Foreign Affairs, here. We are delighted to have with us Robert Kaplan,
the author of a major new piece in our May/June issue, "The Geography
of Chinese Power." Bob is a senior fellow at the Center for a New
American Security and a correspondent for The Atlantic and has a new
book out, Monsoon: The Indian Ocean and the Future of American Power,
which will appear in the fall.
Let's get right to it. You all know who our author is; that's why
you're here. So for those who haven't read the article -- those few
people living under a rock somewhere -- can you just summarize briefly
what the gist of the piece is? And then we can discuss further some of
the issues it raises.
ROBERT KAPLAN: Sure, Gideon. We've been reading a lot about China,
about China holding so much of our debt, about -- you know -- all
these problems the U.S. has in their bilateral relations with China
over global warming, over China's support of authoritarian regimes in
Burma, in Sudan, and all that. But one thing that's the most obvious
thing that nobody writes about is Chinese geography; in other words,
what does the map say about China?
That's what this piece is all about. And it's got several themes.
Whereas Russia is north of the 50th degree of parallel and is in the
frigid Arctic zone for the most part, China is a temperate-zone power
that harnesses a lot of the mineral and energy wealth into Central
Asia as well as having a long 9,000-mile frontage in the temperate and
subtropical zones on the Indian Ocean.
And this gives China tremendous advantages. China is also -- as a
rising power, it is through demographics, aggressive corporate
practices, signing border agreements and trade practices, it's
expanding its zone of influence into contiguous zones: into the
Russian Far East, into Mongolia, into Central Asia, into Southeast
Asia. And it is building ports or helping to build ports along the
Indian Ocean. It's taking steps with its navy that will secure for
China at least partial control of the South China Sea, of the East
China Sea.
The map of China is growing, and this presents a geopolitical
challenge, because just as the U.S. is the hegemon of the Western
Hemisphere, China is becoming -- on its way to becoming -- a sort of
hegemon over, we'll say, much of the Eastern Hemisphere.
ROSE: Okay. Let's talk about this for a second. How inevitable is
this, and does it depend on things like the rates of growth in the
Chinese economy or political stability in China, or the political
system that the Chinese themselves have?
KAPLAN: Well, as I say early on, history is not linear. We cannot take
for granted that China is going to have the kind of economic growth in
the future that it has had over the past 30 years. There'll be a lot
of bumps and bruises along the line. And this will definitely affect
China's ability to project power through its navy and through its
corporations and the deals it signs on land.
But a few things should be mentioned. First is that China is
projecting its power -- its hard power, rather -- largely through its
navy. And there was a good New York Times story to that regard by
Edward Wong just about a week ago. The fact that China can do this, as
I say in the article, represents a luxury for China, because
continental land powers go to sea not as a matter of course but as a
luxury. And the luxury in China's case is that its land borders are
more secure than they have been in a very long time. And that, in and
of itself, says much about how China is a rising power, because as we
know from much of Chinese history, a lot of these land borders were
insecure -- you know, 100 years ago, China barely had control over
Manchuria, over many other regions.
ROSE: Okay. Let's talk for a little bit about the means by which all
this is going to happen. I mean, a greater East Asian co-prosperity
sphere is a very bad thing if acquired in some respects, and may not
-- may be less so -- if it's more benignly originating. Are you
arguing that this is going to be basically a source of conflict on
China's part?
KAPLAN: It may not be. I say early on in the piece that China is not
an existential threat. China is not a -- China's military threat to
the United States, for instance, is indirect only, through its trying
to limit America's access to the East and South China Sea and the
Strait of Taiwan.
I think that China's geographic growth of sorts is more an expression
of a situation going back to normal than it is of some power that
means to do harm. I think that -- as I say in the piece -- Chinese
leaders are not a proselytizing power. They're not a missionary power
like the United States; they're not trying to promote any particular
system of government. They're in search of mineral wealth and oil and
energy in order to raise the standard of living of one-fifth of
humanity. And this makes them, as I call it, an über-realist power.
That is going to be a challenge for us to deal with but is in no sense
negative or evil.
ROSE: Okay. Realists have often talked about the incidents of conflict
that occur, not just from crusading powers or ideological systems but
simply from the normal logic of competing interests. And so even if
China is not aggressive or crusading, if it tries to expand its
interests and sphere of interests naturally -- along the lines you
suggest -- it'll start to bump up against what the United States
considers its sphere of interests in the Pacific and in the region.
