Dissecting the Dragon: Confrontation, Coercion, and Asymmetric Leverage in China's New Pacific

Abstract : This study aims to develop and assess strategic options for confronting a hostile China, with the specific intent of recommending changes to US strategy to enhance the United States ability to defend Taiwan. By evaluating the military modernization effort currently underway in China, the author distills an overall Chinese anti-access military strategy, which through asymmetric means grants the Chinese, for the first time, a reasonable expectation of air superiority over and around Taiwan. Furthermore, the author examines and discredits the doctrine of overwhelming force that has come to characterize America at war in the modern era. With this conventional wisdom invalidated, the author analyzes China's general and specific strategic goals, and describes a critical disparity between China's narrow goal of Taiwanese re-unification and China's grand strategic goals of continued economic prosperity and regional hegemony. Using this disparity as a critical leverage point, the author develops five strategic options: blockade of the Malacca Strait, conventional compellence, counter invasion, unconventional warfare, and nuclear brinkmanship. Ultimately, blockade, counter invasion, conventional compellence, and unconventional warfare on the Chinese mainland are shown to be effective at exerting pressure on China's grand strategy by threatening China's energy security, economic stability, diplomatic standing, and internal domestic stability. Conventional compellence and insurgency on Taiwan are proven effective strategies to more directly confront Chinese aggression against Taiwan. Nuclear brinkmanship is shown to be an invalid policy against China, as Chinese modernization efforts have granted that country a survivable and reliable retaliatory strike capability. This study concludes by addressing the four Chinese courses of action against Taiwan that DOD deems plausible, and recommends specific strategic options or combination of options to confront those courses of action.