Future of the Undersea Deterrent feb2020

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Chapter 1 Undersea Deterrence and Strategic Competition in the Indo-Pacific | Rory MedcalfChapter 1Undersea Deterrence and StrategicCompetition in the Indo-PacificRory MedcalfThe various undersea nuclear deterrence programs in the Indo-Pacific region cannot be considered in isolation or solely in relationto one another. There is a large and complex strategic context tothe decisions by China, India, Pakistan, and North Korea to investin submarine-launched nuclear weapons programs, by the UnitedStates and Russia to modernise their own, and by the United Statesand its allies – notably Japan and Australia – to double down on theiradvantages in anti-submarine warfare (ASW). As James Goldrickexplains in this volume, nuclear strategy cannot be divorced frommulti-layered maritime competition involving everything fromterritorial disputes to resource exploitation to conventional navaloperations. The contest for authority and control in the South ChinaSea is not simply about fish, energy resources, nationalism, andhistory, but has a bearing on the balance of military power andprospects for coercion or deterrence in a crisis, right up to thenuclear level. Meanwhile, Chinese and American investments indisruptive technologies – such as quantum computing, artificialintelligence, autonomous systems, and new sensing techniques– are part of a broader strategic competition related in part todeterrence in the maritime domain. This chapter offers someframing insights on how strategic competition connects withthe 21 st century ambitions of a range of Indo-Pacific countriesto deploy – or neutralise – nuclear weapons below the waves.A China-Centric PowerplayThe great power dynamics of the Indo-Pacific revolve around therise of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). This is a two-oceanregion, with an increasingly multipolar character, as attested toby the prospect of its waters being plied by no fewer than sixnuclear-armed submarine fleets: American, Chinese, Russian,Indian, Pakistani, and North Korean, with the first four countriesfielding fully-fledged SSBNs (nuclear-powered ballistic missilesubmarines) and the other two improvising with diesel-electricboats and, in Pakistan’s case, cruise missiles. Some non-nuclearpowers are likely to play prominent roles in maritime strategy andASW, notably Japan (as explained by our author Yoji Koda) andAustralia, and in the long run the role of emerging players suchas Indonesia as naval powers exploiting their central Indo-Pacificgeography astride the sea-lanes cannot entirely be dismissed.Nonetheless, although the region is not China-centric, some ofits main strategic questions are. In particular, how can a powerfulChina be incorporated into a regional order in ways that sufficientlyrespect Chinese interests while respecting the interestsand rights of other nations, large and small? How can America’sprotection of its own global interests, its allies, and its agenda toprevent hegemony be reconciled with Chinese ambitions? Howcan the Chinese Communist Party’s self-imposed connectionbetween maintaining domestic control and projecting nationalassertiveness abroad be squared with the preservation of a stableregional status quo? If the United States, under President DonaldTrump or a different future administration, is intent on fully-fledgedcompetition with China for regional influence, military superiority,and technological leadership, how can this settle into patternsof coexistence?It must be borne in mind that, as the US conventional military edgeover China comes under great strain – and is already open toquestion – there will be temptations for Washington to rely moreheavily on its superior nuclear deterrent capabilities, and to doubledown on being able to neutralise China’s, including SSBNs.At the same time, warnings are sounded – including in variousways by our authors James Wirtz, and Tom Mahnken and BryanClark – against the assumption that America’s own next-generationSSBN fleet will always be invulnerable to adversary efforts toneutralise it in a conflict. The ripples of US–China nuclear rivalryflow further out still, affecting for example the dynamics of otherstrategic contests – notably India–China and India–Pakistan – asexplored in this volume by Sudarshan Shrikhande, Raja Mohan,and Sadia Tasleem.Nuclear weapons have played a limited role in China’s dramaticgrowth in armed power over recent decades. Fiona Cunninghampoints out that accelerating military spending and the rapid developmentof maritime anti-access and power-projection capabilitieshave overshadowed the modernisation of Beijing’s nuclearforces. Furthermore, at least until recently, the SSBN programwas of secondary importance to the land-based nuclear arsenal,although Adam Ni argues this is changing, with SSBNs likely toend up carrying a larger proportion of China’s warheads. In anyevent, nuclear armaments cannot be separated from China’soverall defence policy and great power ambitions, as was sopalpably highlighted in the flaunting of ballistic missiles in theOctober 2019 parade to mark the 70 th anniversary of the CommunistParty’s victory in the Chinese civil war and the founding ofthe PRC. Despite these Cold War images fuelling speculation tothe contrary, China maintains a declared position that minimisesthe role of nuclear weapons in its strategic posture, limiting themto missions of retaliation under a no-first-use policy.2
