-end’ domestic law enforcement duties. What’s more, professional military units’ esprit de corps may serve as a moral barrier that dissuades them from employing force against people who appear to be civilians, if not fellow citizens. One could make a strong argument that if the Ukrainian government had been able and willing to quickly deploy reliable, well-disciplined, and well-armed constabulary forces against the initial seizures of Crimean and eastern Ukrainian civil infrastructure by Russian operatives and proxies, Kiev might have been able to either prevent those Russian faits accompli or delay if not deter their follow-on moves elsewhere in eastern Ukraine. The effective deployment of such forces would certainly have presented the Russian regime with additional costs, risks, and uncertainties; at least one of NATO’s Baltic members has evidently taken note of this for its own contingency plans. Still, Ukraine’s lack of credible military forces (or membership in a credible defensive military alliance) meant that effective Ukrainian constabulary force employment against the ‘separatists’ early-on might have prompted a limited but decisive Russian military invasion—which is essentially what happened this past summer in response to the Ukrainian military’s and Kiev-sponsored paramilitaries’ broader rollback operations in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. This is why the low-end conventional deterrence provided by constabulary forces or state-controlled paramilitaries must be latently supported by military forces positioned ‘over-the-horizon’ that possess the requisite qualities and asset quantities to bog down if not arrest an adversary’s offensive. This tandem approach is the best way to create doubts in an opponent’s leaders' minds about the wisdom of pushing salami tactics too far in a given confrontation.

An even more dangerous problem nevertheless emerges if circumstances reach the point that a revisionist power runs out of cheap and relatively low-risk salami tactics that can help it make progress towards achieving its political objectives. For instance, if the revisionist has seized de facto control over all the waters or isolated territories that it contests with an opponent, and if the revisionist still seeks to manipulate the opponent into bending to his political will or otherwise score gains at the opponent’s expense, then what low-stakes pressure points remain for military coercion? Alternatively, the revisionist may assign high value to certain political objectives that salami tactics simply cannot address. Contemporary Western crisis management theory embraces the idea of providing an opponent ‘offramps’ to deescalate a confrontation, usually through a combination of some demonstration of resolve and the potential for further escalation combined with some diplomatic concession (whether symbolic or substantive) that is designed to allow the opponent’s leaders to ‘save face.’ This is all fine and good if the opponent can be convinced that he overstepped and that a way-out is desirable. We must appreciate, though, the opponent will only accept such an offer if one of his most highly-valued political objectives is avoiding the uncertainties associated with further escalation—if not the certainty of a war should the defender’s deterrence policy be structured as such—more than the political objective(s) that drove his aggressive moves in the first place. Not all opponents at all times will take an offramp deal; sometimes the other side’s leaders come to value some political objective(s) far more than they do restoring the peace. As such, offramps may not work (or even be offerable) depending upon how the two sides characterize and value their respective political objectives. Though their calculus may seem ‘unthinkably’ irrational from our perspective, if the aggressor’s leaders want something badly enough they will do whatever they think they need to do and pay whatever costs they think they must pay to obtain it.

--Update 11/24/14 9:17PM--

I highly recommend Robert Haddick's serendipitous article at the National Interest from earlier today on this very topic. I think he and I broadly agree on the importance of constabulary forces and the potential uses of state-sponsored fishing fleets. He makes several additional suggestions regarding maritime information-sharing and surveillance cooperation amongst America's East Asian allies and partners. I believe his most important idea is for these countries and the U.S. to begin developing mechanisms that could support cooperative management of crises.