Irregular Warfare Podcast - Active Defense: China’s Military Strategy Since 1949

Episode Date: December 29, 2023

Be sure to visit the Irregular Warfare Initiative website to see all of the new articles, podcast episodes, and other content the IWI team is publishing! How have the revolutionary roots of China’s military forces influenced Chinese military strategy? How has the doctrine of the People’s Liberation Army been influenced by global events, changes in the international system, and technological advancement? And what does China’s military strategy—shaped by all of these factors—look like today, particularly with respect to the flashpoints of Taiwan and the South China Sea? This episode features a discussion with retired Lieutenant General Charles W. Hooper and Professor M. Taylor Fravel, who join our hosts to explore the historical arc of contemporary Chinese military strategy since 1949. Intro music: "Unsilenced" by Ketsa Outro music: "Launch" by Ketsa CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

There are no local wars where great powers or strategic competitors are involved with. And there are no local wars, for example, in East Asia, when we start to disrupt, for example, the 100,000 ships a year that pass through the Straits of Malacca into the South China Sea. Any war between strategic competitors is going to be a global conflict with global implications. This is a country whose military has a very deep-rooted defensive mindset. But given this history of fighting for survival against the nationalists, then prevailing in the Civil War, then being worried about being attacked by strong enemies in sort of the 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s. You have 60-ish years of this kind of defensive

approach to how they thought about using military force. Welcome to the Irregular Warfare podcast. I'm your host, Ben Jepp, and my co-host today is Elisa Laufer. Today's episode examines the historical arc of contemporary Chinese military strategy from the early 20th century until today. is Elisa Laufer. Today's episode examines the historical arc of contemporary Chinese military strategy from the early 20th century until today. Our guests begin by explaining how the Chinese military's revolutionary roots have influenced strategy over the last century. They then address how technological innovations, changes in the international system, and important events within the Chinese Communist Party

have all shaped PLA doctrine. Finally, our guests conclude with a discussion about China's current military strategy with a special emphasis on the South China Sea and Taiwan. Lieutenant General Charles W. Hooper served in the U.S. Army for over four decades. Throughout much of his career, Lieutenant General Hooper focused on U.S. policy in the Indo-Pacific. He completed two attaché assignments in Beijing and spent over

seven years working in the People's Republic of China. Lieutenant General Hooper is a graduate of West Point and holds advanced degrees from Harvard University and the U.K. Ministry of Defense Chinese Language School in Hong Kong. Professor M. Taylor Frable is the Arthur and Ruth Sloan Professor of Political Science and the Director of the Security Studies Program at MIT. He's a world-renowned China scholar who has written prolifically on Chinese military strategy and the People's Liberation Army. In 2019, Professor Frable published the book Active Defense, China's Military Strategy Since 1949, which serves as the anchor for today's conversation.

You are listening to the Irregular Warfare Podcast, a joint production of the Princeton Empirical Studies of Conflict Project and the Modern War Institute at West Point, dedicated to bridging the gap between scholars and practitioners to support the community of irregular warfare professionals. Here's our conversation with Lieutenant General Hooper and Professor Fravel. Charles, Taylor, thanks for joining us on the Irregular Warfare podcast. Great to be here. Yeah, really great to be here. Thanks so much. Okay, so for today's episode, we're going to take an in-depth look at Chinese military strategy from 1949 until contemporary times.

And a lot of that is based on Taylor's book, Active Defense. So to just start off, Taylor, could you describe what inspired you to write your book, Active Defense, and maybe discuss how your study of China's military strategy differs from other efforts that have traditionally looked at Western or democratic military strategies? Sure. So this was actually a book I wanted to write in graduate school as my doctoral thesis, but I didn't think I could get enough source material to do it. But I'd always been really interested in how China thought about using military force. I then went on and studied how China used force in territorial disputes. And so by the time I came back to thinking about a new book project, once I was teaching as a professor, I realized there probably was enough material that had become available from party history sources in China to

write something that would sort of take a deep dive into Chinese strategy. But also, I think it is important to understand sort of the context in history in which Chinese strategy evolved. I might get to something we'll talk about later, right, the idea of active defense, which goes back to the 1930s, but it's still sort of an important concept for the PLA today. Even the concept of the strategic guidelines goes back to the Civil War period. And so I think embracing that history was important. In terms of what might distinguish this from studies of military strategy and sort of Western or democratic context, I think a few things. First, that's certainly possible, right, to study strategy in other contexts and very important to do so, right? If we want a fuller understanding of our theories of why states change their strategies, we have to look beyond simply one kind of states. It's going to be one kind of state. Thank you so much, Taylor, for that framing and context of how you arrived at bringing together the book.

