Article Reviews

Looking the World in the Eye

Robert D. Kaplan, Looking the World in the Eye,  The Atlantic, December 2001 .

“It is my hypothesis that the fundamental source of conflict in this new world will not be primarily ideological or primarily economic. The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural. Nation states will remain the most powerful actors in world affairs, but the principal conflicts of global conflicts will occur between nations and groups of different civilizations… Conflict between civilizations will be the latest phase of the evolution of conflict in the modern world.”

These words, penned almost a decade ago by Samuel Huntington in a Foreign Affairs article, seem almost prophetic today. American-led Western armies are battling dedicated Islamic militants in Afghanistan, as a divided Muslim world looks on, torn between its discomfort with al-Qaeda’s brand of extremism and its resentment of American hegemony. Even though most governments in the Islamic world have professed support for America’s “War on Terror”, the possibility that the gulf between Islam and the West will eventually widen cannot be dismissed out of hand. While many have disagreed with Huntington’s theses, some vitriolically, there is little disagreement that he has asked—and sought to answer—important questions. 

In this thinly-disguised paean, Robert Kaplan walks the reader through Huntington’s works since the 1950s. To summarize, The Soldier and the State (1957?) was an early study of civil-military relations in the United States. Huntington argued that the liberal impulses of America’s civilian leaders were in tension with the necessarily conservative culture of the armed forces, and a proper balance would require the strict delineation of military authority. Political Order in Changing Societies (1968) was provoked by America’s failure to stem the tide of communist insurgency in Vietnam. Huntington argued that the most important political distinction among countries concerns “not their form of government but their degree of government”. Institutions, he suggested, are more important than representation, and rising literacy, growth and political consciousness are likelier to promote instability in the absence of a strong institutional framework.  In a related Foreign Affairs article, Huntington argued that winning popular support by promoting development would achieve little because, rather than poverty, it was “the absence of an effective structure of authority” that allowed alternative power centers to grow. True or not, some readers will notice that similar remarks have been made by paramilitary officers presently combating the Kashmiri insurgency.

Finally, we come to Huntington’s celebrated and vilified The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (1996). Critics have pointed out that intra-civilizational conflict is more ubiquitous than conflict among different civilizations, that forces stronger than civilizational identity pervade international politics, and that the very positing of the existence of “civilizations” is problematic. Indeed, Huntington’s own community of academics has rejected his framework even as interested parties in the wider world embrace the idea of clashing civilizations. Yet, it is undeniable that powerful actors like al-Qaeda have attempted to generate civilizational conflict, suggesting that the idea may not be as outlandish as Huntington’s critics would like to believe.

In short, Huntington is a provocative thinker, unafraid of making and defending unconventional arguments. As Kaplan correctly shows, Huntington has left a lasting impact on American political science, and is one of a few that have made the transition to becoming a public intellectual. Even if political reality does not always fit Huntington’s theoretical lenses, despite Kaplan’s vigorous attempt to prove otherwise, only time will tell how prescient he truly is. While fans will no doubt appreciate Kaplan’s article, readers will have to look elsewhere for a critique of Huntington’s ideas.

A. Dubey

David Shambaugh, China’s Military Views the World, International Security, Vol. 24, No. 3, Winter 1999/2000, pp 52-79

This paper attempts to examine the strategic orientation and military posture of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). PRC’s strategic profile will influence global politics as well, as China increases its national power and becomes more engaged in world affairs. How China behaves will depend, of course, on a host of factors and actors —but certainly the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is a central one.  

The author David Shambaugh is the Professor of Political Science and International Affairs, and the Director of the China Policy Program in the Elliott School of International Affairs at The George Washington University, and Non-Resident Senior Fellow in the Foreign Policy Studies Program at The Brookings Institution. 

The article begins with a discussion of the socialization of the current Chinese military leadership, the difficulties of gaining insights into their world-view, and the sources available to illuminate their perceptions. This is followed by a brief discussion of the prominent sense of angst and ambivalence apparent in the PLA’s views of its national security. The heart of the article then assesses the Chinese military’s perceptions of the Yugoslav war of 1999, the United States and its global posture, Northeast Asia, Russia and Central Asia, South-east Asia and multilateral security, and South Asia. It concludes with a discussion of the implications of the PLA’s ambivalent sense of security, and particularly the policy implications for the United States of managing a long term “strategic competition ”with China.

