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Late last month, the front page of the Washington Post contained the kind of story that I, as a professional educator, like to see. The piece discussed the work of Georgetown University's Asian Arms Control Project. Specifically, it chronicled the laborious effort of a couple dozen Georgetown graduate students to uncover, over the course of years, China's "underground great wall," a network of thousands of kilometers of underground tunnels constructed by the People's Liberation Army Second Artillery Corps - the same branch of the Chinese military that controls Beijing's nuclear and conventional ballistic missiles. The students have amassed a lot of evidence, including some eye-catching pictures, of China's tunnel system.
The Georgetown project demonstrates the value of open-source basic research on the Chinese military. Unlike the Soviet Union, which closely guarded even the most mundane bits of information, China publishes quite a lot on its military, including voluminous information on its underground tunneling program. The problem is that, until the Georgetown students began to document the program, few in the United States paid much attention to the fact that China has poured massive amounts of resources into underground facilities over the course of decades. Indeed, it was not until this year's edition of the Pentagon's Congressionally mandated report on Chinese military power that China's tunneling program received official acknowledgement.
China's tunneling program is of more than academic interest, however. It raises legitimate questions about the ability of the United States to verify the scope of Chinese military modernization, including the size of China's missile force and its nuclear arsenal.
It is that inconvenient fact that has drawn the ire of the arms control community. Over the past month, arms controllers, including the Union of Concerned Scientists and the blog Arms Control Wonk have launched a series of vitriolic attacks on the Georgetown students; their professor, Phillip Karber; and that staunch member of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, the Washington Post, which had the temerity to report on the students' efforts. The Post's Ombudsman summarized the attacks - and stood by the paper's original story - yesterday.
If this were an isolated event, I wouldn't give it too much attention. Unfortunately, it appears to part of an emerging pattern that indicates that the debate over China's military modernization is entering a new phase. Over the past few months, I've been peripherally involved in an academic controversy that offers both similarities and contrasts to the contretemps between Georgetown and the arms control community. The latest issue of The Journal of Strategic Studies (which I help edit), contains "Space: China's Tactical Frontier," an article by Eric Hagt and Matthew Durnin, that documents China's growing military space program and explores its implications for the United States. Hagt and Durnin's manuscript was vetted through the journal's peer review process and was deemed worthy of publication.
Like the Georgetown project, Hagt and Durnin's work has drawn a sharp response from the Union of Concerned Scientists' David Wright, who objected to the researchers' methodology and conclusions and argued that the authors overestimated China's space capabilities. We agreed to publish the critique as well as the authors' response.
I draw a couple of conclusions from these episodes. The first is the need for additional scholarly research on the Chinese military. The Chinese write extensively about modern warfare, but the vast majority of their publications remain beyond the reach of all but the small number of researchers who are fluent in Mandarin.
The second is the need for a civil scholarly debate. The increasing modernization of the Chinese military, combined with the Obama administration's "Pacific Pivot," strongly suggests that there will be more rather than fewer controversies over Chinese military power and what it means for the United States. The sort of ad hominem attacks that the arms control community has aimed at the Georgetown team over the past month are unbecoming and, in fact, undermine their case. The American people deserve a real debate, not name-calling.
Long before there was any danger of a shooting war between the USA and China, the Chinese would have signalled that they were going to ditch US Treasuries. This is pretty much what Eisenhower did to Sir Anthony Eden in 1956. Obviously there would be a cost to China in doing that but it would be much lower than the cost of going to war. China's holdings are only there to hold down the value of their currency so any loss would be purely theoretical.
15 trillions national debts raising,
no way to deal with!! medicare, social security, healthcare reform, too many special interst groups plus entitlements, everything slowly sinking into quick sands; the projection will be 25 trillions debts, no way to pay off except printing more phony dollars - hyperinflation & raising interest rate will reach an inflection point by this decade,
so, why even arguing adding one trillions more defense budget to become even more belligent, when there is NO DEFENSE AGAINST INEVITABLE DEFAULT and BANKRUPTCY??
Don't take things for granted NOW that people can GET AWAY with printing more phony money to cover shortfall or bailout, or more FOOLS willing to pay down 10 years treasury at 1.85% interest rate - CHINA MORONS!!!
First, if you are going to accuse others of arguments that are "unbecoming," you owe it to them and to your readers to provide proper links to the pieces in question. Yours are broken, Dr. Mahnken. Please fix them.
