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S. Mahmud Ali Post-Cold War Great Power Security Dynamics 31 well. The USAF commissioned RAND to study China’s potential air power as a threat to US forces in East Asia. This was the first of a range of DoD studies examining Chinese military capability, strategic objectives, economic prospects and threat perceptions. Such studies provided the intellectual substance to views hostile to rising Chinese power. • In 1993, the US intelligence community presented the Clinton White House with a SNE (Special National Intelligence Estimate) on China which stated that China was likely to grow as an economic power and treating Beijing as an adversary could become a self-fulfilling prophecy. It would be more effective, policy-wise, to ‘engage’ China and persuade it to pursue policies that were congruent to US interests. This forced the change in Clinton’s perspective, but conservative unhappiness persisted. • Later that year, Chinese national security leadership organised an 11-day symposium in which specialists read 60 papers on the global security environment. Key findings ⎯ until 2000, America would remain China’s biggest threat ⎯ infiltrating China’s ‘upper strata’ using Beijing’s ‘open door’ policy. 60% of the analysts believed by 2020, Japan, supported by the USA, would become the main threat; 25% believed the USA would remain the main threat until 2020. The conference report was circulated by the CPC (Chinese Communist Party) Politburo and the CMC (Central Military Commission) among senior Party and PLA cadres and became a foundational document in establishing China’s post-Cold War national security perspective. • In early 1994, the US Naval War College conducted war-games set in 2010. In this exercise, the Chinese navy lured US CVBGs (carrier battle groups) close inshore to be ambushed and destroyed; China attacked US satellites and employed space-based weapons to rout US forces and reinforcements. This scenario caused alarm. In February, America, Russia and Japan held a senior Forum for North Pacific Security at the Deputy Chief of Staff level. The US Defence Secretary and Japanese Foreign Minister ordered their forces to jointly monitor Chinese military developments. • In late 1994, senior DoD official and China specialist, Charles Freeman, learnt during a visit mere that the 2 nd Artillery, China’s strategic rocket forces, were preparing to coerce Taiwan by launching a ballistic missile armed with a conventional warhead every day for thirty consecutive days. The material and psychological consequences of such an attack, and the lack of strategic defence, would force Taiwanese surrender. Vol.1, No.2 2008 pp.27-47
32 Peace and Security Review Vol.1, No.2, Second Quarter, 2008 • In late 1995-early 1996, China conducted a series of land, air and naval exercises, culminating in missile launches close to Taiwan just before Taiwan’s first general and presidential elections. In early 1996, America deployed two CVBGs and four attack submarines just east of Taiwan, signalling to Beijing its intent to defend Taiwan. In Chinese view, this was blatant military interference in China’s internal affairs. • A month after those missile tests, in April 1996, Clinton and Prime Minister Hashimoto signed a set of defence guidelines forming the basis of a deepening and widening of the US-Japanese alliance’s remit from the defence of Japan to that of the Asia-Pacific region and encouraging Japan’s new assertive diplomatic stance, and the development and deployment of ballistic missile defences threatening to neuter China’s modest first-strike capabilities, its strategic deterrent. • In March 1997, American and Chinese National Defence Universities organised a joint seminar at which military specialists from the two sides discussed respective national security perspectives. PLA delegates made it clear that in the 21 st century, they wanted China to exercise greater influence than Japan did, and influence equal to America’s in the Asia-Pacific region. Around this time, a joint study by China’s Communist Party, State Council (cabinet equivalent), Foreign Ministry, and Ministry of Defence concluded that early in the 21 st century, a war with America was possible. This set the strategic context in which each power-elite viewed the other. • In the spring of 1999, during NATO’s Kosovo War against Yugoslavia, a US bomber destroyed the Chinese chancery building in Belgrade, causing massive outpourings of national outrage across China, severely damaging relations. Just weeks later, the 13th joint seminar on ‘fundamental issues’ organised by the US Naval War College and the DoD’s Office of Net Assessment explored the strategic environment in Asia-Pacific in 2025. It concluded that hostile coalitions could arise in a complex environment in which events would occur at a rapid pace, presenting a multiplicity of threats to US interests and giving lesser powers local advantages over American forces in-theatre. The sole superpower, the global hegemon, would seek to prevent this from happening. The Clinton Administration’s anxiety that treating China as an adversary would turn out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy reinforced its ‘constructive engagement’ with Beijing. However, Washington both engaged and hedged ⎯ preparing for contingencies in which China did not meet American expectations. Vol.1, No.2 2008 pp.27-47
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