US-China Strategic Stability: Ending 'Systemic Transitional Fluidity'

Landscape of fears and suspicions: In early May 2024, US Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin hosted counterparts from Australia, Japan and the Philippines in Hawaii, home to US Indo-Pacific Command, the military establishment responsible for ensuring US military pre-eminence across the Pacific and Indian Oceanic Area-of-Responsibility (AoR). Indo-Pacom’s tasks include preventing actors considered unfriendly- notably China, Russia, and North Korea- from acting in ways detrimental to US systemic primacy. In his valedictory testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, outgoing Commander, Adm. John Aquilino thanked the men and women under his command who ‘work tirelessly alongside our allies and partners daily to keep our nation safe while ensuring a free and open Indo-Pacific.’ Aquilino stated, ‘Each of our three major state-threat in the USINDOPACOM AoR- the PRC, Russia and the DPRK- are taking unprecedented actions that challenge international norms and advance authoritarianism.’ He emphasised, ‘the PRC is the only country that has the capability, capacity, and the intent to upend the international order.’[i]

Official and semi-official assessments like Aquilino’s deepened Washington’s ‘China-scare.’ Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo told Congress China’s invasion of Taiwan would be ‘absolutely devastating’ for the US economy since ‘the US buys 92% of its leading-edge chips from TSMC from Taiwan.’[ii] TSMC’s new fabrication-plants in the USA and Japan would presumably not solve that problem. US naval-air ability to defend Taiwan faced severe challenges from PLA missiles posing ‘an increasingly worrying threat, a missile force unlike any the US has faced in combat before.’ These had acquired ‘ominous nicknames such as “carrier-killers” and the “Guam Express”.’[iii]

PLAN Commander Adm. Dong Jun’s promotion to China’s Defence Minister in late-2023 underscored Beijing’s emphasis on continued naval buildup, further challenging US force-projection capabilities upholding US systemic-primacy. The PLAN commissioned its eighth Type-055/Renhai-class cruiser, eight more Type-054A/Jiangkai-class frigates, a submarine-rescue ship, a Type-075/Yushen-class amphibious-assault ship, ‘five cruisers and destroyers, two newer Type-054B frigates, and three nuclear-powered submarines’ adding 170,000 tons to the fleet in 2023.[iv] The US clearly perceived grim maritime challenges with China’s growing power. But the strategic context of maritime anxieties looked worse: America ‘will face a world where two nations possess nuclear arsenals on par with our own.’ The risk of ‘conflict with these two nuclear-peers is increasing. It is an existential challenge for which the US is ill-prepared.’[v]

Austin's Singapore meeting with Dong, and their formal remarks at the Shangri-La Dialogue demonstrated the superficiality, inefficacy and perhaps even futility of efforts at 'maintaining contact' while pursuing evidently contradictory strategic objectives driven and shaped by conflicting beliefs.

Mutually-exclusive drivers: As successive US strategic policy documents, e.g., National Security Strategy (NSS), National Defence Strategy (NDS), Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) the Intelligence Community's Assessment of Threats, etc., published since December 2017 demonstrate, US leaders/practitioners believe US primacy is threatened by China's aggressive all-domains challenges. These documents, official Congressional testimonies, senior-level remarks, and background media-briefings since then have insisted US 'global leadership' is the only thing holding the planet back from catastrophe and China's challenges to US 'leadership' threaten planetary wellbeing. Documented Chinese expression of interest, intentions and plans indicate profound concerns over 'hegemonic' pressures threatening to subordinate China, and Beijing's determination never to permit foreign subjugation ever again. This zero-sum divergence raises questions about systemic future and planetary strategic stability. The import of this fundamental divergence is apparent to anyone with basic understanding of what two nuclear-weapons-states can do to each other, and the rest humankind, if they decide to take their contention to its logical extreme. The current imbalance between US nuclear arsenal, warhead, delivery systems, C4ISR networks and global deployments, and their very much smaller Chinese counterparts - given the competitive intensity - precipitate strategic instability of the most incendiary kind. More on this later.

