US military planners might be viewing China in the wrong light

Their aircraft carriers don’t have catapults. Their submarines are mostly diesel. Many of their aircraft are made of Soviet-era designs. Their economic growth has ground to a halt. And their birthrate has crashed. So why does military doctrine rate China as a near-peer military offensive force? The Federal Drive with Tom Temin talked with someone who argues for a different way to think about China and consequently about the U.S. military and foreign policy. Dan Grazier is Senior Military Fellow at the Project on Government Oversight.

Interview transcript:

Tom Temin
You’ve written kind of an eye opening essay about the reality of what we constantly hear about China’s military spending and its build up. What are some of the shibboleths here that we need to maybe look at a little more closely?

Dan Grazier
I think the main thing is just questioning the general premise of all major discussions going on in Washington about national security. And the starting point for most of these discussions is that China presents an immediate existential military threat to not just the United States, but basically the entire world. And we need to spend vast fortunes to confront that threat. And so I just wanted to kind of poke holes and just raise some questions that don’t seem to be asked. And one of the main things is, what is China actually doing? And when you take a look at it for even five minutes, you realize that China is building a military that is defensive minded, that is oriented almost entirely to keeping foreign invaders out of what they consider their territory. It’s not to project military power forward, like the Chinese are not building a military to invade the West Coast of the United States. And so when you understand that, then you start to kind of question a lot of the decisions that are being made about our own military force and future.

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Tom Temin
Well, let me ask you two devil’s advocate questions. And one is, that they seem to be trying to deny U.S. access to waters that were, at least at some point considered international, that are close to China. So that’s one issue. The other issue, not mentioned in your article, is the vast nuclear arsenal that they have.

Dan Grazier
Yes, the Chinese are building a military force that is capable of defending their territorial waters. So far, there hasn’t been a lot of efforts to actually exclude people from their territorial waters. And in fact, that would be pretty disastrous for the Chinese economy, because their entire economy is based on imports and exports. And so if they were to threaten to shut down waters, then that global trade would be disrupted, and the Chinese economy would take an almost immediate hit. So that’s one thing. Yes, they have the ability to do that. But that’s not what they’re actually doing. As far as keeping people out of their territory. And as far as their nuclear buildup, you could take a look at that and say that that’s actually a stabilizing effort on their part, because no one abhors the potential of a nuclear war more than me.

But it does have a stabilizing effect, because nuclear powers don’t fight each other, for good reason. Because if that war escalates, which it almost certainly would, then we would all be dead. And so their nuclear buildup, can be viewed as kind of a good thing in that sense. But we also have to take a look at the Chinese are a strategic competitor to the United States. And so we need to really take a look at, what are the reasons behind some of their moves? Because some of them might not be what it seems. Yes, they’re undertaking a big nuclear modernization. But that also prompts us to do the same thing. But when we spend money on defense, it is at a much higher level than what the Chinese do. So for every dollar that the Chinese spend on nuclear modernization, we’re spending two, three, maybe even $4. So it’s a lot more expensive for us. So that could be part of the mindset behind the Chinese moves. Like they might be trying to prompt us to do that, for us to continue investing vast amounts of money on the military, to maybe destabilize the United States.

Tom Temin
Right. Is one cause of their lower costs for seemingly the bang for the buck that they get, is the fact that maybe their contractors are similar to iPhone makers. And that they don’t get the kinds of wages that our big contracting firms get.

Dan Grazier
It’s really kind of difficult to make a direct one for one comparison between the Chinese economy and the American economy. But we also have different ways of doing business as far as defense goes. The Military Industrial Congressional Complex in the United States had some definite practices that just increased cost naturally. The idea of spreading contracts around the country just to bolster political support for programs. That adds costs in each product. And I doubt very much that there’s the same kind of motivation behind the Chinese defense industry.

Tom Temin
We’re speaking with Dan Grazier, senior military fellow with the project on government oversight. And to get back to the essay that you wrote that prompted this. You make some really interesting observations of behind the numbers we hear about Chinese. The size of their fleet on the waters, the size of their aircraft fleet and so forth, or submarine fleet. When you look at them closely, they don’t quite measure up. Kind of reminds me of the story of the ancient Israelites looking at the land they were about to occupy and coming back and reporting. Everybody there’s a giant, we’re just a grasshopper.

Dan Grazier
Right. That was a very interesting part of my research into this, when I was actually kind of evaluating the Chinese fleet. Because, again, the normal talking point or the beginning point of the discussion in Washington, is that the Chinese have a fleet that’s bigger than the United States. In raw terms, that’s very true. The last time I looked at the numbers, the Chinese hit about 355 battle force ships. And I just looked this morning, the United States has 242 battle force ships and active commission. So there’s a big discrepancy right there, and that grabs a lot of headlines. But when you really take a look at the fleet composition, then you start to see the big differences. So even though the Chinese have more ships, the United States fleet has more tonnage. Almost double the tonnage of the Chinese fleet. And that is a big impact on what the fleets can do.

The United States has bigger ships, because our fleet is oriented towards projecting military power far away from our shores. The Chinese they have a larger fleet in total numbers, but their ships are smaller, which means that they are not capable of traveling as far. They can’t carry as many missiles, they don’t have the range. Which is fine, because the Chinese fleet is a fortress fleet. It was something that Alfred Thayer Mahan, derided 100 years ago. But the Chinese have kind of upgraded the concept, because with their area denial, or anti axis area denial strategy. With all the long range missiles that are based on the shore, they create this defensive bubble over the fleet. And so that’s all meant to operate as part of a system to keep outsiders away from Chinese shores.

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Tom Temin
The latter day version of the Great Wall, you might say.

Dan Grazier
Right, it’s a modern version, high tech version of the of the Great Wall. It just happens to be at sea, which is itself, that’s a pretty impressive accomplishment.

Tom Temin
Sure. So given what you have postulated about their motivation, and about their actual power. How should that devolve to how we look at what investments our military needs to make in the United States?

Dan Grazier
Well, since we’ve questioned some of the basic assumptions. I think that leads us to, like, the next logical step is to kind of reevaluate our investments in military forces. The idea of us projecting military power right up to the Chinese shores, doesn’t make a lot of sense anymore. Because that is such a formidable challenge. And we would take such great losses to do that. But even if we were able to get up to the shore. Then what? We’re not going to invade China with the United States Army, and the United States Marines. Our military force is relatively tiny. Chinese population is still really big.

Tom Temin
And a big country, geographically.

Dan Grazier
It would be a fool’s errand. So none of that actually makes any sense. So then what? If our big concern is to defend against Chinese aggression, then you don’t need to build a force to attack directly into that bubble. You just need to build a force that can deter that Chinese force from leaving its bubble. And that’s a much easier prospect than trying to build a fleet to attack directly to the mainland. So you can get away with a lot of submarines. And because this isn’t the 1940s anymore, we have a lot of allies in the region. So a better course of action would be to create a defense in depth across the Pacific. Using all of our allies in Japan, in Australia, the Oceania countries. And we can create this defense in depth, that should the Chinese ever get the notion to attack outside of that bubble, that they would then have to fight through this defense in depth.

Tom Temin
So we’re playing Dungeons and Dragons and they’re playing chess or vice versa?

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Dan Grazier
Right, exactly.

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