KAPLAN: Absolutely. And that is in fact how I end the piece, that
we're more or less destined to have a tense relationship with China
because of this very fact. Remember, at the end of World War II, China
was devastated, Japan was devastated, Korea was devastated, the
Philippines were devastated. The U.S. Navy owned the Western Pacific
as though it were an imperial lake, our own private lake. Those days
are ending. And it's . . . and the growth of the Chinese navy presages
that, and this is going to bump up against American interests.
You know, overhanging the whole piece is the fact that our navy is
plateauing, or some would even argue that it is declining in relative
strength, in terms of the number of warships we put to sea.
So we're going to see more of . . . we're going to have more of a
multipolar power system and less of a unipolar one, and that is going
to be inherently more unstable.
ROSE: So the Cold War is dead, long live the Cold War?
KAPLAN: In a sense that the Cold War system in the Western Pacific and
East Asia was very stable. For the most -- you know, with the
exception of the war in Vietnam in the '60s and early '70s and the
three-year-long Korean conflict, from '50 to '53, the Cold War was
pretty stable. We're entering a period, and I say this in the piece,
where it's not just China's navy that is rising. We're also seeing the
modernization and strengthening of the South Korean navy, of the
Japanese navy, of other navies in the region. These are real symbols
of hard balancing, so to speak, which is going to make more… a less
stable situation than we've had in recent decades.
ROSE: Are you saying that there's actually a significant increased
prospect for old-school conventional war in this region?
KAPLAN: I would say there's a significant increased prospect for real
hard balance-of-power nationalism. Because it's not just . . . Europe
is declining as a sphere of military power as Asia is increasing. I
haven't brought into this discussion India, which will also balance
against China. India's building a great navy, going from the
fifth-largest navy in the world to perhaps the third.
So this is an area of the world where nationalism still lives, where
militaries are not something to be embarrassed or ashamed about the
way they are in parts of Europe.
ROSE: So this is basically a thesis of -- similar to Aaron Friedberg's
one in "Ripe for Rivalry," in which Europe may be peaceful and
post-historical and so forth, but Asia is going to go back to classic
Westphalian multipolarity and the basic security problems that --
KAPLAN: Yes.
And in addition to Aaron Friedberg, another book along those lines
that came out in 1999 but which is very prescient is Paul Bracken of
Yale's Fire in the East.
ROSE: Let's talk a little bit about the U.S. response, and then we'll
turn it over to our audience so they can jump in and engage you. What
do you think -- how do you think the United States has responded to
the issues you're describing? And what have they done right, and what
have they done wrong?
KAPLAN: Well, first of all, let me say a lot of people have criticized
the special envoy system in the State Department where Richard
Holbrooke was appointed to manage Afghan -- AfPak relations, and
George Mitchell Israel-Palestine relations. In terms of China, this is
a good thing because it frees up the secretary of state to make more
trips to East Asia, more trips to South Asia, and more trips to
Africa, where there is . . . the U.S. is also in competition with
China. There is more attention, you know, in terms of manpower hours
being paid now to these issues than was during the Bush
administration, because the secretary of state is not so overwhelmed
with the greater Middle East.
ROSE: And so if in your ideal world, you're made national security
adviser, secretary of defense, and secretary of state all together,
what do we do differently and better?
KAPLAN: I think what we do is . . . we do several things. First of
all, we recognize that the Western Pacific, East Asia, South Asia
really is the center -- the strategic center of the world. And we
engage these countries. One of the problems with the Bush
administration was we didn't show up enough at conferences at a high
enough level.
We do that, and we also leverage allies -- Japan, South Korea, India,
other countries. At the same time, we reach out to China and try to
draw them into a kind of concert of powers, patrolling the seas from
the Horn of Africa all the way up to the Sea of Japan.
ROSE: Okay. Well, that's an excellent start for our discussion. And
the whole point of these calls is to bring our audience into the
discussion. So with that, let me turn it over to our queue, and let's
get some questions going so you can engage them.
OPERATOR: Our first question comes from Michael Bruno with Aviation Week.
MICHAEL BRUNO: Hi, thanks for having this teleconference.
ROSE: Hi.
BRUNO: Curious as to whether . . . how do you think that the current
fleet or the plans for the plans for the fleet under the 313 plan in
the U.S. Navy -- how does that compare with what you see with China
building up? And what is needed, from your perspective?
KAPLAN: All right, what is the 313 plan?
BRUNO: It's a -- the plan for building up the U.S. Navy fleet to 313 ships.