Aquilino’s allegations against China: ‘Even amidst slowing economic growth, the PRC continues its aggressive military buildup, modernization, and coercive gray-zone operations.’ He saw ‘all indications’ pointing to ‘the PLA meeting President Xi Jinping’s directive to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027.’ Concerningly, ‘the PLA’s actions indicate their ability to meet Xi’s preferred timeline to unify Taiwan with mainland China by force if directed.’[i] His implied assertion was, this could not be countenanced and Congress must fund IndoPacom to prevent this from transpiring. Aquilino stressed his deterrent/warfighting initiatives:

·?????? Distributed Force Posture with deployments dispersed widely across the AoR

·?????? Campaign of Joint and Combined Operations with all services and allied-forces united

·?????? Advanced Warfighting Capabilities with modern materiel delivered and deployed

·?????? Enhanced Network of Allies & Partners including AUKUS, Five-Eyes, EDCA, India[ii]

In short, Aquilino was leaving his Command ready for challenging China’s presumed plans to ‘invade’ Taiwan; if deterrence failed, IndoPacom would engage and defeat the PLA in battle. Even if Beijing abjured such ‘aggression’, IndoPacom was refining its deterrent/warfighting preparations to constrain China’s ability to even consider such initiatives. The steps Aquilino presented to Congress, seen from the recipient’s end, could be construed severely constraining China’s maritime rights, options and choices. This paper illustrates a few such examples.

Washington’s insecurity perspective shaping its force-posture, deployments, arming, training and combat-preparations: ‘Confronting the strategic threat that China poses to the US is a daunting task even if the US is able to focus the appropriate strategic resources and attention. However, perhaps it was never truly possible for the world’s greatest superpower, with binding strategic alliances spanning the globe, to be able to have a laser-like focus on one region of the world. In that case, a true “pivot” to Asia was never really possible.’ The USA, ‘whether it likes it or not, is still viewed as the world’s policeman and will naturally be brought into global affairs in a way that China will not.’[iii]

Dialectic dynamics triggered by US efforts to mitigate its China-rooted, primacy-focused insecurity, and China’s defensive responses, precipitated ‘systemic transitional fluidity’ manifest in the US-proclaimed ‘great-power competition’ with China. Beijing’s consequent threat-perceptions and responses, and the resultant security-dilemma shaped both sub-systemic and systemic-level volatility.

Beijing's dilemma: Western and Japanese rivals have eyed China’s elongated Pacific coast since the mid-19th century. China’s inability to defend this vital, valuable and vulnerable belt from foreign depredations precipitated the ‘century of humiliation.’ Even today, this belt presents a serious dilemma for China’s strategic planners. The conundrum arises from the trajectory of China’s post-reform and opening economic development. Ascending the value-addition chain from assemblies of intermediate goods to fabrication of tertiary products to designing and producing sophisticated items, China increasingly relied on the ports and manufacturing hubs for its ‘peaceful rise’ paradigm. In 2010, when China’s GDP overtook Japan’s as the world’s 2nd largest, China also overtook the USA as the largest manufacturing economy.

By 2023, the OECD estimated China had become ‘the world’s sole manufacturing superpower.’ China’s production exceeded ‘that of the nine next largest manufacturers combined.’ In 2020, China produced 35% of the world’s manufactured goods, but excluding imported intermediates, its value addition was 29% of the world’s total. Corresponding figures for US manufacturing were 12% and 16% respectively; Japan’s, 6% and 7% respectively.[i] For nearly two decades Beijing has encouraged industrialisation of China’s central- and western regions; and rising labour-costs and China-European railway links have eased some coastal congestions. But cost-efficiencies ensure coastal manufacturing hubs retain their dominance. China’s GDP, the role manufacturing and trade play in it, and the location of these production-centres define the strategic significance of China’s coastal belt to its vitality and well-being. Of the world’s 10 busiest ports seven, with large hinterlands, are China’s manufacturing hubs:[ii]

