Getting old before getting rich?

I apologize for pushing my promised C4ISR article off, but I received some questions from Chris M. about demographics, development and China:

I have a question that I would like to run by an actual East Asian specialist. Much is made about how China will be the new world power- the one to replace the US. I just don't see how it is possible. China is in a demographic coffin corner and in 50 years they are going to be totally screwed. Look at the age/sex curve projected by the Census bureau for 2050. Sure, in 2050 they will have 70+ million young males of military age, but they are going to have 450 million people 60+ (they are going to have a population 60+ larger than the entire US!). How can an economy grow, a country afford a military (especially the opportunity cost of those productive young males), and the country be expected to do anything with that much population that old? Short of inventing robots to take care of all those old folks, who will? Indonesians? Who will pay for all of this? Their ratio of workers to 60+ people will be less than 2:1. That will be a severe problem, right?

What happens when a country that is somewhat poor per capita, but has a pretty industrialized economy, goes gray really rapidly? The closest I can think of is Russia and some of the old Communist countries, who have aged tremendously in the past 15 years, but isn't a lot of that due to immigration and economic distress, not totally broken birth rates (leaving the huge sex-ratio disparity in the PRC completely out of the picture)? We also can see what happens when a rich country (per capita) grays- we have Japan and Western Europe to show us the way, but I can't think of a good model for this sort of thing. They would have to fix a lot of problems in their universal education system to be able to follow the path that Japan and Western Europe are blazing.

No one who predicts that China is the coming threat to the US, or that China will soon be the world's economic engine seems to ever mention this problem. Why is that? Am I missing something that people who have actually studied the issue understand? I'm somewhat afraid that this is a kooky position, as I haven't seen it discussed in the popular press.

In answer to your first question - yes, the Census Bureau's figures on Chinese population growth should be considered a fairly accurate prediction of the future. Their country summary shows that Chinese fertility rates are well under the replacement rate. The projections show that China's population growth rate will go negative around 2035, which means their total population will peak at about 1.46 billion. By all accounts, Russia's total population peaked around 1995, Italy and Japan's peaked around 2005. In fact, if you look at the Global Population at a Glance report the Census Bureau issued in 2002, the human population growth rate peaked somewhere around 2000 and the mean global fertility rate is expected to drop below the replacement rate around 2050.

Now we get to the question, "So what does this mean for China?" Before I answer that, I want to dispel the myth that population aging is always a bad thing. Declines in population growth over time will push a country's demographic composition away from a traditional pyramid shape to something more akin to a paper lantern.

Chris is right to point out that this means this will tip the population balance away from the young toward the old, but it doesn't say much about who will work. Japan and Europe have been pretty lucky because they were able to transition their economies from manufacturing towards services, which is far more friendly to older workers. Older workers are generally better at service jobs because their experience and knowledge generally adds the most value. Service jobs are also less physically intense, which allows older workers to stay on the job longer.

This does not come without cost though. Older workers require a higher degree of medical attention and at some point that cost will outweigh their contribution to the economy. This will be particularly problematic if the inflationary trend in the price of medical care in the United States -- 7.9% in 2004 according to the Economist (sorry, subscription only) -- spreads to other countries. All is not lost though because there are two effects that may mitigate the medical care crunch Chris sees over the horizon. First, older workers save more because they don't have to care children. Second, spending on health care generates fairly high margin service jobs.

The key question is, can China fill those jobs? Maybe. The Chinese economic miracle is largely predicated on a delicate balance of fertility, development and migration. The reasonably well-educated middle class that has grown in coastal provinces would not be able to meet demand without the constant flow of unskilled workers from China's interior.

If migration slows down before the Chinese economy moves further up the product life cycle, growth may come to a screeching halt. China could mitigate this by accepting greater flows of immigrants from the poorer states of Southeast Asia (Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Burma, etc.), but it is not clear whether they would make such a dramatic policy shift before the foreign direct investment starts flowing somewhere else.

This structural movement is certainly possible. The Japanese and Europeans pulled it off in the 1950s-1960s and the Asian tigers did the same in the 1970s-1980s. So the take-home message on this subject is that population decline could seriously derail its economy, but shouldn't if the Chinese manage it correctly.

As for what things will look like after 2050, I don't know. At that point, the predictions of statisticians and economists are about as certain as fiction novels on the subject. One thing is for sure, China will probably have to get a lot more comfortable with accepting immigrants from the last few high fertility spots in the world (Africa, South Asia and the Near East).

The real question is what will happen to Russia. It looks like the boom in commodity prices and Russia's shrinking population are turning it into a full-blown rentier state. There are definitely indications that the Dutch disease's 'spending effect' is hollowing out parts of the Russian economy.

China wants military power = Duh...

I'm growing so tired of boring pieces on China's military modernization. The latest example: American Enterprise Institute scholar Gary Schmitt's real snoozer in the op-ed section of today's Post:

Obviously, greater transparency by the Chinese would be helpful. But absent a significant shift toward political liberalization in China, there's no reason to expect that to happen. And anyway, after a decade and a half of military buildup, do we really need greater transparency to understand what China is up to?

The Chinese are a proud people and they want to be seen as a powerful, potentially dominant, state. And power, they understand, includes not only a strong economy but a powerful military. When the Chinese look at the world today, who gets in their way most of the time? It's certainly not the Europeans, who have economic strength but little hard power. It's the United States.

There is a tendency on the part of American Sinologists to think that China's "peaceful development" precludes it from craving what all rising powers before it have craved -- power and recognition. Yet the Chinese don't think the two are opposed at all. They view a growing economy as critical to solving their domestic problems, but they also know that it is critical to providing the resources for military modernization and expansion.

The lack of transparency is, if anything, a dodge we've used to avoid dealing with the real problem: China's ambitions to be as great a power as it can be. It's understandable, perhaps, that with all that is on America's plate at the moment, we're not inclined to add China. But that doesn't change the fact that Beijing believes the more military power it has, the more likely it is that those ambitions will be fulfilled.

I'll be the first person to agree with Mr. Schmitt's point here. China's military build up is almost entirely based its desire to amass national power. Since the end of the Cold War and its opening to investment from the West, threats against China have declined precipitously. There is an argument that modernization can sometimes reduce a military's long-term cost, but it would be hard to quantify this argument without reliable information on the PLA's current operating costs.

