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The naval strategy of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) and Navy (PLAN) closely integrates China's conventional forces with nuclear weapons in a warfighting role, the combination of which is intended to threaten or cause massive U.S. casualties. In reality, however, Chinese air and naval capabilities are quite modest and the PLA may suffer heavy attrition in the early days of a Sino-U.S. conflict. China's conventional options will become scarce and nuclear weapons may be seen as the only way to win or save face. A highly unstable situation will result when China is faced with the choice between defeat or nuclear usage.
Notes
1. Ilan Berman and Lisa-Marie Shanks, eds., “Another Nuclear Blackmail Threat Over Taiwan,” China Reform Monitor no. 595 (21 July, 2005).
2. Thomas M. Kane, Chinese Grand Strategy and Maritime Power (London: Frank Cass, 2002), p. 69.
3. Bernard D. Cole, The Great Wall at Sea: China's Navy Enters the Twenty-First Century (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2001), p. 166.
4. You Ji, The Evolution of China's Maritime Combat Doctrines and Models: 1949–2001 (Singapore: Institute of Defense and Strategic Studies, May 2002), pp. 7–8.
5. Bernard D. Cole, “China's Maritime Strategy,” in People's Liberation Army After Next, ed. Susan M. Puska (Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, August 2000), p. 293.
6. Eric Craig Whittington, “China's Pacific Strategy for the Twenty-First Century” (Master's thesis, Southwest Missouri State University, 2001), p. 109.
7. You Ji, The Armed Forces of China (New York, NY: L.B. Tauris Publishers, 1999), p. 167.
8. Bernard D. Cole, “The PLA Navy and ‘Active Defense,”’ in The People's Liberation Army and China in Transition, ed. Stephen J. Flanagan and Michael E. Marti (Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 2003), p. 130.
9. James P. Lambert, “The People's Republic of China's Preeminent Power Ambitions: An Assessment of Its Maritime Efforts” (Master's thesis, Southwest Missouri State University, May 2003), p. 142.
10. You, The Evolution of China's Maritime Combat Doctrines and Models, p. 9.
11. Lyle Goldstein and William Murray, “Undersea Dragons: China's Maturing Submarine Force,” International Security, vol. 28:2 (Spring 2004): 185.
12. You, The Evolution of China's Maritime Combat Doctrines and Models, p. 23.
13. You, The Armed Forces of China, p. 183.
14. Cole, The Great Wall at Sea, pp. 167–168.
15. Sam Bateman and Chris Rahman, “The Rise of the PLAN and the Implications for East Asian Security,” in Taiwan's Maritime Security, ed. Martin Edmonds and Michael M. Tsai (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003), p. 15.
16. You, The Evolution of China's Maritime Combat Doctrines and Models, p. 19.
17. Cole, The Great Wall at Sea, pp. 188–189.
18. You, The Evolution of China's Maritime Combat Doctrines and Models, pp. 19, 21.
19. Thomas J. Christensen, “Posing Problems without Catching Up: China's Rise and Challenges for U.S. Security Policy,” International Security, vol. 24:4 (Spring 2001): 9.
20. Eric McVadon, “PRC Exercises, Doctrine, and Tactics Toward Taiwan: The Naval Dimension,” in Crisis in the Taiwan Strait, ed. James R. Lilley and Chuck Downs (Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 1997), p. 267.
21. Richard D. Fisher, Jr., “To Take Taiwan, First Kill a Carrier,” China Brief 2, no. 1 (8 July, 2002), available online at The Jamestown Foundation, http://www.jamestown.org/publications_ details.php?volume_id =18&issue_id=654&article_id=4653 (2 February, 2005).
22. Goldstein and Murray, 191.
23. Thomas Woodrow, “China's ‘Tsushima’ Anticarrier Strategy,” China Brief 3, no. 1 (14 January, 2003), available online at The Jamestown Foundation http://www.jamestown.org/publications_details.php?volume_id=19&issue_id=666&article_id=4701 (2 February, 2005).
24. Ibid.
25. Goldstein and Murray, 193.
26. Woodrow.
27. Goldstein and Murray, 193.
28. See Robert S. Ross, “Navigating the Taiwan Strait: Deterrence, Escalation Dominance, and U.S.-China Relations,” International Security, vol. 27:2 (Fall 2002): 75–76, as well as references to senior naval officials in Woodrow, “China's ‘Tsushima’ Anticarrier Strategy.”
