Another day, another piece of US think-tankery poo-pooing
the prospects for a nuclear confrontation with the PRC.
RAND came up with a new report on the economic costs of war
with China, Thinking the
Unthinkable. In RAND's view the
war won’t escalate beyond a limited conventional war fought in the West Pacific
and over Chinese territory, China gets devastated beyond its ability to resist
and keep military forces in the field, we win, the world economy staggers but
carries on, The End.
I beg to differ, for reasons given in my current piece for
Asia Times, RAND’s ‘Unthinkable’
War with China.
It’s always possible that I’m out of line here, but I think
RAND’s public confidence is borderline delusional.
The PRC is narrowing the conventional military disparity
with the US and it seems most likely sooner or later, maybe around 2025, the
US is going to have to bring nukes into the equation to make sure it can
win a war with China.
That’s what we had to do with the Soviet Union—that’s why we’ve
still got those nukes at Incirlik in Turkey—and I don’t see any reason why this
wouldn’t happen in Asia.
My personal theory is that Thinktankistan has been put on
notice not to provide any oxygen to the nuclear narrative right now because, if
a nuclear exchange is seen as feasible, then Japan, South Korea, and even
Taiwan are going to want to have their own nuclear deterrent.
Faith in the technical capabilities of Raytheon missile
defense ain’t gonna cut it, in my opinion, if we’re talking about a clutch of Chinese
missiles making it through the shield to take out US bases in Japan and that
nice THAAD installation in South Korea…and they might be nuclear-tipped.
If everybody’s got nukes, they not only don’t need the US
nuclear umbrella; they’ve got their own defense and security policies and the
US, instead of acting as the maestro of the China-containment orchestra, is
just the fat guy with the tuba in the back row who provides some extra oompah
to support the front line players.
The PRC therefore has two incentives to abandon its old
fashioned No First Use/MAD deterrent based on a few ICBMs.
First, naturally, is that the threat of a nuclear deterrent
based on first use or launch on warning becomes more useful, maybe necessary,
as the US packs offensive capabilities, including dual use (nuke as well as
conventional) enabled fighter-bombers and cruise missiles into the East Asian
theater.
Second, triggering a nuclear arms race in Asia shreds the US
nuclear umbrella that underpins US leadership of the pivot, fragments the
alliance, and allows the PRC to target—and intimidate—US allies bilaterally and
bring its local superiority to bear.
Interesting element of PRC leverage, isn’t it? Evaluations of PRC current and future nuclear policy (and
the US dance of provocation and accommodation with China) should probably
weight this factor pretty highly.
China isn’t the only country with the ability to upset the
US nuclear applecart.
If the genuine history of US strategy for East Asia is
written, it will of course cover the multi-decade effort to d*ck with
China. But it will also include the
secret history of the US effort to direct and control Japanese rearmament as an
asset for US hegemony, while keeping a rein on Japanese geo-strategic ambitions…and
keeping Japan from turning the nuclear assets covertly gifted by the Pentagon
into a declared nuclear weapons capability (Joseph
Trento can write that section).
This is not a theoretical issue. Shinzo Abe is a dyed-in-the-wool
anti-American revisionist
Japanese nationalist who is determined to exploit the US eagerness to
remain the official East Asian hegemon to extend Japan’s geopolitical sway into
East Asia and restore its dignity as a full-fledged regional power.
For Team America, keeping a leash on Japan and the US in the
driver’s seat for Asian security policy is Job One. That means the pot has to keep boiling enough
to keep the US in control of the pivot polarization narrative and development
of security alliances with the Philippines, Vietnam, et al. while keeping things calm enough that Japan stays on
rez as a nominal junior partner of the coalition, whose military adventurism is
still officially circumscribed by the principal of “collective self defense” in
support of US operations.
As it pays lip service to US leadership, Japan has used the US
pivot to develop its own bilateral security ties down ASEAN way and with India—and
is reaching out to the Tsai Ying-wen government on Taiwan, which probably gives
US planners a distinct case of the collywobbles.
Japan is, in other words, edging toward the full formal resumption
of a “normal” role in overseas military affairs, one in which it officially
pursues its own interests and doesn’t just follow US policy.
If Japan goes nuclear, it’s pretty much game over. The US becomes just another passenger on the
pivot bus. So Japan can also use its
nuclear weapons potential as leverage over the US to shape policy and extract
concessions.
Which means, in my opinion, RAND has to pretend, at least
publicly, that nuclear weapons are not a factor in Asian strategy in order to
defend the status quo of US leadership and nuclear monopoly.
Privately, I suspect, it’s another matter entirely, and US
strategy is shaped both by Chinese and Japanese nuclear blackmail.
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