·?????? Shanghai

·?????? Shenzhen

·?????? Hong Kong

·?????? Ningbo

·?????? Qingdao

·?????? Guangzhou

·?????? Tianjin

Maintaining these port-cities’ access to and from the outside world is crucially important to China. The reverse of that fundamental fact is, China’s adversaries will seek to cut off this access, shut down China’s economic lifeline, and coerce China into accepting suboptimal choices it would otherwise reject. Deployments of US, Japanese and Taiwanese stand-off strike-missiles targeting Chinese cities add to challenges.[iii] In an apparently prescient move, CMC Chairman Hu Jintao proclaimed the PLA’s ‘New Historic Missions in the New Era’ on 24th December 2004, urging the PLAN to uphold China’s exploding economic-commercial interests along extended Lines-of-Communications vital to the rapidly industrialising economy’s future.[iv] The New Missions did not precipitate but were intricately linked to what, by mid-1999, had become the US grand-strategic assessment that China was becoming a ‘constant competitor’ whose challenges to US primacy must be countered with Indian help.[v]

This engendered China’s ‘Malacca Dilemma’, the possibility that in time of conflict/crisis, the US and/or Indian Navy could interdict Chinese shipping at Malacca, Lombok or Singapore Strait choke-points, but any Chinese efforts to reduce that threat could precipitate exactly the blockade Beijing feared.[vi] The US Navy’s China-focused Littoral Combat Ship-class vessels, homeported in Singapore and frequently seen drilling across brown-water choke-points with other navies, represented the USA’s ‘distributed lethality’ paradigm for striking Chinese assets from multiple, widely-distributed, and relatively-expendable fire-bases.[vii] China’s maritime vulnerability in the face of US adversarial actions and coalition-building activities in and around China’s ‘near-seas’ have been widely reported.[viii]

Coercive drills by rival navies and naval-aviation have moved into the South- and East China Seas, and the Yellow Sea, far closer to China’s shores than the Malacca Strait. With the US’s counter-China coalition partners growing in number and increasing both frequency and complexity of combat-manoeuvres near China, the latter’s deepening maritime insecurity is rationally apparent.[ix] With US-allied forces virtually re-enacting their joint campaign against China during the Boxer Rebellion- this time around at China’s maritime-fringes and without actually firing shots in anger- the source of China’s threat-perceptions was revealed. If this is the peace-time milieu, it is hard to ignore how the US-led counter-China coalition will seek to cut off, shut down, or even destroy the vital economic-commercial-industrial-communications hubs along China’s coastal heartland if and when differences of opinion escalate to military confrontations. So, just what can Beijing do to defend its vital- or ‘core’ interests along the coast? That is at the heart of its conundrum. But adversarial drills in nearby waters are not all.

US operational conceptual evolution: Washington, aware of the risks posed to its expeditionary bases in Japan and Okinawa, and in Guam, by the PLA’s large arsenal of MRBMs and LACMs, part of China’s long-analysed A2AD defensive carapace, adopted a ‘distributed-force’ profile by dispersing fire-systems. This has reduced China’s target-acquisition opportunities, complicating its defensive measures, and eroding its conventional deterrence. The idea is to supplement ‘a few large, vulnerable bases and scarce, expensive platforms like aircraft carriers’ with ‘smaller units that operate from more austere locations and fight with cheaper, more numerous, and more expendable weapons.’ The outcome of ‘more resilient, diversified military posture up and down the Western Pacific with sufficient firepower to inflict and awful cost if the enemy attacks’ will be to impose unacceptable costs on China, deterring the PLA from initiating ‘aggression.’ The US would thus ‘prevent an age of Chinese dominance.’[i]

Any suggestion that Washington would discount or disregard its carrier-strike groups- most potent symbol of its primacy- near its ‘pacing challenge’ is, however, inaccurate. In fact, the USN for a time deployed five CSGs, nearly half of its 11, to China-proximate waters, in 2024.[ii] And that excluded the US Marine Corps’ ‘mini-carriers’ operating F-35B short-take-off-and-landing stealth-fighters. Japan’s F-35B carriers, the Izumo and Kaga, and their escorts, began 7-month deployments alongside USN CSGs in April 2024, the highlight of their mission being participating in RIMPAC2024 drills in July. Although China was not mentioned in the drills’ preparatory statements, nobody could doubt the drills’ designs.[iii]