The problem is that Mr. Schmitt's argument does not answer two questions that are far more important:

Is this actually a threat?: The reason why American Sinologists pour over Chinese policy documents and lament about the PLA's lack of transparency is that foreign military power itself is not a threat. After the U.S., the next largest military spenders are the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Japan -- all of which are U.S. allies. One could easily argue that their $233 billion will be used against us any time soon. China is more of a black box. Do they plan on using their military to support the current U.S.-backed status quo or will they attempt to revise it? If they do intend to revise the status quo, how far are they willing to go to meet their objectives? These questions will lead to highly divergent requirements for the U.S. military that come with different future forces and price tags.

What can we do about it?: The U.S.'s military capabilities currently dwarf those of China and this is likely to continue for decades. Even China comes close to catching up, what can we do about it? U.S. military spending is pretty close to its budgetary limits and the Chinese have the sovereign right to build a military within the limits of international law. What does Mr. Schmitt propose we do if China's capabilities begin to rival our own? Raise taxes and increase defense spending? Launch a pre-emptive strike on China's materiel factories? Attempt to stifle Chinese economic growth?

China's interest in amassing military power tells me nothing. At the same time, "American preeminence" is an end state, not a strategy. Mr. Schmitt should come back when he has something interesting to say.

New DoD report on China's military. (Yawn)

The Office of the Secretary of Defense published its 2007 Annual Report to Congress on the Military Power of the People's Republic of China. As you might expect, the report confirms that the People's Liberation Army is still pursuing a standard modernization strategy -- better command and control, more precise and longer range weapons, better space assets, etc. There are also references to PLA interest in asymmetrical capabilities, with the typical mention of cyberwar (i.e. digital attack), as well as a few paragraphs tying January's ASAT test into the Navy's beloved "anti-access" theme.

The report does has have two points that I found particularly interesting:

1. DF-31 goes ITA -- If you're my age, you were in high school when the Intelligence Community developed the idea of "initial threat availability." It was the IC's response to the 1998 Rumsfeld Commission Report's apt criticism that their existent analytical approach to missile threat estimation relied too heavily on past patterns of missile development. As time passed, it appeared that the Rumsfeld Commission's fear of rampant "at any cost" missile proliferation was overblown, so the idea has mostly gathered dust on a self somewhere -- that is until the afternoon of Friday, May 23.

In a bit of classical bureaucratic salami-slicing, the DoD pulled out the term to punt on the question of when China will actually field the DF-31s. According the report implies that the Chinese tested the DF-31 sometime in 2006, but they do not have all of the support equipment, personnel and command systems in place to support the missile. I vaguely remember a missile test in the Ghobi last year, but I can't pinpoint the time frame -- I'll do some digging.

2. Shock and awe is alive and well in Beijing -- It seems that the U.S. military experience in Iraq has done little to tarnish China's interest in cultivating network-centric warfare capabilities. The PLA's book on Joint Space War Campaigns even mentions the idea of "shock and awe" preemption as a form of deterrence (bottom of page 21).

It appears that the U.S. experience in Iraq hasn't caused the Chinese to question the value of either concept. The report even calls this issue out in terms of China's deterrence posture towards Taiwan (box at the top of page 33). What would China do if it couldn't compel the Taiwanese government with its missiles and "non-war" operations? Even if it had the assets to launch a successful amphibious invasion, a native insurgency would grind their land forces up (subtext: especially if it was U.S.-sponsored).

Update: Tequila, Yathrib and a few of my readers have taken issue with my musings about insurgency in a hypothetical post-invasion Taiwan. If one assumes (1) that the invasion is a unilateral move by the mainland and (2) it takes 3-6 months for the PLA to control the entire island, I see the following factors contributing to insurgency:

1. A history of divise sectarian rule -- Taiwan has been a democracy for less than a decade. Before then, it was a repressive, corporatist oligarchy run by mainlander elites. I can see any attempt by the Kuomintang to cozy up with the People's Republic ripping open the social and political wounds between the mainlanders, Fujianese and Hakka that are only now healing. In a sense, the political divisions Tequila mentions would serve a predicate for resistance and potential sectarian violence -- all it would take is another 228.

2. The training and materiel is already there -- True, commercial access to guns and explosives in Taiwan is limited, but then again, I imagine they weren't widely available in Iraq prior to 2003 either. The intervening variable here is Taiwan's 1.3 million reservists and their access to the Taiwanese military's stockpile of weapons and explosives. I am seriously skeptical of the Bush administration's assertion that Iran needs to supply the Iraqi insurgency when 7 million tons of materiel was pilfered from the Iraqi military's depots. The same situation could easily come to fruition in Taiwan, especially when PLA tanks start rolling down the streets of Taipei and Kaohsiung.

3. The PLA's slow invasion -- The PLAN's amphibious assault capabilities are pretty limited, so I doubt they could achieve the same kind of maneuver that got us into Baghdad so quickly. PRC rule on Taiwan would not be a sudden fait accompli for the government, businesses or localities. The government would have time to distribute arms. Failing that, an extended lapse in public security could seriously undermine public confidence in governance like it did in Iraq.

This was merely an intellectual exercise designed to challenge the potential assumptions of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. It is by no means definitive or likely, but I would argue it is strong possibility with significant consequences for the mainland and Taiwan.

Second Update: I doff my hat to Tequila for all of his great comments. I'm glad to see that someone else is still interested in Taiwanese politics and society.

What happens to Prompt Global Strike when START stops?

So after Congress killed the Conventional Trident Missile, the U.S. Air Force has stepped up to plate with a "midterm solution": Conventional Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles.

[Col. Richard Patenaude, chief of the deterrence and strike division for Air Force Space Command] said the missile may be based in the continental United States or abroad, and “may or may not” be considered an intercontinental ballistic missile under START Treaty counting rules.

In defending the Pentagon decision to move ahead with the conventional Trident, some defense officials have suggested a conventional land-based alternative could be problematic because Russia or China may misinterpret a launch as a potential nuclear threat to their nations.

Patenaude took pains to make clear the Air Force “has no plans to put conventional warheads on current operational ICBMs or [use] their silos.”

Other defense officials have described how a land-based missile could be configured so it is incapable of carrying a nuclear payload and use a trajectory to its target that would not threaten other nuclear weapons nations. It also could be inspected by the Russians under existing arms control regimes; based on a U.S. coastline in Florida or California so launch debris could fall in the ocean rather than on land; and made capable of being rapidly retargeted.