As the author points out gaining insight into the strategic thinking of China’s high command is extremely difficult. Direct interactions with the PLA elite remain rare and are tightly scripted, while an extremely low level of transparency further obscures the perspectives and capabilities of the PLA. Although they occasionally travel abroad, the seven military members of the Central Military Commission (CMC) and their principal deputies in the four “general headquarters ” (zongsiling bu) rarely meet with foreign visitors in China, and when they do it is almost always with their military counterparts in carefully controlled meetings or visits to military installations. In these sessions PLA generals rarely depart from their “talking points,” often reading them verbatim, and they are known to be uncomfortable in freewheeling strategic dialogue with foreign military leaders. Their lack of assuredness in such dialogue is commensurate with their socialization and professional backgrounds.

The PLA high command today largely comprises elder officers in their late sixties and seventies who possess battlefield, command, and lengthy service experience. Many of them commanded forces n the 1979 Sino-Vietnamese border war, and some fought in the 1962 Sino-Indian conflict and the Korean War. In a departure from past practice, most did not come up through the ranks as political commissars. The current high command no longer comprises soldier politicians, who are active in the rough-and-tumble world of Chinese elite politics (CMC Vice-Chairman Chi Haotian being the exception).

This change signals a potentially very significant development in Chinese politics the breaking of the “interlocking directorate ” and long-standing symbiotic relationship between the Communist Party and the PLA. For the first time since the Red Army was created n 1927 and the Chinese Communist Party rode t to power n 1949,a growing bifurcation of the two institutions is now evident. Corporatism and a more autonomous identity are taking root in the armed forces. The PLA today is much more prepared to resist party encroachment into military affairs, including attempts to pull the PLA into domestic politics or domestic security.

As the author points out most PLA leadership today have spent their careers largely in regional held commands deep in the interior of China, cut off from interaction with the outside world. They have not travelled extensively or studied abroad, and do not speak foreign languages. Most have a shallow understanding of modernity, much less modern warfare. Their backgrounds as ground-force field commanders make them more comfortable discussing battlefield tactics than global security or political-military issues. Accordingly, they display a distinctly insular worldview. Their nationalism is fierce, sometimes bordering on xenophobia. Many senior PLA officers evince a deep suspicion of the United States and Japan in particular. They have also been socialized in a military institution and political culture that prizes discipline and secrecy —thus they do not appreciate the importance of defence transparency as a security-enhancing measure, and view foreign requests to improve it with suspicion. They refuse to join alliances or participate in joint military exercises with other nations, are reticent to institutionalise military cooperation beyond a superficial level, and are leery of multilateral security cooperation. However there is a large tier of major generals and senior colonels in their forties and fifties who are better educated and trained. A number of these younger officers have spent time abroad, speak foreign languages, and do not evince the same insular tendencies. They display a far better grasp of at least the theoretical practice of modern warfare (although no PLA officer has had any actual combat experience for twenty years). It is this generation who will command the PLA in the early twenty-first century, as the current high command retires with in five years.

The Kosovo conflict of 1999 was a real eye opener for the PLA office corps since it reinforced and demonstrated the power of modern standoff weapons. The PLA analysts were surprised, however, by new features evident in the Yugoslav conflict —for example, the use of several new weapons systems such as improved laser guided precision munitions that employ a variety of new active homing and direction finding devices. One of these was the GBU-28/B laser guided “smart ”gravity bomb —five of which were launched from B-2 strategic bombers, mistakenly striking the Chinese embassy in Belgrade. Also on display were arrays of satellite-guided bombs, delivering 1,000 –2,500 pound warheads with accuracy of a few meters. PLA analysts also noted the use, for the first time, of microwave bombs that could sabotage electronic equipment, missile target seekers, computer networks, and data transmission lines. The extensive use of cruise missiles and other precision-guided munitions from ranges outside Yugoslav point defences had a major impact on PLA planners (although they had witnessed similar displays of power during the Gulf War); they were particularly impressed by the increased accuracy of such weapons. This prominence of “smart weapons ” impressed upon the PLA the fact that wars can be prosecuted from great distances, far over the horizon, without visual range targeting or encountering anti air and ballistic missile defences and without even being able to engage enemy forces directly. Even the Gulf War involved ground forces and force-on-force engagements —but not in Yugoslavia. This was a stark realisation on for PLA commanders whose whole orientation and doctrine to date had been one of fighting adversaries in land battles on China’s soil or in contiguous territory. PLA analysts were profoundly disturbed by the very idea that, in modern warfare, an enemy could penetrate defences and devastate one’s forces without the defender’s ability to see or hear, much less counter attack, the adversary.