KAPLAN:Oh, 313 ships.
BRUNO: Yes.
KAPLAN: All right, that 313 number is going to come, at least to my
knowledge, to some extent from the introduction of the littoral combat
ships --
BRUNO: Right, right.
KAPLAN: The Congressional Research Service also has figures that it's
not going to reach 313, that we may even be going down below our
current 283. That's because of cost overruns, delays in production.
There are a lot of rumors going around about problems with the USS
Gerald Ford, and we may be a 10-carrier navy, rather than an
11-carrier navy for a significant period. I think that we will still,
for the years ahead, have an overwhelming advantage one-on-one against
China because our ships are better, and we'll still have enough.
But the distance is closing. And not only is the distance closing, the
Chinese are smart. They're not buying across the board; they're
developing niche capacities in submarines, in missiles, in space
technology that will allow them to potentially embarrass us at sea,
like they've done a few times in the past, or to lock us out of the
Taiwan Strait.
You're probably familiar with the RAND study of 2009, which had a lot
of caveats in it but basically said that by 2020 we might not be able
to win a war in the Taiwan Strait. Not that we'll ever fight one, but
the very perception that we couldn't win one could change the balance
of power in Asia.
OPERATOR: Thank you. Our next question comes from Elizabeth Pun, freelance.
ELIZABETH PUN: Hello. I wonder if you could answer a question about
how the Chinese see this. Because your article and your framework is
strategic analysis from a Western point of view. And I wondered what
-- how do the Chinese themselves see this?
KAPLAN: Well, I don't know for a fact how the Chinese themselves see
this. But I can give you a few insights here. If you look at the
Indian Ocean, it's fascinating. The Chinese are building port projects
in various points along the littoral.
But at the same time, they have no interest whatsoever, at least now,
of making those into ports for the Chinese navy. And the reason is
that they wouldn't be able to defend them against the Indian air force
and navy. I think the Chinese are like us, they're moving ahead
cautiously. They're looking around.
They're worried if they will have access to these ports even if they
build them. Will they have the same problem as the Americans, where in
a different political crisis they may not be able to use them? Also,
if you look at Chinese history, all these areas that I write about,
where China is expanding in one way or another, are areas that used to
be under Chinese control but that they have lost over the centuries.
The Russian Far East is a prime example, where due to the weakness of
the Qing dynasty in the nineteenth century, Russia got formal control
over the area north of the Jamawar River and east of the Ussuri River.
You know, I think the Chinese see -- and again, I'm just speculating
-- that North Korea is a big problem for them. Yes, they support Kim
Jong Il, but they can't be happy with all of his machinations because
the Chinese want stability in this area. The Chinese look at North
Korea, and they see a trap in its armpit, the Bohai Sea, where a lot
of Chinese maritime activity goes along.
The Chinese have a geographical interest in the Korean Peninsula that
outlives the Kim Jong Il regime. So, as I speculate in the piece, they
may be much more happy with more of a light, low-calorie Gorbachev
version of communism in the north than the present regime that they
have. But also, like the South Koreans, they're terrified of a
collapse of the North Korean state because of the refugee flows it
would bring. So they don't want to precipitate that.
The Chinese are making overtures in the Philippines, you know,
offering all sorts of agreements. But I think this is . . . as I
write, to me, China is expanding in the way that the U.S. did between
the Civil War and the Spanish American War, where we didn't so much
seek conquests or seek territory. It was just that our economy was
expanding at such a dynamic pace that we developed interests and
anxieties about far-flung places of the world that we hadn't
previously. I think that's how the Chinese may be looking at this.
ROSE: Let me take a question here, Bob -- it's Gideon again. But that
would put us in the role of Britain as the declining hegemon. Are we
going to be as graceful in ceding power, if that scenario continues to
play out, as Britain was to us?
KAPLAN: Well, you know, that brings us back again to Aaron Friedberg,
who, in The Weary Titan, wrote that actually the British Royal Navy
started to decline in the 1890s, but that didn't stop Britain from
winning two world wars up through 1945. It was a very gradual and
elegant decline of the British Royal Navy.
I think, to take the British example, a gradual and elegant decline of
the United States in a more multipolar world would see us try to
encourage Japan to re-militarize; we would be very happy and
encourage, you know, the continuing buildup of the Indian armed
forces, of the Australian armed forces, of the South Korean armed
forces. At the same time, I'll have to keep repeating that we reach
out to China.
ROSE: Wow.