RIMPAC’s massive concentrations of maritime firepower stood at one extreme of Washington’s muscular displays. The other end carried organisation, training and stationing of small-unit deployments of PACOM forces. Dispersal denied ‘the enemy’ opportunities to strike large targets, gave own forces flexible agility across an island-sprinkled oceanic milieu, and allowed them to weaken large hostile-forces ‘with a thousand cuts.’ US Marines in Japan began conducting ‘stand-in force operations in the 1st Island Chain’ in November 2023 when the 4th Marine Regiment, supported by Marine Aircraft Group 36, and 3rd Reconnaissance Battalion, engaged in the first force-on-force combat drills outside Continental US. Two company-sized force-on-force drills simulated ‘combat scenarios, enabling Marines to refine their combat skills and enhance their readiness.’ With early help from 3rd Recon Battalion, 1st Marine Aircraft Wing helped deploy 2nd Battalion, 2nd Marines and 2nd Battalion, 7th Marines using CH-53E Super Stallions, ‘ensuring the rapid dispersal and sustainment of forces.’

Air assets simulated ‘air assaults, maritime strikes, adversary forces, and rehearsed armed recon and close air-support.’ These dispersed, aviation-aided small-unit combat drills rehearsed how Marines would occupy hostile-territory in case of war.[iv] In US Army assessment, ‘the likelihood of a US military conflict with China over Taiwan in the next decade continues to increase.’ Determined to deter or defeat the PLA in such a contingency, the US Joint Chiefs of Staff proclaimed a new operational concept- ‘Expanded Maneuver’ aimed at deterring China. It included four ‘functional battle-areas[v]:

·?????? Contested logistics

·?????? Joint fires

·?????? All-domain command-and-control, and

·?????? Information advantage

Preparing for implementing this new operational-concept, US forces home-ported in Alaska, Washington State, California, Hawaii, Japan, Okinawa, RoK, Guam and Australia[vi] have been conducting multiple joint-forces drills with allied services since 2023, leaving behind stockpiles of arms, ammunitions, explosives and non-lethal combat-support stockpiles in host-countries across China’s periphery. The US Army, for instance, stored ‘roughly 330 vehicles and trailers and 130 containers in warehouses in Bandiana’ in northeastern Australia. US Pacific Army intended to use that practice as a template for future stockpiles elsewhere. Responding to fears China would ‘bomb jet-fuel supplies or refueling ships, crippling US air and sea power without having to battle heavily-armed fighter jets or sink’ US warships, PACOM is spreading military logistics hubs ‘across the region.’[vii] A conflict with China could be extended, and US-allied forces are readying themselves for that contingency.

Caging the dragon? If US leaders were anxious about China’s power, Beijing, too, faced challenges- some geographic. US strategy vs. China had for decades focused on constraining and containing manifestations of Chinese power within the ‘US-owned’ 1st Island Chain, by controlling ‘choke-points along key maritime routes.’ With Japan to the north, Taiwan in the middle, the Philippines and Indonesia to the south, the Island-Chain was a US-controlled bulwark. In March 2024, Washington solidified its control of the Chain by incorporating Brunei into its counter-China fire-wall. As a pair of F-35 stealth-fighters from Eielson Air Force Base, Alaska, landed at Brunei’s Rimba air-base, USAF officials stated, ‘The Indo-Pacific region is the priority theatre. The US is a Pacific nation.’ With ‘unbreakable bonds’ tying America to the region, ‘Brunei Darussalam (is) a key partner in the Indo-Pacific region, advancing our bilateral economic goals, peace, and security.’[i]

Brunei was the last piece in Washington’s 1st Island Chain maritime-fence around China. Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines and Indonesia have long been US treaty-allies or ‘strategic partners.’ Even though the USA officially recognized the PRC as ‘the sole legal government of China, and Taiwan is a part of China,’ its 1979 Taiwan Relations Act, and its July 1982 ‘Six Assurances’ to Taipei effectively negated that undertaking by stipulating US military support for Taiwan’s self-determination. As long as China’s growing power could be contained within the space defined by the 1st Island Chain, China was hemmed-in physically, unable to break-out of any US-led blockade, and secure external linkage with sources of support.

