China's view of US 'lily pad'
strategy By Ehsan Ahrari
US President George W Bush's August 16
troop-realignment speech - officially described as Global
Posture Review - is read with great interest in the
People's Republic of China. Unofficially billed as a
"lily pad" bases strategy, it is aimed at creating a
network of smaller bases closer to potential hot spots
of the globe. Those bases will be used to perform
offensive military operations worldwide, taking the
fight to the enemy. Even though it is not focused on
China, however, given that it describes a long overdue
post-September 11, 2001, strategy of the United States'
global force alignment, Beijing knows that it will
affect its own strategic interests, not only as a rising
power, but also as a wanna-be superpower.
In
the contemporary strategic environment, no country in
its right mind is willing to take on US troops on the
basis of a force-on-force war-fighting strategy. At the
same time, the greatest challenge to the lone superpower
comes from terrorist groups that are constantly probing
the world, seeking to destabilize the regional balance
of power, and knowing full well that the global sheriff
would be there to respond. By overextending its global
presence, the transnational terrorists hope to make the
United States vulnerable to their attacks. From
Washington's vantage point, the agility and flexibility
of those terrorist groups must be matched by developing
similar characteristics in America's fighting forces to
meet that challenge. Thus the Bush administration,
after systematically examining the altered international
strategic realities during the past three years, has
formally released its Global Posture Review.
The US intends to realign its forces in
order to make them "more agile and more flexible".
About 60,000-70,000 uniformed personnel, and 100,000 civilian
family members and civilian employees will move from overseas
bases to the United States over the next decade.
Two army divisions will leave Germany and return
home. In addition, 37,000 troops currently deployed
in South Korea, will also depart from their
bases. Further negotiations with Turkey and Japan about
potential troop redeployment are continuing. In all probability,
the US force presence in Turkey might be
somewhat reduced because of that country's refusal to
station the US forces or allow them passage to northern
Iraq during the invasion of Iraq. The greatest lesson for
the Pentagon for such future contingencies is to have
highly tenable backup plans. However, as a major Muslim
ally, Turkey still figures prominently in America's
global "war on terrorism". Thus it is politically not
feasible to exclude Turkey from the future global
posture. Regarding the US force presence in Japan, some
troops might move, but with a clear understanding that
Japan would increase its military activities with the US
forces, primarily in the realm of regional naval
activities, such as those in the Malacca Strait and in
other joint naval exercises in the coming years.
Since Central Asia, South Asia and
the Middle East are regions where transnational
terrorist groups are exceedingly active now, and are expected
to have even a stronger presence in the coming years,
the Bush administration intends to make its
enhanced force presence last at least 10 years.
China's interpretation of America's lily-pad global
force presence strategy is variegated, and is based on a
high degree of realism. In a recent article in the
People's Daily, it calculates that the Bush
administration attaches less significance to "old Europe" - for
its refusal to unquestionably toe the US line before
its invasion of Iraq - than the "new Europe". The latter
region became important in the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization's (NATO's) "eastward march", even though
the United States is purposely being tacit about that
aspect of its global strategy, which is still aimed at
containing Russia. In the Chinese calculation,
containment remains as a major aspect of America's
Global Posture Review involving their homeland. Thus
this strategy is being studied with great care in
Beijing with a view to developing timely
countermeasures.
In Central Asia, Beijing's
countermeasures will be highly intricate, nuanced and
dynamic for a variety of reasons:
First, leaders in Beijing have no doubt that radical Islamists of
Central Asia - a region that they regard as comprising Pakistan
in the western extreme, Afghanistan, Central Asia,
and China's own Xinjiang autonomous region - continue
to be the most potent enemies of China and the United
States.
Second, Beijing's leaders know that
they cannot envisage America's presence in Central Asia in
a purely black-and-white fashion, ie, regard it as purely good or
bad. From Beijing's point of view, it might best be
described as containing elements of both good and bad.
It is good in the sense that the US is definitely
deterring the Islamist proactivism by prolonging its
force presence in a number of Central Asian countries,
viz, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan. However,
that force presence also has a potential of turning
"bad" if the United States uses it in the long run to
establish its hegemony in the area, a potential
development that threatens China's own aspirations.
Third, the US presence in Central Asia is still
promising because it also complements China's own
proactivism and presence in that area within the
framework of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization
(SCO).
