1ac / Summary / Glossary

Summary

China has been expanding its claims in the South China Sea. They have been doing a number of things in places that other countries – Vietnam, Indonesia, Laos, etc – believe is their space [also known their EEZ]. Those activities include things like – building and making islands, doing military exercises, allowing fishing vessels to go into those areas, sending military ships into those areas – other things that would traditionally be reserved for the country.

The United States, amongst others, has asked China to stop doing it. But, no one is actually doing anything to make them stop. China’s actions are often referred to as “salami-slicing.” Basically, they are doing a lot of small things that make those countries nervous, but not enough to get anyone to force them to stop. Cutting off small bits of the South China Sea at a time instead of claiming large chunks.

The aff plan does two unique things. First, it makes the diplomatic stance of the U.S. clear and absolute. China should stop pursuing the expansion of its sovereignty into parts of the SCS. While the U.S. has made requests in the past, this stance almost creates a red-line for China. It says “do not do this any more.” Second, the aff establishes permanent military-to-military exchanges with china around the SCS. We do exchanges now. However, those mil-mil contacts are often canceled or threatened to be canceled because of unrelated disputes between the U.S. and China. The aff creates permanent annual exchanges that are separate from disputes.

The first advantage is directly tied to the SCS and the policy of China. China will, at some point, take a step too far and start a small conflict with a country or set of people in the area. That is called miscalculation. The conflict would escalate because Vietnam, or another friend/ally in the region would request that the U.S. get involved. The conflict is likely to drawn in numerous countries because the SCS is a necessary water-way for a large portion of the world’s trade and resources.

The second advantage stems from the relationship benefits of establishing permanent military-to-military ties. If the two countries military are regularly meeting and planning things, then overall relations are likely to be greater because the two militaries can just talk about disagreements, and even if there are other fights, the military is unlikely to get drawn into the skirmish.

Glosssary

Deterrence – The ability to stop an attack by convincing an enemy that the sheer force of response makes the attack ‘not worth it.’ More specifically, the use of military threats as a means to prevent international crises and war. The U.S. is trying to

EEZ – An exclusive economic zone (EEZ) is a sea zone prescribed by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea over which a state has special rights regarding the exploration and use of marine resources, including energy production from water and wind.

Escalation – In this context, when a conflict grows bigger by incorporating more countries and people. When a fight is between 2 people and then 2 more join and then 4 more join, that fight ‘escalated.’ Escalation can also include an increase in the size or

Military-to-Military / Mil-Mil – Quiet simply, when two militaries get together either for discussions or exercises. This can take place anywhere and can involve any or all branches of the military.

Miscalculation / Miscalc – When a conflict starts by accident. Few countries want to go to war. In this instance, a war starts because someone does something that causes another country to respond. That response then escalates to include other people. Countries are often ‘drawn-in’ because they are committed to protecting allies, or believe they are fighting for what is ‘right.’

Nine-Dash Line – literally: "nine-segment line of the South China Sea" and at various times also referred to as the "10-dash line" and the "11-dash line", refers to the demarcation line for their claims of the major part of the South China Sea. The contested area in the South China Sea includes the Paracel Islands, the Spratly Islands, and various other areas including the Pratas Islands, the Macclesfield Bank and the Scarborough Shoal. The claim encompasses the area of Chinese land reclamation known as the "great wall of sand".

Salami-Slicing – a series of many small actions, often performed secretly, that as a whole produces a much larger action or result that would be difficult or unlawful to perform all at once. In this context, China is cutting off small pieces of the South China Seas and claiming them as their own. By only taking small actions, they hope to avoid backlash. But, also hope to eventually control a much larger space.

Sino – generally refers to China. As in, Sino-American, or Sino-Japanese.

South China Sea – part of the Pacific Ocean, encompassing an area from the Singapore and Malacca Straits to the Strait of Taiwan. It is: - south of mainland China, including the island of Taiwan, in the east;- east of Vietnam and Cambodia;- west of the Philippines;- east of the Malay peninsula and Sumatra, up to the Strait of Malacca in the west and north of the Bangka–Belitung Islands and Borneo

Sovereignty – The full right and power to govern. In this context, it means the right to govern a particular space or area. One country challenges another’s sovereignty when they try to take over their land or area.

**Advantage One – Salami-Slicing

South China Sea conflict is highly likely – confrontation is inevitable – changing Chinese strategy makes a US-China war highly likelyBlain 15 - Centre for Defence and Strategic Studies at the Australian Defence College, Commanding Officer of the 6th Battalion, The Royal Australian Regiment [Jason Blain, The Dragon and The Eagle in the South China Sea: is conflict between China and the US inevitable?, Australian Defence Journal, Jul/Aug 2015] doa 5-6-16

IntroductionIn 2011, Robert Kaplan proposed that the 21st century’s defining battleground would be located not on the land masses of Europe or Asia but instead on water.2 Kaplan offered that just as German soil constituted the military front line of the Cold War, the waters of the South China Sea may constitute the military front line of the coming decades .Six countries—China, Vietnam, The Philippines, Taiwan, Brunei and Malaysia—lay claim in whole or part to territory in the South China Sea. However, it is the relationships and actions of the two major powers in the region—China and the US—which will determine if Kaplan’s forecast bears true. If it does, the question of whether this future front line will be one of ‘cold competition’ or ‘hot confrontation’ deserves close attention.This article argues that conflict between China and the US is not inevitable during the next decade. To support this proposition, it will first establish the factors that are creating a perception that China is abandoning what has been a ‘peaceful rise’ strategy, and is changing its approach towards historical disputes centered on the South China Sea.The article will contend that Beijing’s strategy is shifting in response to a confluence of drivers, including increasing nationalism and a perceived threat posed by the US pivot to the Asia-Pacific. Based on this changing dynamic, the article will then examine the potential for conflict between China and the US during the next decade and outline the economic interdependencies and military disparities between the two that might prevent this outcome from being inevitable.3The article will conclude by noting that while conflict is not a given, growing Chinese assertiveness is creating increased friction within the Indo-Pacific region. At the same time, the US is increasing its military presence in the region and enhancing security cooperation with its allies and partners, several of which also lay claim to territory in the South China Sea.4 While conflict may not be inevitable, this friction has the potential to draw the US and China into a confrontation that neither wants.Abandoning a ‘peaceful rise’ strategy?The South China Sea is regarded as the trade route hub of the industrial revolution of Asia, providing the main artery of transportation for vital energy imports and commodity exports in East Asia.5 It contains potentially vast resources, including gas and oil reserves, as well as protein-rich seafoods, access to which underlies the current territorial and maritime disputes. China and others in the region have growing energy needs, and technological improvements in recent years have made oil and gas development in offshore locations more feasible. At the same time, growing demand for seafood and the depletion of near-shore fishing areas are driving fishing fleets further from domestic shores.6While nations in the recent past have sought to resolve territorial disputes peacefully, events playing out in the South China Sea may indicate that China is changing its approach to resolving historical disagreements. Beijing continues to emphasise that China’s rise as a global power is based on a strategy of peace. 7 However, increasing tensions in the waters of the South China Sea are seen as testing the sincerity of such a claim.8Carlyle Thayer contends that China commenced a behaviour of aggressively asserting its sovereignty rights in the South China Sea as early as 2011, by targeting the commercial operations of oil exploration ships in waters claimed by The Philippines and Vietnam.9 A more recent example of Beijing’s increasing assertiveness was seen in early May 2014, when a Chinese deep-water oil-drilling rig was constructed some 130 kilometres inside an exclusive economic zone (EEZ) claimed by Vietnam near the Paracel Islands; the rig was escorted by more than 80 armed vessels that, in the course of a confrontation with Vietnamese vessels, fired high-power water cannons and rammed civilian ships.10So why is China changing its approach? When considering this question, it is evident there are a range of factors influencing China’s strategy, rather than a deliberate objective on the part of Beijing to move away from a ‘peaceful rise’ policy. This article now turns to two contributing factors; rising Chinese nationalism and the US rebalance to the Asia-Pacific. Rising nationalism

Some observers assert that recent actions by China indicate that Beijing is responding to domestic politics and nationalist public opinion, demanding greater respect for China’s new higher status.11 According to this view, powerful and growing nationalistic movements are influencing China’s foreign policy, and disputes in the South China Sea are stirring up substantial nationalistic fervour.12Furthermore, it is argued that a new generation of Chinese leadership, under President Xi Jinping, is supporting this revival of nationalism. Since taking power at the Chinese Communist Party’s National Congress in March 2013, the incoming politburo has demonstrated a strong desire to exert more control over existing territorial disputes—and is regarded as being more confident than its predecessors in taking a tougher stance towards China’s neighbours.13 Robert Haddick asserts that China’s leaders may see internal political rewards for responding to these nationalist appeals, as well as benefit in using this nationalism for social control if other forms of legitimacy falter.14Responding to the pivotThe other factor in China’s changing strategy is that Beijing is responding to Washington’s rebalance or pivot to the Asia Pacific. 15 According to this view, the US pivot has caused concern in China because of the strong perception that the US is enhancing its involvement in the South China Sea in order to contain China, with Washington interfering in what Beijing considers to be bilateral issues with other littoral Asian nations .16 In particular, Beijing would be concerned that the US pivot is emboldening neighbouring counties, particularly The Philippines and Vietnam, to challenge China’s maritime and territorial claims.According to some commentators, deepening US relationships with these nations and the increased US military presence in the region have caused Chinese strategists to argue that China is trapped and vulnerable and must break out of any strategic containment.17 Others assert that recent Chinese actions in the South China Sea may indicate that Beijing has decided to openly challenge the US pivot and negate the growing influence the US is establishing with China’s Northeast and Southeast Asian neighbours; Haddick, for example, argues that China is now pressing previously dormant claims in the South China Sea to protect its growing interests and gain control over its links to key sea lines of communication. 18Whatever the reason—and whether or not China is seeking to abandon a ‘peaceful rise’ strategy—it is clear that China is now in a position to assert its historical claims in the South China Sea in a manner it was unable to do only a few years ago.19 With growing tension between the US and China, and increased resource competition between nations in the region, mixed with an increasing nationalistic and assertive Chinese leadership, the likelihood of a flashpoint between the US and China may, therefore, seem inevitable—especially if conflict occurred between China and a regional US ally, such as The Philippines, which has a Mutual Defence Treaty with the US.20

The conflict will start by miscalculation – and escalateKim 16 - Assistant Professor at the Institute of International Studies, Bradley University [Kim, Jihyun. "Possible Future of the Contest in the South China Sea." The Chinese Journal of International Politics (2016)] doa 5-11-16

On the South China Sea disputes, however, Beijing has never deviated from its position that the given issue is not between China and ASEAN, and thus that Sino-ASEAN relations as a whole should not be aggravated by it. Even in the face of growing concern on the part of China’s neighbours and the United States fuelled by revelations of Beijing’s controversial land reclamation in the South China Sea that could serve a military purpose, Chinese leaders have defended the country’s island-building as legitimate because it falls within its territorial rights. Although China’s island-building is widely interpreted by its neighbours and the United States as a provocative move intended to strengthen its territorial claims and potentially threaten FON, Beijing insists that its construction and maintenance works are designed not to restrict free naval passage but to provide positive public services, including maritime search-and-rescue, disaster prevention, weather forecasting, and navigation security and fishery production for the greater good of the region.33 Such rhetoric, though not widely accepted by outside powers, has been constantly reiterated by Chinese leaders to portray the country as a peaceful rising power, interested in constructive regional engagement and promoting mutual prosperity and a common destiny in Asia.Still, there are a number of important factors that could trigger a future conflict. They include intensification of maritime disputes due to China’s growing popular nationalism, combined with the government’s effort to treat the issue as a matter of national security and pride . For example, China’s grand strategy would evolve in a more comprehensive way to strengthen its national power and establish the country as more than just an economic giant in the 21st century. In this light, the expansion of China’s South China Sea claims, as well as its growing fleet of nuclear submarines armed with ballistic missiles, can be interpreted as part of its strategic efforts to create what’s known in military parlance as a ‘bastion’, or a deep-water sanctuary where Chinese submarines

could avoid detection.34 Notwithstanding China’s ‘no first use’ policy on nuclear weapons, its neighbours and the United States might see this rapid development of ballistic submarines and nuclear deterrence capability as a threat. This is because China might possibly ‘adopt a bastion strategy in the South China Sea’ and unilaterally declare an ‘air defence identification zone’, which would restrict other countries’ military overflights and abilities to track China’s submarines, so inevitably intensifying the security dilemma.35Additionally, the weak crisis-management structure of the Chinese system and the lack of unity among China’s large and complicated political, foreign affairs, and military bureaucracies could heighten the danger of escalation from an operational miscalculation at sea to a political and diplomatic crisis .36 For example, rising nationalism in China is not only real but also being utilized by a diverse set of actors, including the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), local governments, law enforcement agencies, resource companies, and fishermen, who are promoting different agendas to advance their own particular parochial interests by seeking increased government funding or enhanced prestige. This means that ‘despite the image of Xi as a strong leader’, it is inevitable that Xi and the central government will be influenced by China’s fractured authority and systemic problems, even in the course of formulating a grand national strategy for maritime security in the South China Sea.37 The problem is that ‘not every action taken by the government agency’ or other related actors would properly reflect ‘the will of China’s leaders’ while it could increase the chances of division among Chinese policymakers at a tactical level.38 In the current nationalist political atmosphere, where Chinese leaders rely heavily on these actors to maintain the legitimacy and unity of the party, almost anything could be justified in the name of safeguarding China’s security and maritime consciousness, even at the risk of deteriorating regional stability and causing foreign policy consequences that might go against China’s long-term national interests. This is what could potentially, though not deliberately, shift the security order in the South China Sea from minor tensions to major confrontations rather than peaceful cooperation, notwithstanding Beijing’s smile diplomacy, buttressed by its charming rhetoric and economic leverage.

Great Power War will resultKim 16 - Assistant Professor at the Institute of International Studies, Bradley University [Kim, Jihyun. "Possible Future of the Contest in the South China Sea." The Chinese Journal of International Politics (2016)] doa 5-11-16

There has been growing concern in recent years about China’s becoming a threat to regional and global security, as its expansionist ambitions could undermine stability in East Asia and beyond. Whereas China claims that it has no hegemonic ambitions or aspirations to territorial expansion, ‘China’s lack of transparency surrounding its growing military capabilities and strategic decision-making’ has made both its neighbours and the United States suspicious of the country’s intentions.1 In particular, territorial disputes in the South China Sea have become a major regional security concern, one which could clash with the US strategic rebalance to the Asia-Pacific region, especially in light of China’s flexing its military muscles.2 For Beijing, the power game in the South China Sea is not merely an isolated issue but a significant piece of the overall picture that will complete the process of China’s re-emergence as a dominant power after its century of humiliation.However, a recent upsurge in tension, partly due to Beijing’s greater assertiveness, as manifest in military activities, land reclamation, and energy explorations in what it considers to be its own particular and traditional sphere of influence, has renewed concerns that the area is becoming a minefield with global consequences . Certain states in the region have consequently strengthened their relations with the United States to counter China, in line with Washington’s efforts to rebalance to Asia and reinvigorate America’s security ties with its traditional Asian allies and partners. This has further complicated the issue, making the South China Sea a centre for big power rivalry. Taken as a whole, the South China Sea disputes could be a useful indicator when evaluating the ‘China threat’ thesis. This is also an interesting test case for examining the effectiveness of America’s influence when dealing with what seem to be ‘Asian problems’. It can also shed light on broader issues, including the prospects for Sino-US relations and the future of the regional order in Asia.