By contrast, critics have complained the Trident submarines would use a weapon virtually identical to its nuclear-armed twin; remain on patrol typically just off Russian coasts, potentially posing at least a debris threat to Russia; likely be closed to Russian onsite inspection; and possibly take hours or longer to receive target data and steam within range of nations where fleeting threats may appear.

There are two big holes in your plan Col. Patenaude. First, the inspection provisions of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty expire in 2009 and the Bush administration is doing little to renew it. In fact, the current STRATCOM commander, Marine General James E. Cartwright did a pretty smooth waltz around the subject when Arms Control Today brought it up in a June 2006 interview:

ACT: Speaking of treaties with Russia, the 1991 START, with its extensive verification and information exchange regime, is set to expire in December 2009. As a military commander, are you worried about losing that level of transparency and confidence provided by that regime, and would you like to see those mechanisms or measures extended or transformed in some way?

Cartwright: As a military commander, I would sure like to see them transformed; if not transformed, then to remain. I think you want something that is a little more responsive to the changes that occur in the world than the current treaty construct. That is someone else’s domain—the Department of State—to figure out. The attributes that you would seek are transparency, the ability to generate warning time, and confidence in what the intentions are of a counterpart. When talking about the United States and Russia before, I mentioned warning time. Warning time allows me to defend myself and not misjudge what it is that you are doing. A vehicle [for the attributes mentioned above] should allow the regime or protocol to keep up with the state of the technology in the future.

The State Department is working very hard on a Joint Data Exchange Center with the Russians. It has had some trouble getting its foundation laid down, but it looks like it is starting to move forward. This center would allow us to exchange information in real time and across more than just offensive weapons. We could start to look at missile defense, defensive weapons, and space sensors. There are any number of things that you could start to bring in to help create, like we did with warning time, better confidence of what each other is doing so misinterpretation becomes less of a problem. Whatever the construct is that we do with a treaty-like activity, you are trying to make sure that you can build confidence, understand the intentions of your adversary, and have time to react appropriately to those intentions. Usually, “appropriately” is defined as finding alternative ways to get out of a problem. You want to generate the time to be able to do that; the less time, the less options you have.

Treaty-like activity indeed. ACT gets the best interview quotes sometimes.

The second hole is that it may be impossible to gain international acceptance of the Prompt Global Strike concept. Even if the you could conclusively mitigate the potential for a mistaken nuclear attack, China and Russia still have cause to fear Prompt Global Strike because they couldn't defend against it. Does the military think that either nuclear power would accept the idea that the United State could launch a strike deep within its territory? The Bush administration feels so insecure about such a scenario happening to the United States that it is funding missile defense programs to the tune of $10 billion annually.

There are plenty of other reasons for other states to feel wary about conventionally-tipped long-range ballistic missiles. William Arkin correctly points out that the Prompt Global Strike concept occupies a fantasy land where the U.S. Intelligence Community incompetently misses all but the last minute warning signs of a catastrophic threat against the United States. The British-American Security Information Council argues that there is a very real chance the incredible time constraints applied to the system could lead to a 'shoot first, ask questions later' attitude. If anything, Russia should be wary of the slew of half-baked arguments that Prompt Global Strike advocates make to downplay the risk of misinterpretation over a U.S. launch. My favorite is "The Russians won't do anything because they know we're not after them."

Most importantly, military thinkers should realize that the Russians have been thinking about the implications of a long-range strategic strike capability for decades. Just check out this summary from Andrew Krepinevich's 1992 Office of Net Assessment study of Russian thinking on Military Technical Revolutions (the pdf version is down, I'm using a cached html version):

Strategic Strikes

It was observed that advanced technologies may provide the means for fielding an integrated group of networked systems (or architectures) that could execute conventional "strategic" strikes against an adversary. There has been some discussion, particularly in the Soviet/Russian literature, that this could occur through the employment of so-called aerospace operations, whereby airborne and space information (and perhaps weapon) platforms provide real-time targeting information to long-range precision-guided advanced conventional munitions, which may be land-, air-, or sea-based. If a sufficient information gap can be created , it may be possible to strike the entire range of enemy strategic targets comprising their center of gravity in a relatively short period of time,without first having to defeat the bulk of an enemy's military forces. Thus, strategic strikes would be expected to either coincide with, or follow on the heels of, operations to achieve information dominance, and perhaps air and space control as well. Strategic strikes would focus on a relatively small set of enemy targets—those comprising its center of gravity—i.e., those targets that, when disabled, will deny an enemy state the ability or the will to block an opponent from achieving its military objectives.

Furthermore, at some point in this revolution it may be possible, through the use of advanced simulations, to "test strike" a small subset of a target base, observe the effects—perhaps even matching the data obtained with simulations—and then deciding whether (and how) to continue eliminating the entire class of targets designated for destruction, or to identify more promising alternatives. There are two potential advantages to employing test strikes. First, they may allow a peer competitor to preserve time and resources critical to achieving its military objectives. The intent would be to avoid the situation the United States found itself in during previous strategic bombardment campaigns in World War II and the Vietnam War. In the former case, in the European theater the United States focused on several target sets (e.g., air frames)before finding Germany's weak point. During the Rolling Thunder campaign against North Vietnam, a progression of target sets was attacked (e.g., transportation, oil, electrical) without achieving the desired results. The importance of time and the high cost of advanced conventional munitions places a high premium on "getting it right the first time" in extracting the desired results from a chosen target set. Second, such an approach allows a peer competitor to avoid creating undesirable damage to the enemy state. Such unwanted damage may complicate war prosecution (one thinks here of the effect on domestic and world public opinion), war termination (will such damage stiffen the resolve of the target regime or its people?), and postwar plans (e.g., reconstruction).

