During the Cold War, the possibility of any form of direct attack by the Soviet Union on the United States, or vice versa, was reduced to near zero by the principle of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD). Each country had the capability to absorb even a nuclear first strike and thereafter inflict unacceptable damage on the other.
This knowledge kept the peace. Indeed, the Soviet Union was so intimidated by the U.S. nuclear arsenal that the Communist Party lacked the courage to mount even a conventional challenge, not only against the United States and its NATO allies, but also against countries such as Pakistan that were openly being used by Washington to conduct a proxy war against Moscow.
When, in the early 1990s, I pointed to China as being a replacement for the fallen Soviet Union in the demonology of NATO, all but a few strategic experts saw such an outcome as fanciful. Today, though, they may well have changed their views. Certainly the Barack Obama administration is aware of the challenge, specifically noting in last year’s Defense Department strategic vision document that China and Iran pose a threat to the United States.
Although he has been condemned on the campaign trail as being weak on national security, the reality is that it was Obama who saw off Osama bin Laden, and it is his administration that has accelerated drone attacks on terrorist hideouts in Pakistan. Indeed, while the Bush administration reportedly gave a free pass to the most deadly elements of al-Qaeda and the Taliban by permitting their evacuation from Kunduz and other locations within Afghanistan, Obama has understood that while military power can win territory from a conventional enemy, it can’t hold this territory without inflicting civilian casualties on a scale made unacceptable by today’s 24 hour media coverage.
That China People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and the U.S. military consider themselves rivals is no secret. Indeed, Afghanistan has become the first significant theater of confrontation between the two, with China adopting the 1980s U.S. strategy of using Pakistan to drain and ultimately defeat the military of a rival. While in the 1980s, the target of Pakistan was the Soviet Union, today it’s the United States itself.
Since 2003 at the latest, the PLA has arguably had greater influence over the Pakistan military than the Pentagon, despite public perceptions and statements to the contrary. Since 2007, the PLA’s influence – and therefore that of China – has been dominant to a degree that has enabled Pakistan to challenge NATO, including by cutting off supplies to its forces across the Durand Line. The preferred outcome for many in the PLA is undoubtedly a complete withdrawal of all NATO forces from Afghanistan (and Pakistan), followed by the takeover of the former country by a Taliban affiliate of Pakistan’s Inter-Service Intelligence. Across the world, from Iran to Sudan to Venezuela, China has been boosting the military and other capabilities of forces hostile to the NATO powers, principally the United States.
The PLA is no match for the U.S. armed forces, just as U.S. conventional forces in Europe were no match for the Soviet Union. So what prevents a sufficiently robust response from Washington to the increasing number of challenges from Beijing? The explanation may rest in what could be described as the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction of Economy (or MADE). While China lacks the capacity to inflict equivalent damage to the United States through military means, it has reached a stage of economic interlinking with the United States that would make a direct conflict between the two unacceptably costly for Washington.
Given the absence of an overt and existential threat, such as that posed by the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP) by its aggression against Czechoslovakia and Poland in the 1930s, populations in a democracy are reluctant to endure the hardships and uncertainties of war. Such an outlook helped shape the appeasement policies of Neville Chamberlain, which changed only after the public began to better understand the reality of Hitler's rule. Public opinion played a significant role in French acquiescence in the 1936 occupation of the Rhineland by the German army.
Given the importance of economic issues in the matrix of public opinion, states with an elected government are wary of committing their military to conflicts where the economic costs are massive. The relative lack of domestic opposition to the 2003 invasion of Iraq by the United States at the time is explainable in large part by the fact that the public didn’t know how expensive the war was going to become. Now that the figures have come in, both for Iraq and Afghanistan, getting domestic support for another major war would be impossible, unless there’s a direct and existential threat to the United States itself. By keeping the threshold of aggression below this (high) level, a country determined to challenge the United States can do so with relative impunity.