US-Sino conflict would escalate and go nuclearCunningham & Fravel 15 - Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Political Science and member of the Security Studies Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology & Associate Professor of Political Science and member of the Security Studies Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology [Fiona S. and M. Taylor,

“Assuring Assured Retaliation: China’s Nuclear Posture and U.S.-China Strategic Stability,” International Security, Vol. 40, No. 2, Fall, pp. 7–50]

In a recent article on the role of China’s secure second-strike and coercive leverage, Thomas Christensen draws attention to the danger of inadvertent escalation in a crisis between the United States and China. In particular, Christensen challenges the optimistic view that China’s secure second-strike capability will prevent escalation to the strategic nuclear level because each side would be able to impose unacceptable damage on the other after absorbing a first strike.111 Drawing on the Cold War–era scholarship of Robert Jervis and Thomas Schelling, Christensen suggests that a conventionally weaker state with a secure second-strike capability could create a “threat that leaves something to chance,” whereby any conventional conflict could ultimately escalate to strategic nuclear war.112 The lack of a clear firebreak between conventional and nuclear operations enhances this risk of nuclear escalation . Conventionally weaker states may unintentionally increase the threat that leaves something to chance if their nuclear and conventional forces are integrated, and “fighting can become blurred between conventional and nuclear war.”113In a possible crisis between the United States and China, Christensen identifies how inadvertent escalation might occur. He suggests that China could be bolder in a conventional crisis with the United States because it believes it could counter U.S. threats of nuclear escalation.114 Complicating matters, some of China’s newly developed

conventional systems overlap with its nuclear ones , especially land-based ballistic missiles and their attendant command and control infrastructure but also submarines and space-based assets . If a conflict between the United States and China occurred, Christensen notes that U.S. commanders could have strong incentives to attack China’s mobile missiles and related assets to defend U.S. forces and ultimately prevail in a conflict.115 If these strikes occurred, Beijing could mistakenly view them “as a conventional attack on its nuclear retaliatory capability or as a precursor to a nuclear first strike.” As a result, “even a China that generally adheres to a No-First-Use posture might escalate to the nuclear level .”116 Christensen also

highlights sections from the Science of Second Artillery Campaigns to show that “China’s NFU [no-first-use] doctrine still allows for blurring of the firebreak between conventional and nuclear warfare.”117 The book, for example, indicates that China’s

nuclear forces create a means “by which to level the playing field with a stronger adversary” and suggests that China could lower its “nuclear deterrence threshold” under certain conditions, including “to compel the enemy to stop its war of invasion.”118Avery Goldstein analyzes the effects of asymmetric conventional capabilities under the condition of mutual nuclear vulnerability on, among other factors, crisis stability. He identifies three incentives for states to use force first in a crisis: to gain a military advantage that could be translated into a coercive bargaining advantage, to signal resolve, or to preempt an attack.119 Where both states have conventional and nuclear forces, nuclear weapons dampen the incentives for either state to use any kind of force in a crisis to gain bargaining leverage, even if one power has superior capabilities. Mutual possession of nuclear weapons does not, however, entirely eliminate incentives to use conventional force first in a competition in risk taking below the nuclear threshold, which could cross that threshold if miscalculation occurred.120 In the U.S.-China case, Goldstein suggests that crisis instability results from deliberate competition in risk taking for coercive bargaining, played out at the conventional level.121 Each step in this competition is designed to bring the two states closer to nuclear conflict. For Goldstein, the stakes in a U.S.-China crisis would not be high enough for either side “to choose an unrestrained nuclear exchange.” Nevertheless, he suggests that “some stakes might be high enough for either one to choose to initiate military actions that elevate the risk of escalation to such a disastrous outcome.”122 As the conventionally stronger power, the United States might use conventional force first to gain a bargaining advantage by eliminating China’s ability to escalate using conventional weapons. China would then be required to move immediately to nuclear threats. As the conventionally weaker state, China could use conventional force first to preempt such a U.S. attack, or to signal its resolve over the issues at stake, but it could not improve its bargaining position by altering the balance of conventional forces.123 Neither state would want to take actions that provoked certain nuclear retaliation, but such escalation could occur as the intensity of conventional bargaining escalated .124

SCS conflict will destroy the global economyBlain 15 - Centre for Defence and Strategic Studies at the Australian Defence College, Commanding Officer of the 6th Battalion, The Royal Australian Regiment [Jason Blain, The Dragon and The Eagle in the South China Sea: is conflict between China and the US inevitable?, Australian Defence Journal, Jul/Aug 2015] doa 5-6-16

Economic interdependenciesThe economic bonds between the US, China and other nations in East and Southeast Asia are immense, and any serious conflict between them would cripple the global economy, as well as the Chinese and American economies. 25 The economic relations between the US and China have expanded substantially since their signing of a bilateral trade agreement in 1979, with total annual trade between the two rising over the past three decades from US$2 billion to US$562 billion (as of 2013).26China is currently the second-largest trading partner of the US (after Canada), its third-largest export market, and its number one source of imports.27 China provides a US$300 billion market for US exports and sales and is the largest foreign holder of US Treasury securities (approximately US$1.3 trillion); significantly, China’s purchases of US government debt help keep US interest rates low.28 Overall, almost a tenth of US economic output and employment is directly linked to trade with East Asia.29 Moreover, US trade with China will continue to grow and, for the foreseeable future, will continue to be a foundation of US economic stability.While the US economy remains reliant on a growing Chinese economy, China itself is dependent on secure trade flows and imports, essential for a burgeoning economy that has been responsible for bringing many millions of Chinese citizens out of poverty. By 2050, it is expected that China will include 20 per cent of the world’s middle-class consumption and will be the world’s largest economy.30 In order to achieve this growth—and meet the energy and technology demands as it moves from an industrial manufacturing economy to a service-oriented economy—China needs to trade with a stable, prosperous Indo-Pacific region.John Lee from the Centre of International Security Studies at Sydney University agrees that ‘China's export sector has been responsible for the creation of hundreds of millions of jobs, and the country still remains deeply dependent on outside technology and know-how’. 31 An example of China’s reliance on a stable environment for imports, particularly through the sea lanes of the South China Sea, can be found in its increasing oil imports. China currently imports over 55 per cent of its oil, half from the Middle East, and has become the largest importer of petroleum and other liquid fuels in the world; furthermore, it is anticipated that Chinese oil imports will rise to 65 per cent by 2020.32This snapshot of economic and commercial interdependencies highlights the significance of a stable US China relationship. That view is reinforced by Bonnie Glaser from the US Center for Defense and Strategic Studies who has argued, in the context of the importance of the US-China relationship to the global economy, that all parties clearly have a major interest in preventing any one of the various disputes in the South China Sea from escalating militarily.33

That causes wars around the globe that go nuclearFreeman 14 – Former US Ambassador – Chair of Projects International [Chas Freeman, A New Set of Great Power Relationships, September 13, 2014, Remarks to the 8th International Conference on East Asian Studies]

We live in a time of great strategic fluidity. Borders are shifting. Lines of control are blurring. Long-established spheres of influence are fading away. Some states are decaying and dissolving as others germinate and take root. The global economic order is precarious. New economic and geopolitical fault lines are emerging. The great powers of North and South America are barely on speaking terms. Europe is again riven by geopolitical antagonisms. Ukraine should be a prosperous, independent borderland between the European Union and Russia. It has instead become a cockpit of strategic contention. The United States and Russia have relapsed into hostility. The post-Ottoman borders of West Asia and North Africa are being erased. Neither Europeans, nor Russians, nor Americans can now protect or direct their longstanding clients in the Middle East. Brazil, China, and India are peacefully competing for the favor of Africa. But, in the Indo-Pacific, China and Japan are at daggers drawn and striving to ostracize each other. Sino-American relations seem to be following US-Russian relations into mutual exasperation and intransigence. No one surveying this scene could disagree that the world would benefit from recrafting the relationships between its great powers. As President Xi Jinping has proposed, new types of relations might enable the great powers to manage their interactions to the common advantage while lowering the risk of armed conflict. This is, after all, the nuclear age. A war could end in the

annihilation of all who take part in it. Short of that, unbridled animosity and contention between great powers and their allies and friends have high opportunity costs and foster the tensions inherent in military posturing, arms races, instability, and impoverishment.

**Advantage Two – Military EngagementThe US and China meeting in military-military exchanges – but they are currently tied to political issues. Establishing permanent ones allows them to avoid crisis.Kamphausen & Drun 16 – a. Senior Vice President for Research and Director of the, D.C., office at the National Bureau of Asian Research, b. Bridge Award Fellow at the National Bureau of Asian Research [Roy D. Kamphausen & Jessica Drun, Sino-U.S. Military-to-Military Relations, The national bureau of asian research, nbr special report #57 | april 2016, Edited by Travis Tanner and Wang Dong, http://nbr.org/publications/specialreport/pdf/Free/06192016/SR57_US-China_April2016.pdf] doa 5-11-16

Areas of Convergence in the Mil-Mil DimensionSetting realistic expectations. A common thread that has emerged from experiences in carrying out mil-mil programs, as well as numerous interviews conducted with senior officers and policymakers on both sides, is that the optimal mil-mil program must recognize the aforementioned challenges and thereby avoid some of the more dramatic swings in the relationship. This necessitates—and both sides have argued for—modest steps, despite the fact that the mil-mil relationship is already more than 30 years old. The first area of convergence is this shared interest in moving mil-mil engagement forward while keeping expectations modest.Demonstrating the value of an enduring mil-mil relationship. A second area of convergence is the judgment that cancelation of mil-mil activities to demonstrate displeasure with policy decisions or military developments by the other side is an approach that has outlived its utility. As noted earlier, both parties have engaged in this practice in the past. It is precisely because both sides perceived the costs of canceling mil-mil to be low that such an approach was so often employed. Mercifully, both sides are realizing that setting a low bar for suspending engagement serves neither country’s interests, nor for that matter the interests of the region, and a higher standard—no cancelations —is now more generally accepted . Indeed, after the most recent U.S. decision to sell a package of weapons to Taiwan, China chose not to cancel mil-mil activities, which is a sign of progress.27Establishing parameters for the U.S.-China relationship. A third area of convergence is that both countries share an interest in defining and delimiting what the new great-power relationship between the United States and China will become in terms of mil-mil engagement. This includes several dimensions. The first is declaratory and centers on the objectives for what the relationship might become, whether it results in a fourth Sino-U.S. communiqué on the emerging relationship or is defined progressively by presidents after bilateral visits. A second dimension of such an effort is to clarify the intentions each state has for the Asia-Pacific. China desires that the United States continue to avow that it does not seek to contain China’s rise and that it will respect China’s sovereignty, integrity, and system. The United States, for its part, among other things, desires to hear that China does not seek the end of U.S. military presence in the region, that U.S. relationships with allies and strong partners (including Taiwan) will not be threatened, and that freedom of operations in international air and sea are guaranteed. A final aspect of this area of convergence is to discuss what the two militaries might usefully accomplish together that will strengthen the existing international order. Determining an appropriate set of mil-mil activities. A fourth area of convergence is both sides’ efforts to find a mix of mil-mil activities that will help define an appropriate new great-power relationship. Whether through raising the level of participants from the military side in the annual Strategic and Economic Dialogue, building on the newly established army-army staff talks, enhancing existing strategic dialogues, increasing personnel exchanges, or other measures, there are many opportunities.

Mil-Mil engagement boosts overall US-Sino relations – prevents unrelated issue spilloverKamphausen & Drun 16 – a. Senior Vice President for Research and Director of the, D.C., office at the National Bureau of Asian Research, b. Bridge Award Fellow at the National Bureau of Asian Research [Roy D. Kamphausen & Jessica Drun, Sino-U.S. Military-to-Military Relations, The national bureau of asian research, nbr special report #57 | april 2016, Edited by Travis Tanner and Wang Dong, http://nbr.org/publications/specialreport/pdf/Free/06192016/SR57_US-China_April2016.pdf] doa 5-11-16

Risk Reduction

Mil-mil engagement can also contribute to risk reduction in the overall bilateral relationship, especially in areas of shared threat and vulnerability. Improved mil-mil relations support and facilitate broader collaborative efforts in counterterrorism, antipiracy, disaster response and relief, and, more recently, climate change mitigation. Collaboration between the United States and China can help ensure stability and prosperity in the Asia-Pacific and offers the promise of the provision of public goods for the shared benefit of all in the region.Management of TensionsAn effective mil-mil relationship can manage tensions over issues on which the two sides do not agree and cannot make concessions, but which they need the other side to at least understand. For example, the United States has critically important alliance relationships in the Asia-Pacific that cannot be sacrificed for improved U.S.-China relations. An example of managing tensions in this regard was the suggestion by a senior adviser to this project that China was willing to engage in trilateral dialogues on a variety of security topics in a “United States + Asian ally + China” formulation. On the Chinese side, Beijing affirms its sovereign right to “rise” and pursue national security goals—such as defense of sovereignty and territorial integrity—that contribute to modernization and development within the current window of opportunity. Beijing often views U.S. actions in the region that appear to endanger these goals as part of a concerted containment policy to prevent China from attaining its development efforts. Thus, U.S. actions and statements that reassure Beijing on this point serve broader purposes of managing tension.This reality of conflicting national interests is compounded by misperceptions and unilateral moves that have largely exacerbated existing distrust in U.S.-China relations. The Obama administration’s “rebalance to Asia” is a high priority to Washington. The rebalance, however, is viewed by Beijing as primarily military-focused, not least due to perceptions of increased U.S. military activities in the Chinese periphery. Conversely, the United States is wary of China’s deployment of its military, coast guard, and other security services in the South China Sea and elsewhere—apparently to pursue changes in the status quo to favor Chinese interests—which both threatens U.S. leadership in the region and affects perceptions of U.S. commitment among regional allies. In the absence of real conflict, the usefulness of the United States’ unmatched military power in East Asia is potentially limited. It is worth noting, however, that Washington’s commitment to allies and security partners remains firm, and if called on, the U.S. Armed Forces would execute contingency plans in defense of those relationships. Enhanced mil-mil contacts can reduce the risk of miscalculation through the confidence building that declining security tensions might bring. Neither side wants to engage in a war, given fiscal constraints and high personnel and recapitulation costs, as well as the untold impact on each country and the region as a whole. A U.S.-China conflict would impose unimaginably high costs and prove disastrous for not only the two countries involved but the entire Asia-Pacific.

Specifically centering that contact around the SCS boosts overall relationsThayer 13—Emeritus Professor at the University of New South Wales, Australian Defense Academy [Carlyle, “Why China and the US won’t go to war over the South China Sea,” East Asia Forum, 13 May 2013, http://www.eastasiaforum.org/2013/05/13/why-china-and-the-us-wont-go-to-war-over-the-south-china-sea/] Even before Washington announced its official policy of rebalancing its force posture to the Asia Pacific, the United States had undertaken steps to strengthen its military posture by deploying more nuclear attack submarines to the region and negotiating arrangements with Australia to rotate Marines through Darwin . Since then, the United States has deployed Combat Littoral Ships to Singapore and is negotiating new arrangements for greater military access to the Philippines.But these developments do not presage armed conflict between China and the United States. The People’s Liberation Army Navy has been circumspect in its involvement in South China Sea territorial disputes, and the United States has been careful to avoid being entrapped by regional allies in their territorial disputes with China. Armed conflict between China and the United States in the South China Sea appears unlikely.Another, more probable, scenario is that both countries will find a modus vivendi enabling them to collaborate to maintain security in the South China Sea. The Obama administration has repeatedly emphasised that its policy of rebalancing to Asia is not directed at containing China. For example, Admiral Samuel J. Locklear III, Commander of the US Pacific Command, recently stated, ‘there has also been criticism that the Rebalance is a strategy of containment. This is not the case … it is a strategy of collaboration and cooperation’.However, a review of past US–China military-to-military interaction indicates that an agreement to jointly manage security in the South China Sea is unlikely because of continuing strategic mistrust between the two countries. This is also because the currents of regionalism are growing stronger.