In a war between peer competitors it seems clear that, unless an assured second-strike capability is established, the side that can execute its strategic strike operations first stands to benefit most, assuming that it retains sufficient information on the enemy target base, and overcomes active and passive defenses, to conduct its strikes effectively. This is an important point, since it is not yet clear that forces engaged in strategic strikes will have the requisite level of RSTA and battle-damage assessment (BDA) data, or that they will be able to negotiate successfully all enemy countermeasures. Therefore, in a war between peer competitors, it may not be possible to execute decisive strategic strikes,especially if the defender retains a sufficient level of its information structure intact to enable it to conduct an integrated, coordinated defense. As for nuclear weapons, they may become significantly more discriminate. Micronuclear weapons might be able to destroy targets with little collateral damage that conventional systems could not eliminate at an acceptable cost. While their employment may be useful in a purely military sense, there are obviously strong political factors and precedents for not employing nuclear weapons, save in extremis. However, nuclear weapons in the hands of radical regimes that possess ballistic or cruise missiles could emerge as the "poor man's" counter against peer competitor states.

But hey, I'm just crazy, right? Then again, I bet Bush didn't see Putin suspending Russian compliance in the CFE when he looked into his soul either...

Update: Dear readers, I apologize for all of the syntactical errors in this piece. Last Thursday was a lesson in why beer and blogging don't mix sometimes.

Blue helmets over the red flag

I may have studied under his mentor, but I can't stand Thomas "Captain Obvious" Barnett. He recently commented on the jump in Chinese participation in peacekeeping operations that started around 2004. His completely credulous surprise isn't all too unique though. Despite the fact that low intensity operations has been in vogue since 2001, peacekeeping is still considered the red-headed stepchild of military operations. I think the defense community would benefit from a little context before they jump to yet another conclusion about China's rise:

Countries participate in peacekeeping operations for a multitude of reasons. India, Pakistan and Bangladesh have been the three largest troop contributors since the 1980s, each regularly giving between 8,000-10,000 soldiers annually. Peacekeeping has clearly done little to modulate the reputation of these South Asia countries. Then why do they do it? For free training and logistical support, of course!

United Nations peacekeeping operations are paid for using a formula that distributes annual operational costs across all member states. The formula is based on a combination of politics and economics. Each member state ostensibly pays an equal share, except when their per capita gross national income (GNI) is under about $11,000. Countries with a per capita GNI below $11,000 receive a discount on their slice of the peacekeeping bill and that discount increases as national per capita GNI decreases. In the end, the five permanent members of the Security Council (with the voluntary assistance of Japan) are expected to pay the difference.

Countries with deep discounts (80-90%), such as India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Jordan, Ghana, Nigeria, Nepal and Uruguay, avidly participate in peacekeeping operations because it means someone else will cover the cost of training and sustaining their soldiers for a few years. For desperately countries like Bangladesh, peacekeeping missions often means access to highly specialized training (demining, civil affairs, policing) and language education that isn't available back home.

It may not seem obvious, but even the People's Liberation Army could be turning to peacekeeping as a source of training and support. Even if the DOD's estimate of Chinese military expenditures is correct, the PLA's personnel budget is probably spread pretty thin when it comes to training 2.2 active duty troops. The 300-500 soldier detachments operating in Liberia, Lebanon, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Southern Sudan will probably learn more during their deployment than they would at PLA schools for NCOs and junior officers.

I think the real story here is that China's gradual acceptance of the legitimacy of peacekeeping. Over a period of about twenty years, China went from being a vocal opponent of all peacekeeping operations to eventually supporting 'nonviolent and impartial' blue helmet missions. Despite a few hang-ups over U.S. 'peace enforcement' operations in Haiti and the former Yugoslavia, China was deploying a handful of observers and police advisers by the late 1990s.

As for the two large bumps on Stratfor's snazzy little chart, I think they are reflective of opportunism than a rising China thesis. The 2004 bump coincides with a significant expansion of the troop authorization for the UN Mission in Liberia from 4,000 to a then record-making 14,000. The 2006 increase also lines up nicely with expanded troop authorizations for the UN Organization Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (10,000 to 18,000) and the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (2,000 to 12,000).

If you break down current Chinese deployments by assigned mission, these three missions account for about 65% of their total troop contribution. Since each year represented a 25-33% increase in the demand for peacekeepers and typical contributors were already at their maximum contribution levels, it isn't surprising that China was forced to step up its involvement.

The bit of information that really surprised me is that the UN Mission in Sudan accounts for another 25%. I wonder if there is any relationship between China's willingness to support the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in Southern Sudan has anything to do with its interests in Sudanese oil - especially considering that oil is mostly located in Southern Sudan.

Update Madness 6 March 2007

Faithful readers, I apologize for the lack of posts during weekdays for the last two weeks. My Japanese language exit exam is in two days and I have spent almost every free moment for a fortnight cramming.

I've been cooking up some thoughts on arms control, the North Korea situation, Japanese defense politics and China's self-styled 'peaceful rise' -- spring break is next week, so I should have time to put them all online.

I also wanted to direct everyone's attention to my ClustrMaps. I anticipated only getting a modest amount of traffic, but I am really surprised by the geographic dispersion of my audience. Check out all of those readers in the London area and on the West Coast - definitely not the 'Inside the Beltway' crowd I expected.

I'm really impressed by how dispersed my Chinese visitors have been - Fuzhou, Nanjing, Guangzhou (or Hong Kong), Beijing, Shenyang, Harbin, and Lanzhou. The image of the Western-oriented urbanite who lives along China's coast is definitely an undeserved stereotype.

Overinflating the Chinese nuke threat

Mark Helprin may be a gifted writer, but his column in the Sunday Post proves that he should be kept as far away from defense policy as possible:

This has led the United States unwittingly to encourage China to move toward nuclear parity. In the next five years, as we reduce our arsenal from 10,000 strategic warheads to 1,700, China's MIRV'd silo-based missiles and imminent generations of MIRV'd mobile and sea-based ICBMs will easily allow a breakout from warhead numbers now variously estimated to range from 80 to 1,800.

Once, the vast imbalance (in 1987, 500:1) might have discouraged China from such augmentation, but no longer. Our reductions and their growth provide fewer targets for more missiles and will create the possibility and therefore the temptation, however remote, of a first strike. As we have cut the stable sea-based leg of our nuclear deterrent from 37 ballistic missile submarines to 14, China works to build its own and a fleet that can provide protected bastions at sea as well as hunt down the small number of American boats on station.

All of the recent U.S. government estimates of the Chinese nuclear arsenal that I've seen generally place it between 100 and 200 warheads (FAS has a nice summary of government estimates located here). I don't know where this 1,800 warheads number comes from, but it definitely doesn't come from the intelligence community.

