Asymmetry
By Chock full o’ futuriness (via Defense News, subscription required):
China has fired high-power lasers at U.S. spy satellites flying over its territory in what experts see as a test of Chinese ability to blind the spacecraft, according to sources. It remains unclear how many times a ground-based laser was tested against U.S. spacecraft or whether it was successful.
But the combination of China’s efforts and advances in Russian satellite-jamming capabilities that illustrate vulnerabilities to the U.S. space network are driving U.S. Air Force plans to develop new space architectures and highly classified systems, according to sources.
This is interesting not just from a military point of view (the PRC is obviously testing its capacity to nullify US technological advantages, just as Russia has done in the past and just as, in a very different way, Iraqi insurgents are doing in Iraq today), but also from a sociological perspective. When facing a profound disadvantage in one area or another of military capability, states often fall victim to the temptation to narrow the inequality through mirroring procurement decisions. For example, the US and the USSR most often responded to each others developments in military science by creating capabilities that mirrored their opponent. This wasn’t always the case, but it happened a lot. Similarly, the Anglo-German naval race of 1900-1914 was essentially a “mirror” effort, as the Germans tried to equal the Royal Navy battlefleet rather than finding ways to nullify it. The same thing happened in South America, as each of Chile, Argentina, and Brazil acquired expensive battleships when smaller, less costly vessels might have proven sufficient. There is certainly a sociological imperative to engage in this kind of behavior, as possession of the most modern types of weapons conveys, both internationally and domestically, prestige and a sense of what might be termed “modern state-hood”.
China’s defense procurement, by and large, does not seem driven by this logic. Instead, China seems to be actively thinking about and planning for a war with the United States over Taiwan, a project which, among other things, must be regarded as quite sensible from the Chinese point of view. Instead of trying to equal US naval capabilities, the PLAN is working hard to develop the means to kill US carriers, thus largely nullifying the US naval advantage. In response to “network-centric” warfare that relies heavily on satellite communications, the Chinese are thinking about how to break the US system, rather than how to replicate it.
I find this deeply fascinating. Chinese procurement seems driven, more than anything else, by the need to create the operational capacity to seize Taiwan and fend off US intervention. This hardly seems a devastating insight, but it’s interesting given how little a US-PRC war over Taiwan, or even a PRC seizure of Taiwan, seems to make sense. There are a dozen reasons why fighting over Taiwan would be a terrible idea from the Chinese point of view, but the PRC nevertheless is procuring weapons and developing capabilities oriented around just such a war. Indeed, the Chinese seem to be focusing on this problem at the expense of the other reason to acquire big ticket, expensive weaponry, which is international and domestic prestige. This is why, although I concur that there are many reasons we shouldn’t expect a war over Taiwan, I can’t be as sanguine as some about its probability.