As such, a third scenario is more likely than the previous two: that China and the United States will maintain a relationship of cooperation and friction. In this scenario, both countries work separately to secure their interests through multilateral institutions such as the East Asia Summit, the ASEAN Defence Ministers’ Meeting Plus and the Enlarged ASEAN Maritime Forum. But they also continue to engage each other on points of mutual interest. The Pentagon has consistently sought to keep channels of communication open with China through three established bilateral mechanisms: Defense Consultative Talks, the Military Maritime Consultative Agreement (MMCA), and the Defense Policy Coordination Talks.On the one hand, these multilateral mechanisms reveal very little about US–China military relations. Military-to-military contacts between the two countries have gone through repeated cycles of cooperation and suspension, meaning that it has not been possible to isolate purely military-to-military contacts from their political and strategic settings.On the other hand, the channels have accomplished the following: continuing exchange visits by high-level defence officials; regular Defense Consultation Talks; continuing working-level discussions under the MMCA; agreement on the ‘7-point consensus’; and no serious naval incidents since the 2009 USNS Impeccable affair. They have also helped to ensure continuing exchange visits by senior military officers; the initiation of a Strategic Security Dialogue as part of the ministerial-level Strategic & Economic Dialogue process; agreement to hold meetings between coast guards; and agreement on a new working group to draft principles to establish a framework for military-to-military cooperation.So the bottom line is that, despite ongoing frictions in their relationship, the United States and China will continue engaging with each other. Both sides understand that military-to-military contacts are a critical component of bilateral engagement. Without such interaction there is a risk that mistrust between the two militaries could spill over and have a major negative impact on bilateral relations in general. But strategic mistrust will probably persist in the absence of greater transparency in military-to-military relations. In sum, Sino-American relations in the South China Sea are more likely to be characterised by cooperation and friction than a modus vivendi of collaboration or, a worst-case scenario, armed conflict.

US-China nuclear war will destroy the planet – only improved relations prevent itWittner 12 - Professor of History emeritus at SUNY/Albany [Dr. Lawrence Wittner, Is a Nuclear War With China Possible?, Jan 30, 2012, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lawrence-wittner/nuclear-war-china_b_1116556.html] doa 5-10-16

While nuclear weapons exist, there remains a danger that they will be used . After all, for centuries international conflicts have led to wars, with nations employing their deadliest weapons. The current deterioration of U.S. relations with China might end up providing us with yet another example of this phenomenon.The gathering tension between the United States and China is clear enough. Disturbed by China’s growing economic and military strength, the U.S. government recently challenged China’s claims in the South China Sea, increased the U.S. military presence in Australia, and deepened U.S. military ties with other nations in the Pacific region. According to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the United States was “asserting our own position as a Pacific power.”But need this lead to nuclear war?Not necessarily. And yet, there are signs that it could. After all, both the United States and China possess large numbers of nuclear weapons. The U.S. government threatened to attack China with nuclear weapons during the Korean War and, later, during their conflict over the future of China’s offshore islands, Quemoy and Matsu. In the midst of the latter confrontation, President Dwight Eisenhower declared publicly, and chillingly, that U.S. nuclear weapons would “be used just exactly as you would use a bullet or anything else.”Of course, China didn’t have nuclear weapons then. Now that it does, perhaps the behavior of national leaders will be more temperate. But the loose nuclear threats of U.S. and Soviet government officials during the Cold War, when both nations had vast nuclear arsenals, should convince us that, even as the military ante is raised, nuclear saber-rattling persists.Some pundits argue that nuclear weapons prevent wars between nuclear-armed nations; and, admittedly, there haven’t been very many — at least not yet. But the Kargil War of 1999, between nuclear-armed India and nuclear-armed Pakistan, should convince us that such wars can occur. Indeed, in that case, the conflict almost slipped into a nuclear war. Pakistan’s foreign secretary threatened that, if the war escalated, his country felt free to use “any weapon” in its arsenal. During the conflict, Pakistan did move nuclear weapons toward its border, while India, it is claimed, readied its own nuclear missiles for an attack on Pakistan.At the least, though, don’t nuclear weapons deter a nuclear attack? Do they? Obviously, NATO leaders didn’t feel deterred, for, throughout the Cold War, NATO’s strategy was to respond to a Soviet conventional military attack on Western Europe by launching a Western nuclear attack on the nuclear-armed Soviet Union. Furthermore, if U.S. government officials really believed that nuclear deterrence worked, they would not have resorted to championing “Star Wars” and its modern variant, national missile defense. Why are these vastly expensive — and probably unworkable — military defense systems needed if other nuclear powers are deterred from attacking by U.S. nuclear might?

Of course, the bottom line for those Americans convinced that nuclear weapons safeguard them from a Chinese nuclear attack might be that the U.S. nuclear arsenal is far greater than its Chinese counterpart. Today, it is estimated that the U.S. government possesses over 5,000 nuclear warheads, while the Chinese government has a total inventory of roughly 300. Moreover, only about 40 of these Chinese nuclear weapons can reach the United States. Surely the United States would “win” any nuclear war with China.But what would that “victory” entail? An attack with these Chinese nuclear weapons would immediately slaughter at least 10 million Americans in a great storm of blast and fire, while leaving many more dying horribly of sickness and radiation poisoning. The Chinese death toll in a nuclear war would be far higher. Both nations would be reduced to smoldering, radioactive wastelands. Also, radioactive debris sent aloft by the nuclear explosions would blot out the sun and bring on a “nuclear winter” around the globe — destroying agriculture, creating worldwide famine, and generating chaos and destruction.Moreover, in another decade the extent of this catastrophe would be far worse. The Chinese government is currently expanding its nuclear arsenal, and by the year 2020 it is expected to more than double its number of nuclear weapons that can hit the United States. The U.S. government, in turn, has plans to spend hundreds of billions of dollars “modernizing” its nuclear weapons and nuclear production facilities over the next decade.To avert the enormous disaster of a U.S.-China nuclear war, there are two obvious actions that can be taken. The first is to get rid of nuclear weapons, as the nuclear powers have agreed to do but thus far have resisted doing. The second, conducted while the nuclear disarmament process is occurring, is to improve U.S.-China relations. If the American and Chinese people are interested in ensuring their survival and that of the world, they should be working to encourage these policies.

**PLAN – The United States should establish guaranteed annual military-to-military exchanges with the People’s Republic of China demanding that China abandon military expansionism in the South China Seas.

SOLVENCY - Absent constant engagement – war is inevitableDenmark 14 - Vice President for Political and Security Affairs at The National Bureau of Asian Research [Abraham M. Denmark, Could Tensions in the South China Sea Spark a War?, May 31, 2014, http://nationalinterest.org/feature/could-tensions-the-south-china-sea-spark-war-10572] doa 5-10-16

In the South China Sea, where China’s ambitious “nine-dash line” claim of sovereignty has been disputed by several other claimants, relations have in recent weeks turned remarkably chillier. Vietnam and the Philippines are facing the brunt of Beijing’s ire, and the potential for crisis and conflict is significant. Positions are hardening, willingness to compromise is low, and the fact that the Philippines is an ally of the United States raises the potential for a disastrous crisis and potential conflict between the U.S. and China.The clash between China and Vietnam has attracted more attention in recent days. Just a few days after President Obama’s visit to the region, a Chinese mobile oil rig took position in a carefully selected site that, while closer to the Vietnam mainland than China’s Hainan Island, is just fourteen nautical miles from Chinese-occupied island, a part of the Paracel Island group that is claimed by both China and Vietnam. China sent a large flotilla of ships to escort the derrick; a group that included several armed Naval vessels. After Hanoi expressed outrage at this action and violence against Chinese nationals across Vietnam, Beijing expanded the escort flotilla to over 100 ships. Most recently, Chinese ships interdicted, rammed, and sunk a Vietnamese fishing vessel that was challenging the derrick. Vietnam claims that four ships were attacked in all, and now there are reportedly 113 ships standing off against sixty Vietnamese vessels.Similar incidents have played out in recent months between China and the Philippines. After China took effective control over the Scarborough Shoal in 2012, Beijing seemed to set its sights on the Second Thomas Shoal—a small land formation about 105 nautical miles from the Philippines but is claimed by both countries. To buttress its claim, the Philippines in 1999 intentionally beached the hospital ship Sierra Madre on the reef and has maintained a small crew on the beached craft ever since (see an exceptional piece about the sailors on the ship and the broader dispute by the New York Times here). Most recently, the Philippines arrested a group of Chinese fishermen found 70 miles from the Philippines near Half Moon Shoal with a ship filled with endangered (and valuable) turtles.To an outsider, all this hyperbole and saber rattling about small rocks, oil derricks, fishermen, and turtles must seem like much ado about nothing. Yet it is deadly serious—these seemingly trivial issues are used as avatars for deadly serious questions about history, power, ambition, and national sovereignty. An

examination of how countries see these issues and how they have behaved in the past provides a window for how they are likely to act in the future. It’s not a comforting thought.Chinese Ambition and Reactive AssertivenessThe common denominator in all of the South China Sea’s existing disputes is China. Beijing serves as the primary catalyst for tension and crisis in these disputes. Its declaration of a nine-dash line claim of sovereignty that covers almost the entire Sea is stunning in its ambition and audaciousness: in April, Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and the Pacific Daniel Russel described the claim as lacking any “apparent basis under international law regarding the scope of the claim itself.” That’s because China has justified its claim by asserting its historical control over those waters, yet the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS)—which sets standards for defining territorial waters, exclusive economic zones, and the land features that generate them—does not allow for claims based on history. Moreover, while various Chinese dynasties have at various times controlled various islands within the South China Sea, China has never controlled all of them at the same time.China’s behavior in the South China Sea has changed significantly in recent years. The South China Sea was not a major issue for Beijing for the first few decades after Chairman Mao established the People’s Republic in 1949. It wasn’t until Deng Xiaoping took the reins of power in the 1970s that it became a significant issue in China’s foreign affairs, and Deng set a path for restraint and nonconfrontation. Seeing China as relatively weak and in need of a peaceful external environment to allow China’s economy to develop, Deng pursued a policy to shelve disputes in order to pursue joint development of resources.As China’s economy has grown more prosperous and powerful, its calculations have changed. The growth of its economy has far outpaced indigenous development of natural resources, and China’s economy has grown ever more hungry for new sources of food and energy—a hunger that the South China Sea can potentially help to address. At the same time, China’s economic, political, and military power has grown exponentially and now towers above the other claimants. Their economies are fundamentally tied to China, which leaves them vulnerable to economic coercion from Beijing, while their political influence and military power now pale in comparison to China’s.Many of China’s elites have recognized this change in the distribution of power and believe China should act more assertively in the pursuit of its interests in the South China Sea. Led by large state-owned corporate interests such as CNOOC and SINOPEC and abetted by hawks in the PLA, China’s leaders have apparently been convinced that Beijing should abandon Deng’s precedent of restraint and conciliation and instead seek to change the status quo in China’s favor.China’s strategy toward the goal of strengthening control over the South China Sea has been fairly remarkable for its ingenuity. While certainly assertive, China’s leaders have insisted on a strategy that is restrained and defensive on its face. Beijing always couches its actions as reactions to perceived attacks and incidents from the other claimants. Yet China’s behavior is always to escalate the situation and use its overwhelming power to enhance its claims and strengthen its position.This approach, which can be called Reactive Assertiveness, is used by Beijing to describe China as fundamentally defensive and its adversaries as the ones causing trouble. With all apparent genuineness, Beijing paints the claims and actions as impinging on China’s national sovereignty—an equivalent to a foreign military force establishing a beachhead in Florida. As one Chinese scholar told me, “This is our territory and we have every right to use any means necessary, including the use of force, to evict them.”Yet China does not want a war. The tactics at use—fishing vessels and coast guard ships, harassment and ramming without firing a shot—are designed to stay below the level of tension that would rise to the level of an outright conflict. Beijing even attempts to paint its own hostile actions as defensive and the fault of the other party. A day after Chinese ships intentionally rammed and sank a Vietnamese fishing vessel, a Foreign Ministry spokesman urged Vietnam to “immediately stop all disruptive and damage activities” and the Vice Foreign Minister said that no country should doubt China’s determination and will to safeguard the peace and stability of the South China Sea. The message from Beijing is clear: the other claimants should wholly accede to all Chinese claims, and any violence that result from their resistance is wholly their responsibility.Fear and Loathing in Manila and HanoiLeaders in the Philippines and Vietnam see themselves as walking a strategic tightrope. On one hand, China’s economic importance, geographic proximity, and overwhelming military power demands that they maintain a positive relationship with Beijing. Yet their claims of sovereignty in the South China Sea are felt just as strongly and genuinely as they are felt in Beijing, and they feel an obligation to their country to defend its national sovereignty and territorial integrity.One topic that is raised regularly in both countries is, a bit incongruously, Crimea. Elites in both Manila and Vietnam see much of themselves in Ukraine—a small nation embroiled in a serious territorial dispute with their (relatively) economically vital and militarily dominant neighbor. Russia’s intervention and subsequent annexation of Crimea seemed to demonstrate to leaders in Southeast Asia that economic dependence and military weakness is a geopolitical liability, and that territorial integrity and national sovereignty are not inviolate in the twenty-first century.These countries fear that Russia has set the stage for China to use force to take control over disputed territories. As a reaction, they are seeking to diversify their economies in order to reduce their dependence on China while also building their own military power somewhat reduce China’s military advantage. Vietnam has in recent years purchased 6 Kilo-class submarines from Russia, maritime patrol aircraft from Canada, and Sigma Corvettes from the Netherlands. The Philippines has likewise announced plans to increase its defense spending and to purchase three decommissioned Hamilton-class cutters from the U.S. Coast Guard, along with twelve new FA-50 fighters from Korea. Both also seek to buttress their defense cooperation with the United States—Hanoi’s engagement with Washington has increased noticeably in recent years, and Manila recently signed an Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement with Washington to strengthen defense cooperation and expand the American military presence in the Philippines.Vietnam and the Philippines will not stand idly by as China gradually erodes their hold on what they believe to be their territory. Yet they also do not want a war with China—their strategy appears to be focused on resisting China’s efforts to erode their claims while buying time to build their power, reduce their dependence on China, and hope the international community will intervene. Manila has brought its dispute with China to the UN Permanent Court of Arbitration, a decision from which is expected near the end of 2015. Moreover, both have turned to ASEAN to bring added geopolitical weight to negotiations with Beijing to develop a legally binding maritime code of conduct in the South China Sea—an agreement that would not affect the disputes themselves, but would considerably reduce tensions.Chilly Times Ahead

The future of these disputes is not promising for long-term peace and stability. Neither side has demonstrated any interest in backing down or compromising, and the potential for future escalation and crisis is high.China’s approach to these disputes is particularly problematic. Its refusal to compromise, its continued reliance on escalation, and its commitment to change the status quo (no matter how gradually) is a recipe for persistent tension. Most troubling is the confidence with which China approaches escalation. Beijing appears to see escalation as a tool that can be used with absolute control and predictability. China’s strategists and policy makers are fairly new to major power geopolitics, and have not learned the lessons their American and Russian counterparts learned during the Cold War: that escalation is a dangerous tool, that an adversary can respond in very unpredictable ways, and that tension can quickly spiral out of control.One problem on the near horizon is how China will react to the arrest of Chinese fishermen by the Philippines. Beijing will certainly react, and will again seek to punish Manila and strengthen China’s claims in the process. One option would be to arrest Philippine fishermen operating in waters claimed by China. Another more likely and more provocative response would be to evict the Philippine forces currently on the grounded Sierra Madre on the Second Thomas Reef. China has already harassed routine efforts by the Philippines to resupply those sailors, and may seek to tighten the blockade on the ship in order to force the sailors to withdraw. The potential for shots to be fired or another ship to be rammed and sunk would be high, and lives may be lost.Without serious engagement, China is unlikely to back down. Beijing has painted this issue as directly related to its territorial integrity and national sovereignty, and its recent public marking of the 95th anniversary of the May 4 movement—in which the existing government was overthrown by a popular uprising that judged Beijing as weak in the face of foreign exploitation—strongly suggests that China’s leaders are sensitive to linkages between perceived weakness abroad and instability at home. With the growth of China’s economy likely to slow dramatically in coming years, Beijing appears to see incidents like these as useful in stirring nationalist sentiments at home to buttress the popular legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party.Should China use force against the Philippines, no matter how much Beijing may try to describe the act as defensive or reactive, the United States would probably be drawn into the crisis—certainly in a diplomatic sense, and potentially in a military sense as well. The United States will be unlikely to back down in such a situation, as the credibility of America’s willingness to intervene overseas has already come into question after decisions to not intervene in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine or Assad’s crossing the chemical weapons “redline” in Syria. While Washington would certainly attempt to de-escalate any crisis and prevent the use of force, it will also be sure to demonstrate will and resolve in order to both deter hostilities and reassure its allies.