OPERATOR: Thank you. Our next question comes from Tejinder Singh with
AHN Media Corporation.
TEJINDER SINGH: Yes. Thank you for arranging this. You fleetingly
mentioned India, and then you said our ships are better, we are
better. Some analysts say that this should change. Otherwise, this
will bring on our fall from the pedestal. And also you said about
China going for their resources. As you see, China today has an iron
grip on African resources, as they just want resources with no
questions asked. How do you see that being addressed by the Americans?
KAPLAN: All right, let me just throw a question back at you. Can you
explain again what was your implication about Indian warships that you
want me to answer?
SINGH: There are three questions. One is, you fleetingly mentioned
India. India is next door to China, with a huge, competitive
population, a democracy, and so I thought that it could have played a
much more -- it should have been addressed in a paragraph at least.
Then you said about it's nothing to do with India, that our ships,
American ships are better, we are better. This attitude . . . pundits
say this attitude should change. Otherwise, this will bring us down
from the pedestal.
KAPLAN: Ah, okay, yes.
SINGH: The third one was China's iron grip on African resources. If
you go there, they don't ask any questions, they just want the
resources. Europeans are fighting on that with the Chinese, but the
Americans are absent there.
KAPLAN: Yes. Actually, I wrote extensively about Indian-Chinese
relations and competition in a previous story in Foreign Affairs in
March/April 2009. And that's why, frankly, I didn't emphasize it in
this piece, because I didn't want to overlap from the previous piece.
You're right. India is contiguous with China. Whereas China is
authoritarian, India is a democracy. I think India is playing a great
game with China over Bangladesh and Sri Lanka and -- to an extent --
Nepal. Both China and India are offering the governments in these
countries various aid packages. I think, the recent generous . . . I
think that the loans that India offered the prime minister of
Bangladesh back last January were a result of what China was offering
them.
China has been basically supplying the Sri Lankan armed forces from
top to bottom, from assault rifles up to fighter jets, and was an
indirect influence in helping the Sri Lankan government win the civil
war against the Tamil Tigers. This makes India very nervous obviously.
India and China have, I think, the world's largest bilateral trading
relationship. Their economies are complementary rather than
competitive. This will be a stabilizing force in Indian-Chinese
relations.
But I think that, to sum up on your first question, as China moves
south -- in other words, expanding its influence along the Indian
Ocean littoral -- India seeks to move east and west in terms of
influence, out to the borders of former British India, and this is
going to mean a very tense relationship between India and China in the
future.
In terms of the warships, you know, it's a fact that American
technology, at least at this point in history, is superior to the
Chinese and the Russian technology. China buys a significant amount of
warships from Russia. This could change. Technology is stolen, it is
borrowed. It is just hard to keep -- very hard to keep -- a
technological edge. And you're right, the Americans should not be
boastful in this regard.
And your third question again?
SINGH: The third question was about the African resources, natural
resources. I've just come from Europe, and in Europe they are going
crazy about the way Chinese have an iron grip, you know. Belgium used
to have Congo --
KAPLAN: Yes. Look, if you look at the country of Niger in Africa,
which is one of the poorest countries in the world, near the bottom of
the UN Human Development Index, there was a coup d'état recently. The
Chinese had excellent relations with the government that was
overthrown. It has excellent relations with the new government. It
played both sides. It is getting deeply embedded into the politics of
these nations through its need for resources.
Niger has uranium and is a potential big oil exporter as well. Niger
is a microcosm of what is going on, you know, with the Chinese in
Africa, which may herald a new form of colonialism that will be
different from the previous colonialism. But it's not necessarily a
great thing that China is investing such large amounts in Africa.
SINGH: Thank you.
OPERATOR: Thank you. Our next question comes from Paul Eckert with Reuters.
PAUL ECKERT: Hi. Thank you. Brilliant article, and thank you for
making yourself available. I had two questions, one more general. If
China's political system sort of shifts to a more benign and
transparent entity, does that lessen the concerns of this naval
buildup and outreach?
And two, with Japan itself in disarray -- and, relatedly, the
Japanese-U.S. relationship and alliance in disarray -- is that
something that China is likely to seize on and take advantage of, and
how?
KAPLAN: All right, all right, your first question again was about?
ECKERT: A lot of concerns about China and the China threat, et cetera,
has to do with its political system and the fact they're not
democratic and not --
KAPLAN: Yes. Thank you very much for the praise. In terms of China's
political system, I take a kind of counterintuitive look at this.