Unlike Libya and other states that have pursued policies antithetical to perceived NATO strategic interests, China has thus far escaped retaliation. The reason for this is the dense web of interconnectedness between the Chinese economy and that of the United States and the EU. While the U.S. economy may be able to withstand the shock of the stoppage of commercial relations with China that would follow a conflict, the EU would find such an outcome terminal. And in a domino effect, once the EU goes under economically, a weakened United States may as well. Given the core importance of economics to voters within the NATO bloc, China remains immune from significant NATO retaliation, despite Beijing challenging the alliance's strategic interests worldwide.
Apart from assistance to regimes considered “rogue” by NATO, would such immunity extend to a conflict between China and Taiwan?
Interestingly, the island has a similar defense vis-a-vis the China as Beijing itself has vis-a-vis NATO, despite being much smaller. This is, again, Mutually Assured Destruction of Economy (MADE). So closely enmeshed are the economies of China and Taiwan now that a conflict would also lead to significant damage to the former. In particular, advances in high-technology items needs the willing participation of brainpower. Should the Taiwanese see China as an occupier they would surely be unwilling to allow their own R&D skills to mesh with those of China. It needs to be remembered that it is the Taiwan Dividend that has most enabled China to leapfrog several technological stages in its efforts at matching the NATO countries in high technology.
In a globalizing word, the transition from MAD to MADE is inevitable. And the consequences remain the same: immunity from attack by either party. The only “anti-missile” defense against MADE would be a significant dilution in the economic linkages binding the NATO countries with China, an outcome that seems distant.
Madhav Das Nalapat is a contributor to The Diplomat and holds the UNESCO Peace Chair and is Director of the Department of Geopolitics at Manipal University in southern India. Nalapat is a former Coordinating Editor of the Times of India and writes extensively on security, policy and international affairs.
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Oro Invictus
While I do share the hope that global interconnectivity can avert further major war, I fear such hopes are overly optimistic; similar things were said prior to the Trade Wars, the War of Austrian Succession, both of the World Wars, etc. Nations which were said to be unable to survive without the trade from another have seen fit to fight some of the bloodiest wars in history, oft with the victor not suffering the expected economic collapse. The reason why this proposed theory of MADE is a poor comparison to MAD is that it utterly fails to compensate for the fact that nuclear war, in itself, is an existential threat; MAD served to guarantee the utter destruction of humanity, whereas economic collapse represents something much less dire, a far more immaterial and less pernicious threat. While economic ties can certainly bolster the threshold by which war would result, to believe its deterrent effects would be anything approaching the threat of nuclear annihilation represents a critical failure to understand the human psyche and the nature of how we, as a species, instinctively determine benefit/risk scenarios.
Indeed, even if MADE proved comparable to MAD in terms of its ability to avert war, to rest on this and assume the possibility of war is precluded except under extraordinary circumstances is mind-boggling; there were numerous instances during the Cold War in which the world teetered on the brink of utter destruction, yet simply because we are alive to talk about it, the assumption is that MAD was effective. In truth, the principles behind MAD pushed us, as a species, to the brink of destruction; MAD (along with standard diplomacy) helped to prevent nuclear war, yes, but the very risk was created in the process of sustaining MAD through arms production and deployment. Simply because you replace the missiles with money and the warheads with resources does not change the overall equation; it is still human aggression which drives both.
What troubles me most about this idea is that it reduces the responsibility of diplomats and governments to ensure peace by providing this false safety net of “the markets” serving as some type of economic “Maginot Line” against war. While I can understand the author’s temptation to believe there is some virtually unassailable barrier to war instead of accepting that, for the time being, aggression and xenophobia is an inherent trait of our neurobiology (something for which there is no “quick fix”), this is extraordinarily irresponsible. Peace cannot be bought or traded, it must be learned and taught; unless all sides are willing to reason and understand, no amount of money can ensure even nominal peace.
Alfred Nobel and Orville Wright once believed their inventions (TNT and powered flight, respectively) would ensure any future war would be too costly to fight; unfortunately, despite pure intentions, Alfred’s creation would fuel modern explosive weaponry (even leading to him, unfairly, being called “The Merchant of Death”) while Orville would see the basis of his invention be used to facilitate the destruction at the Somme, the firebombing of Tokyo and Dresden, and the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Despite their innate understanding of their inventions, both inventors woefully underestimated the bloodlust of humanity. Do you really think avarice will really fare any better as a deterrent?
