Book Review - China Goes Global: The Partial Power

But WHY is China Only a Partial Power?

China Goes Global: The Partial Power, by David Shambaugh, is an attempt to defuse some of the mounting paranoia regarding China’s rise. The premise revolves around the fact that although China is a large growing nation with ties all over the world, those ties are not very strong and they are not deeply connected to anyone. China is a country without traditional allies, and it continuously shoots itself in the foot attempting to buy friends. Though Shambaugh does an admirable job detailing China’s strengths and weaknesses, his argument does have a few flaws, and he fails to give a satisfying answer as to why China is where it is globally.

Shambaugh first argues that even being an authoritative regime with top down decisionmaking, China ironically suffers from having multiple wildly varying narratives on what direction the country should be taking in foreign affairs. These hit both extremes, from hypernationalists all the way liberal institutionalists. The influence of these competing voices makes China’s foreign policy disjointed, as the international trust and respect that China is trying to build with the one hand is seriously harmed by the rhetoric from the other. This is a common theme that recurs throughout the book.

Each substantive chapter follows a similar pattern: first Shambaugh explains China’s strengths in a given area, or otherwise what they are attempting to build. Then he shows the limitations of those strengths. The chapters cover most of the major foreign policy pushes: institutionalization and diplomacy; trade and economics; cultural and soft power; and military. In each he shows China’s global ambitions and what they have achieved so far, but then explains what their limits are and how many of them are self-imposed.

China Goes Global is a very well cited book. Shambaugh has extensive footnotes and has travelled the globe getting personal interviews with everyone from Latin American universities to Russian arms suppliers. His facts seem beyond dispute and his insightful analysis of Chinese domestic politics speaks to his years studying and living in China. However, the vast majority of his analysis is limited to second image Chinese domestic factors. Being a professor of Political Science and and International Affairs, I would think he would include some amount of structural analysis, examining China’s place in the system of powers. Other than some very cursory mentions of a security dilemma, Shambaugh never examines why some of China’s attempts to globalize are met with such skepticism from a wide variety of actors, from the US to the EU to its own Asian neighbors. Or rather, his explanations are always from the perspective of each individual state, with no mention of anything that could tie them all together, like relative gains considerations or the burgeoning possibility of regional hegemony.

More damning is his dependence on a historical/cultural explanation to do much of his theory’s heavy lifting. He does do an excellent job explaining why China’s history matters to its current foreign affairs, as does its culture, but the argument is countered in his own writing. The Chinese government has systematically ignored certain periods in its history, particular from the mid 1950s until the later 1970s, the period of the Cultural Revolution. This is a significant period of the party’s history that they are very much trying to forget. Similarly, Shambaugh believes that nationalistic and institutional memory of the “Century of Shame and Humiliation” explains a lot of China’s behavior, but should a historical approach not also remember the centuries that China dominated its entire region, to say nothing of its recent subjugation and repression of other populations?

Chinese culture explains even less than their history. “Culture” should be universally understood and apply equally to all its citizens, but then what explains the variation between different foreign policy outlooks? Though culture might be important in many cases, scholars like Kenneth Waltz and Fareed Zakaria have attacked it for being reductionist and amorphous. Zakaria in particular argues that a culture is complex and can explain nearly any behavior, which of course means it explains nothing. Having a “Confucian culture” has been used to explain everything from backwards feudalism to industrious capitalism to cronyism and corruption.[1] Waltz meanwhile argues that dramatically different cultures have arrived at very similar foreign policy outcomes, suggesting that culture perhaps is not the driver of policy and something larger is at work.[2] Finally, Shambaugh himself quotes a number of Chinese scholars in his Soft Power chapter that bemoan the lack of Chinese culture. They say that one of the reasons China has such trouble attracting others is that it has nothing to export culturally; it was all destroyed in the Cultural Revolution. In all, Shambaugh never really defines Chinese culture consistently, but he uses it to explain all sorts of behavior, and none of it good.