I also don't know where Helprin is getting his data on Chinese missiles being equipped with multiple warheads, but that generally isn't believed to be the case. Even if it were true, it would mean a vast reduction in the explosive power of the Chinese arsenal. The intelligence community believes that current single warhead on China's silo-based DF-5 has about 4 megatons of explosive power. If China were to MIRV the DF-5 with 3 250 kiloton warheads, it would actually reduce the overall power of the missile by 80%. The same thing happened to our land-based missiles when the U.S. switched from the Atlas (4 megaton warhead) and Titan (9 megaton warhead) to the Minuteman (3 300-400 kiloton warheads).

The U.S. compensated for this loss of explosive power by simply building more of the MIRVed missiles. Our land-based part of the arsenal went from about 100 Titan and 30 Atlas ICBMs in the 1960s to 500 Minuteman ICBMs by the 1980s. I'm not aware of any public reporting that bear out an increase in Chinese ICBMs that would be commensurate with the introduction of MIRVs into their arsenal.

As for nuclear submarines, China doesn't really pose much of a threat here either. They fielded two 12-missile Xia class submarines, but one hasn't ventured far from Chinese waters and the other has barely left dry dock.

Despite Halprin's poor grip on the facts, I was more surprised by the assertion made in the latter half of his column:

The danger lies not solely in quantitative instabilities but in potential nuclear strategies that technical evolution has elevated above Cold War paradigms. It is one thing for a few experts to foresee these strategies but quite another to obtain from a people no longer confident of its right to self-defense the political consensus, appropriations and authority to counter them. Consider just one scenario, highlighted by the recent successful test of China's anti-satellite weapon, part of a strategy to exploit technological asymmetries.

Given China's appetites and our alliances and interests, a war is not inconceivable in Taiwan, or in Korea. To remove American nuclear escalation from the equation, China would need not parity but only a deterrent such as it has long possessed. The Chinese, however, whose nuclear thresholds are dissimilar to ours, would have other options.

They know that every facet of America's economy, military and society depends on individual and networked electronic devices. Were these to fail all at once and irreparably, the nation would seize up, perhaps for years.

Faced with victory, or with loss, they might choose to -- and who would venture to guarantee that they would not? -- detonate half a dozen high-megatonnage nuclear charges in the mesosphere, in an electro-magnetic pulse (EMP) strike perhaps not even in American airspace, cooking almost every circuit and semiconductor, rendering the American government blind, deaf and dumber than it is already and the country unable to resist the inroads that would surely follow.

Though we would undoubtedly respond in kind, China is not as technically dependent as are we. Nor, given China's sufficiency for a counterstrike, could we deter an EMP attack with the prospect of massive retaliation, especially because an EMP strike, with no immediate casualties, would seem as peaceful as snow in still air.

I don't buy his argument on the threat of a nuclear EMP attack from China. The Defense Support Program would catch the launch from space and the U.S. would be doctrinally-bound to launch a counterstrike against China before their missiles detonated. There would be no waiting to see if the Chinese only intend to pull of a EMP attack in the upper atmosphere versus an air burst attack a few hundred feet about Los Angles. There would simply be immediate and overwhelming retaliation on the part of the U.S.

The trick in nuclear strategy is to maintain stability by balancing potentials and thus to discourage events from converting the hypothetical to the actual. Required in this case -- only one of many -- is the electronic hardening, redundancy and redesign of essential systems and networks; and missile defense, which would not only close the first-strike window by shielding our second-strike capacity from destruction but protect against an EMP strike directly and dissuade China in the first place by making its deterrent less certain.

Were we to proceed along these lines, we could diminish the chances that China might in the not-so-distant future be tempted to win a nuclear war without fighting a nuclear war. But given that we have ignored explicit warnings of the congressionally chartered EMP commission, what are the chances that we will act on an opinion we dare not even form? In regard to war and the sometimes counterintuitive actions for avoiding it, we are no longer either confident or clearsighted. What a pity to have come so far to find that our rivals and enemies all over the world can run rings around us because half of our politicians have lost their intelligence and the other half have lost their nerve.

If I am reading this right, Halprin has essentially argued that Chinese leaders will escalate a conventional shooting war with the U.S. to the nuclear level out of desperation. Whatever happened to the cold rationality of deterrence and mutually assured destruction? Are we back those dark days of the Cold War where policy elites debated the efficacy of deterrence because we believed that our adversaries were slaves to their an irrational ideology? I hate to sound cynical, but Mark Halprin's piece isn't the first aspirant to George Keenan's Long Telegram I've seen in the last five years and, unfortunately, it probably won't be the last.

Isn't it interesting how nuclear paranoids like Mr. Helprin, force planners at the Pentagon and Democrats in Congress can look at the same subject, but see three complete different threats? It makes one think that public hand-wringing about the 'China threat' might be a self serving exercise...

But then again, I'm just an lowly East Asia analyst. What do I know about nuclear strategy or China, right?

Blast from the Past: Latest 6-P Talks joint statement

I just read the latest joint statement agreeded to by the six parties (China, Russia, Japan, the U.S. and North and South Korea) and I almost cried. Not out of elation or sadness, but because it reminded me so much of the 1994 Agreed Framework and 1994 always makes me think about the death of Kurt Cobain. Here is a summary of today's statement:

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I. The Six Parties reaffirm their intention to implementing the September 2005 joint statement in a 'step-by-step' fashion. (see this ACW post for a good description of how Joe Rood's unilateral reinterpertation of U.S. commitments in the 2005 JS caused implementation to fall apart before it even began)

II.

1) North Korea will power down and seal the graphite-moderated Magnox reactor at Yongbyon.

2) North Korea will disclose all of its nuclear activities.

3) The U.S. and North Korea will initiate talks to normalize relations, including consideration of taking Pyongyang off the state-sponsors of terror list and easing some unilateral sanctions.

4) Japan and North Korea will initiate talks to normalize relations, including North Korean grievances originating from the Japanese occupation and the status of the Japanese citizens kidnapped by the Norks back in the 70s (not explicitly stated, but definitely in the subtext).

5) Reaffirms the first three clauses of the JS issued two years ago. This includes commitments to normalizing relations all around, an affirmation that U.S. nuclear weapons are off the Korean peninsula and will not return and commitments to provide energy aid to Pyongyang.