Before we really dig into some of the questions we have more specifically about the arguments you make in the book, I think it's important to define terms because China's civil military structure can seem somewhat opaque to a lot of our listeners, myself included. So Charles, based on your extensive experience working in a capacity where you were engaging with Chinese officials, could you describe the role of the CCP, the Central Military Commission, and the People's Liberation Army? We're really interested to hear how these organizations interact with one another and who holds decision-making power? Great question and happy to do it. And I'll begin kind of where Taylor left off by saying that one of the things we have to remember is the People's Liberation Army is truly the armed wing of the Communist Party. And this comes from Mao Zedong said many years ago, and part of his philosophy was political power flows from the barrel of a gun. And he understood better than anyone in his time that it was the army, it was the armed body, the armed wing of the Communist Party that would be the ultimate arbiter of power

in that country. So in China, the military is an arm of the Communist Party. The military is not led by the minister of defense, as it is in most Western or democratic countries and in ours. And this is kind of the source of the conflict as it is in most Western or democratic countries and in ours. And this is kind of the source of the conflict early in this current Biden administration, where we were saying that the Chinese minister of defense was not the equivalent of our secretary of defense. And I'll talk a little bit about that in a minute. So in China, the Chinese People's Liberation Army, the highest organ controlling them is the Central Military Commission of the

Communist Party of China, and the chairman of the Central Military Commission of the Communist Party of China. And the chairman of the Central Military Commission, who is usually the head of the party, is in fact the head of government, who is Xi Jinping. He is the chairman of the Central Military Commission. The Central Military Commission consists of a total of seven members, including Xi Jinping. So that's six military officers and Xi Jinping. They are subordinate to the Politburo of the Communist Party. And that is the organ that controls it. So that's the organ. The minister of defense in China at this time is General Li Shangfu. His sole function is military diplomacy. So he only exists to meet other ministers of

defense. That's his sole function. And the reason he won't meet with ours is because the United States government has sanctioned him. And he will not meet with us until we lift the sanctions off of him. So the Central Military Commission oversees the political departments, the general political departments of the People's Liberation Army. That's the Joint Staff Department, the political Department, the Logistics Department, the Equipment Department, and also directly supervises the branches of service, the ground forces, the People's Liberation Army Navy, the People's Liberation Army Air Force, as well as the Strategic Rocket Forces, their equivalent of Strategic Command, the Strategic Support Forces, this is where the cyber and anti-satellite capabilities exist, and the National Defense University, Guofeng Daxue, and the Academy of Military Sciences.

In addition to the People's Armed Police, which is the paramilitary organization responsible for internal security in China, which is almost as large as the PLA, the Chinese Coast Guard and the militia forces are all subordinate to the Central Military Commission. Now, why is this important? This is important because despite the PLA's impressive technological modernization and recent organizational efforts, the PLA essentially remains a political entity with a warfighting mission. Their approach to learning and leadership is heavily influenced by Communist Party ideology, by Xi Jinping's own political philosophy, by traditional Chinese culture and education,

and the senior leader personalities involved. So imagine if our Democratic or Republican Party were responsible for leader development of the U.S. Army. And as scary as that sounds, that's what takes place in China. And one of the things we learned is, and why is this important? One of the things we learned from the conflict in Ukraine is the Russian military failures are as much a function of command and control, poor leadership development, and internal corruption as they are of technology. And so we have to ask ourselves, in a country where the military is governed by a political party, how do you address leadership challenges? How do you address morale

challenges and corruption challenges? So this is the organization, and this is why this party subordination of the Chinese military is so important and why their officers are not the same as our officers. And I'll stop there. Yes, that was an excellent synopsis of the CCP and PLA. So thank you for that. But for Taylor, kind of switching to the book, your general argument throughout the book is that China's military strategy usually changes as a product of two forces, right? The first has to do with changes in the international conduct of war, you know, basically responding to changes in technology and how war is waged. And the second factor has to do with party unity within the CCP.

So this analysis is somewhat different from traditional realists who claim that states improve their militaries, you know, solely due to economic growth or they react to threats to their security. So could you kind of delve into your argument a little for our listeners? So the argument in the book was set up just to say, why in these three moments in 1956, 1980, 1983, did the PLA really try to reinvent itself and not at other periods in time? And a traditional realist approach would have simply said threats. And so you would have looked at, say, the 1980 strategy, which was really focused on how to counter a Soviet armored airborne assault through Mongolia, should have really been adopted in 1970, not in 1980, because that's when the threat crystallized after the clash at Jambal

Island in 1969. Or maybe it should have been adopted even earlier, right, in 1966, when the Soviets began deploying forces to Mongolia after signing a treaty with them. And so threats didn't really seem to work. And so in the first strategy, they were really responding mostly to the industrialization of warfare in World War II, as well as a bit of their own experiences in Korea. This was also the first strategy they adopted. In some ways, it's overdetermined, right, when it's the first one. In the 1980 strategy, they were responding to what they witnessed in the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, both in terms of armor and anti-tank systems, as well as air power and anti-air systems, and the speed with which those operations were conducted. And then in 1993, they were reacting to what they witnessed

in the Gulf War. I remember actually having a fascinating conversation on a bus with a retired military officer in China, talking about watching smart bombs go down chimneys on CNN in the Gulf War. And I remember being at college watching those same videos. And so they had a big effect in China. But that's not enough, right? So there's a lag, for example, especially between the 1973 Arab-Israeli War and the adoption of the 19th Strategy. There's also a lag, nevertheless, between the Gulf War and then the 1993 Strategy. And then there are periods when you might have expected maybe there to be a change and there wasn't. And so this is why we get to party unity as being a secondary factor.

