Military Strategy

Choosing Interests While You Sleep? The Senkaku Paradox

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The Senkaku Paradox: Risking Great Power War Over Small Stakes. Michael E. O’Hanlon. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2019.

“The protagonists of 1914 were sleepwalkers, watchful but unseeing, haunted by dreams, yet blind to the reality of the horror they were about to bring into the world.”[1]
—Christopher Clark, The Sleepwalkers

In his magisterial survey of pre-1914 Europe, Christopher Clark sought to illuminate the pathways the principal actors took towards the fateful summer that rent European peace. In some regards the question is simple: Why did Europe commit continental suicide over a wayward prince’s death in a Balkan city far from the centers of imperial power? The answer has nothing and everything to do with the assassination of the Austrian Archduke. A series of strategic decisions made by competing great powers prior to August 1914 had unknowingly created an inflexible security environment ripe for miscalculation, misperception, and mistake. As the above quote suggests, the makers of the European tragedy made conscious decisions in relation to their interests throughout the pre-war era, but failed to project the consequences of their actions into the future until it was too late.

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Michael O’Hanlon wants to shake the current Great Power somnambulists awake and avoid a similar tragedy. His latest study, The Senkaku Paradox, examines the current U.S. security calculus relative to its near-peer competitors, China and Russia. O’Hanlon explores the likelihood of the United States risking great power war over relatively low stakes: the Senkaku Islands (from where the book gets its title), Taiwan, or the villages of the eastern Baltic states. The reality of the United States’ current treaty and partnership framework means the U.S. could face an existential threat over a series of unpopulated islands, a fractious Two-China policy, or small ethnically-Russian hamlets on the NATO side of a border. “The possibility exists,” he writes, “that Washington could be forced to choose between risking war and appeasing Chinese or Russian aggression in ways that could ultimately lead to much graver threats to international peace.”[2]

On its face, the wake-up call seems sound. As O’Hanlon sees it, technological change will limit the ability of the United States to project force into regions contested by a near-peer adversary, increasing the likelihood of escalation beyond the conflict’s initial cause. He instead proposes the U.S. and its partners pursue an asymmetric defense—a combination of military and economic actions executed through a whole of government approach intended to deter great-power war. In this scenario, protecting a contested region from a near-peer adversary within a partner’s border with direct military action would be a last resort. The U.S. should instead deter and, if needed, defeat an adversary through economic isolation, executed through sanctions and military attacks on an adversary’s infrastructure outside the conflict zone.[3]

The core of asymmetric defense is economic warfare, O’Hanlon’s vision of globally leveraging the power of the U.S. economy, in conjunction with closely proscribed military force, to counter an adversary’s actions within a contested region. While incorporation of economic factors into deterrence and war-making seems obvious, O’Hanlon takes such measures a step further. He argues for economic punishment, proportional to potential competitors’ actions, to become a foundational part of war planning for the Department of Defense as both a flexible deterrent option and a step to be taken in war. Tailored economic sanctions, much like the measures taken against Russian oligarchs in response to Russian interference in Eastern Ukraine, would attempt to change a competitor’s actions without, or in accord with, force. “Such [economic] warfare need not be all-out or indiscriminate,” he writes, “but it should be intense enough to be commensurate with the damage caused by the initial aggression.”[4]

O’Hanlon argues his framework provides a rational, practical, and achievable option within the United States’ current fiscal and technological reality. Several of his assumptions, however, bear further assessment. O’Hanlon undergirds his vision of economic warfare with a bullish appraisal of the current and future economies of the United States, Europe, and their respective global partners.[5] This runs counter to many contemporary projections of the global economy, particularly in regards to China’s growing economic power. O’Hanlon acknowledges but ultimately dismisses these projections. If you follow his logic, economic sanctions led and enforced but the U.S. could rapidly isolate China or Russia, motivating them to eventually reverse course on their intended or executed military actions. The reality of sanction regimes, however, has proven uneven.[6] O’Hanlon’s exemplar of success—the aforementioned targeting of Russian oligarchs—stressed elements of the U.S.-European partnership in a manner not seen since the founding of NATO and the proposal of the Marshall Plan. And testing China’s burgeoning economic power by attempting economic sanctions risks shearing off partners in a region where the United States does not enjoy a multi-state, multi-generational security and economic framework like it currently does in Europe.