Because we Americans are democratic, we tend to think the rest of the
world will all be better if they're democratic. And if China's
democratic, or less authoritarian, that will mean that we'll have
better relations with China.
Well, that's true on a number of fronts, but it's not necessarily true
across the board because a less authoritarian China could be a much
more economically and socially dynamic China, while still being as
nationalist as an authoritarian China was. So it may seem
counterintuitive, but a freer China could still be a China where the
United States will be in intense competition in the twenty-first
century.
A freer China may lead to more sustained economic growth rates in the
years and decades ahead, which would allow China to expand its power
into the borderlands of which I write. So I'm not convinced that the
struggle for democracy in China automatically means that China will be
the friend of America rather than its enemy.
On the U.S.-Japan relationship, Japanese politics are in disarray.
It's got a new government, you know, which hasn't governed before. The
way I see it is Japan has finally had its post–World War II political
upheaval. For decades, Japan was essentially, was functionally, a
one-party state and now it is no longer. And the new party has a lot
of gripes. It has no experience in governing, so there's real
confusion in Japanese politics.
China has actually been trying to exploit the U.S.-Japanese
relationship for years now. It hasn't gotten much attention. It's been
trying to reach out to Japan very quietly, saying, "You don't need the
Americans so much. We will assure you of protection -- you know, of a
good healthy relationship."
Remember, Japanese politics will probably stabilize; we're already
going to move 7,000 marines from Okinawa to Guam. You know, we're
entering a world, a time in history when we're just not going to be
able to have such a large military presence in Japan as we've had for
the last few decades. And in that sense, as I said before, we need to
encourage Japanese remilitarization, its psychological
remilitarization as a hedge with China.
Thank you.
OPERATOR: Thank you. Our next question comes from Michael Lelyveld
with Radio Free Asia.
MICHAEL LELYVELD: Yes, hi.
KAPLAN: Hi.
LELYVELD: I want to ask a couple of questions about a statement made
by Admiral Willard last month before the Armed Services Committee.
This has to do with . . . he says "China is also developing and
testing a conventional anti-ship ballistic missile based on the
DF-21/CSS-5 MRBM, designed specifically to target aircraft carriers."
You touch on some of this in your article without, I don't think,
specifically mentioning this missile.
But my questions are, first, is it known for a certainty that this
missile was being tested and that this is its specific purpose? And,
if we know it for a certainty, how do we know it?
And if such a weapon is being designed with that specific purpose, how
do you evaluate the risk . . . the potential for major conflict any
time a U.S. aircraft sails into Chinese waters?
KAPLAN: Yeah, alright. First of all, in terms of "is this a certainty,
does the U.S. have countermeasures?" -- I suspect that the real
answers to this lie in the classified realm, and I don't know them. I
am aware of the Chinese developing this anti-ship ballistic missile
with a particular aim at moving aircraft carriers. I wrote about this
as early as 2005 in the Atlantic Monthly.
I think about it this way: the essence of power is to affect the
behavior of your adversaries. And if the mere development of this
anti-ship missile makes the U.S. Navy and its carrier strike groups
more hesitant to enter the East and South China Seas whenever and
wherever it wants, that will show a growth of Chinese power. In other
words, as I say in the piece, the Chinese don't have to actually go to
war against anybody. Simply by doing this, by developing underground
submarine pens for nuclear submarines off Hainan Island in the South
China Sea and other actions like that, the Chinese are affecting the
behavior of their potential adversaries and therefore growing in
power. Simply by developing all these means, China can affect the
balance of power without actually doing anything.
Everybody knows about the Taiwan Strait, but the key area to watch is
actually the South China Sea, which may be as important in the
twenty-first century as the Persian Gulf has been in the twentieth
century. The South China Sea is an international waterway, it is the
gateway to the Indian Ocean, it's got energy reserves, it's got
problems of piracy, the potential Islamic terrorism. But even though
it's an international waterway, the Chinese see it in Monroe Doctrine
terms -- it's something that is part of their patrimony. They see the
South China Sea the way the U.S. saw the Caribbean when it was
expanding its power under President Theodore Roosevelt.
LELYVELD: You just addressed the last part of my question, though also
you say in your article China's not going to attack a U.S. carrier any
time soon, et cetera. I take that point. But my question was also, if
such weapons are being developed for that specific purpose, and that's
our interpretation, how do you evaluate the risk that there will be a
major conflict as a consequence any time a carrier sails into that
area?