So, in other words, when the party is unified, when there's agreement around that proverbial party line, In other words, when the party's unified, when there's agreement around that proverbial party line, you tend to see historically, right, significant delegation or responsibility from military affairs from the party leaders to the senior leaders of the PLA. And so they're empowered, essentially, in this sort of odd sort of party-army relationship that they have, which is civil-military relations in a party-army context, right, going back to Charlie's earlier point, that they can propose changes as they see necessary, given sort of the party's goals at the time. And of course, the party's goals in some ways implicitly already include the main threat or the main adversary, right? So that's not something that the PLA itself would ever determine, but they can determine or suggest how to best sort of prosecute those wars or to prepare to fight them in the future. Well, great. Thank you for that explanation of the thesis of the book. Ben and I both found it super interesting. And we wanted to kind of walk through the bulk of the book chronologically, where you go through these

different junctures at which China is adjusting its military strategy. So I'd like to start with actually the period that precedes the bulk of your analysis, which is the Chinese Civil War from 1927 through 1949. Could you speak a little bit about how that period in China's military history influenced current PLA doctrine and the evolution of PLA doctrine over time? I think it was a formative experience in several respects. I think it was a formative experience in several respects. Perhaps the most important one for the sake of brevity would be this idea of active defense, which it turns out now develops after the counter- of the Chinese Civil War, in the early 1930s, the CCP had sort of left urban areas and retreated into mountainous areas, often at the borders between two provinces. The largest of this was called the Jiangxi Soviet. And the nationalists, led by Chiang Kai-shek, tried repeatedly to essentially eliminate the CCP as a political force by eliminating its armed forces. And these are

known as sort of in Chinese sources as the counter-encirclement campaigns. I think in nationalist sources, they're the bandit suppression campaigns. So again, depending on whose side you're on, you have different names for what was happening. And these were almost successful. And the idea was, after developing this time, right, that the Red Army, as it was in Norway, it was too weak to take most nationalist units head on, right? So they had to find some way to gain advantage. And this was this idea of sort of striking after the enemy is struck. So basically letting the nationalists sort of seize the initiative and start an attack on a base area, but then try to sort of extend their supply lines, find vulnerabilities, find areas where you

could sort of achieve a local superiority in forces, right? So once they sort of found a detached nationalist unit, right, they could surround it, defeat it, and then gradually sort of wear down the nationalist forces such that they would retreat. But eventually, the PLA, as it's then renamed, gains the initiative and is able to defeat the Nationalists in 1948 and 1949. And it's sort of Maoist parlance, right, moves from being on the strategic defensive to the strategic offensive, which I think is an important concept today. So going back to this idea of active defense, that you would really want to basically counter-strike as opposed to attack first, I think has endured. Mao described it as offensive defense, and he was contrasting himself with some other sort of CCP leaders at the time who had, at different moments in the Civil War, pushed for a more offensive posture. But in the Civil War period, active

defense was largely an operational concept, how to prevail in these counter-insurgency campaigns. This, I think, helps show why active defense is such a useful concept for the PLA. It sort of transitioned from being an actual military strategy for the defense of the country to being a strategic principle that would guide when offensive actions would be justified. And increasingly, right from the mid-1990s onward, you had PLA authors writing about how we can counterattack once we've been attacked on the plane of politics. And this is written in the context of Taiwan. So I think the Declaration of Independence on Taiwan or some other triggering event that

China would view would cross sort of a red line with respect to Taiwan. And thus then, in this mindset, right, the PLA would be counterattacking. Charles, could you also comment on how the PLA's early revolutionary history and ideas like People's war have influenced Chinese strategy and military doctrine? Well, I think that they've significantly influenced the doctrine. And furthermore, the fact that, and this is important, and Taylor, you mentioned it a couple of times, that as their strategic perspective has evolved over time, number one, it remains heavily influenced by the revolutionary period.