Fourth, the US presence in Central Asia is dynamic
in the sense that China, Russia, and the United States
may still negotiate avenues of cooperation in the coming
years and reduce the destabilizing aspects of Islamist
groups.
Fifth, finally and most important of all, America's
force presence in Central Asia, as China envisages it,
should be constantly watched with a view to altering its
own strategy in that area.
America's presence in South Asia is a source of some comfort,
but at the same time a reason for anxiety, for China.
The comforting aspect involves containing, or even
curtailing, the influence of Islamist forces, especially
in Afghanistan and the Afghan-Pakistan border area,
where the top al-Qaeda leadership is hiding but still
hopes to widen the scope of its destabilizing activities
in the contiguous areas in the future. But China is
worried by the continued inability of the government of
Afghan President Hamid Karzai to extend its authority in
his country, and especially in areas contiguous to
Tajikistan.
At the same time, the growing
US-Pakistan nexus is being watched in Beijing with a
considerable amount of suspicion. As a junior partner of
the Sino-Pakistan nexus, Pakistan looms large in the
calculations of China's mandarins who are in charge of
their country's maneuvering vis-a-vis India, another
rising power in its immediate neighborhood. So China
does not want to see Pakistan becoming too significant
an actor in America's regional strategy, for it may not
remain as useful to China's own power game with India.
Even though
the US-India strategic partnership is not related to America's
lily-pad global strategy, Beijing has viewed with great
suspicion its sustained evolution. The US-India strategic
partnership has not only outlived the transition
from the Democratic administration of former president Bill
Clinton to the Republican Bush administration, but also
it has been expanding its scope, even
in the post-September 11environment. China has no doubt
that this partnership has swung the pendulum of advantage in
favor of India. However, the transition in India
from the former Bharatiya Janata Party-led government
to a government led by the Congress party might turn out
to be somewhat deleterious for the continuing
evolution of that strategic partnership, or so
China's leaders probably hope. With the return of Congress to
power, India is manifesting some old foreign policy
predilections of the Jawaharlal Nehru era, outdated nostalgia
for the moribund Nonalignment Movement, or the return
of the Cold War-era insistence on India's independent
foreign policy. There is no suggestion that the
US-India strategic partnership would undergo any amount
of unraveling or lose its insignificance. However,
any amount of setback would be a matter of
great satisfaction to China. Now Beijing would be
carefully studying any future linkages between the new lily-pad
bases strategy and the US-India strategic partnership.
The Middle East, on the contrary, figures
heavily in the Bush administration's Global Posture
Review. It has not been an area where China had a major
strategic presence. However, that is about to change in
the coming years. China's growing energy dependence
compels it to ensure access to Middle Eastern oil (and
oil from the Caspian Sea) by concluding a number of
bilateral and multilateral agreements. The Middle
Eastern arms markets were lucrative sources of hard
currency for China during the Iran-Iraq War. As long as
the Western arms remain hostage to the frequently
unpredictable political climate in Washington, Berlin and
London, China (along with Russia) will be a beneficiary,
largely because of its willingness - or even eagerness -
to sell arms to Middle Eastern countries.
After
the toppling of Saddam Hussein, and in the prevalence of
escalating anti-Americanism in the Middle East, China is
hoping to emerge as a major seller of arms, and,
consequently, a significant strategic actor in the area.
In this sense, regardless of whatever significance
Washington attaches to the Middle East from the
perspectives of its new Global Posture Review, China
enviages it as a promising area for its own aspirations
to minimize America's presence and influence, albeit by
taking a circuitous route.
In the final
analysis, Global Posture Review is not envisaged by
China as really giving the lone superpower an inordinate
advantage over China's own global and regional
ambitions. Beijing knows that it carries no political
baggage in the Middle East compared to the hostilities
that the United States is currently facing. It can cash
in on that comparative advantage and it still hopes to
move ahead in South Asia and East Asia, where the United
States has a noticeable advantage for now.
Ancient civilizations have a powerful sense of
history and an attendant uncanny sagacity to study their
competitor's advantage, and then arrive at a conclusion
that their own disadvantages are only transitory. That
dialectical process enables them to assiduously strive
to transform the strategic environment to their benefit,
no matter the odds. Thus, China will continue its
regional and global maneuvers to take a few steps
backward and readjust in order to make further advances,
America's new and dynamic Global Posture Review
notwithstanding.
Ehsan Ahrari, PhD, is
an Alexandria, Virginia, US-based independent strategic
analyst.
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