A Question of Balance (RAND on the China-Taiwan Conflict)

Over at Wired's Danger Room (you can see it in my blog list) David Axe offers a nice summary of a new RAND study, A Question of Balance: Political Context and Military Aspects of the China-Taiwan Dispute. The study's authors (David A. Shlapak, David T. Orletsky, Toy I. Reid, Murray Scot Tanner, Barry Wilson) argue that "Looking to the near future, improved air defense capabilities, including shipboard defenses, a growing inventory of modern fourth generation fighters, and a powerful and flexible force of offensive ballistic missiles place in jeopardy the long-held assumption of the defense’s control of the skies over the Taiwan Strait and Taiwan’s coastline" (p. 118).

The 185 page study, the PDF edition of which can (like much of that think tank's output) be accessed freely online, posits a scenario circa 2013 in which China uses those ballistic missiles to suppress the Taiwanese Air Force and make it a simpler matter for its own modernized air force (which might deploy 350 to 400 generation 3.5 and generation 4 fighters, while benefiting from better electronic warfare and precision guided munitions capabilities) to seize air superiority over the island (especially in the event that the missile attacks hit U.S. bases on Okinawa).

Chapter 3 works out the details with regard to the missile attack, Chapter 4 those with regard to the aerial fighting. This makes for a much more effective assault of any sort, and raises the odds of a successful invasion (the focus of Chapter 5)--but the latter (which the authors acknowledge is the "only . . . military course of action that guarantees China control of Taiwan") remains pretty unlikely. Even assuming the expansion of China's assault fleet in accordance with the scenario described it would have the capacity to deliver only 30,000 troops to the beachheads, far too few to conquer the island--and even these would not be certain of getting there, even with air superiority, because of land-based cruise missiles, mines, helicopters and fire from ground forces on the Taiwanese coast.

As a result, they conclude that "an invasion of Taiwan would, in the face of properly prepared defenses, remain a bold and possibly foolish gamble on Beijing’s part."

And even that may be overoptimistic. As David Axe points out, the study fails to properly acknowledge the impact U.S. submarines (and it might be added, Taiwan's subs as well) could have on the invasion, relegating it to a single footnote on page 118, though conceding that "their firepower would substantially increase the defenders’ odds of success."

It might also be suggested that the assumption of an attack on U.S. bases in Okinawa is a little too pat (as partially acknowledged in the sidebar on pages 86-87), given, if nothing else, the risk that Japan's own very large and very capable air and naval forces would enter the conflict, which would work strongly against China.

And then, of course, there is the broader political context, and all the factors in it that work against any decision to undertake a large-scale attack on Taiwan: that China has prioritized development over military confrontation; that China's trade with Taiwan, the U.S. and Japan approaches $800 billion a year, or about 18 percent of the country's GDP (measured at official exchange rates), and so could not be lightly jeopardized; that the damage China would likely do to its military establishment and its relations with key neighbors and trading partners apart from those it fights in such a scenario would damage its security position and diminish its influence, and its economic growth, for years to come, while likely subjecting the country to even worse internal stresses than a war against Taiwan would be meant to alleviate; and that "any PLA combat with U.S. forces involves China’s tacit acceptance of the risks of fighting a nuclear-armed superpower" (p. 86).

These factors may not make a conflict between mainland China and Taiwan impossible (a move toward formal, permanent independence on Taiwan's part is seen by many as an exception to China's usually scrupulous practice of rational realpolitik, in part because Taiwan's status is seen as an "internal matter" and key legitimacy issue), but I suspect they diminish the likelihood of a major conflict much more than is generally appreciated.

On The Risk of Sino-Indian Confrontation

I remember a decade ago hearing about a Sino-Indian competition for influence in the Indian Ocean-not an entirely new thing then, but quite different with the loss of the old Cold War context (inside which China and India fought a month-long war in 1962, and China aligned itself with Pakistan while the Soviets sided with India), and the rapid growth of China's economic and military weight (providing it with a regional influence not seen in centuries). In particular there was a widespread impression that Myanmar was fast becoming an extension of China, and that very soon the Chinese navy would become very visible indeed in the Indian Ocean.

Talk about this competition seems to be heating up again with China's combat deployment of a naval unit to the western Indian Ocean to fight pirates (something India also did, one result of which was a reported stand-off that may have been overblown in the press), and recent Chinese projects aimed at developing port facilities in both Pakistan and Sri Lanka (widely interpreted as potential bases for the Chinese navy, though as ex-Indian Cabinet member B. Raman acknowledges in this paper, the Hambantota facility in Sri Lanka is not slated to become a base, nor likely to be used against India, even if the interest is "more strategic than purely commercial").

