National Defense University

Coping with the Dragon: Essays on Pla Transformation and the U.s. Military National Defense University

Publisher Marketing: The probability of conflict between the United States and China over Taiwan has diminished in recent years. The chief potential flashpoint for war, a Taiwanese declaration of independence, has become less likely as Taiwan's independence movement has waned and economic ties with the mainland have strengthened. Should the independence movement in Taiwan regain political momentum, however, the potential for U. S. military intervention in the Taiwan Strait would increase. Further, the perception of U. S. vulnerability in the region could invite assertiveness. So, despite the fact that armed conflict between the United States and China is in no one's interest, China's burgeoning power requires that critical factor sin U. S. plans for the defense of Taiwan be examined. This collection of essays offers just such an examination. It looks at China's growing strength, the strategies underlying U. S. plans for military intervention in the Strait, U. S. vulnerabilities, and options for how these vulnerabilities might be overcome through the development of new technologies and strategies. The U. S. defense commitment to Taiwan, thought tacit and conditional, has been a long-standing strategic constant. America's ability to prevent the invasion or coercion of Taiwan, however, is more variable. As the Defense Department's most recent report to Congress on Chinese military power indicates, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) has embarked on a concerted effort to modernize, with the goal of being able to conduct (and counter) the sort of rapid, precise, information-intensive operations of which the U. S. military is now capable. Of particular concern in a Taiwan scenario is China's growing ability to track, target, and destroy U. S. carrier strike groups (CSGs), which are the fulcrum of American military strategy in the region. The Defense Department reports that the PLA is focused on targeting surface ships at long ranges, perhaps as far as the "second island chain," east of Japan and as far south as Guam. China is amassing the intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (SR) and strike assets needed to conduct long-range precision attacks. These growing capabilities are coupled with PLA doctrine that emphasizes preemption and surprise attack; the potential significance of this turn of thought was underscored by China's January 2007 demonstration of antisatellite weapon. China's growing capabilities demand that the United States carefully review the evolving military balance in the western Pacific and consider the implications for further strategy. Each essay addresses a key part of the Taiwan intervention puzzle. The compilation moves from an overview of U. S. strength and China's growing military abilities (Gompert); to two pieces on China's present and future military technology (Cheung) and personnel (Lo) resources; to an examination of a particular threat to U. S. regional power, China's improving ISR capabilities (Mulvenon); to a review of U. S. maritime (McDevitt) and aerial (Shlapak) strengths and vulnerabilities; to a piece on how some aerial vulnerabilities could be allayed with UAVs (Libicki); to an analysis of U. S. options to better deter Chinese aggression (Gompert and Long); to a forward-looking article on how a new U. S. fleet architecture could change the balance of power in a Taiwan Strait conflict (Johnson). Contributor Bio:  University, National Defense Alexander Woodcock is currently Principal Operations Research Analyst at MITRE Corporation, a consultant to the National Defense University, and an Affiliate Professor at the School of Public Policy, George Mason University. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine, a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of War Sciences, and a full member of Sigma Xi. He was a consultant to the Institute for Defense Analyses, the Naval Research Laboratory, and the intelligence community. He was also a Senior Research Professor and Director of the Societal Dynamics Research Center at the School of Public Policy, George Mason University. Dr. Woodcock was Chief Scientist, Vice President, and Director of the Advanced Mathematics Program, BAE SYSTEMS-Portal Solutions (formerly Synectics Corporation), a Guest Professor at the Swedish National Defence College, and a Visiting Professor at The Royal Military College of Science, England. He is the author of Assessing Iraq's Future, published by the Royal Swedish Academy of War Sciences and co-editor with John Dockery of The Military Landscape: Mathematical Models of Combat. Dr. Woodcock has a PhD in biology and an MSc in biophysics from the University of East Anglia, England, and a BSc with Honours in physics from Exeter University, England. Samuel Musa is a Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Technology and National Security Policy (CTNSP) of the National Defense University. He has held the Homeland Security Science and Technology Chair at CTNSP. He was previously Associate Vice President for Strategic Initiatives and Professor of electrical and computer engineering at Northwestern University. He has served in various positions in academia, government, and industry, including University of Michigan, University of Pennsylvania, Institute for Defense Analysis, and Office of the Secretary of Defense. Dr. Musa served on the Defense Intelligence Advisory Board, Arm y Science Board, and Air Force Scientific Advisory Board. He was Executive Secretary of Defense Science Board Summer Studies and Task Forces, and a member of the Scientific and Technical Intelligence Committee of the Director of Central Intelligence. Dr. Musa received his BA and BS degrees in Electrical Engineering from Rutgers University, and MS and PhD degrees in Applied Physics from Harvard University. Contributor Bio:  Arnas, Neyla Editor Neyla Arnas is a senior research fellow at the Center for Technology and National Security Policy at National Defense University in Washington. The contributors are Robert E. Armstrong, William M. Bellamy, Geoffrey Dabelko, Mark D. Drapeau, Dale F. Eickelman, David F. Gates, Carl Haub, Neil Jacobstein, Peter Katona, Michael Krepon, Ian O. Lesser, Michael Moodie, Steven Pifer, Gregory J. Rattray, Robert S. Ross, Edward Schumacher-Matos, Linton Wells II, and the Transformation Chairs Network. The latter comprises the Transformation Chairs and Force Transformation Chairs at thirteen U. S. professional military education institutions, plus representatives from Australia, Singapore, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. Contributor Bio:  Cheung, Tai Ming Tai Ming Cheung is Director of the Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation at the University of California, San Diego, where he also leads the institute's Study of Technology and Innovation project. Previously, he was based in northeast Asia (Hong Kong, China, and Japan) as a journalist for the Far Eastern Economic Review and subsequently as a political and business risk consultant for a number of companies, including PricewaterhouseCoopers.