Abstract
Amidst “rising” China’s increasingly frequent displays of militaristic bravado in East Asia, America has upped the ante with the introduction a new war doctrine aimed at the Pacific. The AirSea Battle Concept (ASBC), in its basic form, is a call for cooperation between the Air Force and Navy to overcome anti-access and area denial (A2/AD) capabilities of potential enemies. At first glance, that seems like an innocuous and even practical idea. When implemented, however, the ASBC will be a jab at China’s most sensitive pressure points. Given China’s rising encirclement paranoia—most recently fueled by US arms sales to Taiwan, intrusion into the Spratly Islands dispute and naval exercises with the South Koreans in the Yellow Sea—Beijing will likely not take news of this development well. As a long-term strategy, the upshot may be an escalation of hostilities that will lock the United States into an unwarranted Cold War-style arms competition.
Why pick this fight—or more prosaically this arms race—with one’s “banker”? The Pentagon has its reasons, with some actually tied to strategic logic, along with the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act and the usual budgetary instincts for service survival. Behind the scenes, an inside-the-Beltway think tank leads the sales job—as was the case was with the recent rise of counterinsurgency (COIN). Their rationale? A back-to-the-pre-nuclear-future mindset that only a true Mahanian could love: we will bomb and blockade China for months on end, while neither side reaches for the nuclear button!
So what are we to make of this big-war strategizing in an era of small wars? Is this America seeking strategic balance or simply a make-work doctrine for a navy and air force largely left out of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq?
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