III. The Six Parties will establish working groups on Korean denulearization, energy assistance to the North, the normalization of relations between Pyongyang and Tokyo/Washington and a East Asian 'peace and security' mechanism.

IV. The North Koreans will receive up to 1 million tons of heavy fuel oil (with an initial shipment of 50,000 tons) once they declare and begin dismantling their nuclear program.

V. The Six Parties agree to future ministerial meetings to monitor implementation and explore other subjects to promote 'peace and security' in East Asia.

VI. The Six Parties will work to build mutual trust and peace in the region. Peace between the North and South will be handled in a different (probably bilateral) venue.

VII. The Six Parties will meet again on March 19th for the sixth round of talks.

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The lack of a firm promise to provide North Korea with a permanent substitute for the energy generated by Yongbyon (i.e. light-water nuclear reactors) and a commitment to continue six-party consultations on larger security issues are the two major differences between today's JS and the Agreed Framework.

These changes definitely reflect the Bush administration's qualitatively different approach to security East Asia and nonproliferation. In terms of East Asia, the U.S. has chosen a position that is long on revisionist rhetoric (shaping China's rise, regime change in North Korea, etc.), but is short on similar policies. The administration's most substantial policy shift in my eyes was Bush solidifying the status quo in the Taiwan Strait back in 2003 by writing off U.S. support for a unilateral declaration of Taiwanese independence. That was a pretty big step away from revisionism for a man who declared the the U.S. will do "whatever it takes to help Taiwan defend herself" in the opening days of his presidency.

It is, therefore, not surprising that the White House is still moving away from the 'hub-and-spoke' model of relations towards East Asia that the U.S. has used to maximize its leverage over Japan, Korea and Taiwan for the past 40 years. Converting the six-party format into a semi-permanent regional security dialogue is a critical first step towards East Asian security integration. One thing is for sure, this certainly wouldn't have been possible with a sino-phobic Rumsfeld still at the helm of the DOD.

The JS is also interesting because it toes the administration's belief that nuclear proliferators should completely abdicate their right to even peaceful, proliferation resistant nuclear technology. Previous administrations have been willing to trade light-water reactors and the Additional Protocol in exchange for dismantlement, but the White House's expandive definition of 'nuclear capability' generally foreclose that route.

This may be practical option for states with minimal nuclear know-how like Iran, but it doesn't seem very practical for North Korea considering that they (kind of) crossed the nuclear threshold last year.

This may all be a moot in few months anyways, considering each party's seeming inability to implement their side of the JS in good faith. Then again, the years I've spent studying Japan, Taiwan and China have given me a pretty cynical view of the East Asian security environment.

In search of the DF-31's spotty record

My analysis of the credibility of the DF-31 in the face of China's recent ASAT has definitely gotten some attention lately. Although Dr. Jeffrey was kind enough to entertain my thoughts, he did voice a legitimate doubt about one of my points:

I wasn’t aware that the booster for the previous tests [in 2002] had been unsuccessful, but if Robot Economist is right … that explains why the DF-31 remains to be deployed.

Now that I look back at my information on the DF-31 tests back in 2002, I am starting to question the veracity of my sources. This all started after I reviewed the DF-31 test timeline prepared by Globalsecurity.org:

Given the evident challenges associated with the DF-31 program, and the variety of operational missiles that are expected to derive from this development effort, it is plausible that there have been a number of flight tests of components associated with the DF-31 prior to an all-up full range test of the complete DF-31 missile.

1. It is reported that the new missile was test-fired for the first time on 29 April 1992. Because of quality problems in its components, the missile exploded after launch.
2. The second launch also failed due to similar problems.
3. Beginning in June 1995 four other missiles were test-fired successfully.
4. A test on 10 November 1995 possibly included endoatmospheric reentry decoys.
5. A test on 10 January 1996 possibly included endoatmospheric reentry decoys.

[snip]

13. In May 2001 it was reported that China was preparing a flight test of the DF-31, with test preparations at the Wuzhai Space and Missile Center in central China having been detected by US intelligence. Some [not particularly credible] reports claim that a newly-formed electronic warfare unit test-fired DF-31 with inputs from "military reconnaissance satellites that cruise above the Taiwan Strait" as part of the "Modern 1" exercise conducted on 28 June 2001.
14. A flight test in January 2002 failed.

Not one to rest on my laurels with this snippet of information, I whipped out LexisNexis and attempted to hunt down the initial reporting on this failed flight test. Among a few 150 word bare-bones wire reports from the BBC World Service on Russian observation of the January test, I came across this article from conservative The Times (of London):

SECTION: WORLD; Pg. 6

LENGTH: 367 words

HEADLINE: Chinese test new missile threat to US shield

BYLINE: Oliver August * Beijing

BODY:

Chinese scientists are close to a breakthrough in rocket technology that would allow Beijing to overcome President Bush's proposed anti-missile shield, American military analysts say.

The People's Liberation Army is believed to be in the final stages of developing an intercontinental ballistic missile with multiple warheads, matching Russian, American and British nuclear technology. One Washington analyst said: "It looks like the Chinese are much further (ahead) than we originally thought."

China's most advanced missiles have a range in excess of 8,000 miles, which puts them within striking distance of the continental United States. Chinese scientists are working on equipping these missiles with multiple independently targeted re-entry vehicles (Mirvs), meaning that the warhead can separate into more than a dozen individual weapons in space.

At present China has around 20 long-range missiles, a number that experts say would allow the American shield to protect against the Chinese arsenal. Washington aims to be able to guard against attacks by rogue states employing up to 24 missiles.

If Beijing upgraded all its missiles with multiple warheads, the analyst said, "it could easily overwhelm the shield. That would change the balance of power in Asia."

US government agencies have followed China's progress in missile technology closely before a decision on the development of the missile shield.

Beijing is said to have stepped up Mirv tests in recent weeks. Earlier this month the Japanese media reported a test flight, during which a Chinese missile completed the first half of its trajectory before disintegrating upon the deployment of the separate warheads.

It was a Dongfeng-31, which has a range of more than 5,000 miles. China is also said to be preparing for a test of the naval version. US intelligence officials are said to have spotted preparations for the test at a Chinese naval port.

Washington first highlighted China's attempt to develop Mirv technology in 1998, when it claimed that Beijing had obtained Russian SS18 missile technology.

