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Copley, Gregory R. --- "Book Review. China's Future Nuclear Submarine Force" [2007] MarStudies 31; (2007) 156 Maritime Studies 24

• BOOK REVIEW
• The Pacific Turns a Pinker Hue*

BOOK REVIEW

The Pacific Turns a Pinker Hue^[1]

CHINA’S FUTURE NUCLEAR SUBMARINE FORCE, by Andrew S. Erickson, Lyle J. Goldstein, William S. Murray, and Andrew R. Wilson (Editors) Annapolis, 2007, US Naval Institute Press and the China Maritime Studies Institute. ISBN 978-1-59114-326-0. 412pp, hardcover, indexed. US$45.

It may be fair to say that if a book such as China’s Future Nuclear Submarine Force had appeared in 1930 on the subject of Japanese developments in naval air power and force projection, the US ‘battleship admirals’ may have been overruled by the carrier advocates in the critical period leading up to the Pearl Harbor attack of 7 December 1941. This new book, edited by eminent professors from the US Naval War College (and co-founders of its new China Maritime Studies Institute), is that good.

China’s Future Nuclear Submarine Force is a collection of essays on the topic, but not so narrowly focused that the broader strategic context is absent, and not so obsessively concerned with the nuclear submarine force of the People’s Liberation Army Navy that it fails to give due consideration to the other branches of PLAN, the PLA generally, and the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) interests generally.

Retired USN Rear Adm. and onetime anti-submarine warfare naval aviator Eric A. McVadon – who spent two years (1990-1992) as US defense and naval attaché in Beijing – sets the tenor of the report with his opening chapter, ‘China’s Maturing Navy’. His continuing contact with, and study of, the PLAN gives him the basis for sober assessment, and, indeed, the entire book is a very sober assessment of the PLAN’s breakthroughs in nuclear submarine capability, and its implications for the US position in the Pacific. Although the book was released in August 2007, the text was basically completed by end-2005; nonetheless it remains valid. Indeed, it is sufficiently unique as a reference source that it will be read as the authority on the subject for a number of years to come.

McVadon, in his contextual introduction, noted:

In evaluating the risks of an imprudent decision by Beijing, it might be asked rhetorically whether the current Chinese Communist Party is capable of as bad a choice in a future Taiwan crisis as most observers think the Party made with the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, and the actions in 1989 now referred to simply as ‘Tiananmen’. Some observers increasingly find reason to be optimistic, but it is as hard to offer unqualified assurance that Beijing could not again make a very bad decision.

McVadon’s tenor, as with all the contributors, is prudent and balanced. The book is not alarmist from a USN perspective, but neither does it attempt to unduly calm US concerns about the extent to which the PLAN has already changed the balance in the Western Pacific, with the attendant implications for the future viability of US carrier battle groups and the prospect of successful US military support for the Republic of China (ROC: Taiwan) in the event of a PRC move toward a military solution to the ‘Taiwan question’.

The study, logically, very much addresses the PLAN developments from the perspective and interests of the US, and this may have narrowed – or mirror-imaged – the analysis somewhat, with the assumption that the PLAN force developments are being designed along US lines of logic. This is particularly evident in the chapter entitled China’s Aircraft Carrier Dilemma, by Andrew S. Erickson and Andrew R. Wilson, although even that chapter shows a more balanced assessment of PLAN carrier thinking than has been the case from many US observers who have assumed that anything less than a Nimitz-class equivalent is not really a ‘real’ carrier capability.

Erickson and Wilson – both editors as well as contributors to the book – are among the outstanding minds in the US study of Chinese military history and capabilities, and their view of the PLAN’s move toward carrier aviation was sober and cautious. In essence, as with the tenor of the book, these authors feel – and justify – the fact that the PLAN has made nuclear attack submarines (SSNs: principally the Project 093 Shang-class) and nuclear ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs: principally the Project 094 Jin-class) the centre-piece of its immediate strategy. Moreover, none of the authors downplay the significance of the extensive PLAN conventional submarine capabilities, especially the ‘great leap forward’ which the PLAN’s Project 877 Russian export Kilo-class and Project 636 Improved Kilo-class conventional submarines represent.

Erickson and Wilson, however, in their carrier chapter, indicate that the PRC has, in fact, only acquired a couple of surplus and retired aircraft carriers on the world market, the former HMAS Melbourne (17,233 ton disp.), the former Soviet carrier Minsk (38,000 ton disp.), and, of course, the current project, the 65,000 ton disp. Admiral Kuznetzov-class Varyag. But, as studies in 2001 and at other times by Defense & Foreign Affairs showed, this hardly begins to describe the depth of PLAN acquisitions in the carrier field, nor the extent of its research.

Moreover, the authors indicate that learning and developing the business of catapult launched and conventionally retrieved fixed-wing aircraft at sea is something which is only within the realm of the US Navy and the French Navy. Admittedly, those are currently the only practitioners of conventional flat-deck fixed-wing carrier aviation, but if Australia, Brazil, Argentina, the Netherlands, and – lest we forget the original pioneers of the discipline – Britain can manage it, then it would be imprudent to think that the PLAN would think it beyond them.

As noted earlier, the ‘mirror imaging’ aspects of the book – judging China’s perspective on doctrine solely on the PRC-US context, and with regard mostly to the acquisition of Taiwan – are perhaps its only areas of weakness. Clearly, Beijing’s aspirations in the Indian Ocean, where it views the security of its increasingly busy sea lanes of communications (SLOCs) as being of paramount importance to its very survival, represent a critical place in PLAN thinking. Power projection into the Mediterranean and Atlantic – where the PRC has vital oil, gas, and other resource interests – also are in the forefront of Beijing’s thinking, if largely for political purposes.

And, of course, these considerations also impact future procurement and doctrine on nuclear submarines, as well as conventional submarines.

The authors of the book, such as the perceptive Richard D. Fisher Jr. (who wrote the chapter ‘The Impact of Foreign Technology’), are highly conscious of the importance of the range of conventional and nuclear submarines in the PLAN mix, and note the increasingly blurred line between brown water, green water, and blue water deployments by the variety of PLAN submarine types. Indeed, the USN is increasingly aware of the risk posed not only to surface combatants (including carrier battle groups) by PLAN SSNs, but also from its conventional boats, which – as in the case of the Kilos — represent a level of stealth which is presently uncomfortable for the USN.

The study takes into account the increasing cooperation between the various arms of the PLA, and evidences the gradual growth of prestige of the PLAN and PLAAF, as well as the 2nd Artillery Corps which operates the PRC’s ballistic and long-range cruise missile capabilities. China’s Future Nuclear Submarine Force does not answer all questions, but it is one of the great stimulants for informed debate.

Gregory R. Copley

FDI Director &

Chairman of the Research Committee

^[1] This review first appeared in Future Directions International’s (FDI’s) Weekly Global Report and is republished with permission.