Constant military engagement is key – the US must let China know that they will NEVER accept maritime expansion.Quirk 11 – 9 – 15 – Lieutenant, US Navy, Young Leader and non-resident WSD-Handa Fellow with the Pacific Forum CSIS [Sean P. Quirk, Reconciling China’s PLAN: Strategic Intervention, Tactical Engagement, http://thediplomat.com/2015/11/reconciling-chinas-plan-strategic-intervention-with-tactical-engagement/] doa 4-20-16

Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing. Passing, harassing, and shadowing in the case of Chinese vessels meeting U.S. warships.Such exchanges comprise the unfortunate core of U.S.-China military-to-military (“mil-to-mil”) engagement. China’s harassment of the USNS Impeccable in 2009 and USS Cowpens in 2013 are but the most prominent cases of its persistent belligerence in the South China Sea. This tactically aggressive behavior from the People’s Liberation Army-Navy (PLAN) reflects a grander expansion strategy emanating from Beijing. From new Chinese passports with the infamous nine-dashed line, media trumpeting Chinese claims over Japanese-governed Senkaku Islands, and maritime occupation of Scarborough Shoal, China’s maritime expansion is the well-orchestrated foreign policy of the Chinese Communist Party through its national ministries.Betting that war will not result, China is pushing the boundaries – literally – of its maritime claims, incrementally. American military analyst Robert Haddick calls the strategy “salami slicing,” or “the slow accumulation of small changes, none of which in isolation amounts to a casus belli, but which can add up over time to a significant strategic change” (p. 77). By building “facts on the ground” through occupation and declaration of new maritime territory, Beijing builds precedent and physical justification for Chinese claims. Beijing’s recent island construction and aggressive territorial incursions are the most recent events testing the will of the international community and United States. These events are not signals but rather dynamic action by Beijing to unilaterally dominate China’s near seas.Deteriorating U.S.-China Relations

Earlier this September, the ninth track-II U.S.-China Strategic Dialogue convened in Honolulu, Hawaii, hosted by the Pacific Forum Center for Strategic International Studies (CSIS) and the Naval Postgraduate School. Some fifty U.S. and Chinese officials, military officers, and academics met in their private capacity for the unofficial discussions. The general consensus on both sides was the deteriorating state of U.S.-China relations and the need for both governments to have productive dialogue on their security concerns.This deep and widening chasm of distrust is leading to greater potential for misunderstanding and lethal miscalculation in times of crisis . The demand on both sides is for clear, substantive dialogue and binding agreements to sustain peace, yet one retired senior PLA official articulated the current state of affairs. He said, “If the U.S. wants to make China a threat, China will become a threat. China can only respond.”If a country wanted to become threatening in this era, a good start would be to declare indisputable sovereignty over an entire sea. It would repeatedly send government vessels into the territorial waters of an adjacent state. It would declare a new air defense identification zone (ADIZ) overlapping the established zones of its neighbors. It might even go so far as secretly build new military installations in international waters with airstrips for fighter and bomber aircraft.No, China is not a threat to the region because a threat merely signals potential hostility. China is not “threatening” the security and stability of international law in the Asia-Pacific – China is actively undermining it. Washington needs to say so. It should unambiguously call out Beijing’s plan for what it is: encroaching on the international commons and destabilizing geopolitical peace to enlarge China’s sovereign territory. Due to geographic distance, the American public can more easily ignore the writing on the walls – and have. China’s neighbors cannot and have not, and neither can U.S. forward-deployed forces in the region.Steven Stashwick’s excellent article explained that local maritime incidents with China will not spiral out of control into war, as they differ from the “strategic miscalculations” that are the basis of armed hostilities between states. Stashwick is correct in this assessment; however, this reality is precisely the basis of Beijing’s strategy in China’s near seas. China wants geopolitical dominance over the East and South China Seas, not war.Shortcomings of ‘Engage and Hedge’America’s interest in the Asia-Pacific region is foremost stability and peace, but U.S. policymakers and scholars increasingly state that such goals may be mutually exclusive in China’s near seas. Congressman J. Randy Forbes, R-Virginia, recently submitted a bipartisan letter to the White House and Department of Defense urging the United States to reasonably and militarily challenge Chinese claims in the South China Sea, with the inherent risk of armed conflict. Meanwhile, leading academics such as Charles Glaser argue in favor of ceding geopolitical ground to China to preserve peace, even suggesting that the United States end its special relationship with Taiwan that has preserved Taiwan’s status quo for seven decades.Current U.S. China policy of sanguine diplomatic engagement combined with U.S. military capability hedging against Chinese defense posture, so called “Engage and Hedge,” is only increasing tensions between the United States and China. This strategy focuses on diplomatic engagement and high-level talks (see the presidents Sunnylands summit and President Xi Jinping’s recent state visit), while hedging China’s growth with the Asia-Pacific “rebalance” of U.S. military forces. Yet, the effect of Engage and Hedge is U.S. capitulation to China’s maritime expansion strategy; Washington downplays Beijing’s antagonism on the diplomatic stage. This ambivalence coincides with increasing numbers of military assets in the air and seas surrounding China that might be involved in a deadly accident .Strategic Intervention with Tactical EngagementHowever, a strategy that reverses the domains of Engage and Hedge may foster both geopolitical stability and peace. The United States should invert Engage and Hedge by hedging in the diplomatic realm and bolstering engagement at a mil-to-mil level. Hedging against Chinese belligerence means aggressively denouncing China’s strategic moves through state-to-state diplomacy. Washington can simultaneously engage in tactical mil-to-mil exchanges that decrease tension between opposing ships and aircraft. This strategic diplomatic intervention with tactical military engagement is a two-pronged strategy to unequivocally denounce Beijing’s expansionist actions and territorial claims in the East and South China Seas, while simultaneously stepping up mil-to-mil cooperation, particularly with the PLAN.The first prong establishes geopolitical stability as Washington’s perennial strategic objective in East Asia and reveals Beijing’s efforts to disrupt that stability. The second prong at the tactical level allows for mil-to-mil interactions that will help prevent air and maritime incidents, which may cause needless injury and death. Strategic intervention with tactical engagement will not prevent armed conflict if one or both parties determine war to be the best mechanism for dispute resolution and escalation management, but will decrease the likelihood of animosity, misunderstanding, and unintentional death. The goal should be to normalize mil-to-mil exchanges such that they occur separately from the tumult of U.S.-China politics.

Diplomatically, Washington should hold a strategic intervention with Beijing to address China’s bad neighbor policy: The United States will never accept the Chinese strategy of rapidly expanding its maritime domain at the price of international law and the sovereignty of its neighbors . There are already several forums for U.S.-China strategic discussion, among them the Strategic and Economic Dialogue, Strategic Security Dialogue, Defense Consultative Talks (DCT), Asia-Pacific Security Dialogue, and the Assistant Secretary Sub-Dialogue. Conveying U.S. concerns and intentions in these bilateral strategic forums allow Beijing to save face on the international stage. However, past U.S. passivity has allowed the PRC to gain ground. The United States and China have developed joint confidence building measures (CBMs), military memoranda of understanding (MOUs), and the Code for Unplanned Encounters at Sea (CUES). Yet such progress coincides with significantly heightened tensions and a litany of Chinese actions that disrupt calm in neighboring seas. Indeed, legally non-binding CBMs, MOUs, and CUES can be counterproductive if they temporarily quell U.S. public opinion, thereby enabling China’s expansionist strategy to persist. If bilateral forums do not result in substantive, peaceful resolution, Washington should assertively employ multilateral forums such as the East Asia Summit (EAS) or United Nations to convey its strategic concerns.The goal of this strategic intervention would be to pressure Beijing to back down from its destabilizing belligerence in the East and South China Seas. As the Department of Defense reiterates in its recent Asia-Pacific Maritime Security Strategy, the United States “takes no position on competing sovereignty claims” in territorial disputes. Washington does not need to proclaim the legal validity of each state’s territorial claim, which would earn it more enemies than friends. The United States should, however, continue to demand that all claimants resolve disputes through peaceful arbitration, never with the use of force. Attempts to militarily alter established international boundaries in the East and South China Seas would be met with U.S. force, à la USS Lassen’s patrol near Subi Reef. Washington should make clear that China would face international repercussions for further militarization of international waters, to include United Nations condemnation and possible sanctions.While engaging in strategic diplomacy, Washington should simultaneously pursue a campaign for U.S-China mil-to-mil exchange as a means to let off steam in the pressure cooker that is the South China Sea. U.S. forward-deployed forces – the tip of the spear – would need to work tactfully in meaningful naval exchanges with the PLAN to balance U.S. government officials that would confront Beijing’s actions in diplomatic forums. From the track-II U.S.-China Strategic Dialogue to the official DCT between both countries defense departments, increasing mil-to-mil exchange is a common refrain coming from bilateral dialogues and military experts. Both countries’ defense apparatuses should orchestrate a full range of meaningful exercises that show tangible cooperation between their militaries, ultimately cultivating “military trust.” These exercises could include joint training on maritime air encounters, counter-piracy, humanitarian assistance/disaster relief (HADR), emergency evacuations, and naval escort exercises, such as those that were recently completed. In a multilateral capacity, the United States and China could go so far as to joint-host training events as an East Asian corollary to Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC), which the United States hosts in Hawaii every two years. Both militaries could invite their partners in the region, particularly members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), to a large multilateral training environment that builds trust across several international fronts.A new era of U.S.-China mil-to-mil exchange should imitate diplomatic meetings as regular, recurring events. Military exchanges between the two countries are currently episodic and highly vulnerable to political and congressional cancellation. The result? The bulk of military unit “exchanges” between the two navies consist of adversarial shadowing of warships and unsafe military air interceptions – antagonistic events that should not form the foundation of our navies’ interactions. When official exchanges do occur, they are beneficial but often heavily scripted and cursory. Port visits by U.S. warships to Hong Kong and mainland China are the most common means of unit-level naval exchange. Yet political sensitivities stymie engagement of much value-added trust, replacing substance with formality. Even the cultural exchanges that are common in all U.S. port visits are uncommon with port calls in China; activities such as crew-to-crew receptions, community service, and athletic games between U.S. and Chinese forces do occur but are far too rare for the world’s two biggest powers.Washington put on its largest dog-and-pony show for Chinese President Xi Jinping’s official state visit. But formalities cannot take the place of substantive discussions of Beijing’s provocations in the East and South China Seas and the need to mitigate PLAN belligerence. Washington should explicitly stress that the scope of China’s aggressive claims and island construction in international waters is unacceptable, while simultaneously opening channels for increased communications and understanding between armed forces. From senior military officers to deck-plate sailors, all should have the opportunity to stop and meet their counterparts in substantive joint training. To learn to live with one another in peace, U.S.-China military exchange must be deeper than adversarial interactions or superficial gestures, lest silence between the two militaries increase both tension and the possibility of needless death. As poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow concludes that famous verse on ships that pass in the night: “So on the ocean of life, we pass and speak one another, only a look and a voice, then darkness again and a silence…”

Inherency

Status Quo Fails

US isn’t deterring or assuring now – China will continue to expandFrasure 5 – 3 – 16 - Professor of Government at Connecticut College [William G. Frasure, U.S. Credibility in the South China Sea, http://thediplomat.com/2016/05/u-s-credibility-in-the-south-china-sea/] doa: 5-5-16

China continues to militarize the South China Sea, with the manifest intention of making its claim of sovereignty thereto impossible to challenge. China has made clear that it does not plan to accept a likely unfavorable decision, forthcoming in a month or so, by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague. Moreover, China has so far refused to discuss any sort of multilateral negotiations over the many overlapping, conflicting territorial claims.Nations who contest China’s claims as violations of their own sovereignty are left having to figure out how to confront China’s increasingly threatening military posture in the South China Sea. Must the Philippines, Vietnam, and other contestants either accede to Chinese sovereignty over the Sea or fight to defend their interests? If, indeed, those are the only options, then the choice seems clear. None of the contesting countries can overcome China’s military might, and they must eventually concede the South China Sea to China and hope for the best. Rather steadily, however, Vietnam and the Philippines have moved beyond that simple choice to another option of greater global significance: strengthening military ties with the United States.By drawing closer to the U.S., China’s Southeast Asian adversaries seek to acquire some degree of balance in the region, so as to dissuade China from brazen invocations of military might to enforce its sweeping claims. Which is to say, they hope a more visible, active American military presence will deter China. There is no doubt that the United States has, for the time being, adequate military resources to more than balance anything China can put into the South China Sea. But, as aficionados of the Cold War will recall, a fundamental component of deterrence is credibility. It is one thing to possess assets, it is another to convince an adversary of your willingness to use them, and another still to convince friends of your willingness to use them on their behalf. A further step requires that your friend believes that your adversary is intimidated by your posture. It is this last element that seems to be at play in the South China Sea. The United States seeks to assure the Philippines and Vietnam, perhaps others, that China will be sufficiently intimidated by growing U.S. involvement to move toward more reasonable, more accommodating policies, and accept the need to resolve the conflict through serious multilateral negotiation. There is little to indicate that the approach is working.The steady course of events in the South China Sea – China’s construction of artificial islands, introduction of surface-to-air missiles, landing strips, fighter jets, advanced radar, encouragement of provocative intrusions by fishing fleets and oil rigs – indicates China’s emerging confidence that major gains in the establishment of virtual sovereignty within its nine-dash line can be had by patiently undertaking a series of many very small steps. China flaunts its belief that no such steps will be obstructed or interfered with by the U.S. It is hard to imagine that one more dock or airstrip or even one more SAM battery would elicit a military confrontation by the U.S. Nor is it likely that China will unambiguously attack an American ship or plane, or commit any clear act of war against the U.S. China, then, can just keep on piling sand.A more pertinent issue with respect to credibility, is how the U.S. would react to a military engagement between China and an aggrieved Southeast Asian nation. Under a Mutual Defense Treaty, made sixty-five years ago and ceremonially reaffirmed in 2011, the United States has some responsibility to side with the Philippines in the event of a Chinese attack. The extent of that responsibility, however, is not spelled out beyond acting “to meet the common danger in accordance with its constitutional processes” and referring the matter to the U.N Security Council. Moreover, it is not at all clear – indeed, it is doubtful – that the treaty requires the United States to resist Chinese encroachments on contested reefs and shoals. Toward Vietnam, the U.S. has no formal obligations at all. The U.S., in short, has plenty of latitude in deciding how to respond to actual military conflict between China and either or both of its most prominent adversaries in the South China Sea.As China continues to strengthen its military capabilities in the maritime region, it appears increasingly confident that the U.S. will not present any physical obstacle to its ambitions. Chinese media emphasize the theme of supposed U.S. weakness, derisively portraying the recent Russian fly-by of an American guided-missile destroyer in the Baltic Sea, for example, as a humiliation.American activities in the South China Sea have not been conducted so as to support Philippine or Vietnamese territorial claims, but to assert a generalized principle of freedom of the seas. Any action to assert or defend their territorial claims will be left, evidently, to the claimants themselves. Any such action taken by a claimant alone would surely be repulsed by China, easily and quickly. Therefore, no such action is likely to occur without concrete prior assurance of American military support. There is no reason to assume that such assurance would ever be forthcoming.If they are paying attention to domestic politics in the United States, China and the rival South China Sea claimants must be aware of how problematic it would be for an American administration to rouse public support for a military confrontation with China over obscure bits of rock and sand in a corner of the world that, to most Americans, is quite remote. At present, polls showing what Americans are concerned about do not even mention the South China Sea conflict. Occasional polls register only some low-to-mid-range concern about “China,” mostly about trade. Importantly, no effort is being made by the present administration to prepare the public for trouble in the

South China Sea, nor is there any indication that any successor to this administration will do so. The Paracels and Spratleys are not even a vague shadow of Quemoy and Matsu in the realm of U.S. presidential politics.The persistent increase in China’s intimidating presence in the South China Sea has the effect, intended or not, of raising doubts about America’s course there. The appearance grows that the U.S. may, for a while, offer encouragement to its allies, actual and would-be, but can do little or nothing to actually prevent China’s military dominance of the maritime region. Such is likely to continue to be the case, especially if China exercises self-discipline and patience, moving small step by small step, refraining from ugly provocations or attempts to humiliate the U.S.