KAPLAN: Well, there's always the risk of a miscalculation or an
accident at sea. We have had already incidents with the Chinese at
sea: with the surfacing in the middle of the Kitty Hawk carrier strike
group some years ago, the action taken against the USS Impeccable,
more recently -- you know, the risks of accidents and miscalculations
go up. And every time a U.S. carrier strike group sails into this area
where these anti-ship missiles are active -- that, in and of itself,
is going to raise tensions. In other words, I'm not predicting a
conflict, but what I am predicting in this article is more tensions,
and perhaps more crises.
LELYVELD: Okay, thanks very much.
OPERATOR: Thank you. Our next question comes from Gina Chung with
Voice of America.
GINA CHUNG: Yes, hi. Thanks for taking my call.
My question is about Taiwan. Your article says that if the United
States abandoned Taiwan to Beijing, it would raise a doubt in its
allies in Asia about U.S. commitment to Asian security. And,
therefore, you know, Taiwan officials, in response to your article,
are calling for more advanced weapons sales -- for instance, the F-16
jet fighters to Taiwan in order to help it defend itself. Do you think
it will work, to sell more advanced weaponry to Taiwan? And would it,
you know, stir an arms race in the Taiwan Strait and make China more
suspicious about U.S. intentions to contain China?
KAPLAN: No. I was in Taiwan last October and the issue of selling
F-16s to Taiwan has been on the table for months, for years. The
Taiwanese regularly raise the issue; we have deferred on the issue. I
think there already has been an announcement of a major new weapons
sale to Taiwan by the Obama administration; I don't think there will
be another one for quite some time.
You know, the Taiwanese will use -- as they should -- any peg that
they can to raise the issue of more arms sales. And my article is as
legitimate a means as any to do so. But I think the Obama
administration has a pretty calculated and calm mindset on this.
They'll sell sufficient weaponry to Taiwan to raise the price of a
Chinese invasion to a point where the Chinese would not consider it.
But they're not going to sell so many weapons to Taiwan that it really
upsets in a fundamental way U.S.-China relations.
CHUNG: Thank you.
OPERATOR: Our next question comes from Xing Wei with Global Times.
XING WEI: Hi, thank you for taking the call.
The question is it looks like all projections are pointing that the
Chinese navy will grow in the near future. Is there a way they can do
it so that it's not perceived as hostile to major powers?
KAPLAN: The fact that -- it doesn't look like it, because the Chinese,
as I said earlier, are not buying across the board. They're putting a
particular emphasis on submarines, both the latest diesel, electric,
and nuclear. Submarines are the most offensive of all warships. Unlike
aircraft carriers, they don't have peaceful purposes. An aircraft
carrier is a perfect platform for massive humanitarian emergencies
near littorals, as we saw in the 2004–2005 Indonesian tsunami
emergency.
The fact that China is developing one or two aircraft carriers does
not concern me. It's the submarines that concern me more, and I think
which concern other powers in the region as well.
China's naval acquisition program is pretty aggressive, and it's going
to make contiguous powers in Asia -- from India all the way up to
South Korea and Japan -- more nervous than they have been.
OPERATOR: Our next question comes from Raghida Dergham with Al-Hayat.
RAGHIDA DERGHAM: Yes. I wonder if you can share some thoughts you may
have on information that I understand is taking place, that is to say,
about cooperation between the United States and China, naval
cooperation, in terms of fighting piracy. Particularly, of course,
we're talking Somalia and other places. And I'm wondering if you can
reflect on the impact of such cooperation, if, in fact, it's taking
place.
KAPLAN: Yes, that's a great question.
The good thing about piracy is that it enables others -- people who
are in other spheres that tend to be adversaries, whether it's Indians
and Pakistanis, whether it's U.S. and Chinese -- to cooperate. Piracy
is the ripple effect of anarchy on land. And Somalia has the longest
coastline of any country in mainland Africa, and it is in a chaotic
state. And thus we have substantial piracy off its waters. They've
been disrupting Chinese merchant vessels, so China has dispatched -- I
believe it's two destroyers and a supply ship to the region.
And this does several things for China. It allows China to show its
more benevolent side, by cooperating with the United States and other
powers in fighting this scourge, and it also gives China long-distance
experience at sea. And as anyone who's ever spent time on a warship --
I spent two months embedded on nuclear submarines and on guided
missile destroyers -- can tell you, operating at long distances from
home port is incredibly complex. And there's no substitute for
hands-on experience, which the Chinese are getting now.