China’s geographical vulnerability became a source of leverage in US maritime thinking after President Obama proclaimed the ‘Asia Pivot’ in 2011. Naval strategists wrote: ‘Want to give China an ulcer, a nagging sore that compels Beijing to think twice about aggression? Then look at the 1st Island Chain.’ The Island Chain gave the US-Japan alliance ‘abundant opportunities to make trouble’ for PLAN by ‘denying China’s military access to the vast maneuver space of the Western Pacific’ and hampering its movement along the ‘Asian seaboard.’ US strategists recommended ‘fortifying the offshore island chain while deploying naval assets in adjoining waters,’ yielding ‘major strategic gains on the cheap.’[ii] Washington’s $75m arms-package to Taiwan including the Link-16 Communications System that knits NATO-members battlespace -awareness into a ‘transnational coalition kill-chain’ targeting China, incorporated Taiwan’s defences into the US-led Pacific-Atlantic fire-system.[iii] The ‘Pivot’ thus presented China with a much more constricted geo-military reality. Just how constricted, emerged at the first war-game simulation conducted by the US House Select Committee on China in April 2023. War-games targeting China have been a staple of US armed forces planning-methodology for decades, but for China-focused legislators, this was a revelatory first. Early on in a clash over Taiwan, PLAN ‘missiles and rockets cascade down on Taiwan and on US forces’ in Japan and Guam. Initial casualties included ‘hundreds, possibly thousands, of US troops. Taiwan’s and China’s losses are even higher.’ Once conflict begins, ‘US and Chinese satellites, space-weapons, drones, submarines, ground forces, warships, fighter squadrons, cyber-warriors, communications experts, bankers, Treasury officials and diplomats all go to war.’ Costs were exorbitant on both sides but, in the words of the role-playing US Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman, ‘we survived.’ In short, conflict ended without crossing the cataclysmic conventional-vs.-nuclear threshold.[i]

To ensure this outcome, US strategy ‘must include effective deterrence and defeat of simultaneous Russian and Chinese aggression in Europe and Asia using conventional forces.’ Inadequate conventional forces would ‘increase reliance on nuclear weapons to deter or counter opportunistic or collaborative aggression in the other theatre.’ To secure effective deterrence, Washington must prepare for ‘combined aggression (by) Russia and China.’ The USA ‘needs a nuclear posture capable of simultaneously deterring both’ Russia and China.[ii] US assessments of Chinese thinking on strategic, i.e., nuclear-arms, and deterrence-related issues, indicated both sides saw ‘strategic stability’, ‘nuclear-deterrence’, ‘asymmetric strategic stability’, ‘mutual vulnerability’ and ‘survivable second-strike capability’ similarly.[iii] Mutual deterrence in a bipolar adversity is difficult enough; with three nuclear-armed great-powers in play- the situation, and individual calculations of deterrence-sufficiency, can become truly complicated. How each actor would reach decisions in the heat of battle was unclear.

Assuming the CNA appraisal of Chinese strategic thinking is accurate, the PLA must assure Beijing of survivable 2nd-strike capabilities. Given its much smaller nuclear/thermo-nuclear arsenal than the USA’s (and Russia’s), China’s survivable 2nd-strike capabilities, i.e., residual warheads+delivery systems along with C4ISR facilities operational after a hostile 1st-strike has been absorbed, assumes much greater significance for effective deterrence. Sea-based weapons (SLBM-armed SSBNs) being less vulnerable than land-based ICBMs, assured 2nd-strike capabilities usually depend on functioning submarine-launched nuclear-armed ballistic missiles such as the Julang-3 SLBMs on PLAN’s six Type-094A Jin-class SSBNs.[iv] The SSBNs, on operational patrols for several years, must continually provide flexible and survivable 2nd-strike capabilities for effective deterrence, thereby securing strategic stability. This stability is fundamental to sustaining a generally safe and secure milieu for all actors.

Seen from the US perspective, a well-functioning Chinese sea-based nuclear deterrent could have ‘complex effects, decreasing risks that Chinese decisionmakers confront use-or-lose escalation pressures, making China less susceptible to US nuclear threats and intimidations’ and therefore perceiving ‘lower costs to conventional aggression,’ and potentially introducing ‘escalation risks from conventional-nuclear entanglement to the maritime domain.’[v] For PLAN deterrent-patrols to be effective, its SSBNs must be able to undertake these continually across a widely-unpredictable and undetectable battle-space from whose sanctuary these could assuredly conduct effective 2nd-strike missions.[vi] To do that, SSBNs must be able to operate not only in proximate deep-water South China Sea bastions, but also exit at will undetected into the Pacific Ocean through the Miyako Strait and the Bashi Channel.