And I think because they haven't fought a war in a very long time. You know, they've read every book on fishing there is, but they haven't been fishing in a very long time. And what I mean by that, I'm being colloquial, but they are astute students of military strategy. They're astute students of our military strategy. They will execute in the same way that they have articulated the strategy. And let me point out a couple of points here that I would agree with you that that is a fundamental manifestation of active defense. Because in a strategic scenario, we, especially in a war with the United States, we are the attacker. We're the one that has to project power 8,000 miles across the Pacific, build up, as we've done in the past, mountains of iron to unleash upon the Chinese. So they are in an active defensive mode, and that is reflective of their traditional approach toward society. Now, the paradox of this is, as we've learned from Ukraine, Taiwan in this scenario would be in the defense. And we see the arc of warfare, the character of warfare, arcing towards the advantage going to the defense and not to the

offense, which is why a country like Ukraine has been able to disrupt the efforts of a much larger aggressor nation in Russia. The second thing I wanted to mention, or the third thing, because I talked about PLA being the students of modern strategy, but not having actually executed military strategy in a very long time, leadership perceptions. And I take your point about that defense in depth that Mal talked about and how they perhaps might have evolved beyond this. But I'll tell you, not that long ago, I was at a banquet sitting next to a Chinese general, active Chinese general. And it was one of the more contentious phases of our bilateral relationship. It was a terse, very awkward table conversation. And somehow we got

on the subject of offense and defense. And he explained to me that, well, you know, if you attack the coast, if you attack Tianjin, we'll fall back to Beijing, you know, and if you attack Beijing, we'll fall back to Chengdu. And I remember thinking to myself, why the heck would we do that? We're not the Japanese Guangdong army. Why would we follow you into the interior of China so we'd be swimming in the ocean of the Chinese military? You know, and I remember thinking, no, we're not going to do that. We'll just bomb every rail junction, every dam, every power station across the entire country. And then the 600 million people in the middle of China with no power and water will be your problem and not ours. We're not going to do

that. But I was struck by the fact that this particular general was still very much immersed in this active interior lines defense. The last thing I'll mention in terms of strategy and this historical approach to strategy is that I'm struck by how much our studies of Chinese strategy are focused on the worst case scenario from their perspective, which is a war with the United States. It tends to be the analysis of Chinese strategy and their development of strategy seems very binary. A lot of times throughout their strategic evolution, they've essentially reflected or mirror imaged what we were doing. You know, war under high technology conditions, war under information conditions, kind of reflecting and mirror imaging

our strategic evolution. But I'm struck by how little it takes into account, for example, the multinational nature of warfare. A potential conflict in East Asia will almost certainly be multinational. It's inevitable that it's multinational. Why? Because five of the seven countries with which we have bilateral treaties, defense treaties, are in Asia and ring China. Thanks for that lively response, Charles. We're going to keep moving forward chronologically, looking at another pivotal moment in your book, Taylor. We're going to jump ahead now to 1980, actually, which you identify as another watershed moment for Chinese military strategy.

And as we were just touching on with the discussion between the two of you, at this point, China shifts away from that posture of, as you call it, luring the enemy in deep or trying to fight a protracted war within China to a more forward leaning posture. Is that characterization correct? And if so, what was the impetus for that change? Sure, thanks. So that's absolutely correct. And it follows 16 years of pursuing the other strategy. So in that sense, a really dramatic change. And so I think after Lin Biao dies, as Mao gets quite aged in the early 70s after the 73 Arab-Israeli war, especially Suyu, but also Song Chol-in, who are basically two leading figures of the Academy of Military Sciences that Charlie mentioned, right, is directly under the CMC, where doctrine and strategy is essentially developed even today. So Critical Research Institute for the PLA began

writing papers about how, you know, somewhat elliptically, like, well, maybe Mao's wrong, right? Or would he really want to, like, sacrifice the capital to save the country and so forth? And this sort of builds momentum over the next seven years. But the fact that it takes seven years is quite telling to this strategy adopted in 1980 where the PLA says, OK, we're going to try to hold the Soviets as close to the border as we can. They're not going to try to fix them on the border because it was desert and that would be impossible. But there are mountain ranges between the border with Mongolia and Beijing where they thought they had a fighting chance. And there were three invasion routes they had identified. They focused on the one that was the shortest distance between Mongolia and Beijing through

the town of Arnhart and thought, well, we really have to try to engage in, at the time it was called positional defense, right? In contrast with sort of mobile warfare, very fluid movement of units, which again goes back to the Civil War period, but was also what Mao wanted to try to recreate in a roaring enemy and deep strategy. They built large numbers of reserve forces in the interior that they could then move to the location of attack. And in that sense, it was transformative. They really reinvigorated focus on combined arms operations, which would probably act quite significantly at that point. The PLA's performance in 1979, which was China's last war, was quite poor,

although I think they expected it to be quite poor. In fact, they were quite concerned all along that the force was not prepared for modern war. I think Vietnam, invasion of Vietnam sort of affirmed that for them. But it was very much a pivotal moment that leads to, most significantly, the reorganization of ground forces into combined arms group armies, which is trialed and then sort of rolled out in the mid-1980s. It's also linked to some of the naval modernization or kind of create space for that, although that also sort of rolled out in the mid-1980s. It's also linked to some of the naval modernization or kind of create space for that, although that also sort of has its separate logic. And then, you know, by the mid-1980s, in some ways, the strategic pressure,

just as they're rolling out the group armies, begins to sort of be lifted, right, as the Soviet Union goes through the last most of Perestroika and begins to pursue the normalization of relations with China on Chinese terms, culminating in Gorbachev's visit in May of 1989, just around the time when the demonstrations in Tiananmen Square were really intensifying. So the book ends with a discussion of China's more recent strategy developments.

