Leaders in the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) strategic strike force will be transitioning during the 18th Party Congress this coming autumn. But while the focus of the China-watching community has largely been on the top-brass of the central party leadership, much less is openly discussed about the changing leaderships within the armed services – especially the military’s strategic strike force.

Leadership positions within high-placed grades of the services are important indicators of future rank and seniority within the military hierarchy. In addition, the backgrounds of these new Second Artillery leaders, the section of China’s military that controls much discussed anti-ship ballistic missile weaponry and nuclear weapons, may reflect upon the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and Central Military Commission (CMC) priorities for Second Artillery as the PLA continues to modernize its military capabilities.

Since its formation, the Second Artillery’s central responsibility has been nuclear deterrence. Yet, as the strategic environment changed, Second Artillery’s mission has gradually expanded to become the CCP and CMC’s principal instrument for achieving strategic effects through direct targeting of enemy centers of gravity.  The process may be seen as a gradual effort to streamline Second Artillery missions into future military operations. Operational firepower is distributed among six corps-level missile bases, a centralized base for storage and handling of nuclear warheads, and operational support brigades/regiments reporting directly to Second Artillery headquarters in Beijing. 

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As Harry Kazianis noted yesterday, the Pentagon’s Congressionally-mandated annual survey of Chinese military capabilities is out. The highlights:

-- “With its growing power and international status, China periodically acts more assertively in pursuit of its strategic priorities, while also seeking to take advantage of a favorable external environment to pursue economic and military modernization goals. Beijing is finding it increasingly difficult to balance these interests.”

-- China’s official military budget for 2012 totals $106 billion – an 11.2 percent increase over 2011. “Analysis of 2000-2011 data indicates China’s officially disclosed military budget grew at an average of 11.8 percent per year in inflation-adjusted terms over the period.”

-- “Preparing for contingencies in the Taiwan Strait remains the principal focus and driver of much of China’s military investment,” but the People’s Liberation Army “still faces limitations in its ability to conduct a full-scale amphibious invasion of Taiwan.”

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This week, the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) released its annual report concerning China’s military. The report, Military and Security Developments Involving the People's Republic of China, highlights many of the main components of China’s military modernization and expansion, including technological achievements, areas of cooperation with the United States,  force structure, and long term trends.

The report says China “is pursuing a long-term, comprehensive military modernization program designed to improve the capacity of China’s armed forces to fight and win ‘local wars under conditions of informatization,’ or high-intensity, information-centric regional military operations of short duration.”  The text also interestingly notes that “(T)he character used for ‘local war’ can also be translated as ‘regional war.’ There is a debate over which translation is more accurate.”

During a press conference introducing the report, Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense (East Asia) David Helvey was specifically asked about the term ‘informatization.’ Helvey pointed out that “they (China) watched very carefully U.S. and coalition military forces, beginning from the first Persian Gulf War in 1991, up until our current operations today.” He added: “And one of the things that the PLA has consistently highlighted is the role of advanced information technology not only for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, but also enabling precision fires.  And when they talk about fighting and winning local wars under conditions of informatization, that’s the type of war- fighting environment that they’re – that they’re talking about.”

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As members of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) assemble for an important meeting this weekend over future strategy in Afghanistan, the Obama administration is doing everything possible to persuade its European allies that a hefty financial contribution to the Afghan National Security Forces is necessary if Afghanistan is to become a stable country. 

The summit, to take place in Chicago, is just as much about NATO’s ultimate war strategy against the Taliban-led insurgency as it is about solidifying Western support for the Afghan Government after 2014, when the majority of U.S. and NATO soldiers end their mission and depart the country. Indeed, with the Afghan army and police now close to being responsible for the security of 75 percent of the nation’s population, Washington’s ability to garner significant aid packages at the conference has taken on far greater importance. 

Unfortunately, the United States has its work cut out. As The New York Times has reported this week, European governments are unsure of how much money they are willing to give to the Afghan government over the next 10 years. Pressured by domestic constituencies who have long soured on the war, and a debt crisis that continues to rile the politics of the continent, countries that were once thought likely to offer a generous monetary contribution to the Afghans are now scrambling to assess whether they can afford to do so. With the exception of Britain, the vast majority of European officials have become somewhat detached from a war that grinds on after a decade in the making. In the eyes of the Europeans, the Iranian nuclear crisis, Syria’s evolving civil war and Libya’s post-conflict reconstruction are far more vital to their foreign policy and national security interests than a land war in the middle of Asia whose main premise – battling and defeating al-Qaeda – has largely been accomplished. 

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Burma has lately become a favourite destination for world leaders and policymakers, with the likes of Hillary Clinton, David Cameron and Ban Ki-moon all making appearances in order to get a feel for what Burmese political reform looks like up close.

But no visit has encapsulated the great political distance that Burma has travelled over the past year quite like that of South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, who met with both President Thein Sein and National League for Democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi earlier this week.

It was, after all, only five years ago that the Burmese regime was restoring diplomatic ties with the other Korea. At the time, that decision appeared to symbolize the deepening of Burma’s isolation from international society, and the hopelessness of the country’s political trajectory. There was no common ground between Naypyidaw and Pyongyang, or at least nothing ideological: there was only their mutual status as Asia’s outcasts. Burma’s paranoid leaders wanted North Korean weapons systems and, it’s rumoured, engineers to help fortify their newly built capital city. North Korea just wanted Burma’s money.