29. Roger W. Barnett, “Surface Ship Survivability and Risk Management,” Naval War College Center for Naval Warfare Studies (July 1998): 10.
30. Alastair Iain Johnston, “China's New ‘Old Thinking’: The Concept of Limited Deterrence,” International Security, vol. 20:3 (Winter 1995/96): 11, 13.
31. For an in-depth discussion of Limited Deterrence and China's asymmetric stakes in a regional conflict, see Paul R. Dodge, “Circumventing Sea Power: Chinese Strategies to Deter U.S. Intervention in Taiwan,” Comparative Strategy, vol. 23:4–5 (October–December 2004).
32. Thomas M. Kane, “Dragon or Dinosaur? Nuclear Weapons in a Modernizing China,” Parameters, vol. 32:4 (Winter 2003–2004): 104.
33. Kane, Chinese Grand Strategy and Maritime Power, 82.
34. Mark A. Stokes, “Chinese Ballistic Missile Forces in the Age of Global Missile Defense: Challenges and Responses,” in China's Growing Military Power: Perspectives on Security, Ballistic Missiles, and Conventional Capabilities, ed. Andrew Scobell and Larry M. Wortzel (Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, 1999): p. 91.
35. You Ji, “Nuclear Power in the Post–Cold War Era: The Development of China's Nuclear Strategy,” Comparative Strategy, vol. 18:3 (August 1999): 247.
36. Robert A. Manning, Ronald Montaperto, and Brad Roberts, eds., China, Nuclear Weapons, and Arms Control (New York, NY: Council on Foreign Relations, 2000): pp. 32–33.
37. Michael Pillsbury, ed., “Chinese Views of Future Warfare.” Institute for Strategic Studies 1996, <http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/ndu/chinview/chinacont.html> (20 April 2004).
38. Ibid.
39. Berman and Shanks.
40. Barnett, “Surface Ship Survivability and Risk Management,” 8.
41. Ibid., 20.
42. Loren Thompson, “Aircraft Carrier (In)vulnerability: What it Takes to Successfully Attack an American Aircraft Carrier,” Lexington Institute Naval Strike Forum (August 2001), http://www.lexingtoninstitute.org/navalstrike/CarrierBroLO.pdf (5 March, 2005), 1.
43. Ibid., 8.
44. David J. Weinstein, Senior Intelligence Analyst for North Asia, Pentagon Directorate for Intelligence (J2), personal interview conducted on 6 July 2004, Washington, DC.
45. Thompson, “Aircraft Carrier (In)vulnerability,” 9.
46. Ibid.
47. Roger W. Barnett, lecture on 17 November 2004, Southwest Missouri State University, Springfield, MO.
48. Barnett, “Surface Ship Survivability and Risk Management,” 20.
49. Thompson, “Aircraft Carrier (In)vulnerability,” 14.
50. Ibid., 15.
51. Ibid., 20.
52. Daniel Goure, “Pacific Overtones and Bellicose Rhetoric,” Seapower, vol. 45:1 (January 2003): 49.
53. Thompson, “Aircraft Carrier (In)vulnerability,” 23.
54. Ibid., 8.
55. Goldstein and Murray, 193.
56. Ross, 67.
57. Loren Thompson, “The Attack Submarine and Network-Centric Warfare,” Lexington Institute Naval Strike Forum (August 2001), http://www.lexingtoninstitute.org/navalstrike/SubBroLO.pdf (5 March, 2005), 3.
58. David T. Orletsky, David A. Shlapak, and Barry A. Wilson, Dire Strait? Military Aspects of the China-Taiwan Confrontation and Options for U.S. Policy (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2000): 44.
59. Thompson, “The Attack Submarine and Network-Centric Warfare,” 7–8.
60. Barnett, “Surface Ship Survivability and Risk Management,” 20.
61. Barry R. Posen, Inadvertent Escalation: Conventional War and Nuclear Risks (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press), p. 2.
62. Ibid., p. 16.
63. Ibid.
64. Barnett, “Surface Ship Survivability and Risk Management,” 20.
65. Posen, p. 201.
66. Ibid., p. 61.
67. Ibid., p. 2.