US
chases shooting stars over
China By Benjamin A Shobert
Few parts of the American mythology
resonate more deeply in popular consciousness than
the Cold War-era space race.
Americans
recall with a certain fondness a time when the
country led the world in manned space exploration,
a group of accomplishments set in motion only
after the Soviet Union shocked the world with its
Sputnik launch.
Even today, during one of
President Barack Obama's recent State of the Union
addresses, he harkened back to this moment as an
example of America's ability to come together and
rally after being surprised by a foreign
competitor, except this time it would be in an
effort to build consensus domestically for a
focused effort to
match China's immense
energies in the clean-tech and high-speed rail
areas.
As China continues to develop as a
nation-state, it was inevitable that at some point
its path forward would drive it to develop its own
space strategy. It was similarly inevitable that
as China began to do so, its plans would come to
be interpreted as additional reason to question
the country's intentions.
For those
predisposed to distrusting Beijing, China's plans
for space would be additional fuel to the fire
regarding their view of China as a strategic
competitor. Beyond this point, China's financial
ability to entertain manned space travel stands in
sharp contrast to American and European fiscal
situations where space exploration is likely to be
one of many inevitable budget sacrifices.
A recent report, "China's Evolving Space
Capabilities: Implications for US Interests" was
commissioned by the Congressional US-China
Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC).
Released last week, the report acknowledges the
important role space plays in a nation's
conception of itself as a "great power".
As the report's authors Mark Stokes and
Dean Chen with the Project 2049 Institute write,
"... since the Cold War, space technology has been
viewed as a metric of political legitimacy,
national power, and status within the
international community."
The next step in
American and Chinese competition was made all but
certain when Yang Liwei became the first Chinese
ever to be launched into space in 2003. With this
achievement, China signaled to the world both its
intention of becoming a "great power", as well as
its desire to pursue a national strategy of its
own making in space, just as the United States and
Soviet Union had done before.
This
recognition that it was simply a question of
"when" and not "if" China would develop a
competitive space strategy as that of the United
States, European Union and Russia is helpful;
however, the inherent dual-use nature to much of
any nation's space-based assets make a balanced
approach difficult. The report acknowledges this
early on when its authors write, "China's space
ambitions are in part peaceful in nature. Yet
technologies can also be used with ill intent."
What ill intent is most troubling to
American policymakers? Simply put, the ability of
China's space strategy to deny access to American
military resources in the event of a conflict over
Taiwan.
Last week's report makes no effort
to deflect this concern; in fact, the report
asserts that China's space policy would play an
essential role if such a situation were to occur.
While the authors of the report make no claim that
such a moment is either imminent or likely, their
concern is obvious. As they put it, "Because
Taiwan's democratic system of government - an
alternative to mainland China's authoritarian
model - presents an existential challenge to the
CCP [Chinese Communist Party], the PLA [People's
Liberation Army] relies on military coercion to
compel concessions on sovereignty."
Space-based assets would provide several
critical advantages in the event of a conflict in
the Strait of Formosa. First, China's space-based
monitoring capabilities have significantly
increased and improved, with a particular eye
towards what are known as Synthetic Aperture Radar
(SAR) satellites.
SAR capability allows
China to "operate night or day in all weather
conditions, and are therefore well-suited for
detection of ships in a wide area". The report
adds, "As Chinese engineers have noted, SAR
imagery is key for automated target recognition of
ships at sea."
The obvious implication to
this is that China now has the ability to peer
into the Formosa Strait and surrounding East and
South China Sea areas to see real-time movements
of US naval equipment.
The second
advantage China's space-based infrastructure could
provide it with is related to Beijing's nascent
Anti-Satellite (ASAT) capability. In the event of
a conflict, China's ASAT technology could allow it
to blind large segments of the American
communication infrastructure, making a coordinated
response of military assets difficult, if not
impossible.
Beijing's ASAT capability is
not only an example of China's growing
capabilities in space, but also the speed with
which their capabilities have grown. While the
Pentagon has many concerns over China's growing
military abilities overall, Beijing's ASAT
capability remains one of the most vexing.
Recent conflicts the American military has
had to confront have been decidedly one-sided.
Whether much of the technology-laden weapon
platforms the current American military relies on
so heavily would be as effective against a country
with capabilities like China's ASAT remains to be
seen.
In this way, the Pentagon's fears
are accurately reflected in the recent
USCC-commissioned report over China's ASAT
technology.
ASAT capabilities are tricky
to defend against and would likely present
American military planners with additional
pressure to launch a pre-emptive strike to disable
China's ASAT launch infrastructure, a move that
would require deep ingress within mainland China,
a move that would make all but certain a broader
war.
Sensitivities towards Beijing's ASAT
capabilities are not only related to its
disruptive potential; as the report points out,
ASAT tests have been effective at applying
political pressure during critical domestic
conversations within Taiwan. Stokes and Cheng
write, "The ASAT test [in 2007] coincided with
legislative debates on Taiwan regarding investment
of resources into satellite systems and an
associated launch vehicle."
The third
advantage China's space policy presents in the
event of a conflict is coordination and guidance
of Beijing's most recent and particularly lethal
missiles. These new missiles range from ground to
sea-launched cruise and ballistic missiles that
"would be integrated with satellite positioning
and inertial navigation systems".
The
report states these would be "intimately connected
to China's air-and space-based SAR programs, the
advantages of missile-borne SAR include
all-weather capability, high resolution, extended
range imaging, and autonomous guidance".
It is important to remember that each of
these advantages are relative: they are relative
to China's historic lack of capability in these
areas, and they are relative to America's existing
and projected future capabilities in space.
In this way, China's growing capabilities
in space have to be measured both against where
the country is coming from, and where similar
space-based capabilities developed by the United
States are going. America's advantages may be
diminishing relative to historical norms, but a
wide gap does exist and is likely to continue to
for many years.
This captures much of the
challenge American policymakers face when they are
tasked, as the USCC is, to evaluate the nexus
between economic and national security matters
specific to US-China policy and trade.
Handled properly, reports like the most
recent one covering China's building space
capabilities point out the facts of what is
changing on the ground, and make it impossible for
members of the American government to claim that
they were surprised should down the road a
conflict occur.
But handled improperly,
reports like this can be deeply unhelpful as they
feed into a growing narrative over China's
military build-up and naive questions from those
outside China's borders over why the country could
ever need such capabilities.
Taken too
far, people fearful of China's intentions can
easily become the equivalent of Germany in 1914.
Then, a German government afraid that it would
soon be outspent in an arms race with Russia,
France and the United Kingdom, elected to attack
Russia and France before Germany's military
advantage had completely eroded.
Now, as
far-fetched as it may seem, some in American
policy circles seem to be treading on similar
ground, overly sensitive to China's growing
military expenditures and asking unanswerable
questions about how China "might" use these
capabilities against American interests.
How force "might" be used is an important
question to consider, but finding reasons to
prevent such an eventuality from ever occurring is
of even greater importance.
Thus far, the
American policy community has been able to walk
this fine line; but as America's economic and
political troubles mount, it will become
increasingly difficult for Washington's
politicians to avoid painting China in similar
light as Germany did to Russia and France in the
early 1900s.
Benjamin A Shobert
is the Managing Director of Rubicon Strategy
Group, a consulting firm specialized in strategy
analysis for companies looking to enter emerging
economies. He is the author of the upcoming
book Blame China and can be followed at
www.CrossTheRubiconBlog.com.
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