Abstract
Naval power is one of the component parts of national power. Though not limited to countries with maritime borders, it is an essential concern of such states. In an increasingly globalized trade environment that links countries around the globe through a vast network of maritime trade routes, the study of naval power should form a necessary part not only of military and strategic studies, but of power shift studies in general.
兵者, 國之大事也。死生之地, 存亡之道, 不可不察也。
“Warfare is a principal matter of the state. It is the territory of life and death, the road to survival or disaster. Its study cannot be neglected.”
—Sunzi bingfa, sect. 1, my translation. Chinese text cited from Lau (1992: 1).
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Notes
- 1.
For the discovery itself see ‘Secret Sanya—China’s new nuclear naval base revealed’ (2008). The reaction of regional powers and the U.S. was widely covered in various press reports during May and June 2008, i.e. Daily Yomiuri, 5 June 2008; The Indian Express online, May 06, 2008; Times of India, 3 May 2008. For the Philippine procurement plan see Grevatt (2011).
- 2.
This is a point granted even by Holmes and Yoshihara (2008: 106) who otherwise tend to discount skeptical views of China’s naval progress.
- 3.
Cf. Hickley 2007. According to Cole (2010: 205, fn. 15) U.S.N. personnel indicated afterwards that the surfacing may have been accidental, and that the carrier did not detect it because it was operating without its usual escort ships. It remains unclear whether detection would have been possible under better circumstances.
- 4.
Cf. a report in The Economist, May 22, 2010, entitled ‘A guilty verdict for North Korea: Their number is up’. Details of the multinational investigation are discussed in Falletti (2010). Other recent examples of sophisticated naval vessels worsted by asymmetrical enemies included the U.S. Navy’s Arleigh Burke class destroyer USS Cole that fell victim to an Al-Qaeda attack in 2000 and the Israeli corvette Hanit that suffered heavy damage from a Chinese-built missile fired from Lebanon in 2006.
- 5.
The vulnerability against modern diesel subs was one of the factors, aside from cost overruns, for the U.S. decision to truncate the new Zumwalt class destroyer program to just three ships when originally 32 were planned.
- 6.
An excellent book-length treatment of network-centric warfare, also called “picture-centric warfare”, is provided by veteran naval analyst Friedman (2009).
- 7.
See Bimber and Popper (1994) for a thorough discussion of the issue of criticality in the field of technology.
- 8.
Cf. the discussion in Holslag (2010: 11–12).
- 9.
Holmes and Yoshihara (2008: 7–8) distinguish between proponents of a “blue-water hypothesis”, which expects China to challenge U.S. hegemony in the Pacific area, and a “coastal defense hypothesis”, which expects China’s navy to stay confined within its own Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). Holmes and Yoshihara themselves argue in favour of third hypothesis occupying the middle ground between the two extremes.
- 10.
The ubiquitous use of terms such as “probably”, “presumably”, “perhaps”, “almost certainly”, and “one interpretation would be …” in the China entry of Friedman’s normally pretty matter-of-fact treatment of the World’s Naval Weapon Systems is telling. The content of the article illustrates even more clearly the painstaking process that lies behind his China-related evaluations of interpreting protruding parts such as antennae, of drawing conclusions from analogy, and of gathering visual information piecemeal from photographs, models, and published information (cf. Friedman 2006: 61–63).
- 11.
- 12.
After shifting diplomatic recognition from the Republic of China on Taiwan to the People’s Republic of China in 1979 and cancelling the Mutual Defense Treaty with Taipei, the U.S. congress passed the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA) which compels the U.S. government to “consider any effort to determine the future of Taiwan by other than peaceful means, including by boycotts or embargoes, a threat to the peace and security of the Western Pacific area and of grave concern to the United States” (Taiwan Relations Act 1979, Sect. 2, 2.4). The U.S. have therefore become Taiwan’s de facto guardian power against Chinese aggression as well as part of a strategic triangle Beijing–Taipei–Washington despite the intentional vagueness of the formulation quoted.
- 13.
- 14.
Cf. the U.S. Air Force sponsored analysis by Medeiros et al. (2005) that gives excellent data but often draws seemingly odd conclusions from said facts. Another example of perhaps politically motivated misrepresentations of facts was discussed by nuclear weapons specialist Hans Kristensen who reports that the “U.S.-China Commission established by Congress […] stated in 2006 that China is pursuing measures to try to ‘control’ the seas in the Western Pacific, although ‘controlling’ the seas is a daunting technological and operational task, and that China continues to ‘expand’ its submarine force. […] Although China is modernizing its submarine force, it is not ‘expanding’ it. Since the mid-1980s, the force has been in steady decline from nearly 120 boats to roughly 55 operational submarines today” (Kristensen 2007).
- 15.
Shambaugh (2004: xxv–xxviii) provides a very concise and useful overview over the various available types of source materials on Chinese military matters as of 2004. Many of his observations remain valid.
- 16.
Cf. the very insightful overview provided by Hoyt (2007: 8–14).
- 17.
These are defined as “any piece of military equipment which fits into either one of four categories: armored vehicles (armored personnel carriers, light tanks, main battle tanks), artillery (multiple rocket launchers, self-propelled artillery, towed artillery) above 100 mm caliber, combat aircraft (attack helicopters, fixed-wing fighter aircraft), and major fighting ships (submarines, major surface combatants above corvette size)” (Grebe 2011: 17).
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Kirchberger, S. (2015). Introduction. In: Assessing China's Naval Power. Global Power Shift. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-47127-2_1
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