The Future of the Undersea Deterrent: A Global SurveyWide Horizons, Dark WatersSerious complications arise, however, given the increasedassertiveness of China’s wider strategic activity. Even if thePentagon’s warnings of China’s hegemonistic ambitions are lessthan fully substantiated, it is clear that Xi Jinping’s China has setfor itself strategic objectives that run counter to interests that othernations, and of course Taiwan, are willing to defend. Several ofthe region’s long-standing ‘flashpoints’ involve these clashes ofinterests, including territorial disputes in the South China Sea(with Vietnam and the Philippines in particular, but potentially alsowith Malaysia, Brunei, and even Indonesia) and in the East ChinaSea (with Japan). The most obvious flashpoint involves Beijing’sinsistence, enshrined in the so-called Anti-Secession Law, thatit will use force to prevent Taiwan formalising its independence.The range of potential interstate frictions has grown further withthe expansiveness of Xi’s signature ‘Belt and Road’ geoeconomicinitiative, involving infrastructure, influence, and security accessacross the Indian Ocean and much of the Pacific, as well asoverland through Southeast, South and Central Asia. On the eveof the 2020s, the United States and China are in widely rangingstrategic competition, with moments of confrontation and sustainedpotential for conflict. For the time being, China–Japan confrontationhas eased, but a return to the near-war circumstances of theearly 2010s is entirely plausible at some point. Likewise, after theprolonged tensions of the Himalayan military standoff at Doklamin 2017, China–India relations returned to a plane of wary stability.However, there is a high likelihood of further confrontations infuture, not only on the disputed land border but in the IndianOcean, as China seeks to consolidate and protect a securityfootprint in waters where Delhi claims dominance. The structuresof China–India relations are of long-term competition, even rivalry,and India makes no secret of developing its own undersea nuclearforce as an asymmetric deterrent against a much stronger andwealthier China that has coerced it in the past.Thankfully, most of the many tensions that accompany China’sstrategic assertiveness are in themselves unlikely to lead to armedconflict, let alone escalation to nuclear threats. In the South ChinaSea, Beijing is generally careful to rely on paramilitary coastguardunits and militias to bully Vietnam and the Philippines, rather thanresorting to direct application of naval force. That said, Vietnamin particular has the emerging military capability (notably itsRussian-built submarine fleets) to put Chinese forces at risk, atleast in the early stages of a clash. More profoundly with regard tothe nuclear issue, one credible explanation for China’s campaignof building and militarising islands in recent years has been itswish to secure control of the South China Sea to make that areaa bastion where its SSBN fleet can operate in relative safety fromdetection or attack by US and allied forces.In the East China Sea, China has for the moment backed awayfrom high-risk confrontations with capable (and now reinforced)Japanese forces, not least following clarification that the UnitedStates considers its security treaty to apply to clashes over theislands in question. In the Indian Ocean, it is difficult to imaginea China–India confrontation – for instance over the fate of a smallisland state such as the Maldives – escalating to war, althoughreports have surfaced (see Raja Mohan’s chapter) that even theland-border clash at Doklam led Delhi to look for ways to remindBeijing of the nuclear factor. In North Asia, crisis scenarios involvingthe Korean Peninsula could lead to US–China confrontation, butthey could also lead to a degree of US–China cooperation, withthe principal nuclear threat being, as Mike Cohen explains, theregime in Pyongyang, not each other.Some other plausible nuclear conflict scenarios in the Indo-Pacificdo not involve China directly: the unresolved tensions betweenIndia and Pakistan, where both powers are now beginning to adda maritime dimension to their nuclear deterrence; the prospectof renewed confrontation between North Korea and the UnitedStates; and the possibility that a future crisis between Russia andthe West would have a Pacific dimension (bearing in mind thatpart of Russia’s nuclear-armed fleet is based in the Pacific, asMichael Kofman notes).More than a Game: Assessing Resolve and StabilityIn the end, however, the clearest prospect of armed confrontationbetween China and the United States leading to nuclear threatscontinues to revolve around the status of Taiwan. However bizarre itmay seem, the political choice of a self-governing island democracyof 23 million people is the issue on which the leadership of amega-state of about 1.4 billion people has staked its own regimecredibility. Moreover, as James Goldrick’s chapter suggests,there is a strategic logic to the PRC gaining military control overTaiwan, to break through China’s geographic constraint by wayof the so-called ‘island chains’ and secure access to the openPacific. It would be an over-simplification to argue that a Taiwancrisis would escalate quickly to the nuclear level. There wouldbe several ways for Chinese forces to initiate coercion, includeeconomic blockade and cyber attacks. And the subsequentconflict could drag out on multiple levels, including internationaleconomic and diplomatic pressure on China. Nonetheless, aTaiwan crisis – or indeed another conflict, such as one arisingfrom a US–China skirmish in the South China Sea – could lead toa wider mobilisation of forces, including Chinese SSBNs and USand allied ASW assets, perhaps with nations pre-empting eachother rather than necessarily planning to attack.3
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Future of the Undersea Deterrent feb2020

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