More important to the story is not Chinese culture itself, but the Chinese government’s use of their culture. This comes out most strongly in the soft power and diplomacy chapters, but is relevant in the others as well. The Chinese government stresses how unique the Chinese culture is, which plays well to a nationalistic domestic audience but pushes away foreigners. One only has to look at the American icons to see that their universality is constantly pushed. The term “McWorld” was coined for a reason. But Chinese cultural exports often have “with Chinese characteristics” attached to it: Socialism with Chinese characteristics,[3] International Relations theory with Chinese characteristics.[4] These are hard to see a non-Chinese person trying to emulate. Shambaugh does not explore this theme enough, only mentioning that Chinese propagandizing often pushes people away. Much less time is spent on why the exports that should be taking root still seem to not have the cultural appeal that they should.

Shambaugh writes a number of times that the “China model” of economics is also difficult to export, but fails to explain why. In his economics chapter, he does an excellent job showing how integrated China is to the global economy, and how that model, though highly productive, reminds much of the developing world of colonialism. What is not fully explored is China’s failing attempt at hailing the economic model itself as an alternative to western-style capitalism. The reasons for this are obvious: China is a huge exporter of cheap low-end goods, and an export-led growth strategy puts a state in direct competition with them. Trying to outcompete China at its own game seems like a non-starter. Additionally, China already runs a huge trade surplus with the rest of the world. Another state attempting an export-led growth model might find that the developed world is unwilling to run further trade deficits.

The security chapter is perhaps the one that lacks the most analysis, from an International Relations perspective. Shambaugh writes the chapter as he writes the others, explaining how China is growing and trying to become more global, then explaining the limitations. In essence, China is updating their military and trying to build some global capacity, but is not there yet, or even close. But there is no attempt to answer the obvious question of why exactly China’s military spending is growing so quickly. Do they feel insecure, or is this an aggressive buildup? He mentions that other states feel nervous about China’s growing offensive capabilities, and reasonably so, but no mention of China’s motivations here. Much of China’s buildup is focused on Taiwan and the US, but what do they have to fear from us, and more importantly, why the focus on clearly offensive technology? A blue water navy, long range missiles and strategic bombers, aerial refueling, these are all tools of power projection. But where is China going to project power? They already have a strong nuclear deterrent and the world’s largest land army, invading their territory is nearly impossible and has been for decades, even before the modernization push. All it seems to be doing is push self-encirclement, where every nearby power is rushing to strengthen alliances with the offshore balancer, the US. Shambaugh gives us no answers or analysis here.

Overall, Shambaugh does an excellent job telling the reader what and how China is increasing its global capabilities, and how it is not. But the lack of critical analysis hurts the book and leaves the reader asking why. His only theoretical explanations are history and culture, which obviously affect everything that China does to some degree. But why is China succeeding and failing in these specific ways? Perhaps, Ironically, there is not enough history motivating China. They have only been taking part in modern foreign affairs since the 70s, and have grown into a great power very quickly. Perhaps this is simply not enough time to learn proper diplomacy and what exportable culture is like. Throughout the book, Shambaugh makes it clearly that the one thing China has going for it is money. It can spend endless amounts of cash, and it is doing so by building cultural institutes, military modernization, and buying up foreign resources and companies alike. But one cannot buy friends, nor can one buy respect. If China wants to be respected in the International system as Shambaugh claims it does, as a government and society they are going to have to grow up and learn how things are done. Money and brute force can only take you so far.

---

[1] Zakaria, F. 2003. The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad. W.W. Norton. http://books.google.com/books?id=b4Trw_i-xE0C.

[2] Waltz, Kenneth. 1979. Theory of International Politics. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Pub. Co.

[3] “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics.” 2014. The 17th National Congress of the Communist Party of China. Accessed February 24. http://english.people.com.cn/90002/92169/92211/6275043.html.

[4] Xinning, Song. 2001. “Building International Relations Theory with Chinese Characteristics.” Journal of Contemporary China 10 (26): 61–74. doi:10.1080/10670560125339.