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Russia and sanctions (Sergey Dolzhenko/EPA-EFE)

China and Russia, moreover, could also pursue aggressive actions as a test of U.S. hegemony in the global security environment. The sanctions against Russian oligarchs again provides another good case in point. While O’Hanlon deemsthe sanctions successful insofar as Ukraine remains independent and not a part of greater Russia, one has to measure this against the purported Russian goals. Granted, Ukraine is independent, but it remains a corrupt state with an active insurgency still taking place in its eastern provinces, and any plans for it to join the EU or NATO have been shelved. In the process, the viability of NATO has come under question and European countries have had to reprioritize their economies, at great electoral risk, to increase defense spending and update their energy infrastructure away from Russian oil and gas. While China has been less overt in its actions, purported interference in recent Taiwanese elections, continued island-building in the South China Sea, and infrastructure loans tied to the Belt and Road Initiative have displayed its ambition to test the current global economic and security environment as well.

Finally, as part of economic warfare, the U.S. and its partners would use force outside of the immediately contested region against economic targets—shipping, infrastructure, or natural resources—as a means to accelerate the cessation of hostilities without direct confrontation. The U.S. and its partners would use asymmetric advantages in power projection and lethality in geographic locales where they maintain systemic overmatch, particularly in the Middle East and Africa.[7] It is tempting to see these as low-cost/low-risk attacks in regions where the U.S. and its partners enjoy a military advantage, but this approach potentially leads to geographic escalation, something that O’Hanlon claims an asymmetric defense reduces. It is hard to imagine a scenario in which seizing a Chinese mining conglomerate in Africa, for example, represents a clear first step towards returning Taiwan, or how this does not lead to attack on U.S. and partner interests around the globe. The interests, frankly, do not seem to match.

Flags of the Peoples Republic of China and of Taiwan (Stanford)

Towards this end, the potential flashpoints that O’Hanlon uses to assess his asymmetric defense proposal—the Senkakus, Taiwan, and the Baltics—exemplify the true problem that the United States faces in an era of great power competition. While these three areas represent relatively low stakes to the United States, they are, in fact, of existential importance to U.S. partners. China and Russia could threaten military action below the threshold of active conflict just to test the validity of existing treaties and partnerships. O’Hanlon treats such fait accompli aggression as a given, and while he does not disavow that the U.S. and its partners may pursue an operational pathway that leads to liberation of seized territory, he does not favor it. Instead, he wants to pursue economic coercion to return to a status quo antebellum. Aggression against any of the flashpoints that O’Hanlon identifies, however, forces the U.S. and its partners to reassess and reframe their strategic relationship. If the U.S. fails to react, or reacts in a manner that is perceived less than proportional to the actions taken, the global economic and security environment that O’Hanlon believes resilient enough to weather great power competition could immediately be undermined—much as the European Great Powers had to reassess their respective strategic calculi during the crucible of crisis that was August 1914.

What O’Hanlon ultimately describes in The Senkaku Paradox is a grand reevaluation of U.S. interests in the face of great power warfare.

This should not be seen as a condemnation. It is the reality of U.S. power at the end of the first quarter of the twenty-first century. What O’Hanlon ultimately describes in The Senkaku Paradox is a grand reevaluation of U.S. interests in the face of great power warfare. Should measures taken by China and Russia to remake the global security environment force the United States to reassess those regions and thereby the partnerships it is willing to expend blood and resources to maintain? Or is the maintenance of the current security environment, composed of overlapping treaties that swear to the common defense, the proper means to deter great power war? O’Hanlon seems to prefer the former, arguing for a delineation between those interests the United States would fight for and those it would seek resolution through a sanctions regime and the discreet expansion of the initial conflict outside of the initial geographic focus. Such decisions clearly would test existing alliances and partnerships, but would notionally prevent great power war while adding options for deterrence and, as needed, armed conflict.