In 1993, the PLA seemed to focus on fighting wars under high technology conditions, which Charles, you mentioned earlier. And in 2004 and 2014, China again highlighted the importance of high technology conditions and also winning informatized local wars. So I'll direct this question to Charles first, and Taylor, feel free to hop in. But first off, what do those terms mean? And could you discuss what global events led to those changes in doctrine? Well, I think that both of those, both war under high technology conditions, and I think all of those stemmed from the Gulf War and their perceptions and interpretation of the Gulf War, essentially. And their realization, their stunning realization, and Taylor, you talked a little bit about, you know, them seeing the quintessential missiles going in windows and down stovepipes.

And I think they realized the fundamental character of warfare because the nature of warfare never changes, but the character does. The character of warfare had fundamentally changed. And I think that that's the source of some of the evolutions. And I also think they began to see, again, as I mentioned, I'm struck by how much the evolution of Chinese military strategy mirror images our own, because we're the ones that have been fighting almost continuously somewhere in the world since 1990. I mean, think about that. We've been in information, 21st century information-based warfare. We have been fighting for 22 straight years. And despite whether you think we've achieved our strategic goals, we're pretty good at it. So the answer to your question is, I think much of their strategic evolution, particularly in this high-tech warfare, and it has driven to a great

extent their military technological innovation has been this realization that technology in the third wave, beginning all those years ago, and now the kill chain most recently has inevitably and unalterably shaped the war strategy. So I think that that's the source of it. And I think they're trying to grapple with what this evolution means for them. One of the, I think, flawed pieces of logic in their approach is they talk about local wars. And perhaps when they wrote that years ago, this issue of local wars under high-tech conditions, that was evident.

But I would tell you, if we learn nothing again from Ukraine, is that there are no local wars anymore. There are no local wars where great powers or strategic competitors are involved with. And there are no local wars, for example, in East Asia, when we start to disrupt, for example, the 100,000 ships a year that pass through the Straits of Malacca into the South China Sea, when we disrupt the supply chain of 90% of the microprocessors on this planet. So there are no local wars under high-tech conditions anymore. Any war between strategic competitors is going to be a global conflict with global implications. And so the short answer to your question is,

this all came about as a result of our experiences in Iraq, both Gulf War I and Gulf War II. But again, because the Chinese leadership has not had an opportunity, the Chinese military leadership and their grand strategists are observing and reacting. They're not being proactive in terms of having experienced these things and having this experience inform the evolution of their strategy. And it goes back to something I said earlier about, and I'd be interested in Taylor's thoughts about this, that despite the fact that they're brilliant strategists and brilliant students, from a strategic perspective, are they a learning

organization? Do they have the capacity to truly understand the dimensions of executing strategy in the information age? So let's jump in here real quick on the sort of high-tech knowledge conditions to informatize conditions to informatize local wars, I would just point out that for China, at least, right, as being good students of American conflicts, the Kosovo War was really important in sort of shifting them from high-tech conditions to information-related conditions. And then I think as they studied the role of information technology in warfare and our views of net-centric warfare, etc., then they began to say, okay, wars are no longer under informatized conditions. They're just informatized.

This is just the way things are. Then we get this idea of systems-to-systems confrontation, which puts that into practice a little bit. So that's just sort of my quick addendum. But on Charlie's question, so it's ironic, right? They're very good students. They try to learn, right? Actually, most of my students are pretty good students, but you know, occasionally you get students that don't want to learn, right? So, you know, like, learn, that's the prerequisite if you want to advance. And so, I mean, I've been in bookstores in China in earlier eras where I'm in PLA bookstores and trying to buy new source materials. I come across something which is like ground force operational doctrine.