The launch of India's first nuclear sub last month seems likely not only to be viewed in this context, but also to be taken as another data point testifying to the rising danger level.1 As implied by the ambiguity of much of the above data, the talk strikes me as overblown. There are real conflicts between them (over border claims in the Himalayas and the status of Tibet), but the relationship between the two nations is more complex than implied in such discussions, considerable cooperation also taking place (in their negotiations with the industrial nations over matters like trade and climate policy, for instance), and some real signs of improvement, not the least of it the reopening of Nathu La (closed after the '62 war).

Additionally, predictions about the development of the military capability of both these nations consistently overestimate the rate of their expansion, and both of them have other, bigger concerns closer to home. Even overlooking the pressing domestic problems that (certainly in an age of climate change and potential energy scarcity) could make their economic booms go the way of the Brazilian miracle, their biggest military/security considerations are domestic upheaval and the collapse of neighboring states (Pakistan or Bangladesh in India's case, North Korea in China's). Even where the list of potential conventional conflicts is concerned, a Sino-Indian fight is far from the top of the list, and in particular a big sea war in the Indian Ocean. (As things stand, China lacks the means to control the Taiwan Strait, let alone project enough power into the Indian Ocean to fight the much bigger Indian Navy and Air Force at their home base; and of course, the nuclear element in the situation is likely to constrain the moves of both actors.)

Laying out a base prediction for the next century last month, my guess was that

generalized economic stagnation (and the tendency toward short-term thinking reinforced by the economic culture) will encourage cautious, conservative statesmanship, risk-averse and commitment-shy (even if governments find it politically expedient to rattle their sabers and play up the foreign menace for the benefit of domestic consumption) . . . Accident, blunder or the hijack of foreign policy by fanatics inside of a key power will pose a bigger danger than any "inevitable" collision of essential state interests-[but] it is not to be taken lightly.

That certainly holds for the situation in the Indian Ocean basin.

NOTES
1. My analysis of the Arihant's launch can be found here. I emphasized in it that the sub does not yet represent a credible capability-as the ship will not be operational for some years, that a force of several subs is usually required for a continuously functional deterrent, and that the range of the missiles on-board is limited. This quickly attracted criticism, not all of which I agree with, but I do acknowledge the regional nature of the deterrent, the expectation that the missiles will be replaced with longer-range weapons, and that more subs are under construction, all of which may make it operational by the middle of the next decade.

The Rise of the Meritocracy, 1870-2033: The New Elite of Our Social Revolution, by Michael Young

New York: Random House, 1959, pp. 160.

Michael Young's The Rise of the Meritocracy is, of course, the book that brought that word into the language, presenting the titular event and its consequences as a piece of future history, composed by a sociologist of the 2030s, as a way of commenting on a current issue.

This future history imagines post-war Britain undergoing a very thoroughgoing scheme of social engineering, intended to make it internationally competitive in an age of intense scientific-technological-industrial competition, by closely connecting social position with merit. Here "merit" is essentially a function of IQ test score (as the nation's psychologists, apparently, have succeeded in eliminating the causes of underachievement), with the high scorers unfailingly streamed through the most lavish schooling available to elite positions, creating a hierarchy of affluence and status neatly in line with the hierarchy of intelligence and ability.

In his much more recent study of the history of standardized testing, The Big Test: The Secret History of the American Meritocracy, Nicholas Lemann (who devotes a full chapter to discussing Young's earlier book), rightly points out that Young seems naïve in expecting that

inheritance of wealth and position would be abolished, that government would fund education so abundantly that private schools would wither away, that scientists would rule the society, and that schoolteachers would be highly paid.1

Indeed, one could say that the degree of centralization, systematization and rationalization seen in the book (and also, the optimism about what applied social science would soon permit) appear awfully dated.

Nonetheless, like Aldous Huxley's Brave New World or George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, this kind of story (and at one point, Young had intended to present it as a novel, on the advice of Leonard Woolf) is typically written with the purpose of taking an idea to its logical conclusion, rather than really plausible extrapolation--with the idea in this case the meritocratic principle. Young's point is, above all, the unavoidable problems to which inegalitarianism leads, even when it is more rationally arranged, and the need to diminish inequality rather than just rearrange it.