Optimal Use of Military Drones in Theory (and eventually practice)

 This is a research agenda assignment for my Advanced International Security seminar. The idea is to suggest a line of research that interests you, outline key concepts and literature, then suggest a possible research design. This is a research paper I would like to write in the future expanding on Robert Pape's work but with a modern or futuristic twist, examining the use of Drones in modern warfare.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Drones are seen as a natural evolution of the shift in military organization that began in World War I. Warfare has become more and more mechanized over time, until finally now technology has progressed to the point that, for certain operations, soldiers are not needed on the field at all. This marks a qualitative difference from previous eras: previously, no matter how mechanized the military might be, there was a risk to soldiers. In a military engagement, even heavily armored troops might be killed. But with drones, there is very little risk to military personnel: engineers and technicians can sit in secured bases within safe territory, while pilots are sitting in an office or facility far away from the fighting.

This marks a dramatic reduction of the costs, both material, in terms of money and troops; and political, by not requiring leaders to explain to the people what American troops are dying for. If war is less costly, it is far easier to commit to a military action, and even more so to maintain an action that is ongoing. This has dramatic impact on current research into asymmetrical wars, which many believe boils down to a cost calculation on the part of the strong state. If high costs can no longer be inflicted on a strong power by a weaker power, they lose their ability to make the stronger power quit the fighting.

However, not having soldiers physically present for a mission is not all upside. With current technology, drones are only capable of performing certain types of missions, in effect replacing other forms of air power. They can effectively replace personnel in airstrikes or strategic bombing campaigns, but like all air power they cannot control or conquer territory. Beyond that, being the logical endpoint of mechanized military, they lack a human ability to connect with other humans. Effective counter-insurgency operations often boil down to an occupying soldiers’ personal connection with civilians, thus a drone based campaign, by its very definition lacking persons, is unlikely to succeed on that front. This raises a question: in what missions would drones be an effective substitute for military personnel, and what are their limitations?

In the context of asymmetric warfare, Ivan Arreguin-Toft has examined why on occasion the strong state seems to “lose” even when a direct power comparison says they are clearly far more powerful.[1] For him, the outcome boils down to a difference in strategy between the weak and strong state, and assumes, fairly reasonably, that the strong state is the aggressor. Arreguin-Toft dichotomizes each state’s options: the strong can choose a direct attack strategy, which means attacking the enemies armed forces in the field and attempting to destroy their capacity to resist; or they can choose “barbarism”, which is an attempt to destroy the defenders will to resist by imposing extra costs on the defending population as well as the defenders themselves. The defending military could continue to fight, but the costs of doing so would be too high, so they give up. The defender meanwhile makes a similar choice: direct defense, destroying the attackers capacity to attack in the field, or a guerilla campaign, which attacks the attackers will to fight by, again, imposing higher costs. The defender might not be able to destroy the attackers capacity to continue, but the attacker will not want to at the costs they are facing, and thus will quit and go home.

Arreguin-Toft finds that whenever the strategies are mismatched, the weak state can win, but when the strategies align, the strong state is victorious.[2] If a weak state attempts to defend directly and loses their fighting capacity in the field, they can no longer resist. But if they refuse to defend directly in favor of guerilla tactics, they can impose huge costs on the attacking army, keeping the war going far longer than it would otherwise. He also notes that although it would make sense for the attacking army to use barbaric tactics to defeat guerillas, it is politically costly as this strategy tends to involve breaking the laws of war or possibly war crimes.[3]

Patricia Sullivan has a similar but different idea as to why a strong state can lose to a weak one, also revolving around costs. Sullivan explains that, unlike in Arreguin-Toft’s typology, the weak state cannot actually “win” the war, in that the strong state cannot really lose.[4] They can simply decide to stop fighting. This decision is made exclusively by the strong state, and revolves around political leaders expectations of the cost of the war are exceeded by the real costs. Regardless of how much damage the weaker side takes, if they can press on until the stronger side exceeds its cost threshold, they should be able to force a withdrawal.