I go, oh, wow, I found something nobody else has found before. And I open it up and then I'm like, oh, this is a translation of FM 100-5. Or it's like, you know, Soviet regulations. I once came across those. Or, you know, Russian paratroopulations. It's like, great document, right? And it's like, you know, Soviet regulations. I once came across those. Or, you know, Russian paratroopulations. It's like, great document, right? And it's like, actually, no. So I'm curious, actually, if there are better students of other people's words than we are. I don't know. That would be an interesting question. But they're very assiduous students of other people's words. But there's only so much you can learn from kind of academic study, which I think is true of any

way which we learn. And they don't have the same kind of academic study, which I think is true of any way which we learn, and they don't have the same kind of experience in trying to put all the pieces together. On top of that, they have recognized but never overcome, right, the challenges of training. So Charlie's got his hand up. I'll shut up and turn it back to him. But I think it's a great question that he raises. Two quick anecdotes on that. And your book is fantastic in your analysis of the evolution of Chinese military strategy. But Xi Jinping himself has recognized, he calls it the Wugabuh command. And in fact, he recognizes his officers are not adept at exercising battle command, essentially. The ability to act on initiative, the ability to act with the confidence that they are empowered by their leadership to take chances and to assume risk. And no strategy can be successful unless the leadership has that

ability. And there's a question as to whether or not communist party culture and Chinese culture will allow the sufficient delegation of operation in Ukraine, you could tell that Russian strategic leaders were still executing a plan that said, go from point A to point B, regardless of what took place between the time they left point A and the time they got to point B, you know, where the whole world has changed. Now, in our system, as General Eisenhower famously said, plans are absolutely useless. Planning is everything. So I wonder, you know, when you talk about the execution of the strategies that they have very meticulously studied, whether or not their military will be able to do it. Second anecdote I wanted to mention is I had an opportunity not too long ago to sit next to or to escort the commander of the Chinese Airborne Corps.

And we went all around. We went to Fort Bragg. We saw a bunch of stuff and we showed him our technology. And so at the end of the day, I asked him, what impressed you the most about everything that you saw? And he did not hesitate. You know what he said? The people. And in a moment of honesty, he said, your people, your military personnel are five generations ahead of us, which I thought was a startling comment for him to make. And I knew exactly what he meant. He meant the ability of our people to execute the orders that they were given. Their intuitive understanding of the technology placed them above Chinese. So I only say these things

because they have an absolutely fundamental influence over whether or not a strategy can be successfully executed. So we focused by looking at your book on patterns of change over the decades in China's military strategy. But I want to talk right now about China's current military efforts. And there are really two interrelated developments to cover right now, according to a lot of China watchers. The first is the PRC's militarization of the South China Sea. And the second is China's ostensible preparation to conduct amphibious operations in Taiwan. So could we get your take on this analysis, Charles? I know it's a big question. Do you think it's accurate? Again, keeping in mind

some of the insights from the conversation with Taylor about his book. And then again, we'll pivot over to you, Taylor. Interestingly enough, the militarization of the South China Sea, in my view, has complicated Chinese strategic thought as opposed to simplifying it. And why do I say that? First and foremost, as I mentioned earlier, we have five treaty mutual defense pacts. We only have seven in the world. Five of them are in the Pacific. The only ones that are not in the Pacific are NATO and the Rio pact. The Philippines is a bilateral defense partner of the United States by treaty, which means if the Philippines are attacked, we are bound to respond as if the United States was attacked. And it's obviously an attempt, going back to Taylor's points about active defense, it's

an attempt on their part to expand their strategic depth. They find themselves ringed in in the East by the five treaty allies, by the Pacific Islands that we've dominated since the Battle of Midway. They find themselves ringed in, which is why when you look at the Belt and Road Initiative, everything is going West because they can't go East. So the answer to your question on that note is that I think the militarization, far from offering them a distinct advantage, offers them a disadvantage. The second reason I say that is because inevitably, if there was a conflict in East Asia, the fortified

positions in the South China Sea, they consider as Chinese sovereign territory. And I'm choosing my words very carefully here. And this complicates escalation. We're trying to control escalation. Because once we've attacked Chinese sovereign territory at a strategic level, all the gloves are off, in theory. And we could expect an attack on American sovereign territory, be it terrestrial or extraterrestrial, in other words, space-based or cyber-based. Any one of those could possibly be an area where we might expect an attack. The second, let me talk about an amphibious attack of Taiwan, because this is one I talk about all the time.

And I think in a lot of people's minds, particularly non-military types, there's a confusion here about what we would call in the military the worst case scenario and the most likely scenario. Chinese military modernization has given them a full range of kinetic and non-kinetic military capabilities that they can execute, of which at the furthest end is an amphibious invasion of Taiwan, right? But there's a bunch of other stuff that they can do from decapitation strikes to cyber attacks to special warfare or unconventional warfare attacks, to blockades that have nothing to do with an amphibious operation. The last successful amphibious operation on this planet was September of 1950. And that was the attack in Inchon.