The topic is expected to be discussed during President Bush's visit to Beijing next week.

LOAD-DATE: February 12, 2002

I guess I should have known to better than to trust a periodical that has Rupert Murdoch's dirty little fingerprints on it, even a fairly reputable institution like The Times. In order to do this issue true justice, I decided to poke around the Japanese side of the Internet and hunt down an reporting on the January 2002 test.

The first place I looked was the Japanese publication Nuclear Weapon and Nuclear Test Monitor, which is a great Japanese language source on most things nuclear weapons-related. Nestled in their testing log for January-February 2002 is this bullet (page 4):

２月１日　中国が先月、射程約８千キロの「東風（ＤＦ）３１」ミサイルの多弾頭（ＭＩＲＶ）化の為の飛行実験を行ったことを明らかに。実験は失敗。

Translation: February 1 It became apparent last month that China conducted a flight test of a MIRVed version of the 8000 kilometer range DF-31 missile. The test was a failure.

The Japanese are not known for their concision or their directness, I think those are droids I am looking for. There is only one problem: My search options for the Japanese language news are pretty limited, so this is where the trail goes cold - for now. I will look into this again soon, but for now, I need to finish the readings for Mike Mochizuki's class tomorrow or he will be pissed.

Hu's in charge?

I've been sitting on this post for a while now, but I thought my two cents might be of interest:

The New York Times ran a piece yesterday questioning whether the Politburo of the People's Republic of China had complete control over this month's ASAT test:

The American officials presume that Mr. Hu was generally aware of the missile testing program, but speculate that he may not have known the timing of the test. China’s continuing silence would appear to suggest, at a minimum, that Mr. Hu did not anticipate a strong international reaction, either because he had not fully prepared for the possibility that the test would succeed, or because he did not foresee that American intelligence on it would be shared with allies, or leaked.

In an interview late Friday, Stephen J. Hadley, President Bush’s national security adviser, raised the possibility that China’s leaders might not have fully known what their military was doing.

I think Mr. Hadley needs a lesson in comparative politics. In some countries around the world, political power is not clearly defined by the national constitution or laws. China, for example, is a corporatist state run by different political cliques that are born from personal relationships, patronage networks and common economic interests. These cliques are constantly jockeying for position within the state (and party, in this case). Needless, performance is a large determinant of the length of a Chinese politician's career.

Excuse the acerbic comment, but I doubt the Chinese premiere would be allowed to blunder into a hornet's nest like Iraq and keep his job for a year, let alone four. I'm also skeptical of Hadley's view because Hu Jintao has a very close relationship with the head of China's Second Artillery Corps. The Corps' current commander, Lieutenant-General Jing Zhiyuan owes both his third star and his position on China's Central Military Commission to Hu. If you want to know more about the dynamics of the current CMC, check out this article in the Asia Times article written just after Hu wrested the commission from his predecessor Jiang Zemin.

The Times article continues and produces an alternative answer to China's silence that is far more likely:

Chinese political and military analysts, who would not speak on the record about an issue the Chinese government still regards as secret, said they considered it unlikely that the army’s Second Artillery forces, in charge of its ballistic missiles, would conduct a test of a sophisticated new weapon without approval from the highest levels.

But they suggested that the test might have been approved in principle, with little advance preparation for the diplomatic fallout in the event it was successful. That entails not just new military worries; the destruction of the weather satellite left debris in space that could damage satellites from other nations.

“It’s the kind of silence that makes you wonder what’s happening inside the country,” said another senior American official who has been monitoring the case. “I’m sure the Chinese leadership knew there were tests under way, in a general sort of way. But they don’t seem to have been prepared for a success, and they clearly had not thought about what they would say to the world.”

I think the unnamed political military analysts may be on to the most likely cause of China's public silence - a failure to coordinate information between the military and Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

We are talking about a government whose budget documents are treated like state secrets, so I wouldn't be surprised if the military held the details of their test too close. It is quite possible that Hu and his politburo associates just assumed briefing packages on the test would change hands at the right time and paid the matter no mind.

I can think of two more plausible explanations, although there are plenty of possible explanations:

1) As my recent research into a DF-31 test has shown, the Chinese military isn't known for being forthcoming when it comes to its missile activities. It is possible that they didn't even think of how the test would impact international politics and security relationships.

2) The Chinese military calculated that the damage done by a failed, but publicly announced test would outweigh the impact of international outrage at an successful unannounced test.

Either way, I think Mr. Hu has enough tact and political savvy to know that his government's initial silence and bungled reaction have tarnished their 'peaceful rise' tag line.

Wrap-up on the Chinese ASAT test

I've gotten a few e-mails from readers wondering why anAsianist like me has been following the fall out of China's ASAT test so closely. The honest truth is that rocketry and astrophysics are in the blood of the R. Economist family. My father is a satellite engineer and almost all of his 7 siblings are either atrsophysicists, rocket scientists, or managers at NASA.

I know that may sound really interesting to some, but it can loose its edge very quickly at family gatherings when you realize you're the only one in a crowded living room without an engineering degree. That and I received a total of 12 telescopes between my 5th and 20th birthdays (thanks Uncle Jeff...). I am pretty proud of my Cosmos DVD collection though.

That anecdote aside, I have a few parting thoughts about how this test fits into the strategic picture:

Out with the new, in with the old

According to Jamie MacIntyre, China's successful January 11th test wasn't its first using ground-based ballistic missiles. There were apparently three failed tests prior to this one using the unproven Kaitouzhe-1 space launch vehicle as the kill vehicle [ed. note: This is not my claim, it is part of Globalsecurity's analysis of China's ASAT program. I have merely adopted it for the sake of a larger argument. My apologies for any confusion.]. The many of the key components for the Kaitouzhe are based on the new road-mobile DF-31 ICBM, which has had its share of problems, including some failed test launches back in 2002.

The Chinese decision to abandon newer Kaitouzhe design in favor of the twenty year-old DF-21 looks like a significant vote of no confidence in the DF-31 to me. As many have noted, including Matthew Thompkins, the Economist and myself, technological innovation in China is lagging. For the 1.3% of GDP they spend on R&D, very few innovations and inventions in China are truly "groundbreaking."

