The Great Rivalry: Geopolitical Competition

All empires fall, eventually.”
“But why? It’s not for lack of power. In fact, it seems to be the opposite. Their power lulls them into comfort. They become undisciplined. Those who had to earn power are replaced by those who have known nothing else. Who have no comprehension of the need to rise above base desires.”

                                                                                                       ---Max Barry

I was in Boston recently and did the tourist thing. We did the tour with the Boston Tea Party Museum. Among the things I learned was the indifference to the American sentiments which led to the lost of America as a British Colony. The revolt was over the army that was sent over from Britain and the taxes that were levied against British merchandise. Since East India Company, whose tea was dumped into the harbor, had a monopoly over the American trade, the British could easily have asked the East India Company to include the taxes as part of the price of the Tea and no one would be the wiser. It might have delay the end of the British Empire. The East India Company itself, despite hugely profitable trades across the world, almost went bankrupt and had to be bailed out by the British government. The reason was that it had also taken on the task of empire building. In 1857, it had an army 280,000 strong. Eventually, the cost of running this empire was untenable and East India Company was taken over by the government. As with the East India Company, the British Empire, whose rise was driven internally with the Industrial revolution, Eventually fall as the cost of running the empire exceeded the benefit. The timing of their fall was due to the rise of the United States as the rising power. It was the United States, wanting to overtake the British as the superpower after World War II, that encouraged British colonies all over the world to secede from Britain, thus raising the cost of the empire until it exceeded the British's capacity to maintain it.

The end of the cold war left the United States with NATO, bases and alliances all over the world and a trading alliance with the most prosperous nations in the world. The U.S. was set up to rule the world. Unfortunately, like all empires before us, our victory over the Soviet Union had driven us to hubris and overreach. After 911,  George W. Bush started the war with Iraq to control the Middle East, and by extension, to control the world. Instead, the electoral democracy that he installed in Iraq had created the Shiite Crescent, a rising power in the Middle East that gave rise to a lot of conflicts. Compared to Iraq, China is many order of magnitude larger, stronger and smarter. Unlike us, the Chinese also have an expectation that is grounded in reality. They don't want to rule the world. For now, they wanted to control their immediate neighborhood and they wanted to trade with the rest of the world based on common interests between them and other nations. In the mean time, with the lost of the Soviet Union and with Russia a shadow of its former self, NATO is no longer a cohesive unit like during the cold war. The United States, treating the Europeans like our own fiefdom, had made demands to them that are against their own interests. We had ask that they stop the Nordstream pipeline so we can cut off the oil revenue of Russia. We had ask that they stop using Huawei for their 5G network. We discouraged them from joining the Chinese Belts and Roads initiative. At the end, the Europeans balked at all these demands and went their own way. Germany is signalling that they will allow Huawei for their 5G. Italy, financially wobbly, has announced that they will join the Belts and Roads initiative. At the end of the day, unrealistic expectations meant, at a minimum, the lost of credibility. It also increased the cost of running an empire unnecessarily.

The rise of each empire is driven by internal factors, factors like good governance, high population IQ, scale of the country and the character of the people. The empire falls if the cost of running the empire exceed the benefit. In the case of the United States, if our empire fall, it would most likely be due to our overreach. With the rise of China, our cost of maintaining world order could become prohibitive if we have the wrong expectations and wanted to exert complete control in every corner of the world. Instead, we should very carefully weigh the cost and benefit to our nation each time we contemplate taking an action. We must not let our dominance blind us to our limitations.

The Great Rivalry: The Military Race

"the United States military has had a lot of experience in the Western Pacific, taking down small islands."

                                                                                   ---Lt. Gen. Kenneth McKenzie


From their humble beginnings, the People's Liberation Army, or PLA, has come a long ways. As late as the nineties, they were barely able to license produce second rate Soviet weapons. Today, they have caught up to the cutting edge in most areas. The remaining few weaknesses, namely aircraft turbo-fan engines, nuclear submarines, carriers, strategic bombers and transport, they are making rapid progress and may close the gap within the coming decade or so. We still have the advantage outside of China's immediate neighborhood, but as the Chinese military quickly ramp up, the sphere of Chinese military superiority will expand further afield.