And the third thing is it allows China to show some sort of presence
in the Indian Ocean, where Chinese ships had plied the seas before
Western imperialism, before even the Portuguese in the early fifteenth
century.
So it serves three purposes for the Chinese.
DERGHAM: Can I just bring it to another point, though? Am I still on?
KAPLAN: Yes.
DERGHAM: Yeah. I was just wondering if you can reflect on how that
will impact the ongoing sort of maneuvering vis-à-vis the Iran
situation, particularly because we have cooperation --
Chinese-American naval cooperation -- in that region, and Iran is
probably threatening some action in the Straits of Hormuz and the
Persian Gulf. I'm wondering if you can reflect on that sort of
cooperation.
KAPLAN: Yeah. I don't think the cooperation extends to there. It's
only two destroyers, and it's not near the Straits of Hormuz. It's
near the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb, where the Chinese are.
Also, China, again, is hungry for energy. They're hungry for minerals,
et cetera. China has a strategic interest in good bilateral relations
with Iran, because Iran will supply China and China's population in
the future, as it rises to more middle-class status, with both oil and
liquefied natural gas. And these are considerations for China that are
over and above its considerations about problems the U.S. or Israel
may be having with Iran's nuclear program.
China may, in the last analysis, help the United States at the UN
vis-à-vis Iran's nuclear program. But it would only happen if the
sanctions regime is severely whittled down.
DERGHAM: Thank you.
OPERATOR: Our next question comes from Robert Katz with Small Wars Journal.
ROBERT KATZ: Yes, thank you.
Robert Kaplan, excellent piece. My question is: Should the Chinese
leadership conclude that they have no possibility of winning a naval
arms race and therefore look to other means, such as diplomacy or
other arrangements, to defend their commercial interests? And let me
explain why.
KAPLAN: Yeah.
KATZ: First, the United States has the capacity to transfer more naval
power from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Secondly, you've already
mentioned the future expansion of Indian naval power. And third,
United States military diplomacy through the Malabar exercises and so
forth is already working on increasing cooperation and coordination
between the U.S. fleet, India, Singapore, Australia, Japan, and others
in the region.
And so shouldn't the Chinese leadership look at this combined naval
power and see that they have no chance of prevailing or keeping up in
a naval arms race?
KAPLAN: All right, thanks for the praise on the article.
I think the Chinese look at it somewhat differently. I don't think
China is in the game to dominate the seas or to win an arms race. I
think they think very long term. I think they're uncomfortable with
the fact that they rely on the United States to protect the sea lines
of communication for their merchant fleet. They're content to
free-ride off U.S. naval protection for the moment, but they don't
want to do it for the long run.
And if you had the same sort of historical experience that the Chinese
have had, with great powers encroaching on their territories terribly,
especially in the late nineteenth century, you would want to someday
be able to protect your own merchant fleet with a blue-water force.
I think what the Chinese want is . . . they're building up
particularly their naval capacity to have a correlation of forces
where they want without the need to ever go to war. And for China,
again, this is a return to normalcy. It's not belligerency, because
China is already such a great economic power. Throughout history,
countries that have built up a sustained great economy over decades
have also built up their militaries.
So I think the Chinese look at it in this way. They're not trying to
win an arms race against anyone. They just want a military that's
commensurate to their economy in order to protect their economic
interests.
OPERATOR: Thank you for your question. Our next question comes from
Garrett Mitchell with the Mitchell Report.
GARRETT MITCHELL: Thanks very much.
And Robert, thanks, as always, for an interesting perspective on this question.
I want to ask you about the comments that you have made throughout
this conversation that deal with the inevitability of rising tensions
and, in some senses, a return to a kind of balance-of-power mentality.
My question is: When you speak about those tensions and balance of
power, is it your framework that it's, in simplest terms, China versus
the West, where tensions will occur? Or is the framework that you're
talking about more in Asia itself?
Bill Emmott from The Economist makes the point in his book called
Rivals that if you . . . his view of the future is that the tensions
we ought to be most aware of are those that are inherent in the growth
of economic and military power and interests in India, China, and, to
a lesser extent, Japan.
And that's really the landscape that he was looking at. And I'm
wondering whether yours is -- you are in agreement with that or
whether you see it in a sort larger geopolitical framework?
KAPLAN: I think it is both.
I'm not trying to avoid the question, but I really think it's both. I
think we're going to see more jockeying, competition and tension
within Asia, as Bill Emmott suggests, and we're also going to see more
on a bilateral framework between the United States and China because
the United States has been for over 100 years an Asian power and it
will continue to be so.
