Schelling Goes to Sea: Managing Perceptions in China’s ‘Contested Zone’

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Notes

1 Joseph S. Nye, ‘The American National Interest and Global Public Goods’, International Affairs 78/2 (April 2002) p. 238.

2 Carl von Clausewitz, On War, (ed. and trans.) Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton UP 1976) p.92.

3 Ibid. p.79.

4 Ibid. pp.36–7.

5 Ibid. p.605.

6 Ibid. pp.87, 606.

7 Sun Tzu, The Art of War, trans. Samuel B. Griffith (London: Oxford UP 1963) p.77.

8 Mao Zedong, On Protracted War [1938] (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press 1972) pp.226–8.

9 Sun Tzu deemed winning without fighting the supreme excellence for kings and commanders. Americans tend to look askance at such notions, conceiving of war as something that happens ‘should deterrence fail’. For them, diplomacy halts when the shooting starts and resumes when the guns fall silent, presumably after the overthrow of an enemy. ‘Sun‐Tzu’s Art of War’, in The Seven Military Classics of Ancient China, trans. Ralph D. Sawyer (Boulder, CO: Westview 1993) p.161; Carnes Lord, ‘American Strategic Culture’, Comparative Strategy 5/3 (1985) p. 276; Russell F. Weigley, The American Way of War (Bloomington: Indiana UP 1973) pp.xvii–xxiii.

10 Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP 1960) pp.4–5, 9.

11 Thomas C. Schelling, Arms and Influence, 2nd ed. (New Haven, CT: Yale UP 2008) p.43.

12 Schelling, Strategy of Conflict (note 10) pp.21–80; Schelling, Arms and Influence (note 11) pp.35–91.

13 Schelling, Strategy of Conflict (note 10) pp.21–80.

14 Ibid. p. 36.

15 Clausewitz, On War (note 2) pp.56–8, 596.

16 Barry R. Posen, ‘Command of the Commons: The Military Foundation of US Hegemony’, International Security 28/1 (Summer 2003) p.22.

17 Clausewitz, On War (note 2) p.528.

18 Julian S. Corbett, Some Principles of Maritime Strategy (London: Longmans, Green, 1911; repr. with intro. Eric J. Grove, Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press 1988) pp.62–4.

19 Schelling, Arms and Influence (note 11) p. 35.

20 For a more exhaustive treatment of cross‐strait relations following the 2008 elections in Taiwan and the United States, see James R. Holmes, ‘A Clausewitzian Appraisal of Cross‐Strait Relations’, Issues & Studies 44/4 (Dec. 2008) pp.29–70.

21 Mao Zedong, ‘Strategy in China’s Revolutionary War’ [1936], in Selected Writings of Mao Tse‐Tung, Vol. 1 (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press 1966) pp.208, 211, 217, 234.

22 ‘American Attitudes: Americans & the World’, World Public Opinion.org, 〈www.americans-world.org/digest/regional_issues/china/china7.cfm〉. See also Pew Global Attitudes Project, 12 June 2008, pp.34–44, 〈http://pewglobal.org/reports/pdf/260.pdf〉.

23 For an extended treatment of US and Taiwanese attitudes toward the cross‐strait impasse, see Holmes, ‘A Clausewitzian Appraisal of Cross‐Strait Relations’ (note 20).

24 Milan N. Vego, Naval Strategy and Operations in Narrow Seas (London: Frank Cass 1999) pp.85–8. For the US Army’s definition of interior lines, see Headquarters, US Department of the Army, Field Manual 3‐0, Operations (Washington DC: US Army June 2001) pp.5‐7, 5‐9, 〈www.dtic.mil/doctrine/jel/service_pubs/fm3_0b.pdf〉.

25 Mao Zedong, ‘Problems of Strategy in Guerrilla War’ [1938], in Selected Writings of Mao Tse‐Tung, Vol. 2 (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press 1966) p. 83.

26 Ibid. pp. 82–4.

27 Adm. Liu Huaqing, who commanded the PLA Navy during the 1980s, coined the phrase ‘offshore active defense’. He urged China to adopt a phased strategy to wring control of the waters within the first island chain from the US Navy before turning its attention to the waters within the ‘second island chain’, farther out in the Pacific, and ultimately to global competition for maritime supremacy. See Bernard D. Cole, The Great Wall at Sea: China’s Navy Enters the Twenty‐First Century (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press 2001) pp.165–68; Jeffrey B. Goldman, ‘China’s Mahan’, US Naval Institute Proceedings (March 1996) pp.44–7; Jun Zhan, ‘China Goes to the Blue Waters: The Navy, Sea Power Mentality, and the South China Sea’, Journal of Strategic Studies 17/3 (Sept. 1994) pp.189–91; Alexander Chieh‐Cheng Huang, ‘The Chinese Navy’s Offshore Active Defense Strategy’, Naval War College Review 47/3 (Summer 1994) p.18.

28 Maj. Gen. Jiang Shiliang, ‘The Command of Communications’, Zhongguo Junshi Kexue, 2 Oct. 2002, pp.106– 114, FBIS‐CPP20030107000189.

29 Martin Andrew, ‘The Dragon Breathes Fire: Chinese Power Projection’, China Brief, 5/16 (19 July 2005) pp.5– 8.

30 Keith Crane et al., Modernizing China’s Military: Opportunities and Constraints (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2005).

31 James R. Holmes and Toshi Yoshihara, ‘The Influence of Mahan upon China’s Maritime Strategy’, Comparative Strategy 24/1 (Jan.–March 2005) pp.53–71; Lyle J. Goldstein and William S. Murray, ‘Undersea Dragons: China’s Maturing Submarine Force’, International Security 28/4 (Spring 2004) pp.162–94.

32 Of the Japanese invasion of China, Mao wrote, ‘Japan, though strong, does not have enough soldiers. China, though weak, has a vast territory, a large population and plenty of soldiers.’ Even if strong enemy forces seized key urban areas and communication nodes, then, China would retain ‘a general rear and vital bases from which to carry on the protracted war to final victory’. Mao, ‘Problems of Strategy in Guerrilla War’ (note 25) p.158.