There's a reason for that. It's extraordinarily difficult to do. And anyone who knows anything about the Taiwan Straits and the oceanography and the topography of Taiwan would tell you there's only a couple of times they can invade. They would have to transport hundreds of thousands of troops and hundreds of tons of equipment twice the distance that we had to transport them from southern England to the Normandy beaches. It's twice the distance that they'd have to do that. And they'd have to win and win quickly. Otherwise, it would be drawn out. I already talked about some of the other global ramifications of this amphibious invasion. And so what I'm trying to sum up is I believe the probability is extremely

low that an amphibious invasion would be the first choice of the Chinese military because it is fraught with all types of possibilities for failure, quite frankly. And we see from the conflict in Ukraine that a small, well-motivated, well-supplied country can vastly complicate the strategic calculus of a much larger, better equipped country. We see in Ukraine that it is far easier to deny a country air superiority than it is for a country to impose air superiority on another country. Based on the conversation today, what are some of the implications for the academic practitioner and policy communities who

track developments within the PLA and the CCP? And I'll direct that question to Charles first. Well, I'd say there's a few. The first implication is the evolution of Chinese strategy clearly is an act of defense and clearly is focused on denying the concentration of combat power by the United States and its allies and partners within the interior of the first island chain. So the implications of that are how the strategic implications from a military perspective is understanding that. How does the United States and its allies and partners, how do they counter that? Because as I said in the beginning, the paradox here for us is that China in this particular instance is on the defensive, essentially, an active defense. It is the United States or the adversaries of

China that would be projecting power into the South China Sea. So I think that's the first implication. The second one I'd say is, and it's at a strategic level, is this issue of de-escalation mechanisms and negotiation mechanisms, which have atropied between the two militaries in particular. I was involved in the signing and the execution, for example, of something called the Military Maritime Consultative Agreement. And I was directly involved in the invocation, the only active invocation of that, which was in 2001 after a Chinese fighter jet collided with a U.S. surveillance plane. And we actually invoked this de-escalation mechanism in order to have negotiations. And in fact, on 9-11, that's where I was on 9-11. I was negotiating with the Chinese in Guam to get the plane back. My point is that those have

atrophied and we don't have any of those from a strategic perspective. The third thing I mentioned is I'm very surprised, sometimes shocked at the fact that when we discuss Chinese grand strategy, U.S. grand strategy, and the potential for conflict in East Asia between the U.S. and China, we almost never discussed South Korea at all. We have 28,000 troops in South Korea. Are they going to be involved? Are the North Koreans going to be prompted to initiate some tensions that would pin down those 28,000 troops? And related to that is, who exactly in East Asia is going to be directly involved in this conflict and who is not? The Singapore Prime Minister has said, do not force

us to choose. And the final thing that I'd say is, again, as I mentioned earlier, it's my belief that there are no regional conflicts in this scenario and in this strategy. So what will be the role of our European allies and partners? What will be the role of Russia? What will be the role of India? These are all huge strategic questions that are germane to this particular strategic problem set. I do agree with Taylor that those of us who are familiar with Sun Tzu Bing Fa, Sun Tzu's The Art of War, know that China will use all types of military coercion, which is a form of strategic communication, in order to coerce peaceful reunification. But the essence of Chinese grand strategy is to win without firing a shot. And I tend to believe that they still follow that. So

those are just a few of the strategic implications of Chinese grand strategy and the strategy of active defense that I think are relevant here. That's a terrific list and a hard act to follow. Let me foot stomp one and then maybe reflect a little bit on like the study of strategy in China, which is in theory what I know a very little bit about. On Charlie's last point, right, military strategy and the way it's conceived in China is meant to achieve political role. It's not an end in itself. And so I think we have to remind ourselves when we're reading these texts and reading what the Chinese say about strategy, like when Xi Jinping says to the PLA, you need to be ready to fight and win wars. It doesn't mean that Xi Jinping wants to go fight and win a lot of wars, right? He just funds a military that's ready to achieve the political

objectives if it sort of comes to that. Two other points. First is, I think, given China's industrial and technological development, it may be in a point now where, depending on how things evolve, right, it could actually generate or come up with new ways of warfighting that might be linked with AI. AI is a big amorphous concept. I'm glad we haven't talked a lot about it because it's very hard to define and come down. But China was in many ways

a taker of other people's wars, a close observer and a student, and lacks the experience that Charlie mentioned. But I think it is a technological powerhouse and it's probably thinking a lot about how to harness that technology in innovative warfighting ways, perhaps because they're going to be more efficient or more effective or more rapid, what have you. But we could be sort of in a new phase where China is going to be coming up with things we might not yet have anticipated in the same way that America is a very innovative country with

that crazy idea that you could land planes on ships back in the 1920s. China may be having some similar ideas now. We need to watch out for them, not overplay them by any means, but that is a difference. Last point, I think, is a somewhat sober point, which is to say, I think it is going to be very hard for us to study changes in Chinese strategy going forward because of the way in which interactions and exchanges between Chinese and Americans have been significantly reduced over the last three to four years for a number of reasons. Thanks. Those are some really good points on the implications both for policy, but also as you touched on, Taylor, the implications for analysis and how we