PLA’s assessment are in general highly critical of US strategic posture, global behaviour, and military deployments. Numerous Chinese military analyses portray the United States as hegemonic, expansionist, and bent on global and regional domination. Civilian Chinese officials and international relations specialists share this predominant view. It has its origins in the Cold War, but has become a singular theme since the Soviet Union’s collapse and the Gulf War. The view of the United States as an expansionist hegemon has been evident in civilian and PLA journals throughout the 1990s, but the published attacks on the United States gained an unusual intensity and bellicosity in the wake of the 1999 Yugoslav conflict. Some Hong Kong media even asserted that incensed senior PLA generals sought a military confrontation with the United States. One cited Central Military Commission Vice-Chairman General Zhang Wannan as being prepared to wage nuclear war. According to this report, the CMC ordered the Second Artillery to expand its stockpile of tactical nuclear weapons and neutron bombs.

As the author notes PLA analysts have not published much on South Asia. Unlike their civilian counterparts, prior to 1998, they were even silent about Indian “regional hegemony.” India’s May 1998 nuclear tests, however, sounded an alarm to the Chinese military. “India’s Attempt to Seek Regional Hegemony Has Been Longstanding!” roared a headline n the Liberation Army Daily within days of the blasts. Another article in the armed forces newspaper elaborated in unprecedented detail the composition and order of battle of India’s conventional military forces (one wonders how analysts felt describing how much more advanced these forces are compared with the PLA in virtually all conventional categories).“Through fifty years of efforts, India now boasts a mighty army,” the authors observed. To what end is the Indian build up to be put? The article was clear: “The military strategic targets of India are to seek hegemony n South Asia, contain China, control the Indian Ocean, and strive to become a military power in the contemporary world. To attain these targets, since independence India has always pursued its military strategy of hegemonist characteristics.” The authors continued by chastising the Indian policy of “occupying Chinese territory in the eastern sector of the border region ”(saying nothing, of course, about the western sector where Chinese forces occupy 14,500 square kilometres of Indian-claimed territory), targeting its missiles on southern and south-western China, and “maintaining its military superiority in the Sino-Indian boundary region to consolidate its vested interests and effectively contain China.” India, the authors concluded, “is waiting for the opportune moment for further expansion to continue to maintain its control over weak and small countries in South Asia, advance further southward, and defend its hegemonist status n the region.” While PLA vitriol increased so did its deployments opposite India. Other PLA commentators expressed fear of an accidental nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan, citing the situation on the subcontinent as “far more serious than the Cuban missile crisis of 1962.” The PLA has seemingly found a new adversary in India.

In conclusion the author states that The PLA’s views of the United States and its security posture outlined in this article should be of considerable concern for US policymakers, and suggest that the United States should be on guard against Chinese attempts to undermine core US security interests n Asia and elsewhere. Dialogue may increase clarity and understanding —even f it does not narrow differences —but those Americans who interact with the PLA, officially or unofficially, should be under no illusion about the depth of China’s suspicion and animosity toward the United States. This has long been apparent, but it has worsened since the 1999 Yugoslav war and mistaken bombing of the Chinese embassy n Belgrade, after which popular images of the United States turned from cautiously critical to overtly hostile overnight. The attacks by thousands of Chinese demonstrators on the US embassy in Beijing and consulates elsewhere expressed the depth of public hostility, which was also evident in elite attitudes and commentary. A torrent of anti-American invective was unleashed in the Chinese media the likes of which had not been seen since the Cultural Revolution. The official People’s Daily, the mouthpiece of the Communist Party, published a series of authoritative “Observer ”and “Commentator ”articles lambasting US “hegemonism,” “imperialism,” “arrogance,” “aggression,” and “expansionism.” One article accused the United States of seeking to become “Lord of the Earth ” and compared contemporary US hegemony to the aggression of Nazi Germany.

The reviewer felt that the paper was well put together with sufficient reference material. However this reviewer was surprised by the extent of the insularity of the Chinese high command even though the PLA is a revolutionary army and not a professional army. This paper is a recommended read for policy analysts in both Washington and New Delhi.

Raj Kumar