The PLA at Home and Abroad - Strategic Studies Institute - U.S. Army

IMPLICATIONS FOR U.S. POLICY
Truth is unattractive. Error charms. It holds out all
manner of false hopes . . . All the shores of the great
ocean of time are strewn with those whitened skeletons
of misguided thought.
Lester Ward, Applied Sociology 121
Predicting the effects of China’s logistics modernization
and commensurate improvements in its power
projection capabilities on U.S. policy defies a simplistic
threat, no threat analysis. Concrete improvements
in China’s military logistics system would certainly
pose potential concerns for the worldwide operation
of U.S. forces, however, as well as for U.S. obligations
to Taiwan and military alliances. A key indicator of
the potential negative aspects of China’s increasing
military reach will be China’s ability or inability to
dispassionately adapt to how to handle encounters
between the two militaries at sea and in the air without
it escalating into a crisis with damaging effects on
U.S.-China relations.
As discussed in this chapter, improvements to China’s
military logistics over the last 10 years have moved
steadily toward a higher degree of regional and global
support capacity. Nonetheless, logistics remains an
area of weakness for the PLA. Logistics serves as an
indicator of potential ambition and capability, but it
does not in and of itself provide a clear understanding
of intentions to threaten the United States, let alone to
displace America’s global position. China does, however,
seek autonomous military capability that could
be used to protect its own national interests, which
will require adaptation from the United States, other
regional and global powers, as well as China itself.
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