Excellent
Intelligent and well though out argument. Bravo!
applesauce
just like to point out that in addition to M.A.D.E. the traditional M.A.D. deterrent is still there(so a double effect), even if the US enjoys an overwhelming numerical advantage and ability to “depopulate” china,just being hit by a dozen nukes will mean an effective end to America as a great power
Mike From Tampa
China will attack the US as soon as it thinks it can win.
Right
But it think it can’t win now.
So make sure China never think it can win and war will not happen.
Anuj
Was this supposed be an article on China US?
The tags says otherwise.
Anyway pretty nice analysis.
Leonard R.
The author presents the very common hypothesis that commercial contacts between the PRC & the US will prevent it from going to war. I agree with Oro Invictus. I it’s naive. Another variation of this theory is that both the US and PRC government are too ‘rational’ to go to war.
The fundamental problem with this analysis is it assumes without evidence that the CCP has secure command and control over the PLA. I see no evidence in this article to support that view. And I’ve seen quite
a lot of evidence that runs counter to it over the years.
Wars are often triggered by irrational acts outside the power of any government to control. Today, we know a rogue, irrational actor named Gavrilo Princeps, assassinated an Austrian Archduke. But historians are at a loss to explain why that event led to millions dying in the trenches. It was a chain of irrational decisions following one irrational act that led to the Great War.
There have been military confrontations with the PRC every year for the past few years.
One of these days Americans will die in one of them. What will happen then Professor Nalapat?
What happens then Professor Nalapat?
Mignonne from Taiwan
Brilliant !! MAD or MADE both point to the cost-benefit analysis within the confine of bounded rationality. It is enlightening for all, no less for diplomats to re-orient their multi-dimensional tasks and challenges ahead.
John Chan
The author perhaps does not have internet, that’s why he is so late to the staled “China threat” treadmill. The author is imaging every shadow as a threat to the USA from China, it seems he is hallucinating from malnutrition.
I hope the Diplomat does not pay this author for his writing, this article is the most incoherent article I ever read from this site, the author simply stuff a lot terms together without slightest obvious linkage between them.
With such confused mind as the Editor of the Time of India on security, policy and international affairs, no wonder India is rattling nuclear sable to every shadow in sight.
Lung Sha Shou
Obama is not strong (or weak on national security) as a function of “the reality is that it was Obama who saw off Osama bin Laden, and …his administration that has accelerated drone attacks on terrorist hideouts in Pakistan”
These two things do not prove that he is strong on national security.
They are not indicators that the rest of the national security fundamentals / essentials / actual threats have been in any way attended to.
This logic is utterly flawed, I am used to seeing this sort of “knight’s move thinking” and reduction ad absurdum from the China Lobby Boogers but would not expect it from a contributor. In fairness he may be using these examples as s shorthand for his beliefs.
In a similar vein comparing Bush and Obama’s actions at vastly different stages of the so called War on Terror is a little suspect.
I think he is onto something regarding the APPARENT absence of an overt and existential threat. China is brilliant at this. It is clear that regard the US as an enemy and iti is not difficult to see that this in many different parts of the machinery of state. They will attempt to appear harmless but it is very clear they hold aggressive intent and are barely concealing their desire to show it.
They practically threatened Australia with the nuclear missiles (they of the no first use policy (spit)). China will try and seem harmless until the assassins mace is used and they reach for Chi Haotian’s goals.
People who can torture Tibetan monks and nuns, sell the organs of people they define as a threat, and butcher their own people, imprisoning over 2 million in their labour camps and employing another 2 million in cyber spying are morally bankrupt and a real threat to the rest of the world – who they lack any respect for.
If you think my views are immoderate or extreme, you had better be able to reconcile the known actions and atrocities of the Beijing Regime and explain them all away. Its not politically correct to point out atrocities and crimes arranged and condoned by the central government at the highest levels?
That sort of denial is the same morally bankrupt view that denied the reality of Jewish persecution. Diplomacy goes to far when the implications of these crimes are not considered.
By the way, all this from a country who has built thousands of kilomteres of tunnels deep under rock – do you really think that this is because the US will attack them? Give me a break. Michael from Tampa is on the right track.