actually understand a country like China and shape policy around it. So thank you. On that note, we're going to close with one last question, continuing on the theme of policy implications and again, implications for how we analyze China. And this also goes back, Taylor, to the main argument that you make in the book, which is that the PRC strategy changes in part due to international developments and the conduct of war. So given that, I'm going to start with you, Taylor, and then please, Charles, jump in. How should we think about the way current trends right now in the conduct of war might be influencing China's contemporary military strategy? And particularly, how do you think the Ukraine-Russia conflict and Xi Jinping's

consolidation of power within the CCP could lead to changes? I guess my top line on Ukraine is it's a stark reminder that war is probably a lot more complicated than the scholars at the Academy of Military Science and National Defense University in China have written about. Russia struggled with, continues to struggle with combined arms operations, especially on the offensive, and never really achieved the ability to conduct any joint operation. In the worst case scenario of Taiwan, which is still the driver of modernization, I think, in China, it would be a multi-service, multi-domain joint operation that is infinitely more challenging than what Russia

was trying to execute or is trying to execute by invading Ukraine. And so I think for that reason alone, of many other lessons that follow from that, I think it's less about the role of technology, but we can talk about drones and Starlink and these things that maybe are more tactical and strategic, although maybe Charlie sees them differently than I do. I don't want to say they're unimportant, but I don't think we've seen sort of breakthroughs in technology. We've seen things that have greatly accelerated targeting or communications in these sort of combined arms contexts. But the bigger lesson would be for the sources of Russian underperformance. If we've learned anything at all from history, and the Ukraine conflict illustrates this yet again,

at all from history, and the Ukraine conflict illustrates this yet again, wars never, ever evolve the way the aggressor thinks they will. Never, ever. And I've gone back to study, I've reread all of the information on the negotiations between Japan and the United States leading up to Pearl Harbor. And it's fascinating, the misperceptions on both sides, and the misperception on what the attack on Pearl Harbor would achieve for the Japanese military was stunning. They never, ever evolved the way you think they will. I say this next one as someone who was responsible for weapons sales for the U.S. government. Military technology does not equal a military capability. That's another inalterable lesson of history. We defeated the fourth largest military on the planet in 100 hours, and that was during Gulf War I. People

matter. The motivation of soldiers matter. The motivation of civilians in a society matters. The values for which your force is fighting matter. Why is the Russian military performing? Because they lied to those kids. They fed them expired food and equipment that didn't work. They're corrupt, and that's why they're losing. Leadership matters. It doesn't matter how advanced your technology is. And on that note, I'm not sure any of us understand the genuine ramifications of the technology we're employing, okay? Now that I'm in the private sector, I'm stunned at how caught off guard people were about the implications of generative AI, chat GPT. And the entire body politic and economic is reeling, trying to desperately catch

up. So when I hear that people are going to leverage artificial intelligence and machine learning and hypersonics, there are certainly potent technologies. The question is not whether they're potent. The question is whether you can harness their potency. I said this earlier, there are no local wars in the 21st century between strategic powers. Indeed, the conflict in Ukraine has had implications in Tunisia, which imports 70% of their wheat from Ukraine, or Egypt, where I live, that imports 50% of their wheat from Ukraine. West African farmers are paying four times the price for fertilizer because Ukraine was a principal producer of potash fertilizer. So West African farmers can't get fertilizer because of the conflict in Ukraine. And I often

tell people, if you think the economic implications of that were significant, you haven't seen anything. Imagine if stuff disappeared from the shelves of Walmart or the dollar store in the United States. And imagine what that would do politically. Taylor said it. We forget this sometimes from our Clausewitz, but war is a political struggle, not a military struggle. And we often forget that. The last thing I'll mention is,

and it has to do with Ukraine and the PLA as well, my dad used to say, it's only a lesson if you learn something. Otherwise, it's just information you're observing, right? So we have to ask ourselves whether a politically led and politically influenced force where the evolution of that military is dictated by a political entity, do they have the willingness and the ability to incorporate the lessons they see in Ukraine to their betterment? You know, can they improve and incorporate in just those lessons and evolve? Or does it run contrary to their political ideology and their anthropological and institutional cultures? And what I mean by that is, is the PLA a learning institution? Can it adapt to the leadership and cultural challenges that we're observing that failed for the Russians in Ukraine?

Well, this was a fascinating conversation between two true experts. So thank you for joining us on the Irregular Warfare podcast today. My pleasure. Thank you. Thank you again for joining us on the Irregular Warfare podcast. We release a new episode every two weeks. Next episode, Laura and I will discuss disarmament, every two weeks. Next episode, Laura and I will discuss disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration with Aaron McPhee and Daniela Montemarano. Be sure to subscribe to the Irregular Warfare podcast so you don't miss an episode. The podcast is a product of the Irregular Warfare Initiative. We are a team of all volunteer practitioners and researchers dedicated to

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