These two choke-points, respectively between Okinawa and Miyako Island north of Taiwan, and between Taiwan and the Philippines’ Luzon Island, constrain PLAN vessels’ free movement between coastal China and the Pacific Ocean. The USA, Japan, and Taiwan have invested significant efforts and resources in establishing sophisticated surveillance facilities around these straits so that no PLAN surface and sub-surface assets can cross these channels undetected. PLAN, PLANAF and PLAAF drills, occasionally with PLARF units’ collaboration, demonstrate their ability to use these straits in peace-time.[vii] However, should tensions rise or a conflict begin, how swiftly and freely Chinese ships and submarines can exit China’s near-seas so that planned operational missions- including SSBN strategic-deterrent patrols- can be conducted with confidence and efficacy, remains somewhat uncertain.

Restoring/sustaining strategic stability: Given the complex mix of structural, subjective-passionate, historical-geographic, ethno-cultural, scientific-technological and nationalistic drivers converging in China's maritime periphery, how could the two states restore a measure of strategic stability, on which they and their partners could fashion a more sustainable security-landscape? Since the systemic-primate dominates the power-hierarchy, the challenge rests on the USA's proclaimed-challenger, China. The primate is determined - as seen above - to perpetuate its primacy, while its presumed peer-rival rejects self-abnegation - choices are therefore limited and dialectic. Assuming the two leaderships carry kernels of statesmanship, their engagements may gain substance over time. The two 'rivals' bear differentiated 'responsibilities', convoluted by persistent perceptual grievances. But if strategic stability is the goal, possibilities exist.

History, geography and geopolitics shape China’s complex maritime milieu. If China can reduce the current level of uncertainty and demonstrate the ability of its strategic assets to take their deterrence-stations in the Pacific as is operationally necessary or planned, then the credibility of its deterrence-ability will rise, thereby strengthening strategic-stability. If, however, eroding US-led ISR constraints on its assured 2nd-strike assets and capabilities prove infeasible, then the credibility of its sea-based deterrent will suffer, and must be compensated with reinforced survivability of its land-based 2nd-strike assets, e.g., land-mobile ICBMs with MIRVed warheads, so that deterrence-credibility and deterrence-efficacy are sustained above and beyond hostile BMD capabilities. That would be the strategic-operational approach to mitigating risks.

But what is necessary may not be sufficient. As the US Congressional war-games revealed, while both antagonists in the simulation took rapidly escalatory ‘defensive’ action in response to the other’s actions, neither party engaged in diplomacy- to either restore crisis-stability or secure conflict-termination, or to prevent crisis from escalating to conflict, in the first place. Conflict reflected the failure of deterrence and an absence of diplomacy. US-Chinese strategic imbalance-fed grand-strategic fluidity thus opened up issues meriting urgent policy-level attention.

[i] Aquilino J, Statement: US Indo-Pacom Posture. Senate Armed Services Committee, Washington, 21Mar 2024. Emphasis in original.

[ii] Shepardson D, US official says Chinese seizure of TSMC in Taiwan would be ‘absolutely devastating.’ Reuters, 9May 2024.

[iii] Panella C, China has a lot more missiles- with US warships and bases in its sights. Business Insider, 4May 2024.

[iv] Fanell J, Another Historic Year for the PLAN. Proceedings, US Naval Institute, May 2024.

[v] Congressional Strategic Posture Commission, Final Report. Washington, Oct 2023, p.vii.

[i] Aquilino J, Statement: US Indo-Pacom Posture. Op cit.

[ii] Ibid.

[iii] Birgbauer P, The US Pivot to Asia Was Dead on Arrival. Diplomat, 31Mar 2022.

[i] Baldwin, R, China is the world’s sole manufacturing superpower. VoxEU/CEPR, 17Jan 2024.

[ii] Report, China’s New Top 7 Cities for Manufacturing. ITI Blog, China's New Top 7 Cities for Manufacturing - ITI Manufacturing? Accessed 8May 2024.

[iii] Johnson J, US deploys midrange missile system in Indo-Pacific for first time. Japan Times, 16Apr 2024.

[iv] Mulvenon J, Chairman Hu and the PLA’s ‘New Historic Missions’. China Leadership Monitor No.27, Hoover Institution, Stanford, Winter 2009.