For other readers, try starting here (http://lewis.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/4799/collected-thoughts-on-phil-karber#more-2103) for a bit of this and links to much more.
Second, while some - though not all - of the commentaries are snide, they do not constitute ad hominem attacks, as they are very much focused on the underlying facts and the arguments made by Karber's group. Ad hominem is an attempt to tar the arguments by reference to those making them -- what is going on here is not this at all -- rather, it includes some criticism of those making the arguments on the basis of the arguments made.
Alas, you dabble in snideness yourself, Dr. Mahnken, with your inapt and unwarranted reference to vast right-wing conspiriacies. Let those calling for civility start by being civil themselves.
Civil scholarly discourse would indeed be excellent, but civil discourse unhinged from the facts is worthless. The critics here are understandably frustrated that assertions of fact that appear to be devoid of merit are, yet again, emerging. The problem is that such assertions can be relied on to be echoed, amplified and given unmerited credence. See, for example, http://www.luxlibertas.com/how-many-nukes-does-china-have/
Promulgating estimates of China's nuclear arsenal is a serious business, and we should all have an interest that this be done with great awareness and care. Mr. Karber appears to have fallen short in this regard.
I completely agree with Dr. Mahnken’s call for better scholarship and informed debate. That is exactly the point of our work.
My colleague Gregory Kulacki has made clear in his blog posts that his criticism of Prof. Karber’s work is limited to his claims about the size of China’s nuclear arsenal, and does not extend to his analysis of China’s tunnel system. Moreover, his criticism is of the scholarship that underlies Prof. Karber’s claims. The references that Prof. Karber has provided for his conclusions about the Chinese arsenal are Chinese blog posts. Gregory has done the scholarly work of finding the sources that those posts refer to. What he finds, which is discussed in detail in his blog posts (http://allthingsnuclear.org/post/13878200848/the-sources-of-karbers-sources), calls into question the validity of the information Prof. Karber presents. It also raises the question of why Prof. Karber did not himself track down these sources to check the credibility of the references he uses to support his claims. That is an essential part of good scholarship.
The comment of mine in the Journal of Strategic Studies (JSS) that you mention was also intended to make sure the information presented about China’s satellite program was based on sound analysis. When I saw a pre-publication version of the Hagt-Durnin paper, I contacted the authors several times with comments about the paper, a number of which they incorporated in their final version. When I was concerned that the authors, who do not have technical backgrounds, were still missing some important technical points, I contacted one of the editors of the journal, told them what my concerns were, and suggested they have the paper reviewed by an expert on technical satellite issues. I even provided several names of scientists I thought would be appropriate to do the review. Instead the editors said they planned to publish the article in its current form but invited me to write a comment that laid out my technical concerns with the paper, which I did. As you will see if you read my comment in JSS (http://allthingsnuclear.org/post/13878200848/the-sources-of-karbers-sources), it is not a personal attack on the authors. Instead it explains what my concerns are, and even includes a short technical appendix so that anyone who is interested can see where my conclusions came from and evaluate them.
It is not an “emerging pattern” that Gregory and I both commented on issues related to the Chinese military—that is what we study. Our comments were intended to add information to the discussion about China’s military capabilities, and to ensure that this discussion is well-informed and based on sound scholarship and credible sources.
The link for the JSS comment is
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01402390.2011.623873
George Town Asian Arms project thoroughly debunked:
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/ML10Ad01.html
"This [Washington Post] wonderful story had just two flaws: the parts of it that were true weren't new, and the parts that were new appear not be true."
"When asked by Asia Times Online if he had a comment on the issue [regarding George Town Asian Arms Project], Dr Jeffrey Lewis, an arms control authority and author of Minimum Means of Reprisal: China's Search for Security in the Nuclear Age, responded:
Oh yes, the claim that China has 3,000 nuclear weapons is utter bullshit."
etc..
Those days, I mean with Western social progress, the prowess of the military is deeply discounted.
The USA basically cannot afford to win a limited war and than allow a defeated foe to fester.
The USA has to occupy and institute reform in a defeated foe.
Once a foe is defeated, its recovery becomes the burden of the USA.
The case with China is very salient.
If the US wins a limited war over China, it allows anti-American sentiment to fester.
The USA absolutely cannot afford to help rebuild a defeated China.
China will thus easily avoid war with the USA and achieve enough of its objectives.
Shadow Government is a blog about U.S. foreign policy under the Obama administration, written by experienced policy makers from the loyal opposition and curated by Peter D. Feaver and William Inboden.
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