No Strong Stance Now

US hasn’t taken a strong stance on SCS claimsBroderick 15 - Research Intern at the Project 2049 Institute, MS Foreign Service Program @ Georgetown [Broderick, Kelsey. "Chinese Activities in the South China Sea." (2015), Project 2049, http://www.project2049.net/documents/150511_Broderick_Chinese_Activities_South_China_Sea_Pivot.pdf] doa 5-10-16

Lastly, the U.S. rebalance lacks any defined position on disputed territory and sea claims. Even though the United States and the Philippines share a mutual defense treaty, this treaty does not state whether or not the United States is obligated to come to the aid of the Philippines if the territory the Philippines controls in the South China Sea is under attack.53 The U.S. has not pushed China to account for its nine-dashed line in terms of its UNCLOS commitments, nor has the U.S. taken any steps to label the land formations that are under contention in the sea—a problem further compounded by the fact that the United States has continued to refrain from signing UNCLOS.54China’s “salami slicing” tactics are likely to continue if left unchecked. The U.S. claims to be committed to its allies and partners as well as to the rule of law, but it has not done enough to dissuade China from continuing its aggressive maneuvering in the South China Sea. If China were to take a military stance in the region or, perhaps more likely, if a U.S. ally decides to retaliate against Chinese encroachment, the U.S. would have to decide just how willing it is to flex its muscle.55 Without a pre-determined, clear stance on this issue, it is unlikely that the U.S. would be able to react quickly and decisively. And without strong U.S. action, China would clearly have won the hand by showing that, in terms of the South China Sea, the rebalance was mostly empty words.

SCS Extensions

China is Salami-Slicing

China is salami-slicingBritz 15 – MA of Military Art & Science – Strategic Studies, MBA – UMASS [Britz, Jared W. The South China Sea Territorial Disputes: The Catalyst for a United States-Vietnamese Security Partnership. ARMY COMMAND AND GENERAL STAFF COLLEGE FORT LEAVENWORTH KS, 2015] doa 5-11-16

China’s strategy in the SCS, nicknamed Salami Slicing by outside observers, has been effective thus far in meeting China’s goals in the SCS. The goal of China’s Salami Slicing strategy is to establish more credible forces than the other claimants can hope to match and to give China legal credibility for its claims in the SCS.133 China only deals bilaterally with nations concerning territorial dispute. Using incremental steps, China seeks to change the conditions on the ground with the goal of creating de facto conditions of control over time. China puts the onus on the other countries to indirectly counter its efforts. Few nations have been effective at opposing China’s actions in the SCS. One example of this is China’s establishment of Sansha City on Woody Island in the Paracels.134 China created Sansha City as a military garrison that has the capability to protect its claims. Woody Island is symbolic in the struggle for sovereignty in the SCS; China forcefully seized the island from South Vietnam in 1974.135 Incremental steps in China’s Salami Slicing strategy, rarely garner a response from other claimants. Over time, China’s actions in the SCS amount to seizing territory and exercising greater control piece-by-piece. China claims the SCS as part of its sovereign territory and that the sea is vital to its national security and a lifeline for its economic prosperity.136 China does not often use the PLAN but uses the Chinese Marine Surveillance unit. The Chinese Marine Surveillance unit is a maritime law enforcement agency of China that is made of three fleets of patrol vessels that monitor Chinese territorial waters. In the SCS, the Chinese Marine Surveillance unit regularly conducts armed patrols and monitors the disputed islands, which has helped China to established greater control over the disputed area. If China continues to be successful implementing its Salami Slicing strategy, U.S. freedom of navigation in the SCS could be at risk.

Miscalc Risk High

SCS risks miscalc that leads to war – territory claims are spurring Asian arms racesBritz 15 – MA of Military Art & Science – Strategic Studies, MBA – UMASS [Britz, Jared W. The South China Sea Territorial Disputes: The Catalyst for a United States-Vietnamese Security Partnership. ARMY COMMAND AND GENERAL STAFF COLLEGE FORT LEAVENWORTH KS, 2015] doa 5-11-16

The competing claims in the SCS have raised the risk of armed conflict in the region and resulted in an unofficial arms race.144 Much of the increase in military spending in Asia is allocated towards capabilities in the maritime domain, reflecting the geography of the region and the location of many of the security concerns.145 Military spending increased dramatically across Asia from 2010-2014, increasing over twentyeight percent in the four years and a total dollar amount increase of over $344 billion.146 The largest increases in East Asia came from the sub region of Southeast Asia, which includes many of the countries that border the SCS. Vietnam’s military procurement has centered on improving its naval capability, most notably, purchases of six Kilo-class submarines, upgraded naval patrol vessels, and reconnaissance aircraft. In terms of overall spending, China spends the most on its defense out of all the nations in Asia. Military expenditures reflect the security concerns of a nation. The Asian arms race increases the amount of military equipment that could potentially operate in the SCS and increases the risk of tactical miscalculation that could have strategic consequences. Miscalculation: A Threat to StabilityAll the nations that operate militarily in the SCS face the threat of miscalculation that leads to conflict. The SCS is congested with military, paramilitary, and commercial vessels and aircraft. Numerous nations have economic interests in the region and competing powers regularly come into contact in the SCS. China’s Salami Slicing strategy especially risks a miscalculation by taking incremental action to gain control over time. These actions may result in a military response if China does not properly assess the situation. States go to war for numerous reasons, and the SCS territorial disputes risks escalation of tensions from powers attempting to assert its claims .

Miscalc risk in the SCS is highBritz 15 – MA of Military Art & Science – Strategic Studies, MBA – UMASS [Britz, Jared W. The South China Sea Territorial Disputes: The Catalyst for a United States-Vietnamese Security Partnership. ARMY COMMAND AND GENERAL STAFF COLLEGE FORT LEAVENWORTH KS, 2015] doa 5-11-16

Both China and the United States realize the importance of good relations between the two nations .121 Globalization and the economic interconnectivity, make conflict between China and the United States inexcusably costly and detrimental to the world. Knowing this, Chinese President Xi Jinping expressed his desire to build strategic trust between the two nations on his recent visit with the Obama Administration at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting.122 In 2013, President Obama concluded that China and the United States should continue to work on a “new model” for its relationship and seek areas of cooperation, proper management of differences, and expanded trust through dialogue.123 As both sides work to improve trust, each must be careful not to further escalate tensions between the two nations.One possible point where tensions may escalate between US-CN is in the SCS. In the SCS, some believe the best characterization of the US-CN relationship is that of adversaries. Since 2000, naval incidents between the two nations have led to a periodic escalation of tensions.124 Both nations disagree on how the other should operate in the SCS. The United States does not recognize the legality of China’s 9 dash line and China does not recognize the U.S. right to navigate freely in the SCS. As Kaplan pointed out, China has ratified the UNCLOS, but does not adhere to it, while the United States adheres to the UNCLOS, but has not ratified it.125 These two conflicting interests have put the two powerful nations at odds and has heightened the risk of conflict based on miscalculations.

Key to Economy

SCS is globally significant – trade lanes & resourcesBritz 15 – MA of Military Art & Science – Strategic Studies, MBA – UMASS [Britz, Jared W. The South China Sea Territorial Disputes: The Catalyst for a United States-Vietnamese Security Partnership. ARMY COMMAND AND GENERAL STAFF COLLEGE FORT LEAVENWORTH KS, 2015] doa 5-11-16

The SCS is strategically important, not only to China, but also to the world. Many factors account for the SCS’s strategic importance, particularly the shipping lane and the natural resources. The United States, because of the importance of the region, has recently increased its engagement with the nations of the region and seeks to build better relations. Recent Chinese reactions to U.S. presence in the SCS have caused increased tensions between the two nations. The relationship between the United States and China is complex. The relationship can be characterized as partners, competitors, or adversaries; depending on the issue.13 Considering the recent assertive stance by China in the SCS, the relationship there appears more adversarial.14 China’s actions in the territorial disputes in the SCS received a response from President Obama in the 2015 National Security Strategy (NSS), which stated, “we remain alert to China’s military modernization and reject any role for intimidation in resolving territorial disputes.”15The ongoing tensions between China and other SCS nations revolve around territorial disputes over the Spratly and Paracel Islands and the Scarborough Shoal. China’s most active rival is Vietnam. 16 Vietnam and China have a history of armed conflict over disputed territorial claims. The two countries fought over disputed island claims in 1974 and 1988, as well as fighting a short ground war in northern Vietnam in 1979.17 In the aftermath of the 1974 conflict, China gained control over the entire Paracel Island chain. The 1988 conflict gave China possession of the Johnson Reef in the Spratly Islands. The U.S military is striving to maintain its influence in Asia, but confronts many challenges. The United States has long used its alliances in the Asia-Pacific to underwrite security. Now, instead of increased military spending, the United States seeks new opportunities to partner with nations in order to advance its goals in Asia.18 The 2015 NSS identified Vietnam, Indonesia, and Malaysia as new opportunities to partnering in Asia.19 Vietnam and Malaysia have territorial disputes in the SCS while all three have an Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ) that overlaps with China’s 9 dash line map.

Escalation Likely

Escalation likelyWei & Falzerano 16 - College of Public and International Affairs University of Bridgeport [Wei, Chunjuan Nancy, and John Falzerano. "Making Waves: Recent Developments of the South China Sea Disputes." (2016), https://scholarworks.bridgeport.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/123456789/1497/55-poster_makingwavesrecentdevelopmentsofthesouthchinaseadisputes.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y] doa 5-16-16

ConclusionsThe overlapping claims to sovereignty in the South China Sea contribute to tensions involving variety of stakeholders, with global political, military and economic import. It has become a stumbling block for China’s regional efforts. As China’s economic rise facilitates growing military capabilities, its neighbors are also experiencing their own rise in nationalism and military capability. Considering the complexity of overlapping claims involved, increased use of the contested waters by China and its neighbors augment the risk that miscalculations by sea captains or political leaders could trigger an armed conflict in the region . The security alliances could draw the United States into an unwanted conflict. America’s traditional dominance and alliance structures in the region have heightened its role in the disputes. Violent conflicts benefit no players. For East Asia’s security, prosperity and dignity, it is high time that policy community in various Asian capitals contemplates diplomatic solutions to prevent further escalation of the disputes.

Risk of escalatory conflict likelyCronin & de la Beaumelle 16 - Senior Director of the Asia-Pacific Security Program at the Center for a New American Security & Joseph S. Nye, Jr. Research Intern at CNAS [Patrick M. Cronin and Marcel Angliviel de la Beaumelle, May 02, 2016, How the Next US President Should Handle the South China Sea, http://thediplomat.com/2016/05/how-the-next-us-president-should-handle-the-south-china-sea/] doa 5-16-16

Beijing will test the mettle of the next U.S. administration in the South China Sea. At a minimum, China is determined to use “passive assertiveness” to exercise greater control over this jugular of international commerce. Fortifying artificial islands, executing law enforcement operations, and issuing diplomatic broadsides—while dangling economic incentives in an effort to dismantle multilateral cooperation—all appear to be efforts likely to continue and intensify in the immediate future.But more aggressive military maneuvers and the risk of escalation should not be discounted. A new president should expect to be tested early and often over U.S. surveillance operations within China’s 200-nautical-mile Exclusive Economic Zone, the protection of America’s Philippine ally, and support of other claimant-states such as Vietnam.The level of tension President Barack Obama’s successor inherits next January, however, hinges in no small measure on what transpires in the weeks and months ahead. With the coming judgment of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea in the case that has been dubbed Philippines v. China, President Xi Jinping may prefer to test the will of a distracted lame-duck U.S. leader now, rather than wait for a new one who may have to demonstrate his or her resolve from the outset. As China has so far been successful at pushing a de facto context further in its favor, Beijing is likely to try to have the new U.S. president face a fait accompli in the South China Sea.Perhaps in light of this, the United States is continuing its policy of leaning far forward to reassure friends in the region that Washington is determined to curb China’s excessive claims without precipitating conflict. Accordingly, the Defense Department is investing additional resources in the domain awareness and minimal defensive capabilities of key regional states, and top-level leadership has increased its exchanges with regional powers.

The South China Sea has become a litmus test for the Obama administration’s strategy of rebalancing to Asia. Hence, what the United States does or does not do in the waters and corridors of power around Southeast Asia in the coming weeks and months will set the standard by which U.S. credibility and regional policy will be judged during the next administration.Take the issue of Scarborough Shoal, where there have been concerns about China beginning land reclamation on the disputed reef effectively seized from the Philippines in 2012. If the United States were to specify that Scarborough Shoal is covered under the mutual defense treaty with Manila, the demarche could preempt Chinese reclamation of the shoal or catalyze a crisis, or both. Regardless, the issue will still be a flashpoint over the next several years.

A2 Interdependence Checks War

No checks – interdependence and interests won’t stop escalationBlain 15 - Centre for Defence and Strategic Studies at the Australian Defence College, Commanding Officer of the 6th Battalion, The Royal Australian Regiment [Jason Blain, The Dragon and The Eagle in the South China Sea: is conflict between China and the US inevitable?, Australian Defence Journal, Jul/Aug 2015] doa 5-6-16

ConclusionRecent behaviour by China in asserting its territorial and maritime claims in the South China Sea would seem to suggest that Beijing may be abandoning a ‘peaceful rise’ strategy in favour of using its rapidly developing military power to resolve historical claims. While this behaviour may lead to confrontation with its smaller neighbours, this article has argued that the current economic interdependencies and military disparities between China and the US suggest that conflict in the South China Sea between the two is not inevitable during the next decade.A likely outcome, as proposed by Carl Thayer, is that China and the US will maintain a relationship of cooperation and friction, whereby ‘both countries will work separately to secure their interests through multilateral institutions as well as continuing to engage each other on points of mutual interest’.48 However, as noted by Rory Medcalf and C. Raja Mohan:

There is no guarantee that either diplomacy or economic interdependence could stop conflict from beginning or escalating. The 100th anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War is a reminder that seemingly localised security shocks can have unpredictable and devastating consequences.49

With an increasing US presence in the Asia-Pacific and enhanced security partnerships with littoral nations in the South China Sea, notably with The Philippines and Vietnam, the US now has a great deal at stake in any confrontation between these nations and China. Failure to respond could undermine US credibility in the region.50 And while conflict between China and the US serves neither nation’s interests, the potential for the US to be drawn into a conflict through its regional partnerships is a real possibility.This article has argued that it is in the interests of all parties, and indeed the international community, that the waters of the South China Sea not become the military front line of the coming decades. However, within the context of increasing tension between the US and China over the South China Sea, there are indications that China’s rise is unlikely to be a tranquil one.51

Economic growth spurs military acquisition – undermines interdependenceBlain 15 - Centre for Defence and Strategic Studies at the Australian Defence College, Commanding Officer of the 6th Battalion, The Royal Australian Regiment [Jason Blain, The Dragon and The Eagle in the South China Sea: is conflict between China and the US inevitable?, Australian Defence Journal, Jul/Aug 2015] doa 5-6-16