Is there a middle path that generates flexibility in terms of options, but reassures and strengthens partnerships? Potentially. In a series of recent documents, national policymakers and strategists have begun to shape the notion of competition on a global scale. O’Hanlon only mentions the recent National Defense Strategy’s task of expanding the competitive space in passing. Thus, one cannot easily fathom his assessment of the task or its implications. It could be that, as he prepared his book, competition as a concept had not been fully defined. And it still may not be, but the recent Joint Concept on Integrated Campaigning, the Joint Doctrine Note on the Competition Continuum, the U.S. Army’s Multi-Domain Operations concept, and several recent articles from defense intellectuals have gone further towards shaping this idea.[8] These diverse works all agree: countering Chinese and Russian aggression below the threshold of armed conflict requires active engagement in the competitive space by the United States and its partners globally, particularly in currently contested regions. The goal would be to prevent the great power wars that O’Hanlon seeks to avoid, but in a manner that strengthens our alliances and partnerships in a non-escalatory manner.

How can we characterize competition, and how does O’Hanlon’s asymmetric defense proposal fit within its conceptual framework? Militarily, successful competition requires the defeat of a competitor’s information and unconventional/proxy warfare, the preparation of the operational environment, and the evidence of a credible deterrent. The ability of the U.S. and its partner to calibrate its force posture to meet perceived threats in a contested region requires using the same asymmetric advantages—power projection, emerging technologies, and existing partnerships—that O’Hanlon describes in The Senkaku Paradox. Competition, however, recognizes and legitimizes our partners’ claims to contested regions by supporting efforts to defend the integrity of their borders. Such a strategy aligns the interests of the United States with the existential interests of its partners, identified herein as the Baltics, the Senkakus, and the viability of an independent Taiwan. O’Hanlon would instead earmark these regions for loss and, hopefully, return through sanctions, economic actions, and discreet military force outside the region in question.

Soldier of a Russian Motorized Infantry Brigade in the Kaliningrad region (Igor Zarembo/Sputnik)

On its face, active engagement in competition seeks to generate military and diplomatic options for national policy makers. As O’Hanlon rightly points out, the United States currently only possesses two options in the face of near-peer aggression: acquiescence or rapid escalation at a global level. Successful expansion of the competitive space provides at least two more: operate below the threshold of armed conflict with all elements of national power in a manner intended to deter overt aggression, and maintain strategic initiative and posture oneself to deny a near-peer adversary its operational objectives in a fait accompli attack in a manner that limits escalation and sets the conditions for a negotiated settlement. At the same time, competing in contested regions naturally reaffirms our commitment to partners while also serving to engender multi-echelon interoperability.

On the need to generate options, we all can agree: “Washington needs better, less escalatory, and thus more credible options for such limited but serious scenarios.”[9] The rub, however, is determining where those options exist in time and space. Whereas O’Hanlon’s asymmetric defense concedes those areas that do not meet the critical threshold of existential national interests, the drive to expand the competitive space in a thoughtful and deliberate manner acknowledges the necessity of our partnerships to maintaining the current global security environment through a commitment to the contested regions within our partners’ borders. The ability to generate options for policy-makers requires not just a whole-of-government approach, but also the foresight to make decisions regarding military posture and budgetary priorities in relation to existing global relationships.

If the U.S. should concede ground on partner territories or interests—as O’Hanlon maintains with his long-term view of asymmetric advantages and sanctions regimes—the nation must articulate a new policy. The other option would be to compete against near-peer competitors in such a manner that maintains the present security environment with enough flexibility to deter conflict and, if needed, limit escalation. Either way, we must move forward into the reality of great power competition with our eyes wide open and with a determined gait, not dozing and stumbling forward.

Andy Forney is a U.S. Army officer and received his PhD from Texas Christian University. The views contained in this article are the author’s alone, and do not represent the views of the U.S. Army, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.

This article appeared originally at Strategy Bridge.