Where scale matters

By: Mike Froman

Greetings from Honolulu, where a delegation of CFR members is just finishing up a fact-finding visit to the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM) and some of its components. INDOPACOM is the combatant command for more than half the world—from Hollywood to Bollywood and from polar bears to penguins, as they say. It faces multiple challenges, including North Korea’s growing nuclear and missile activity and the increasing activity of Russia’s Pacific forces, but its overwhelming focus is on China—which the military calls the “pacing threat” for the United States.

The Chinese Communist Party, with President Xi Jinping at its helm, appears keen to achieve regional hegemony and redraw longstanding borders in the Indo-Pacific by “unifying” with the island of Taiwan and solidifying its expansive territorial claims in the South and East China Seas.

Over the last two decades, China has undertaken the largest peacetime military buildup in recent history, enabling it to project power far beyond its land borders and littoral waters, as well as to challenge U.S. and allied military primacy in the Indo-Pacific. By mobilizing its immense industrial base, China has built a substantial maritime fighting force—now the largest in the world by some measures, with more warships (370) than the entire U.S. Navy (296). And China’s navy is focused on largely just one region, while the U.S. Navy is stretched across the globe. 

China’s military continues to grow at breakneck production rates that the United States and its combined regional allies have yet to match. Indeed, according to the U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence, China now possesses more than 200 times the shipbuilding capacity of the United States. Its air force and strategic nuclear forces have also surged. Its missile capabilities are worrisome, as is its determination to build out its nuclear arsenal, with the goal of fielding over 1,500 warheads by the mid-2030s.

The U.S. maintains a significant qualitative advantage in a number of key areas. For example, the CFR delegation spent a day out at sea on a nuclear-powered fast-attack submarine. And there seemed to be a consensus—from the sailors on board to the admirals back in headquarters—that U.S. superiority undersea gives the U.S. a significant edge in any potential conflict. But the delegation heard repeatedly that scale, and the military axiom that “quantity has a quality all to its own,” is the crux of China’s strategy to achieve military supremacy in the Indo-Pacific. And on that score, the U.S. is lagging far behind. 

Concurrent with this military buildup, China has ratcheted up pressure on long-time U.S. allies and partners in the region by militarizing contested territories in the South and East China Seas and increasing its long-time pressure campaign on Taiwan. These actions include China’s recent attempts to create facts on the ground to claim the Philippines’ Second Thomas Shoal and its move last week to plant a flag on Sandy Cay, which the Philippines also claims.

On the issue of Taiwan, China has begun to ramp up large, live-fire military drills in close proximity to the island, akin to dress rehearsals for blockades, missile strikes, air raids, amphibious assaults, and other offensive military operations. It has also severed a number of key undersea cables connected to Taiwan's outlying islands and probed Taiwan's defenses with a steady stream of incursions into air and water around Taiwan. Admiral Samuel J. Paparo, commander of INDOPACOM, told the Senate Committee on Armed Services last month that China’s People’s Liberation Army increased its military pressure against Taiwan by 300 percent in 2024. In recent months, China has also debuted its formidable amphibious assault capabilities, including massive floating bridges and amphibious assault craft, which it could utilize in a Taiwan invasion scenario.

The United States has watched as Beijing mobilized capital and manipulated its investment policy, even as China’s GDP growth has slowed, in pursuit of its long-term economic and security goals. Needless to say, Beijing’s scale advantage may prove to be the decisive factor in determining the balance of power in the Indo-Pacific and beyond.  

My colleague Rush Doshi , who joined the delegation with us and is the C.V. Starr Senior Fellow for Asia Studies and Director of CFR’s China Strategy Initiative, made this very point in the latest edition of Foreign Affairs Magazine with former Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell. They argued “this is an era in which strategic advantage will once again accrue to those who can operate at scale. China possesses scale, and the United States does not—at least not by itself.” Only when combined with its major allies, particularly in Europe and the Indo-Pacific, could the United States collectively marshal more industrial capacity, long-term investment, and human capital to “outscale” China and its partners. As Rush and Kurt underscore in their essay, “because its only viable path lies in coalition with others, Washington would be particularly unwise to go it alone in a complex global competition.”

It came as no surprise, therefore, that when even as we were discussing the relative strengths of various weapon systems, the hardy perennial issue of trade came up: How the tariffs are affecting relations with allies in the region the United States might well need to deter and defeat potential China aggression. As one of my interlocutors noted, there must be something between tariffs and traditional free trade agreements. It may or may not all come down to trade, but the United States would do well to connect the dots between tariff actions and other domains where it needs allies and partners to achieve strategic objectives.

To end on an optimistic note: While it was a sobering visit, one of the United States’ absolute advantages is the unmatched professionalism, discipline, and dedication of the men and women of the armed services. From its incredibly thoughtful leaders to the sailors who serve for months on end in an austere and demanding environment below the waves, one cannot help but be impressed and reassured.

We welcome your feedback on this column. Let me know what foreign policy issues you’d like me to address next by replying to president@cfr.org. 

Photo: The Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy’s guided-missile frigate Yueyang takes part in a China-Thailand joint naval exercise off the southern port city of Shanwei, China, May 6, 2019. (Reuters )

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