Our military is the greatest on earth. In the open seas, our navy has no rivals. What is more, we have military bases all over the world. In East Asia, our bases are dotting across the peripheries of China. Due to their past weakness in their naval force, most of the South China Sea islands have been claimed by surrounding countries such as Vietnam. To stake their claim to the South China Sea, the Chinese have built a few artificial islands out of reefs that were originally semi-submerged. Lt. General McKenzie is correct in stating that we would be successful in attacking these islands. In the age of GPS guided missiles and hypersonic missiles, Fixed and relatively small targets such as the radar installations in these islands will succumb to a determined attack by a peer enemy.

However, in spite of the bluster by the U.S. military, our situation in East Asia and the South China Sea is much more precarious than it would appear. As a precondition, I restrict our future conflict to the peripheries of continental China and the South China Sea, as the Chinese will not challenge us in the open seas for a long time to come. To defend against attacks from the sea, the Chinese have built a thick, layered, sophisticated and interlocking missile defense system all along the border. They have area denial weapons like DF series missiles. They are building strategic bombers like the B2. With today's technology, a determined attack with high end missiles will hit the target, no matter the defense system, so a fight between the U.S. and China means the two countries will trade blows with their missiles and bombers until one is knocked out of the fight. On the U.S. side, the missiles can come from either ships, bombers, and bases along the islands of the Pacific, South Korea, Japan and the Philippines. Here I am excluding intercontinental missiles from the U.S. mainland since this could very quickly lead to nuclear exchanges that nobody wanted. It is unlikely to come from ships since U.S. war ships within 1000 km of the Chinese shores will not survive a Chinese attack. Bombers need runway from our bases to take off and land, runways that are limited in number and easily disabled. Like the artificial islands built by the Chinese, the U.S. military bases in the Pacific Islands all the way up to Okinawa represent weak, isolated and small targets. Even the bases in South Korea and Japan are rather limited. On the Chinese side, they have the power of the entire continent size country with a dense, layered and sophisticated defense that is interlocking. A huge number of bases and dual use runways must be destroyed before the fighting capability is significantly degraded. They also have the ability to back up the front line with an excellent transportation system. The huge asymmetry between the American bases in Asia and China means that if blows are traded between the two sides, the U.S. bases, like the man made islands of China, could quickly be knocked out. Each island in the island chain is separated by vast ocean. So losing one island will weaken the neighboring islands and hasten their fall. What is more, once the Chinese occupy the islands after the bases are knocked out, to re-take the islands will require ships that could be hit from Continental China. The asymmetry between Korean and Japanese military bases and China is not much better. The Japanese lacks offensive capability if the U.S. forces are out of action. The Koreans could be invaded on land by China. Once these bases are knocked out, help will have to come from Hawaii. The bases in the Philippines is further from the Chinese mainland, so only limited types of missiles from China could hit it. As the Chinese develop their strategic bomber and their navy, with a large number of destroyers and maybe four to six carrier groups, even our bases in the Philippines will become vulnerable. What is more, once we lost the bases, we will be forced to fight with a very long supply line.

Once our bases are knocked out and the Chinese occupies the first island chain and secure the South China Sea, they will be in a position to threaten Japan. Both Japan and the Philippines will fall completely under the Chinese sphere of influence. With the Chinese firmly in control of the South China Sea, they will be able to extend stronger influence in the Indian Ocean. The Chinese have the enviable geographical advantage of being able to control both the Indian Ocean and the West Pacific from mainland . This may well end the U.S.'s ability to hold sway the future of the Middle East, since without access to the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean, our war ships will have difficulty reaching the Middle East.

Most Chinese military experts believe that they are without peer inside the first island chain, that includes the South China Sea. As the naval forces advances, their advantages will extend to the second island chain which includes Guam. Today, if we pick a fight in the South China Sea, we might stand a fair chance of knocking out their artificial islands, but a counter attack from China may mean we will lose most if not all of our bases in the East China Sea. Ten years out, with four carrier groups, they will have overwhelming superiority in the South China Sea and East Asia.

That our military can cross the globe and exert so much control on the rest of the world is predicated on a huge asymmetry of power between the U.S. and the target country. As China becomes more of a near peer, it becomes impossible to continue our dominant position so far from home and in their backyard. The development of the Chinese military is the result of Chinese industrialization. As their industrialization continue, their military will be even more formidable. If we are not careful in handling the relative decline of the U.S. military, it could accelerate our decline as the dominant country of the world.