Many informed observers, including SecDef Rumsfeld, have asked, and not just rhetorically, what China needs with so many subs, or with carriers at all. To date, Beijing has not given a satisfactory answer the least bit consistent with their claimed commitment to follow a “socialist road” to world peace. Violent internal protests, put down by police and provincial militias, though viewed by outside media as signs of a grassroots demand for transparency and freedom, too often upon examining details appear more like citizen-hooligans agitating for even more fraud and corruption which they’ve grown accustomed to and don’t want withdrawn. Democracy breaking out in the PRC is a rose-colored myth; the central government just heavily increased restrictions on journalists -- including foreign ones. That China’s form of government will change substantially in thirty years seems most unlikely. It’s been thirty years already since Mao died, and the country is still ruled by an authoritarian Chinese Communist Party elite which insists on –- and gets -– unconditional loyalty and sacrifice from its mainstream nationalistic, patriotic subjects. Dissenters who go too far still “disappear.” Ethnic minorities are repressed. Market-driven economic growth is formally subordinated to preserving xenophobic Chinese “cultural essence,” a vague and thus flexible ideological icon drawing on concepts and events up to a century or more old. (Tall skyscrapers and high technology are currently in vogue, not to admire or mimic the West but to aggressively surpass the West.) The New Chinese Consumerism is not a transformational regime-changing movement, but rather part of President Hu’s broad policy for PRC society to render itself more “advanced” –- along with an official renunciation of Deng’s “reform and opening.” No, for China thirty years into the future is barely tomorrow.

But other U.S. defense commentators have said, either at conferences or in print recently, that beyond the problem of Taiwan, China has neither incentive nor capability to take on America militarily, now or ever. In advancing their argument, these analysts (no names please) pose more specific non-rhetorical questions. They include: In what way could Chinese submarines ever locate, let alone target, fast-moving U.S. Navy carrier strike groups out in blue water? What will China do (besides surrender) when American naval blockades – including perhaps a “close blockade” by dozens of ultra-speedy and low-observable Littoral Combat Ships -- cut off the PRC’s access to seaborne oil and gas shipments? And realistically, how could China ever hope to implement Sun Tzu’s dictums and lay a trap to cripple major U.S. in-theater forces by surprise?

These are three very good questions indeed. Unfortunately, the questions have answers.

A fast-moving carrier strike group is noisy, and submarines have passive sonar arrays. It’s not unreasonable for convergence zones and other deep-water sound propagation effects to allow the tracking, and attacking, of carriers by subs from an initial detection range of 100+ miles. Also, China has a sophisticated space program. While effective sea-surveillance-radar satellites are quite difficult to design and extremely expensive to deploy, communications-relay satellite constellations are a much less daunting proposition. Secure, prompt command-and-control between land headquarters and submarine forces are already possible using such in-orbit hardware. (Huge and conspicuous ground-based ELF transmitters are now obsolete.) Specific targeting info can originate from a time-delayed, sub-launched radio buoy, or from moles within the U.S. (remember the Walker Spy Ring?), or even from old-fashioned “coast watchers” positioned along what Beijing calls the Inner and Outer Island Chains, rife with nautical choke points that don’t distinguish friend from foe. The Outer Island Chain includes the Marianas and Carolines, two thousand miles from PRC shores -- a very long round trip for American carrier aircraft sorties. (U.S. Air Force, and allies’, assets would help, but only so much.)

The question of oil blockades is a double edged sword, since if push comes to shove the Chinese Navy can counter with a “very distant blockade” of crucial American seaborne energy supplies. For one thing, China is building a stronger and stronger presence in the Indian Ocean, astride shipping lanes from the Persian Gulf. Beijing has the two-fold advantage here of being much closer than America is to the oil-rich Muslim countries: closer geographically, and at the rate things are going also closer politically. China has additional advantages on the oil-and-gas front during war. She receives more and more petroleum products from Russia via the vast land bridge of inner Central Asia. To the degree that pipelines, even buried ones, are vulnerable to precision attack, China could rely instead on deliveries by swarms of oil tanker trucks. China’s drive to improve her road and rail connections to her western and northern frontiers can be seen as a dual-use technology. It enhances national unification and empowers more economic growth, while also providing a self-redundant transportation grid for obtaining foreign energy products –- and dispersing/deploying mobile launchers for intermediate-range or strategic missiles. Furthermore, a dictatorship has a big edge over any democracy at enforcing both mandatory electricity-and-fuel rationing/conservation, and at implementing Soviet-style ecocidal fast extraction of domestic resources including coal. Yet the implicit striving between the U.S. and the PRC to achieve true energy independence is a race where the U.S. can’t afford to stumble. If both countries use their subs to attack very large crude carriers and liquid natural gas ships bound for the other’s ports from the Middle East, the result will be a military and economic furball that the U.S. might conceivably lose. Our submarine force would be stretched very thin, and even 55 LCSs can’t be everywhere at once –- especially if third-party, oil rich nations give China but not America free military access inside their 12-mile territorial limits.

An insidious scenario for the Chinese Navy to ambush the United States Navy already sits in plain sight. An important future role for the U.S. Navy has been freshly articulated by the Pentagon: humanitarian aid in natural catastrophes, and in man-made crises in failed or failing countries. Interestingly, and worrisomely, the Chinese Navy quickly added this same role to its basic mission/doctrine statement. The idea in common is that major naval assets, including (by 2030+) carriers and their escorting nuclear subs, would form a relief task force. The specter arises of both navies rushing to supply aid to the same disaster site, say yet another earthquake/tsunami in Indonesia. At some hypothetical time of severe political-diplomatic tension between Beijing and Washington, the contest to get there first, and achieve sea-denial in the guise of defense against terrorists -- in order to claim all available propaganda and goodwill brownie points for providing suffering locals with life-saving aid -- could at best turn into something bitter and dangerous. Garbled or misunderstood communications about intent might lead to (or be blamed for) weapons opening fire, which an eager Beijing might make sure happens and/or makes sure rapidly escalates. In a worst case, a Chinese Navy “relief” task force actually equipped and geared-up for battle might converge on an American task force optimizied and psyched for delivering aid, and if Beijing wants to start a war by surprise then this is one terrific way to give them a decisive victory in the first big naval engagement. A forewarned PRC information-warfare operation could swiftly swamp the Internet and airwaves with claims that America started it, fuzzing things up enough that the U.S. hesitates while China throws further combat assets into a fight conveniently near their own front yard. If this sounds far-fetched, so did Pearl Harbor and 9/11/01 before they happened.

The Long-Off War calls for hard-nosed preparation starting now, to deter it or to win it, especially given the lengthy lead time involved in designing, funding, building, and shaking-down any significant number of new or additional naval platforms. The window of risk presented by China begins near the end of the CNO’s 30-year shipbuilding plan, and extends well past it. Thirty years might seem like beyond forever to practically-minded American politicians and serving flag officers, but to establish a perspective let me respectfully point out that to many Vietnam Veterans 30+ years ago feels like only yesterday.

(This essay is meant in part to lay the groundwork for the upcoming three-part serialized reprint in Military.com’s Warfighter’s Forum of my award-winning article “Will China Rule the Waves?”, first published in The Submarine Review.)

JoeBuff.Com / Joe Buff Inc. Joe Buff, President Dutchess County, New York E-Mail readermail@JoeBuff.Com