The damage that can be inflicted upon the aggressor is half of the cost equation; the other half is the military aim. Sullivan shows that aims can fall upon a continuum from Brute Force objectives to Coercive ones. Brute force would be the conquest of territory or expulsion of a people. It does not require compliance of the target, sufficient force is enough. Coercive goals, like getting someone to change a policy, requires them to comply with your demands, force alone will not achieve the goals. Coercive goals can be far more costly, and it is possible for a state to misestimate the costs of the objective before committing to force. If the estimation is far enough below the real costs, the strong power might quit before achieving their goals.[5]

Taking Arreguin-Toft and Sullivan together, we can see how a weaker state strategy like insurgency works. Guerilla strategies only function by imposing unacceptable costs on the attacking force, making them choose to quit the field, never by forcing the strong state to withdraw. Drones enter into this discussion by limiting the possible costs that can be inflicted. Each infantryman in Afghanistan costs an estimated $850,000 a year, and there is a political cost to deploying infantry as well, since each military death is more meaningful than just the dollar cost of a lost investment.[6] An F/A-18 jet costs $66 million, not including the cost of the pilot.[7] An airstrike via Tomahawk missile costs 1.2 million per missile used.[8] A reaper drone meanwhile costs only $16 million each and around $3,000 an hour to operate.[9] Obviously the risk to a pilot is zero. This is considerably less costly in both economic and political terms. If a soldier is killed, there is political blowback, the death must be justified, that is exactly why guerilla strategies work. But if a drone is destroyed, and this isn’t even very likely given their small size and high maneuverability, it’s only money. The US launches plenty of missiles and the economic costs of each rarely enter the public discourse.

With potential costs so low, it is quite possible that this disrupts Arreguin-Toft’s strategic interaction logic, as well as Sullivan’s cost tolerance argument. A drone war can be run for years on the cheap, and with a low risk of losses. Even ignoring that drones can be used for indiscriminate “barbaric” attacks, drones can be used to directly suppress enemy forces while also being difficult to inflict reasonable costs upon. A nation comfortable with the reasonable per-year cost of drone warfare might take a very long time to cross Sullivan’s cost threshold, especially if the objective is simply long-term suppression of a rebel group or weak state, rather than coercion. Using drones just makes it very hard to “lose” this sort of war.

Though a drone-based war might be difficult to lose, another group of scholars shows that not losing is not the same thing as winning. Insurgency works by imposing costs on the attacker. A similar strategy can be used on the defenders, called strategic bombing.[10] In theory, it should work the same: impose costs, usually on civilians, until there is no longer support for military action, even if the defenders could go on. Though the mechanism is similar on both ends in theory, in practice the situation is very different. Guerilla tactics work because the strong side can simply give up and go home. They have not lost the war, they just failed to win. When the defenders give up, they lose the war entirely.

Robert Pape has written extensively about the actual effectiveness of strategic bombing as a coercive strategy, and found it wanting. In essence, defending governments shift resources so the military is the least affected by any indiscriminate destruction and the costs mainly fall on civilians, but civilian populations do not seem to rise against their government as costs are inflicted upon them.[11] This invalidates the basic logic of strategic bombing: regardless of how it is supposed to go in theory, in practice it seems to do nothing. He does note however that theater bombing (using airpower as direct force against troops, degrading the defenders short term combat capabilities instead of coercing the civilian population at home) has become very effective in recent years.[12]

Drones might be good at many things, but ending an insurgency is not one of them. Lyall and Wilson have studied the effects of mechanization in warfare from 1800 until 2005, specifically looking at insurgencies.[13] They discovered that as militaries mechanized (starting around WWI), they became less and less effective against insurgent tactics. This they theorize is because of the lack of connection with the population the insurgency is hiding amongst: armored troops spend less time in a population center, don’t make as many personal connections with the people living there, and generally don’t acquire the deep local knowledge needed to discriminate between insurgent and civilian.

If armored troops have a difficult time determining who targets are, a drone circling overhead at 10,000 feet, with literally zero contact with civilians, will have an even harder time. In addition, the lack of contact makes any sort of hearts and minds campaign impossible: drones don’t do anything directly positive for civilians on the ground like soldiers can. Lyall and Wilson do not make the claim that mechanized forces will always lose a conflict with insurgents, but they will be less effective at winning than a more “primitive” infantry based army[14].