Chinese engineers have a knack for making steady marginal improvements to pre-existing technology, as well as crafting 'middleware' that marries systems together, original designs are still thin on the ground. The contrast between the (new) DF-31's weak performance and the drastic improvement in the (old) DF-21's circular error probable demonstrated by this month's test appear to validate this notion.

Trump card, not assassin's mace

Michael Dana's "Shock and Awe: America's 21st Century Maginot Line" makes a good point about the weaknesses of U.S. policy, but it reinforces the meme of Chinese interest in asymmetric warfare. In particular, it plays up a common fear around the Pentagon that China is covertly building up a portfolio of asymmetric capabilities that it will suddenly unleash in a bid to retake Taiwan. I am very skeptical of this view because I think Chinese leaders and thinkers correctly realize that war with the United States would be disastrous for both sides, regardless of who actually ends up 'winning' (Zheng Bijian is a little too optimistic, but ultimately right).

It is true that the Chinese military is pursuing capabilities that could be described as 'asymmetric,' but I think their intentions are far from hostile. To steal the phrase from Dr. Jeffrey, Chinese strategic policy has generally been to maintain a minimum means of reprisal against any potential adversary. Considering the way in which U.S. technical prowess on the battlefield has grown significantly since the first Gulf War, this policy is not too surprising.

It is ultimately cheaper for the Chinese to come up with relatively simple, but disruptive technical solutions to counter the sophistication of the U.S. capabilities. If their intent was truly hostile, they wouldn't have wasted the element of surprise by targeting an old weather satellite in a controlled test. It wouldn't have been much harder for the Second Artillery Corp to target one of our keyhole satellites as it flew over Asia.

Since the fallout from this month's test hasn't exploded into a major political crisis (so far), the Chinese may use it as formula for future capability demonstrations. It has definitely raised fewer public suspicions of Chinese intentions than the Titan Rain hack attacks did back in 2003. This is definitely an issue tech-junkies and China-watchers will have to keep on their eyes on in over the next few years.

More on the Chinese ASAT test

Now that us weapons nerds have had some time to sleep on yesterday's revelation, we're starting to things in context. Surprisingly, Defensetech plays up the importance of the ASAT test some while MSNBC's Jim Oberg downplays it. Since I had to write a one-pager about the issue to my boss, I will throw my assessment out to the public:

The test itself was pretty controlled:

1) The satellite's flight path was predictable

2) It passed very close to the launch site

3) The target was emitting a trackable signal

4) Modifications were made to the satellite's flight path to line it up with the kill vehicle launcher

As space interceptions go, the Chinese had a pretty good handicap on this test. It is unlikely that this success will translate into any sort of immediately fieldable capability. If the spotty record of our ground-based missile interceptors demonstrate anything, it is the difficulty of intercepting even predictable space targets. Although last week's success was impressive, we should hold off judgement until the Chinese can produced multiple, sequential successes.

I would also dispute Defensetech's characterization of this test as next-gen. In fact, I would categorize it as distinctly last-gen. The last time the U.S. looked into ground-based interceptors was back during Nike Zeus development in the early 1960s. Ground-based missiles are problematic for ASAT purposes because of their limited firing envelope.

Couple that with the detrimental effects the large amount of debris generated by kinetic energy interceptions have on communications and you can see why we went after options like the fighter-based ASM-135 missile. The ASM-135 would not only have been deployable anywhere a U.S. aircraft carrier was present, it would also ensure that the space debris would be someone else's problem.

Ironically, the success of this tech time warp presents two important facts:

1) There is truth to claims from the intelligence community that the Chinese have significantly improved the circular-error probable of their ballistic missile guidance systems. I have no idea what the Chinese used in this test, but my guess is that they supplemented the missile's normal guidance package with a radiation seeker. Even if this true, the performance of the DF-21 or DF-3 guidance package must have been improved significantly to get the kill vehicle close enough for a homing mechanism to work.

2) This is a continuation of recent trends in the innovative application of older weapons technology for new disruptive purposes. The Chinese will undoubted benefit from both the capability itself and the fact that the United States will divert R&D resources to ASAT countermeasures from other R&D programs. In essence, this situation has the potential of becoming the next big Katyusha rocket or IED challenge.

I don't mean to wander too far away from the ASAT issue, but doesn't this raise even bigger questions about U.S. transformation efforts than it does about Chinese capabilities? Questions such as, is the Air Force's Transformational Satellite Communications System really transformational if it can be crippled by such a last-gen threat?

Update: I fixed my grammar a little. As you may imagine, science and tech officesin the Pentagon, including mine, have been burning the midnight oil over the last 36 hours.

Chinese ASAT test: Minimum means of reprisal

Don't bother talking to a weapons geek or seasoned China watcher for the next 12 hours or so because chances are they are scouring the web for details about China's successful anti-satellite (ASAT) weapon test. Despite having a class at GWU tonight, I have been picking around the Internet for every bit of detail I can find.

According to the Washington Post's article on the subject, the National Security Council mentioned the kill vehicle was likely a medium-range ballistic missile:

[Gordon] Johndroe of the NSC said that the Chinese satellite was destroyed using a ground-based medium-range ballistic missile, which slammed into the object 537 miles above earth on Jan. 11.

If the kill vehicle travelled about 537 miles up from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center (overheads of the site are blotted out on Google Maps, lol) and 4 degrees west (about 250 miles at 28.2 degrees North latitude), its flight path to intercept was roughly 600 miles. I may have only taken "Great Ideas in Physics" (read: physics for poli sci majors) back in undergrad, but by my math, the kill vehicle must have had a surface-to-surface range of well over 1000mi. With a little bit of data and Tsiokolsky's rocket equation, it would be easy to estimate its actual kill vehicle.

If the Chinese used one of their ballistic missiles as a kill vehicle as the NSC suggests, they must have used a DF-21/CSS-5 or a DF-3A/CSS-2. If this is true, it raises an interesting question about the future of the Chinese ballistic missile arsenal. The PRC is currently rocking about 40 DF-3s and 50 DF-21s, so they will have to restart missile construction to keep up with the material demands of further testing.

The upshot here is that things are looking less like the Rumsfeldian translation of "shashou jiang" (assassin's mace) and more like its conventional translation (trump card). As Dr. Jeffrey would say, this test is a demonstration of how Chinese defense policy seeks the minimum means of reprisal against the U.S. and not the doomsday fantasies of some in the Pentagon.