Military disparitiesKaplan asserts that it is a ‘harsh, but true reality; capitalist prosperity leads to military acquisition’.34 True to this view, a consequence of China’s rapid economic growth has been a surging investment in its military capabilities . By 2050, it is estimated that China’s economy will be worth more than US$25 trillion and its annual defence spending will be over US$1 trillion.35 Chinese defence spending has quintupled since 2002 and is increasing by double percentage points each year.China now rates second (to the US) on world rankings in defence expenditure and is rapidly enhancing its military capabilities in both quantity and quality.36 This includes significant investment in naval modernisation and developing anti-access/area-denial capabilities, able to deter US or other outside intervention in any conflict in China’s littoral space.37 These capabilities include anti-ship ballistic and cruise missiles, as well as other means, including legal, public opinion, and psychological warfare techniques.38However, while China’s current defence expenditure of approximately US$145 billion is more than double any of its neighbours, its expenditure is less than a third that of the US (US$577 billion).39 Furthermore, the US is increasing its military capability in the Asia-Pacific and, by 2020, plans to have 60 per cent of its navy ships and six of its 11 aircraft carrier battle groups home-ported in the Pacific Ocean.40

Conflict Goes Nuclear

SCS conflict goes nuclearRando 9/29/15 –U.S. Correspondent and a frequent contributing author for the Chemical, Biological and Nuclear Warfare Journal and the Non-Conventional Threat Newsletter, DHS Certified Weapons of Mass Destruction/CBRNE Instructor, Weapons of Mass Destruction Hazardous Materials Specialist, Radiological-Nuclear HAZMAT Technician, NFPA Certified HAZMAT Defensive Operations and HAZMAT Technician

Frank G., Fire on the Water: The South China Sea and Nuclear Confrontation, CBRNe Portal, http://www.cbrneportal.com/fire-on-the-water-the-south-china-sea-and-nuclear-confrontation/

Robert Kaplan, one of the world’s foremost experts on China, has stated “The South China Sea will be the 21st Century’s defining battleground.” The obsession with supremacy in the South China Sea is certainly not a new phenomenon in the realms of international security and maritime strategy. In opinionated discussions related to naval warfare, prominent political scientists and military strategists have been addressing the geopolitical and military significance of the region for decades. For example, the enlightening 1997 article “The Chinese Way”, written in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists by Professor Chalmers Johnson of the University of California-San Diego, noted significantly increased defense budgets and expenditures in the region. In addition, the article eludes to the fact that China had claimed the entire South China Sea and would use its naval forces to counter any encroachment.¶ The argument for an increased U.S. naval presence in East Asia is certainly not without precedent. This contested aquatic region has tremendous geopolitical, strategic and economic significance. While, the Persian Gulf has immense importance and global recognition due to its strategic location in the Middle East, as well its significance to global commerce, industry and sought after oil, the South China Sea is crucially important to nations seeking to obtain their economic riches and geopolitical advantages.¶ The South China Sea is geographically located near the Pacific Ocean and encompasses an area of 1.4 million square miles (3.5 million square kilometers). As a semi-closed area, the South China Sea extends from the Singapore Strait to the Taiwan Strait, with China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Taiwan surrounding it. In terms of economic value, fishery stocks and potential fossil fuel reserves are two major commodities that may spark an armed conflict, even to the point of nuclear confrontation . As a rich source of the region’s staple diet, fish, the sea guarantees a steady flow of food to the countries of the region. Control and supremacy of the sea would also assure claiming the much touted hydrocarbon reserves in the seabed, possibly exceeding those of the OPEC nations such as Iraq and Kuwait. The conquest of this vast resource would virtually assure energy independence and high monetary returns for those that would gain supremacy over the South China Sea. Thus, seizing the opportunity to gain dominance will lead to control and manipulation of vital food and energy resources, economic wealth and geopolitical power in the region.¶ A scenario of regional and maritime domination and control could lead to the partial or total exclusion of adjacent nation-states to access any food or natural resources derived from a sea ruled with an iron hand; leading to a massive complex humanitarian catastrophe of immense proportions from malnutrition and starvation, limitations in energy production, and economic collapse. These factors make the South China Sea a national security priority for nations in the region, including one of the world’s superpowers, China.¶ The dependence of China and other regional nations surrounding the South China Sea on the Strait of Malacca is analogous in geopolitical and economic terms, to the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf. Approximately one -third of all global trade funnels through the strait and also serves as a conduit for raw materials and energy needs for China and other adjacent nation-states. Such potential dominance in any region, leads to a high-stakes game of brinkmanship, and at least the possibility of a regional war which could conceivably escalate to engulf nation-states external to the regional sphere. Tensions and skirmishes have the propensity to evolve into armed conflict and full-scale war, and apprehensive leaders and military planners in such a contested region serve as the facilitators for disaster.

China Will go Nuclear

Conflict will go nuclear – antagonizing is the worst solutionTikhonova 15 - Russia expert at ValueWalk, citing Zhang Baohui, Prof @ Political Science and Director of the Centre for Asian Pacific Studies @ Lingnan [Polina Tikhonova, “US Faces Nuclear War Threat Over South China Sea – Chinese Professor,” 11/28, http://www.valuewalk.com/2015/11/us-nuclear-war-south-china-sea/] doa 5/9/16

China is willing to start a nuclear war with the United States over the S outh C hina S ea , according to a Chinese professor.Beijing’s rhetoric after an incident with a U.S. warship sailed to the South China Sea suggests that Chinese decision-makers could resort to more “concrete and forceful measures” to counter the U.S. Navy, according to Zhang Baohui, Professor of Political Science and Director of the Centre for Asian Pacific Studies at Lingnan University in Hong Kong.“If so, a face-off between the two navies becomes inevitable . Even worse, the face-off may trigger an escalation towards military conflicts,” the professor wrote in a piece for RSIS Commentary.But, according to Baohui, the U.S. military is “oblivious” to this scenario, since Washington decision-makers think America’s conventional military superiority discourages China from responding to such “provocations” in the South China Sea militarily. However, this “U.S. expectation is flawed , as China is a major nuclear power,” the professor wrote.“When cornered , nuclear-armed states can threaten asymmetric escalation to deter an adversary from harming its key interests,” he added.Baohui then refers to the military parade in Beijing that took place on Sept. 3 and revealed that China’s new generation of tactical missiles – such as the DF-26 – are capable of being armed with nuclear warheads. Moreover, according to the latest reports, China’s air-launched long-range cruise missiles can also carry tactical nuclear warheads.U.S. could provoke nuclear war with ChinaAnd while the U.S. does not have its core interests in the South China Sea, the disputed islands present China’s strategic interests , which is why this kind of asymmetry in stakes would certainly give Beijing an advantage in “the balance of resolve ” over Washington , according to the professor. And if the South China Sea situation escalates and starts spiraling into a nuclear confrontation between the U.S. and China, Washington will face a choice of either backing down first or fighting a nuclear-armed power and the world’s largest military force with a strength of approximately 2.285 million personnel.¶ “Neither option is attractive and both exact high costs, either in reputation or human lives, for the U.S.,” Baohui wrote.So it would be unwise for the U.S. to further provoke China in the disputed area, since China’s willingness to defend its interests, reputation and deterrence credibility could easily escalate the conflict into a military confrontation that would ultimately harm U.S. interests, according to the professor. China will join Russia in nuclear war with NATOWith NATO member state Turkey downing a Russian jet in its airspace, there is already a high risk of military confrontation in the world. And with China being so close and allied with Russia, Beijing decision-makers could see the incident with the Russian warplane as an opportunity to avenge the West for the South China Sea provocations.The Turkish military said it had shot down a Russian jet on Tuesday, triggering a furious response from Moscow and escalating the already hot tensions in the Syrian conflict. With Russian President Vladimir Putin warning the West of “serious consequences,” analysts believe the Kremlin is willing to unleash a nuclear war over the incident.Despite the fact that Turkey is backed by NATO’s 5th Article, which states that an attack on one Ally shall be considered an attack on all NATO members, the chances that Putin will start a nuclear war over the incident with the Russian jet are very “likely,” according to Pavel Felgengauer, Russia’s most respected military analyst.Felgengauer said Turkey wants to protect a zone in northern Syria controlled by the Turkmens, Ankara’s allies, while the downing of the Russian warplane in the region must prompt the Kremlin to either accept the zone or “start a war with Turkey,” which means starting an all-out war with NATO. And the only way Russia could win a war against NATO is by going nuclear, Felgengauer said.“It is most likely that it will be war,” said Felgenhauer, as reported by Mirror. “In other words, more fights will follow when Russian planes attack Turkish aircraft in order to protect our [Russia’s] bombers. It is possible that there will be fights between the Russian and Turkish navies at sea.”U.S. provokes China to respond militarilyThe U.S. recently asserted its freedom of navigation in the disputed South China Sea. On Oct. 27, the USS Lassen traveled inside the 12-mile nautical zone around Subi Reef in the Spratly Islands archipelago. This reef is one of seven reefs China has artificially built in order to claim its sovereignty over the Spratly Islands and the sea around it.¶ Even though Beijing did not take immediate action to counter the U.S. vessel, such

further “provocations” could seriously destabilize the peace and stability of the whole region, according to Baohui.“They could touch off an unintended escalation and push the two countries towards military conflict. The logic is quite obvious,” the professor wrote.The U.S. Navy’s further operations in the S outh C hina S ea could thus corner Beijing and force China to respond militarily . After all, China cannot risk its national interests and power reputation , according to the Chinese professor. Shortly after the incident, Vice-Admiral Yi Xiaoguang, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) deputy chief of staff, warned that China “will use all means necessary to defend its sovereignty” if the U.S. conducts similar provocations.

Economy Impacts

the uncertainty of the economy emboldens adversaries and scares allies – accesses an impact magnifier to all impacts.Mann 14 – MA –Global Security Studies – Johns Hopkins University[Eric N. Mann, “Austerity, Economic Decline, and Financial Weapons of War: A New Paradigm for Global Security,” May 2014, https://jscholarship.library.jhu.edu/bitstream/handle/1774.2/37262/MANN-THESIS-2014.pdf]

ConclusionThe conclusions reached in this thesis demonstrate how economic considerations within states can figure prominently into the calculus for future conflicts. The findings also suggest that security issues with economic or financial underpinnings will transcend classical determinants of war and conflict, and change the manner by which rival states engage in hostile acts toward one another. The research shows that security concerns emanating from economic uncertainty and the inherent vulnerabilities within global financial markets will present new challenges for national security, and provide developing states new asymmetric options for balancing against stronger states. The security areas, identified in the proceeding chapters, are likely to mature into global security threats in the immediate future. As the case study on South Korea suggest, the overlapping security issues associated with economic decline and reduced military spending by the United States will affect allied confidence in America’s security guarantees. The study shows that this outcome could cause regional instability or realignments of strategic partnerships in the Asia-pacific region with ramifications for U.S. national security. Rival states and non-state groups may also become emboldened to challenge America’s status in the unipolar international system. The potential risks associated with stolen or loose WMD, resulting from poor security, can also pose a threat to U.S. national security. The case study on Pakistan, Syria and North Korea show how financial constraints affect weapons security making weapons vulnerable to theft, and how financial factors can influence WMD proliferation by contributing to the motivating factors behind a trusted insider’s decision to sell weapons technology. The inherent vulnerabilities within the global financial markets will provide terrorists’ organizations and other non-state groups, who object to the current international system or distribution of power, with opportunities to disrupt global finance and perhaps weaken America’s status. A more ominous threat originates from states intent on increasing diversification of foreign currency holdings, establishing alternatives to the dollar for international trade, or engaging financial warfare against the United States. The importance of this paradigm shift in U.S. national security, which places new emphasis on the causal relationships between economics and global security threats, will require innovative strategies. These strategies must involve multilateral and domestic policy solutions in the following key areas: international institutions, threat response, and U.S. fiscal policy.

Great Power wars & escalationHarold James 14, Professor of history at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School who specializes in European economic history, 7/2/14, “Debate: Is 2014, like 1914, a prelude to world war?,” http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-debate/read-and-vote-is-2014-like-1914-a-prelude-to-world-war/article19325504/As we get closer to the centenary of Gavrilo Princip’s act of terrorism in Sarajevo, there is an ever more vivid fear: it could happen again .

The approach of the hundredth anniversary of 1914 has put a spotlight on the fragility of the world’s political and

economic security systems . At the beginning of 2013, Luxembourg’s Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker was widely ridiculed for evoking the shades of 1913. By now he is looking like a prophet. By 2014, as the security situation in the South China Sea deteriorated, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe cast China as the equivalent to Kaiser Wilhelm’s Germany; and the fighting in Ukraine and in Iraq is a sharp reminder of the dangers of escalation. Lessons of 1914 are about more than simply the dangers of national and sectarian animosities. The main story of today as then is the precariousness of financial globalization , and the consequences that political leaders draw from it.

In the influential view of Norman Angell in his 1910 book The Great Illusion, the interdependency of the increasingly complex global economy made war impossible . But a quite opposite conclusion was possible and equally plausible – and proved to be the case. Given the extent of fragility , a clever twist to the control levers might make war easily winnable by the economic hegemon . In the wake of an epochal financial crisis that almost brought a complete global collapse, in 1907, several countries started to think of finance as primarily an instrument of raw power, one that could and should be turned to national advantage. The 1907 panic emanated from the United States but affected the rest of the world and demonstrated the fragility of the whole international financial order. The aftermath of the 1907 crash drove the then hegemonic power – Great Britain - to reflect on how it could use its financial power. Between 1905 and 1908, the British Admiralty evolved the broad outlines of a plan for financial and economic warfare that would wreck the financial system of its major European rival, Germany, and destroy its fighting capacity. Britain used its extensive networks to gather information about opponents. London banks financed most of the world’s trade. Lloyds provided insurance for the shipping not just of Britain, but of the world. Financial networks provided the information that allowed the British government to find the sensitive strategic vulnerabilities of the opposing alliance.What pre-1914 Britain did anticipated the private-public partnership that today links technology giants such as Google, Apple or Verizon to U.S. intelligence gathering. Since last year, the Edward Snowden leaks about the NSA have shed a light on the way that global networks are used as a source of intelligence and power.For Britain’s rivals, the financial panic of 1907 showed the necessity of mobilizing financial powers themselves. The United States realized that it needed a central bank analogous to the Bank of England. American financiers thought that New York needed to develop its own commercial trading system that could handle bills of exchange in the same way as the London market. Some of the dynamics of the pre-1914 financial world are now re-emerging . Then an economically declining power , Britain, wanted to use finance as a weapon against its larger and faster growing competitors, Germany

and the United States. Now America is in turn obsessed by being overtaken by China – according to some calculations, set to become the world’s largest economy in 2014. In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, financial institutions appear both as dangerous weapons of mass destruction , but also as potential instruments for the application of national power. In managing the 2008 crisis, the dependence of foreign banks on U.S. dollar funding constituted a major weakness, and required the provision of large swap lines by the Federal Reserve. The United States provided that support to some countries, but not others, on the basis of an explicitly political logic, as Eswar Prasad demonstrates in his new book on the “Dollar Trap.” Geo-politics is intruding into banking practice elsewhere. Before the Ukraine crisis, Russian banks were trying to acquire assets in Central and Eastern Europe. European and U.S. banks are playing a much reduced role in Asian trade finance. Chinese banks are being pushed to expand their role in global commerce. After the financial crisis, China started to build up the renminbi as a major international currency. Russia and China have just proposed to create a new credit rating agency to avoid what they regard as the political bias of the existing (American-based) agencies. The next stage in this logic is to think about how financial power can be directed to national advantage in the case of a diplomatic tussle. Sanctions are a routine (and not terribly successful) part of the pressure applied to rogue states such as Iran and North Korea. But financial pressure can be much more powerfully applied to countries that are deeply embedded in the world economy. The test is in the Western imposition of sanctions after the Russian annexation of Crimea. President Vladimir Putin’s calculation in response is that the European Union and the United States cannot possibly be serious about the financial war. It would turn into a boomerang: Russia would be less affected than the more developed and complex financial markets of Europe and America. The threat of systemic disruption generates a new sort of uncertainty , one that mirrors the decisive feature of the crisis of the summer of 1914. At that time, no one could really know whether clashes would escalate or not. That feature contrasts remarkably with almost the entirety of the Cold War, especially since the 1960s, when the strategic doctrine of M utually A ssured D estruction left no doubt that any superpower conflict would inevitably escalate . The idea of network disruption relies on the ability to achieve advantage by surprise, and to win at no or low cost. But it is inevitably a gamble, and raises prospect that others might, but also might not be able to, mount the same sort of operation. Just as in 1914, there is an enhanced temptation to roll the dice, even though the game may be fatal.