Taken all together, it seems that drone strategies are excellent for maintaining the status quo. Their low initial cost, and the difficulty of increasing costs on the drone user, makes it difficult to feel a drone war is too expensive to continue fighting, thus making it extremely difficult for a strong state to “lose” with a drone strategy. However, their inability to control the ground or pacify an area makes it equally difficult to “win”. As an airpower only strategy, modern drones will not be effective at coercing the enemy to give up the fight, but are effective at destroying enemy forces if they assemble in sufficient force. This forces the enemy to hide, enacting only small guerilla attacks that, like airpower, are unable to win a war. A drones vs. insurgent campaign should, in theory, end up in a war of low level attrition, with neither side able to take and hold enemy territory or inflict major costs on the other unless they make a mistake, such as the strong state putting soldiers in harms way, or the insurgents massing to conquer a piece of territory and getting chopped to pieces by airpower.[15]

If a war can continue stalemated forever, the winner is whatever side is protecting the status quo. A government could suppress, but not defeat a rebel group with drones. However, the government, being in power currently, might be willing to accept this outcome. Stall for time, wait until the rebels fall apart on their own or the political situation changes. In Afghanistan, the US could, for example, likely suppress the Taliban with a drone campaign, but could not defeat them. With sufficient time however, the Afghan central government might be able to gain effectiveness and legitimacy, making it far more difficult for the rebels to achieve an overthrow of the government. The central government could eventually use ground forces and police to actually win the insurgency, defending the border, protecting civilians, and rooting out insurgents in the population. This is unlikely to happen any time soon of course, but buying time is exactly what a drone campaign can be expected to do.

Drone effectiveness in the field can be measured by looking at the number of drone missions, the type of mission and comparing them to levels of direct insurgent action.[16] Drones, acting as theater air power, should be able to stop enemy forces from assembling in strength. Drone strikes might not prevent all guerilla-style attacks, but they should result in significant decreases in attempts to take or control territory. However, if drones are being used in strategic bombing roles, either to decapitate leaders or deny resources to forward troops, there should be little measurable decrease (all other things being equal) in insurgent activity either in guerilla attacks or direct military action.

The large-n study can be supplemented with careful case studies of specific theaters where drones are used as theater air power or in a strategic sense. Interviews with military officers, examining mission reports, and looking at the percentage of drone kills that are civilians (collateral damage through a decapitation or other strategic mission) will allow for a deep sense of what drones can and cannot do, thus informing military strategists and policymakers alike.

---

[1] Arreguin-Toft, Ivan. 2001. “How the Weak Win Wars: A Theory of Asymmetric Conflict.” International Security 26 (1): 93–128.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Sullivan, Patricia L. 2007. “War Aims and War Outcomes Why Powerful States Lose Limited Wars.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 51 (3): 496–524.

[5] Ibid.

[6] “One Soldier, One Year: $850,000 and Rising – CNN Security Clearance - CNN.com Blogs.” 2014. Accessed February 14. http://security.blogs.cnn.com/2012/02/28/one-soldier-one-year-850000-and-rising/.

[7] US Navy. 2012. “Department of Defense Fiscal Year (FY) 2013 President’s Budget Submission.” Navy Justification Book Volume 1 Aircraft Procurement, Navy Budget Activities 1-4.

[8] “What Would a Strike against Syria Cost?- MSN Money.” 2014. Accessed February 14. http://money.msn.com/now/post--what-would-a-strike-against-syria-cost.

[9] US Air Force. 2012. “Department of Defense Fiscal Year (FY) 2013 President’s Budget Submission.” Air Force Justification Book Volume 1 Aircraft Procurement, Air Force.

[10] For an extensive review of strategic bombing, see Pape, Robert Anthony. 1996. Bombing to Win: Air Power and Coercion in War. Cornell University Press.

[11] Pape, Robert A. 1990. “Coercive Air Power in the Vietnam War.” International Security: 103–46.

[12] Pape, Robert A. 1997. “The Limits of Precision‐guided Air Power.” Security Studies 7 (2): 93–114.

[13] Lyall, Jason, and Isaiah Wilson. 2009. “Rage against the Machines: Explaining Outcomes in Counterinsurgency Wars.” International Organization 63 (1): 67–106.

[14] Ibid.

[15] For an example of this during Vietnam see Pape, 1990

[16] Wikileaks data could be used for this.