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One of the more enduring aspects of Indian strategic culture is a strong sense of maritime embattlement. Shortly after independence, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru famously attributed India’s past woes at the hands of predatory colonial powers to its maritime weaknesses. During the Cold War, Indian strategists would fret over the potential mushrooming of American submarine pens in Diego Garcia, or over the possible reiteration of the 1971 USS Enterprise incident, when the United States dispatched a carrier task group to the Bay of Bengal in a singularly blunt exercise of naval suasion. More than forty years later, the U.S. presence in the Indian Ocean is no longer viewed by most Indians as a threat. Another, more menacing extra-regional power has stepped in to fill the void, and, in so doing, has ensured the continued survival of the maritime embattlement narrative.

Indeed, a first time traveler to India could be forgiven for believing that India is on the verge of being subjected to a sudden wave of Chinese amphibious landings. Sensationalistic press reports on China's so-called “string of pearls” abound, and wild stories on secret PLAN submarine bases in the Maldives, or large bases on Burmese islands, are commonplace. In reality, most of China’s ventures in places such as Chittagong, in Bangladesh, or Hambantota, in Sri Lanka, appear to be, for the time being at least, primarily economic in nature. Moreover, Indian observers tend to neglect the profoundly nationalistic pride these projects tend to foster within the host countries themselves.

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The conventional wisdom is that there could be nothing more dangerous to North Korea’s current leadership than the penetration of information into the country from the outside world.  A new empirical study released last week by Nat Ketchum and Jane Kim entitled “A Quiet Opening: North Koreans in a Changing Media Environment” draws on surveys and interviews from North Korean refugees to show that information penetration is changing North Korea, but the result has been an evolutionary change of circumstances in North Korea rather than uprising or revolution.

Almost four-fifths of survey respondents indicated that word of mouth is the most common means by which information is disseminated in North Korea. Two-fifths of respondents identified DVDs and official state media as primary sources of information, and about one-fifth of respondents acknowledged South Korean and foreign media as important sources of information in North Korea.  This data confirms that North Korea is a society where rumors travel fast. Prohibitions on “horizontal” transmission of information are increasingly ineffective.  The state media is increasingly challenged as an official source of information and entertainment, not only by rumors, but also by better produced propaganda-free entertainment offerings from South Korea.

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The standoff between China and the Philippines in the South China Sea has evolved over the last five weeks into a bizarre brinkmanship triangle. The United States finds itself reluctantly backed into corner number three: this is definitely not the pivot to Asia that Washington had in mind.

The beauty of brinkmanship, of course, is that actually going over the brink is seldom required. Most likely it won’t be necessary in this situation either. Despite some tough talk from both Beijing and Manila, the hope now is that the two-and-a-half-month fishing moratorium due to be imposed by China on May 16, imposed annually since 1999, will finally help to douse a few tempers, and bring the confrontation to a peaceful conclusion.

The U.S. government must be praying for such an outcome. If the Chinese and Philippine crews glowering at one another over the contested Scarborough Shoal actually start shooting, the ensuing conflict is likely to pan out in one of two directions:

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An overwhelming majority of U.S. citizens want deep and immediate cuts in military spending, according to a new poll. The Center for Public Integrity, a Washington, D.C.-based investigative news service, in conjunction with two other groups asked more than 600 Americans from across the country about their perceptions regarding U.S. defense spending. The survey went on to ask whether the respondent favored increasing, holding steady or decreasing military spending.   

Seventy-six percent of survey-takers, including 90 percent of Democrats and 67 percent of Republicans, say they would cut the Pentagon's budget. That places the majority of respondents at odds with Democratic President Barack Obama's policies and the proposed budgets of the majority Republican Party in Congress. Obama has essentially held defense spending steady at around $550 billion by cutting its recent rate of increase. The Republicans have proposed adding billions of dollars to the president's budget.

War costs – currently totaling around $100 billion a year – are budgeted separately from the military’s “base” budget.

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A slew of worthwhile questions came up during the Q&A at last month’s Harvard-Diplomat panel in Cambridge, Massachusetts. We even got to banter with an old hippie who held forth on China’s virtues as an honest broker in the non-Western world, a stark contrast to supposedly predatory America. That reminded everyone we were at an epicenter of the Sixties.

Or, one graduate student asked about what China is doing to prepare itself for nonmilitary missions in the “far seas,” as Chinese officials and pundits call waters remote from East Asian shores. She voiced particular interest in the part China’s newly refitted Soviet aircraft carrier might play in ventures far from Chinese shores, like counterpiracy, counterproliferation, or humanitarian and disaster relief. And, in time-honored graduate student fashion, she sneaked in a second question, this one about the prospects for U.S.-China cooperation on the high seas.

These are worthy topics to explore. The former is mostly about hardware and thus less interesting (to me). The ex-Varyag will play no part in far-seas operations until engineers work the kinks out of the hull and its internals, and until the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) has a working air wing for the ship. Those are no easy tasks. It could take years for aviators to develop the skills needed to operate from a pitching flight deck. Once the flattop is a working vessel, it will presumably be capable of doing many of the things U.S. carriers do at the margins of nonmilitary endeavors, though on a smaller scale because of its smaller size.

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