Mil-Mil Good

Regular Meetings Good

Regular meetings and military-to-military ties decrease the risk of conflictBin 15 – CCTV Staff Reporter [Han Bin, Xi Jinping's visit expands China-US military trust, 09-25-2015 00:35 BJT, http://english.cntv.cn/2015/09/25/VIDE1443112437412876.shtml]

China's military hopes to expand trust and cooperation with its US counterpart, in forging the 'new type of military to military relationship' envisioned by the two leaders. The remarks were made by a Chinese military spokesman during Thursday's monthly press conference. Military cooperation has become one of the key issues during President Xi Jinping's visit to the US. As Han Bin reports, despite differences on a number of issues, the two sides have found common understanding for an active engagement.A test for the “new type of major power relations.”Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit to the US highlights the determination of the top leaders to avoid conflicts.The China-US military-to-military relationship has been subject to constant tests. He says the US military engages in plenty of actions that China views as confrontational. These range from close-in surveillance of Chinese coastal regions, to regular arms sales to Taiwan, from openly criticizing China in the South China Sea, to the disputes on cyber-security issues.China and the US have overlapping interests in the Asia-Pacific."Two people can’t be dominant at the same time. We have to find a way to work each other, exchange views on the things that trouble us, as China to tell us more on transparency on military activities and the history of the islands," Former US Secreatary of State Colin Powell said.Still, both are trying to re-assure the other with new mechanisms to minimize risks.The two militaries have reached three confidence-building agreements: one on notification on major operations, one on rules governing the behavior of military activities during air and sea encounters, and one regarding land force exchanges.Both have signed a code of conduct, named CUES, that governs unexpected encounters between navies on the open seas."To build strategic trust, you need to control and manage possible conflicts so that frictions will not become military confrontations. That's very important," He Yafei, vice minister of Office For Overseas Chinese, State Council, said.According to the Chinese military, China is invited to take part in RIMPAC for second time in 2016. The Rim of the Pacific Exercise is the world’s largest international maritime exercise by the US Navy.Xi Jinping’s visit is expected to expand military exchanges and joint drills. But it will be long-term process that requires time and constant adjustments.China-US military-to-military relations have improved markedly in recent years, despite growing tensions between the two countries. And there's been some criticism on the US side over more engagement with China. But most realize that increased, stable communication between the two armed forces can help avoid conflicts, and provide a key source of leverage for both sides.

Suspending Meetings Hurt Relations

Suspending meetings undermines relations and cooperationLieberthal 11 – Senior fellow in the Foreign Policy and the Global Economy and Development Programs @ Brookings Institution [Dr. Kenneth Lieberthal (Professor of Poli Sci and Business Administration @ University of Michigan and Former senior director for Asia on the National Security Council) “The U.S. and China -- mending fences,” Los Angeles Times, Janary 17, 2011|pg. http://tinyurl.com/8wlq833

Many Chinese believe that America is a declining No. 1 that will do anything in its power to prevent China, No. 2, from catching up. They thus bring deep suspicion to the table when they analyze American actions in Pakistan, India, the South China Sea and Northeast Asia . Put simply, while the Obama administration sees itself as reengaging fully in Asia after what it considers the relative neglect of the region under President George W. Bush, Beijing is prone to see this activity instead as an effort to mobilize the rest of Asia against China's growing legitimate interests throughout the region.The United States and most nations in the region, by contrast, see China adopting a harder edge to its diplomacy after years of stressing its "peaceful development." China is also modernizing its military and now is deploying naval vessels, missiles and other capabilities that threaten America's heretofore largely unhindered military access to the Western Pacific. Tensions inevitably result.In this context, Washington has taken heart that countries throughout Asia are urging the U.S. to increase its presence and activities there. Asian nations are engaging with China fully on the economic side while asking the U.S. to make sure Beijing does not convert its economic weight into lopsided diplomatic and military

advantage. But America should beware: If the U.S. primarily provides muscle as China expands its economic role in the region, then Asia will be a profit center for China and a cost center for the U.S. American interests require a better-balanced outcome than that, which means we must work more effectively with China.

There are both security and economic measures that the upcoming summit can advance to reduce mutual distrust and enhance effective cooperation . The U.S. and Chinese military establishments have habitually suspended their limited high-level contacts to show displeasure whenever significant developments occur (such as the forced landing of an American surveillance plane after a midair collision in 2001 or the U.S. arms sale offer to Taiwan in 2010). The result is military-to-military discussions that are infrequent and anemic . The two militaries are now too powerful and operate in too close proximity in Asia to permit this situation to continue.

Solves Mistrust

Mil-Mil engagement key to combat mistrustFong 13 – Commander, US Navy [Fong, Arthur C. Dancing with the Dragon: US-China Engagement Policy. ARMY WAR COLLEGE CARLISLE BARRACKS PA, 2013] doa 5-15-16

Military-to-military engagement between the U.S. and China must be expanded at multiple levels. These engagements would enable our leaders to clearly communicate their intent in order to avoid misunderstandings and distrust while building positive relationships in the long run. The PACOM commander is in the best position to carry out this warrior-diplomat role. For example, the PLA Navy could be invited to join a RIMPAC exercise; PLA officers could join the Army War College international fellow program; U.S. forces could participate alongside PLA units in UN peacekeeping missions; U.S. could finalize the Military Maritime Consultation Agreement between the two navies; U.S. Navy could increase port calls to Chinese ports such as Hong Kong and Shanghai. Military-to-military engagements are great investments and truly support diplomacy while influencing adversaries during peacetime. They also enhance cooperation and mitigate distrust.Last but not the least, U.S. leaders must realistically address China’s rise to global prominence and the transition of power with China. They should not hold the belief that the United States is in a zero-sum game with China. We, Americans and Chinese, must invest in the future of both countries through a long-term strategy. Cultivating mutual respect and constructive dialogue is the only way to move forward.

Key to Relations

Mil-Mil ties key to overall relationsKamphausen & Drun 16 – a. Senior Vice President for Research and Director of the, D.C., office at the National Bureau of Asian Research, b. Bridge Award Fellow at the National Bureau of Asian Research [Roy D. Kamphausen & Jessica Drun, Sino-U.S. Military-to-Military Relations, The national bureau of asian research, nbr special report #57 | april 2016, Edited by Travis Tanner and Wang Dong, http://nbr.org/publications/specialreport/pdf/Free/06192016/SR57_US-China_April2016.pdf] doa 5-11-16

The mil-mil relationship between the United States and China has seen periods of both cooperation and conflict since its inception during the Cold War. While the state of mil-mil relations hinges largely on the overall state of the bilateral relationship, three decades of exchanges have revealed not only the inadvertent risks and shortcomings associated with these exchanges but also their utility and importance in maintaining stability in the Asia-Pacific and safeguarding U.S. interests. At the same time, these interactions have led to a deeper understanding of Chinese interests—and highlighted areas of convergence and divergence with U.S. interests. Acknowledgement of the limitations and differences has paved the way for a more sophisticated mil-mil relationship. Future steps—ones that are modest, incorporate shared goals, and avoid constraints—can contribute to a more effective mil-mil relationship that is optimal for both parties, bringing forth a new paradigm of U.S.-China engagement.

Improved Mil-Mil exchanges – based on mutual agenda – key to larger US-Sino tiesKamphausen & Drun 16 - Senior Vice President for Research and Director of the Washington, D.C., office at the National Bureau of Asian Research, Bridge Award Fellow at the National Bureau of Asian Research [Roy D. Kamphausen & Jessica Drun, What are Mil-Mil Ties between the U.S. and China good for?, April 22, 2016, http://warontherocks.com/2016/04/what-are-mil-mil-ties-between-the-u-s-and-china-good-for/]

Senior Defense Department leadership clarified this week that China’s invitation to the 2016 Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) exercises still stands, despite calls from Capitol Hill for its withdrawal. Opponents to Chinese participation argue that the United States should impose costs for China’s increasingly aggressive actions in the South China Sea. However, military-to-military (mil-mil) — which include multilateral and bilateral exercises but encompass a wide range of activities that serve as confidence-building and deconfliction measures — play an important role in the broader U.S.–China relationship, serving as a channel for sustained dialogue and conflict management.Former head of U.S. Pacific Command Adm. Samuel Locklear, during a keynote address at an event this Tuesday co-hosted by the National Bureau of Asian Research, advanced this view, noting that China’s participation in RIMPAC 2014 was a “very big success” and that Washington “should do all that [it] can to keep the PLA engaged in international military forums.” His comments come at a time where mil-mil relations between the United States and China are growing ever more consequential, in light of recent developments in the Asia-Pacific. Increasing militarization in the region and Chinese assertiveness in the South China Sea heighten the need for mil-mil contacts as a way to manage tensions, ensure stability, and communicate each sides’ respective interests to avoid miscalculations.Both Washington and Beijing have acknowledged the importance of the U.S.–China relationship for maintaining stability in the Asia-Pacific. Presidents Barack Obama and Xi Jinping jointly advocated for a more mature and robust mil-mil relationship during respective state visits in November 2014 and September 2015. Clearly both sides want to avoid military tensions and armed conflict because they recognize that conflict would be disastrous for both countries and catastrophic for the region.However, the United States and China share a long history of highs and, more frequently, lows in the mil-mil domain, given its correlation to overall political ties. The mil-mil relationship took root during the Sino–Soviet split. But mil-mil relations fluctuated in the following years, subject to the ripple effects of the Tiananmen Square incident, the cross-strait crisis in 1995 and 1996, NATO’s accidental bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in 1999, the EP-3 incident, and arms sales to Taiwan.Mil-mil ties were always reestablished after these crises subsided. All the more, the type and sophistication of mil-mil ties have markedly increased, to include a first-ever naval exercise involving cross-deck

helicopter landings in 2013, the completion of an air annex, and an increase in the number of high-level exchanges, among others. The adaptability to change and fluctuations in the strategic environment reflects an overall maturation of the bilateral relationship and should signal confidence going forward, not cynicism. In particular, there is now a heightened awareness about the need for more restraint in suspending ties. For example, Admiral Harry Harris, the commander of U.S. Pacific Command, was welcomed in November 2015 by Chinese counterparts, despite the USS Lassen’s freedom of navigation operation in the South China Sea a few days earlier. A new round of arms sales to Taiwan late last year also did not result in suspension of mil-mil activities, serving as another solid indicator.Yet the mil-mil program between the United States and China could be further optimized in the near term through collaboration in areas of shared interests. This includes enhancing communication mechanisms to reduce miscalculations and assuage differences. For example, they could mutually determine the correct mix of mil-mil activities or clarify interests to the other party.Longer term, the development of a collaborative agenda could both increase security and strengthen the relationship in important ways. There seems to be scope — based off the success of extra-regional initiatives such as the Gulf of Aden exercises — for the United States and China to develop a framework of mil-mil engagement through activities that manage each other’s important constraints and deal with existing challenges.Additionally, Beijing and Washington must establish appropriate mechanisms for managing tensions in areas where interests diverge. A point of contention on the Chinese side has been U.S. congressional oversight, which Beijing views as a major hindrance to mil-mil progress. Washington should be more vocal in emphasizing the relevant role of Congress and should actively engage with Capitol Hill during mil-mil exchanges — for example, by increasing the involvement of key members and staff, as well as congressional representation at the Defense Consultative Talks and major mil-mil exercises.Further options for mitigating tensions in areas of conflicting interests include pursuing trilateral security dialogues with U.S. allies to demonstrate the impact that such relationships have on regional stability. Over the longer term, both sides should work to address common challenges, such as the threats posed by North Korea or in the emerging domains of space and cyberspace. Ultimately, the key to mil-mil cooperation will be moving beyond a relationship defined by the satisfaction of each party with bilateral exchanges and embracing a new paradigm in which Sino–U.S. mil-mil engagement makes real contributions to regional and global security.

Mil-Mil cooperation locks in overall relationsKamphausen & Drun 16 – a. Senior Vice President for Research and Director of the, D.C., office at the National Bureau of Asian Research, b. Bridge Award Fellow at the National Bureau of Asian Research [Roy D. Kamphausen & Jessica Drun, Sino-U.S. Military-to-Military Relations, The national bureau of asian research, nbr special report #57 | april 2016, Edited by Travis Tanner and Wang Dong, http://nbr.org/publications/specialreport/pdf/Free/06192016/SR57_US-China_April2016.pdf] doa 5-11-16

Interests and Challenges in Mil-Mil RelationsThe U.S.-China relationship faces numerous challenges that are grounded in the very nature of the dynamic between the two countries. The United States is the established power, and China is the rising power. Their military relationship reflects the challenges posed by a power transition. Although the two militaries are not actively engaged in competition, planners on both sides are considering such possibilities. To be sure, the two militaries cannot change this core dynamic, but when they interact this reality makes their engagement fraught with more consequence than might be fair or realistic. Managing Security ChallengesThe United States’ principal interests in effective U.S.-China mil-mil relations are to avoid conflict, reduce risk, and manage existing and emerging security challenges in ways that avoid security dilemma outcomes and do not undermine the United States’ prerogatives or military posture, nor limit potential future opportunities in the Asia-Pacific.23 Achieving these goals would be a substantive contribution to the broader bilateral relationship. Moreover, it is imperative that the United States engage in mil-mil activities with China because of how consequential both countries’ militaries are; for Washington to do otherwise would be destabilizing in the region and strongly opposed by friends and adversaries alike. The United States perceives that China has similar interests in conflict avoidance, risk reduction, and tension management but expresses these goals in somewhat different terms. For instance, Chinese counterparts in this project have emphasized that the proper framework for managing bilateral issues would be under the rubric of “building a new type of major-power relations” (xinxing daguo guanxi). In the process, they emphasize the framework for addressing the issues as much as, or even more than, the outcomes themselves.

Moreover, the United States fully understands that China firmly opposes U.S. military operations in the air and sea off China’s coast but outside its territorial waters. The United States hears Chinese assertions that these acts are constituent elements of a strategy to contain China, but it strongly believes that this Chinese perception is belied by more than 35 years—and six presidential administrations—of policy and practice. Finally, U.S. leaders wonder whether China’s historically defensive national security orientation—and the doctrine, disposition, and development that support such an orientation—might be changing as new activities (e.g., land reclamation) are observed and new weapons systems (e.g., anti-ship ballistic missiles) come online.