Some of the problems the book envisions could only rise in the kind of thoroughgoing meritocracy no real-world society has ever achieved, like the anxiety of parents knowing their children will do less well than they did (and knowing this from earlier and earlier on in their upbringing), not because of a weakening economy or increasing downward social mobility, but because of their lesser abilities on a genuinely level playing field; and the compromises and personal sacrifices entailed in the eugenics program intended to maximize the next generation's share of desired talents. Others, however, are only too familiar to our time, like the frustration of women, particularly educated, high-status women, who find themselves torn between child-rearing and family on the one hand, and career on the other; the narrowly utilitarian basis by which "merit" is judged in his future ("the ability to raise production, directly or indirectly"); the argument that "common" workers do not deserve, and ought not be afforded, a share of the gains in economic productivity; the push by a radical right-wing of the political spectrum for an acceptance of greater inequality on the grounds that earlier concessions to a more egalitarian society were wrong-headed and unnecessary; and the invocation of the imperatives of international competition as an excuse for harsh treatment of the lower orders.

The same goes for the idea of the gap in sympathy and concern between the ruling elite and the mass of the people whose lives they run, which the meritocratic rationale widens. Young's son, Toby Young (who of course does not deny his being a beneficiary of Britain's class system), noted in his book How to Lose Friends and Alienate People that the meritocratic idea (which as he notes, is undeniably powerful in the United States, despite its hugely flawed application, as Lemann also succinctly shows in the afterword to his own book) gives elites an excuse to wash their hands of those who fail to thrive, to look down on the "losers" of the world.

Thinking about that, I find myself coming back to Ayn Rand's most famous work, Atlas Shrugged (1957), which appeared at almost the same time, espousing a view toward the subject of meritocracy that is a hundred and eighty degrees away from what the elder Young set forth in his book. Rand's novel is by far the better known book among the general public in the United States today, and ironically, is becoming even more popular in the midst of an economic crisis that in other quarters has led to the widest and deepest questioning of the prevailing version of capitalism seen in some time.

Make of that what you will.

NOTES
1. Nicholas Lemann, The Big Test: The Secret History of the American Meritocracy (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1999), p. 118.

Second Quarter Growth, 2009

The Bureau of Economic Analysis has released its latest figures. Interest naturally is focused on the country's second quarter performance. As predicted, U.S. GDP shrank again, for the fourth straight quarter. However, this was not the only data awaited, the big once-every-five years update of the whole statistical base also appearing. According to the BEA's National Economic Accounts the U.S.'s GDP shrank about 1.9 percent during 2008, when measured in chained 2005 dollars-mote than twice the estimate current before this latest recalculation, which had it at 0.8 percent. (Incidentally, the CIA's World Factbook officially lists U.S. GDP as having grown 1.3 percent that year, a very substantial difference.) When the time frame is shifted just one quarter forward, to cover the twelve months between March 2008 and March 2009 (and three quarters of contraction), the U.S. economy appears to have shrunk by about 3.3 percent using the same measure (compared with 2.5 percent in the earlier calculation). Between June 2008 and June 2009, after four full quarters of economic contraction, it shrank by about 3.9 percent, about evenly divided over the two years. In short, things were worse than they said. Of course, bad as this looks, the "conventional wisdom" (I'll say it again: certainly conventional, but so rarely wise) is that we've seen the worst of it, noting that the drop in GDP slowed markedly in the second quarter (the economy contracting at an annual rate of just 1 percent, instead of the 5-6 percent rate of the three previous quarters), and the third quarter of 2009-this one, the one we're actually living in-will end with a return to growth in the U.S. and much of the world. My take: the business press has been too quick to breathe a sigh of relief. As Rex Nutting of Marketwatch reports, consumers-constrained by still rising unemployment (into the double digits) which even optimists do not expect to see come down for a long while, the flat wage growth that goes along with that, and the maxing out of consumer credit-are in no position to generate the kind of demand that will keep real growth going, barring continuous, unsustainable stimulus injections of the kind that quadrupled U.S. Federal debt in the 1930s, and ran Japan deep into the red in the 1990s. (Indeed, the recent data suggests the drop in consumer spending was sharper than earlier recognized.) Quite naturally, Larry Doyle asks "Are We in the Early Stages of a Economic Depression?" Of course, some might argue that we are already there, at least in some countries (Ireland, for instance, according to Ernst & Young), but what he means is the continued, prolonged deepening of the national and global economic contraction. No one wants the answer to be "yes," but taking the question too lightly could make that outcome more likely.