And as the preeminent Asian power in terms of the size of its armed
forces, it's going to have . . . there's going to be a particular edge
to tensions between the United States and China. But that should not
obscure the fact that Japan, South Korea, China, India are all Asian
countries with either growing or modernizing militaries that are
increasingly expeditionary in nature that are going to bump up against
each other in ways that they haven't over the past.
Because, remember, the first decades of the Cold War saw the emphasis
on land forces in many of these places. The land forces were not there
to fight other land forces; they were there to consolidate the
national project in the first place. But what's developed in the
latter phases of the Cold War and after the Cold War, is real
authentic civil-military postindustrial complexes in all these nations
with missiles, with war ships, and other things.
And this is going to create a note of tension that wasn't there in the
first half of the Cold War.
MITCHELL: Got you. Thanks.
OPERATOR: Our next question comes from Geoffrey Styles with Energy Outlook.
GEOFFREY STYLES: Yes, thank you.
I've just got a question. A number of times you alluded to the
technological aspects of the naval competition. Could you talk a
little bit about the soft side of China's naval buildup, particularly
relative to the challenge of a country without a naval tradition
developing an effective navy, and how that stacks up against the
235-year naval tradition of the United States -- which was included in
a number of wars and all of that -- and whether that U.S.
organizational advantage might actually be more durable than any
technological advantage, and how that ultimately --
KAPLAN: That's an amazing question because, remember, in the
Revolutionary War, John Paul Jones fought the British, not off the
shores of the United States but off the shores of England and
Continental Europe.
We have a coast guard, let alone a navy, that operates from Greenland
all the way to the South Pacific. The United States has an incredible
expeditionary naval tradition that goes back to the very founding of
the republic. I think during the John Adams administration, there were
U.S. ships in the Indonesian archipelago, whereas China was a land
power for most of its history and with very tenuous border
arrangements so that it concentrated on its troublesome borders.
I think it was -- you can check this -- I think it was only the
Manchu's, the Qing Dynasty, that finally conquered Taiwan in the
mid-seventeenth century, relatively late in China's history. China
didn't go to sea the way the Greeks went to sea, the way the British
went to sea, the way the Venetians went to sea. This has come late in
China's history.
You know, the explorations of Zhonghua in the early sixteenth century
were more of an aberration -- and that's why they're so famous.
And one thing you know from reporting on Navy's is that seamanship and
tradition matter a lot. And this will be a tremendous challenge for
China, to build up -- not just throw money at the problem -- but to
actually build up a real naval tradition.
ROSE: With that, we're actually getting close to the witching hour. I
think we have time for one more question.
OPERATOR: Okay, actually at this time, there are no more – well, we do
have one more question: Jim Cochran with Reuters.
JIM COCHRAN: Hello. Hi, this is Jim Cochran with Reuters.
I'm an ex-naval officer, did a lot of intelligence work and flew the
spy plane missions that were shot down in Hainan. Do you still see the
U.S. Navy being combative -- have a combative stance -- with China, or
do you see the U.S. Navy thinking to work closely with China in the
future, to kind of share the responsibility between the Persian Gulf
and the Chinese shores?
KAPLAN: I think it would prefer to have a cooperative attitude towards
the Chinese Navy. When Admiral Fallon was the PACOM combatant
commander, he constantly reached out to China. Our combatant
commanders before or since have done similarly.
The problem is that when you're actually on U.S. warships all they do
is simulated war games much of the time with Country X, which they
never say is China in reality.
COCHRAN: That's true.
KAPLAN: So the fact is, you know, in terms of future naval
engagements, China is the most obvious example.
That doesn't mean it will happen, it just means it's the most obvious,
likely case study. So there's going to be real tension in the U.S.
Navy because you're going to have admirals who are PACOM commanders
and fleet commanders who are going to -- in their diplomatic role --
do everything they can to reach out to China. And then you're going to
have all kinds of war gaming going on at lower levels where China's
going to be the obvious enemy.
COCHRAN: Yeah, I've found that to be true. I participated in those myself.
ROSE: Well, with that, let me thank you all for attending and your
questions and thank Bob again, not only for a great piece but for a
great follow-up discussion.To the extent that you're right -- bad for
the world, good for the magazine, as I always say. We'll have lots of
future opportunities to discuss this subject and its various
ramifications.
Thank you all. Go to our website for more discussions, and we look
forward to having you in future conversations.
KAPLAN: Thanks, Gideon. Thanks, everyone.
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