[v] Marshall A, Summer Study Final Report: Asia 2025. Office of Net Assessment/DoD, 4Aug 1999.

[vi] Myers L, China’s Economic Security Challenge: Difficulties Overcoming the Malacca Dilemma. Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, 22Mar 2023.

[vii] LaGrone S, Chinese See US LCS as ‘Powerful Tool’ in Future Distributed Conflicts. US Naval Institute, 11Aug 2021.

[viii] Stavridis J, China Has 350 Warships. The US Has 290. That’s a Problem. Bloomberg, 2May 2024; Yamaguchi M, US, Japan and South Korea hold drills in disputed sea as Biden hosts leaders of Japan, Philippines. AP, 12Apr 2024; Rogin J, The US has a powerful new alliance- thanks to China. Washington Post, 9Apr 2024; AFP, China conducts ‘combat patrols’ as US holds drills with allies in disputed waters. Voice of America, 7Apr 2024; Garamone J, US Official Says Allies Acting Together to Deter China. DoD News, 29Sep 2023; Baldor L, How the US is boosting military alliances to counter China. AP, 3Feb 2023.

[ix] Gomez J, US, Australian and Philippine forces sink a ship during war drills in the disputed SCS. AP, 8May 2024; Akagawa S, Minami T, Germany, France to send naval and air forces to Indo-Pacific. Nikkei, 8May 2024; Deng X, Guo Y, US recruits Japan for joint patrols with the Philippines; maneuver to further destabilize region, threaten China’s surrounding security: experts. Global Times; 31Mar 2024; Xia W, US non-stop military drills with allies push Asia-Pacific toward more dangerous situation. Global Times, 9Feb 2024.

[i] Brand H, Cooper Z, Dilemmas of Deterrence: The US’ Smart New Strategy Has Six Daunting Trade-offs. CSIS, 12Mar 2024.

[ii] Report, Five US Aircraft Carriers to Operate in the Indo-Pacific This Year. Defence Security Asia, 15Feb 2024.

[iii] Editorial, Beware, RIMPAC brings back Cold War specter to Asia-Pacific region. Global Times, 2Jul 2022.

[iv] Bobrowski S, MAGTF STAND-IN FORCE EXERCISE EMPOWERS SMALL-UNIT LEADERS, INCREASES READINESS IN THE INDO-PACIFIC. 3RD Marine Division, Japan, 7Jan 2024.

[v] Pryor G, Logistics in the Indo-Pacific: Setting the Theater for a Conflict over Taiwan. US Army, 1Feb 2024.

[vi] Feickert A, US Ground Forces in the Indo-Pacific: Background and Issues for Congress. CRS, 30Aug 2022.

[vii] Stewart P, Ali I, How the US is preparing for a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. Reuters, 1Feb 2024.

[i] Feng J, US Air Power Reaches New Point in First Island Chain Around China. Newsweek, 9Mar 2024.

[ii] Holmes J, Defend the First Island Chain. Proceedings, Apr 2014.

[iii] Noh K, After Ukraine, US readies ‘transnational kill-chain’ for Taiwan proxy war. Geopolitical Economy, 1Mar 2024.

[i] Knickmeyer E, Lawmakers war-game conflict with China, hoping to deter one. AP, 22Apr 2023.

[ii] Commission on the Strategic Posture of the US, Final Report. Washington, pp.vii-viii.

[iii] Kaufman A, Waidelich B, PRC Writings on Strategic Deterrence. Centre for Naval Analysis, Alexandria, Feb 2023, pp.i-ii.

[iv] Caggiano L, China Deploys New SLBMs. Arms Control Association, May 2023; report, Chinese Navy has now six Type-094A Jin-class nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines. Army Recognition, 2May 2020.

[v] Logan D, China’s Sea-Based Nuclear Deterrent: Organizational, Operational, and Strategic Implications. US Naval War College, Dec 2023, p.1.

[vi] McDevitt M, Does China Have an Effective Sea-based Nuclear Deterrent? CSIS China Power Project. ?26Aug 2020.

[vii] Gady F, Why China’s Military Wants to Control These 2 Waterways in East Asia. Diplomat, 15Sep 2019.