Relations Solve Global issues

US-Sino mil-mil cooperation spreads to influence global issuesKamphausen & Drun 16 – a. Senior Vice President for Research and Director of the, D.C., office at the National Bureau of Asian Research, b. Bridge Award Fellow at the National Bureau of Asian Research [Roy D. Kamphausen & Jessica Drun, Sino-U.S. Military-to-Military Relations, The national bureau of asian research, nbr special report #57 | april 2016, Edited by Travis Tanner and Wang Dong, http://nbr.org/publications/specialreport/pdf/Free/06192016/SR57_US-China_April2016.pdf] doa 5-11-16

Advancing Cooperation on the Global StageA fourth, more limited interest lies in advancing cooperation on shared global security issues, with the Gulf of Aden patrols serving as a notable example. Such an

interest does not suggest that the United States regards a “G-2” arrangement as either optimal or desirable. What it does suggest is that the two great powers have militaries with highly complementary capabilities, which, if organized effectively, might make useful contributions to the global good of international security. The challenge, of course, is that each side tends to regard security engagement with the other primarily through the prism of its impact on bilateral relations, and this nips in the bud many potential collaborative endeavors with broader potential benefits. Even so, the United States perceives that such shared global security interests are of growing importance to China but are not necessarily of greatest consequence. In part, this is related to the fact that the global dimensions of China’s military modernization are still only nascent. Additionally, China has endured much criticism for its unilateral military activities outside Asia—for example, the development of bases at ports in the western Indian Ocean and its activities in Africa—and hardly wants to invite more criticism. The United States also perceives that Chinese concerns about nonintervention still play a strong role in arguing against out-of-region deployments of the PLA to deal with security issues.26

Decreases SCS Risk

US military exchanges reduce risk of South China Sea conflict – likely to escalate otherwiseVorndran 15 - master’s candidate in Asian Studies at The George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs [Kelly Vorndran, Review of, Fire on the Water: China, America, and the Future of the Pacific by Robert Haddick, International Affairs Review, Volume XXIII, No. 3., Summer 2015] doa 4-28-16

The 21st century will be the Asian Century, characterized by a shift in the geopolitical center of the world from Europe to Asia, and an increasingly confident China. It is evident most keenly in the U.S. rebalance policy, an initiative that will likely outlast the Obama administration, as American policymakers have nearly unanimously come to recognize that the tension filled Asia-Pacific theater is where a small conflict could escalate into a broader regional or global war, and is therefore vital to maintaining U.S. national security. Robert Haddick’s Fire on the Water is artful account of this shift, why America and the world should care, and what these changes mean for the U.S. military.Haddick details the impressive rise of China over the past three decades, but focuses on the modernization of Chinese military forces, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), vis-à-vis U.S. military capabilities. Additionally, he points out how China has become increasingly assertive in pursuing its interests, particularly territorial integrity, which is considered critical to Chinese national identity. The “salami slicing” strategy “to systematically establish legal legitimacy” (81) over disputed territory in the Near Seas, defined as the South and East China Seas, is cited as evidence of an increasingly aggressive China. Chinese action in the Near Seas has begun to cause disruptions in regional order and increase the chances of conflict. Conflicts in the Pacific will most likely involve the American military, specifically the U.S. Navy, which has been tasked with maintaining free access to the Sea Lanes of Communication (SLOCs). The argument made in Fire in the Water is that PLA modernization programs are designed to create a force capable of defeating the United States in any military conflict in the seas or skies between China and the first island chain, and that these programs have been successful. Haddick reasons that the U.S. Navy must begin to implement programs that will counter China’s new capabilities and act as a deterrent to Chinese aggression. With his experience in the Marine Corps and with the Department of Defense Special Operations Command, Haddick’s argument for focused development of the U.S. military to counter China’s modernization programs, and to overcome China’s increasingly effective AntiAccess/Area Denial (A2/AD) capabilities, is succinct and persuasive. Nevertheless, while Fire on the Water is overall a balanced account of U.S. capabilities vis-à-vis those of China, it has several flaws. One of the main flaws is that it presumes an inevitable conflict between the United States and China. This presumption overlooks the domestic problems that will claim China’s attention and capacity and leads Haddick to propose courses of action for the U.S. Navy that are highly likely to spark an unnecessary conflict. The biggest weakness of Haddick’s argument is embodied in the very first sentence of the book: “The risk of war in East Asia is rising” (1). This statement, along with many others in the book, contend that a military conflict between the United States and China is inescapable, due to a clash over the Chinese salami slicing of contested territory, for control of the SLOCs. Furthermore, Haddick incorrectly dismisses the interconnectedness of Chinese, American, and global economic interests by pointing to the example of Germany in WWII. He uses Germany as an example of a state that went to war with its neighbors, despite massive trade and economic enmeshment with them prior to World War II. However, China is not Germany, and Haddick has failed to understand that Chinese strategic thought is oriented towards using economic rather than military means to solve most of its problems, as seen in its economic rather than military engagement with Taiwan. The United States can, through its network of allies and partners, form a strategy that is less antagonistic towards China than increasing the U.S. military’s presence in the region and deal with the territorial issues through international organizations and law. While Haddick is correct that the United States needs to plan for the development of a military that can overcome A2/AD networks, it also needs to increase cooperation and military exchanges with China. Communication and understanding, rather than blinded arms race, is the first step towards deterrence

Solvency

Strong U.S. Stance Key

Strong U.S. stance key – prevents Chinese challengesErickson 16 - Professor of Strategy in, and a core founding member of, the U.S. Naval War College (NWC)'s China Maritime Studies Institute (CMSI) [Erickson, Andrew S. "America’s Security Role in the South China Sea," Naval War College Review 69.1 (2016): 7] doa 5-15-16

The Need for a Paradigm ShiftAs Peter Dutton has long emphasized, the way forward for the United States is clear: Even as China advances, we cannot retreat. Together with the East China Sea and the Yellow Sea, the South China Sea is a vital part of the global commons, on which the international system depends to operate effectively and equitably. Half of global commerce and 90 percent of regional energy imports transit the South China Sea alone. We cannot allow Beijing to carve out within these international waters and airspace a zone of exceptionalism in which its neighbors face bullying without recourse and vital global rules and norms are subordinated to its parochial priorities. This would set back severely what Beijing itself terms * "democracy" or "democratization in international relations."* Instead, we must maintain the national will and force structure to continue to operate in, under, and over the South China, East China, and Yellow Seas and preserve them as peaceful parts of the global commons for all to use without fear.Accepting Moderate Friction. Here, given China's growing power and our own sustained power and resolve, we must accept a zone of bounded strategic friction and contestation. Such friction is manageable, and we must manage it. To do so effectively, we should develop the mind-set that we are in a great power relationship wherein we need to act to protect our vital interests and support the global system even as China is working to promote its own vital interests. It means preparing to live in the same strategic space together, with overlapping vital interests. This is the essence of great power relations, reflecting a reversion to historical norms after the brief and unsustainable unipolar moment is over-even as the United States remains strong as the world's leading power, and the world remains far from being a true "multipolar" system.[dagger]This robust but realistic approach includes accepting the fundamental reality that we will not roll back China's existing occupation of islands and other features, just as we will not accept its rolling back its neighbors' occupation of other islands and features. Most fundamentally, the United States must preserve peace and a stable status quo in a vital yet vulnerable region that remains haunted by history.Embracing Competitive Coexistence. The paradigm we need to think about is a form of great power relations that I term "competitive coexistence." It is not a comprehensive rivalry, as between the United States and the Soviet Union in the Cold War. Hence, charges that it constitutes a "containment strategy" driven by a "Cold War mentality" would be inaccurate. Rather, it has specific competitive * aspects that we should not exacerbate gratuitously, yet must not shy away from. China's current leadership is clearly comfortable with a certain level of friction and tension. Given the current unfortunate circumstances, for the foreseeable future we too must accept-and make clear that we are comfortable with-a certain level of friction and tension.The above paradigm has important implications for both U.S. rhetoric and policy. First, American officials must recognize what their Chinese counterparts have long understood: words matter. The United States must not appear to embrace Chinese policy concepts or formulations that make us appear to fear tension, or to be willing to yield to Beijing's principled policy positions in order to mitigate it. Such optics would only encourage Chinese testing and assertiveness vis-à-vis Washington and its regional allies. Accordingly, two particularly problematic formulations favored by Beijing (and their variants) must be banished from the lexicon of American official discourse:1. "The Thucydides trap"2. "New-type great-power relations"

U.S. Position is key

SCS could escalate – U.S. position is keyErickson 16 - Professor of Strategy in, and a core founding member of, the U.S. Naval War College (NWC)'s China Maritime Studies Institute (CMSI) [Erickson, Andrew S. "America’s Security Role in the South China Sea," Naval War College Review 69.1 (2016): 7] doa 5-15-16

Tipping Point. My Naval War College colleague, China Maritime Studies Institute (CMSI) director Peter Dutton, characterizes the aforementioned Chinese activities as a "tipping point," meriting U.S. government response. "Militarization of the newly constructed islands," which China appears determined to do, will, he argues cogently, alter strategic stability and the regional balance of power. "It will turn the South China Sea into a strategic strait under threat of land-based power."* This is part of a "regional maritime strategy . . . to expand China's interior to cover the maritime domain under an umbrella of continental control."[dagger] Dutton contends, and I agree, that Beijing's militarization of artificial islands sets the clock back to a time when raw power was the basis for dispute resolution. China's power play, combined with its refusal to arbitrate, its aversion to multilateral negotiations, and its refusal to enter into bilateral negotiations on the basis of equality, undermines regional stability and weakens important global institutions.[double dagger]As bad as things are already, they could get worse-particularly if American attention and resolve are in question. In attempting to prevent China from using military force to resolve island and maritime claims disputes in the South China Sea, the United States will increasingly face Beijing's three-pronged trident designed precisely to preserve such a possibility. Maritime militia and coast guard forces will be forward deployed, possibly enveloping disputed features as part of a "Cabbage Strategy" that dares the U.S. military to use force against nonmilitary personnel.§ Such forces would be supported by a deterrent backstop that includes both China's navy and its "anti-navy" of land-based antiaccess/area-denial (A2/AD), or "counterintervention,"* forces, collectively deploying the world's largest arsenal of ballistic and cruise missiles. In the region, only Vietnam also has a maritime militia, and the U.S. Coast Guard is not positioned to oppose China's. Meanwhile, China's coast guard is already larger than those of all its neighbors combined, and still growing rapidly.More broadly, worries about China's island construction, developing force posture in the South China Sea, and accompanying official statements exemplify broader foreign concern about China's rise-that as it becomes increasingly powerful, Beijing will* Abandon previous restraint in word and deed* Bully its smaller neighbors* Implicitly or explicitly threaten the use of force to resolve disputes* Attempt to change-or else run roughshod over-important international norms that preserve peace in Asia and underwrite the global system on which mutual prosperity dependsChina's combination of resolve, ambiguity, activities, and deployments has corrosive implications for regional stability and international norms. That's why the United States now needs to adjust conceptual thinking and policy to stabilize the situation and balance against the prospect of negative Chinese behavior and influence.

Only US leadership can solve SCS warGoh 13 (Evelyn, Shedden Professor of Strategic Policy Studies at the Australian National University, The Struggle for Order: Hegemony, Hierarchy, and Transition in Post-Cold War East Asia. Oxford University Press, 2013 pg. 98-99)

In the South China Sea (SCS), China, Taiwan, and a number of Southeast Asian states stake rival claims to three groups of islands and atolls—the Paracel Islands, claimed by Vietnam and Taiwan and occupied since 1974 by China; the Spratly Islands, claimed in their entirety by China, Taiwan, and Vietnam, and in part by the Philippines and Malaysia; and Scarborough Reef and Macclesfield Bank, which the Philippines, China, and Taiwan dispute.94 The wider regional order implications of these conflicting claims arise from their potential militarization and interruption of vital international sea lines of communication (SLOCs). As the United States is a non-claimant and neutral on the territorial disputes between China and its smaller Southeast Asian neighbours, this might be a good case for testing the limits of US authority

and the extent of Chinese and ASEAN authority in conflict management. Yet key SLOCs in this area ensure US interest in the issue by way of the foundational public good, freedom of navigation. In this regard, US power will have functioned to limit the dispute to a largely bilateral one with China over the military uses of maritime zones. On the territorial disputes themselves, though, the limits of the evolving international maritime legal regime either to compel resolution or arbitrate amongst competing sovereignty claims, as well as the underdevelopment of regional conflict-avoidance frameworks, have exacerbated unilateral assertions of authority. This has in turn stimulated Southeast Asian demands for the U nited States to exert authoritative influence diplomatically and by military deterrence.

Answers to Neg Positions

T - Mil-Mil is Engagement

Mil-Mil visits are engagementKamphausen & Drun 16 – a. Senior Vice President for Research and Director of the, D.C., office at the National Bureau of Asian Research, b. Bridge Award Fellow at the National Bureau of Asian Research [Roy D. Kamphausen & Jessica Drun, Sino-U.S. Military-to-Military Relations, The national bureau of asian research, nbr special report #57 | april 2016, Edited by Travis Tanner and Wang Dong, http://nbr.org/publications/specialreport/pdf/Free/06192016/SR57_US-China_April2016.pdf] doa 5-11-16

Tensions declined in the aftermath of the mini-crisis, but two important trends were now evident, and these have informed the development of bilateral mil-mil relations ever since. First, military planners in both China and the United States began to consider that a military crisis over Taiwan might involve direct conflict between the United States and China. In 1995–96 the United States was surprised at the apparent use of kinetic force to achieve political effects. For its part, China was surprised at the level of the U.S. response but encouraged that the United States now understood how seriously it regards moves toward independence in Taiwan.5 Intelligence activities increased to support operational military planning, and much of the activity and research of the nongovernmental PLA-watching community focused on understanding PLA modernization efforts so as to better inform U.S. policy and operational responses.6 However, at a policy level, the approach was much different. Following a return to normalcy in early 1997, the United States began to pursue an approach that can best be characterized as “deter by engagement.” The logic of this approach was centered on the idea that if senior PLA leaders fully understood the capabilities of the U.S. military, they would avoid conflict at all costs. It was determined that the best means to convey the power and capabilities of the U.S. Armed Forces would be to demonstrate these capabilities directly during official mil-mil visits by senior PLA visitors to the United States. Thus, between 1997 and 2000, six of seven members of China’s top military body—the Central Military Commission—were hosted in the United States for precisely this purpose.7 The United States sought to engage at a high level so as to deter the possibility of conflict, and thus deter by engagement.8 These twin motivations—preparing for conflict while engaging at very high levels so as to avoid this outcome—while not unique to the U.S.-China relationship, form the essential components of the contemporary relationship’s mil-mil domain. A third aspect, the role of the U.S. Congress, derives directly from the tension between these two ideas. In the late 1990s, culminating in the National Defense Authorization Act of 2000, Congress showed that it did not agree with the policy of deterring by engagement if the engagement could result in direct or inadvertent assistance to the PLA’s own military modernization efforts and in the process threaten Taiwan.

A2 Security K / China Threat

Our model of a security dilemma doesn’t blame China or inflate the threat. Their alt must explain, in policy relevant terms, how one can de-escalate current risks.Adam P. LIFF, an assistant professor at the School of Global and International Studies at Indiana University and Associate-in-Research at the Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies and the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, both at Harvard University; AND G. John IKENBERRY, the Albert G. Milbank Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University in the Department of Politics and the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, 15 [“Looking for Asia’s Security Dilemma,” International Security, Vol. 40, No. 2, Fall 2015, Accessed Online through Emory Libraries]

IN THEORY, PRACTICE IS SIMPLE (RESPONSE TO ERIC HUNDMAN)Whereas Fu and Gill focus on our empirical analysis, Eric Hundman engages our analysis of security dilemmas and arms races in the Asia Pacific primarily in abstract theoretical terms. Although he offers a vigorous critique of our argument, we see evidence of significant common ground. Most important, Hundman agrees with us on at least two fundamental points. First, he concurs that “identifying security dilemma dynamics” in the region is of “enormous importance.” Second, he contends that security dilemmas are an important driver of regional military competition, conceding in his conclusion that “[s]ecurity dilemma dynamics are undoubtedly creating additional challenges in the Asia Pacific.”Despite these fundamental agreements, Hundman questions the theoretical model that we developed to identify and empirically test claims about the presence of security dilemma dynamics. What Hundman offers is a useful reflection on the rich and complex literature on the security dilemma. But in critiquing our article, he fails to engage it on its own terms. Most important, he does not show how his preferred theoretical formulations would translate into tractable, much less superior, models for empirical testing. Many of his insights are thoughtful, but nowhere does he show that the theoretical models he favors would in practice better identify, illuminate, and evaluate the regional security dilemma dynamics that he concedes “undoubtedly” exist. Nor does he offer new empirical data that might demonstrate the merits of his preferred approach.In our article, we drew on the seminal works on security dilemma theory that Hundman cites, but we modified and adapted their models for the purpose of empirical testing. (The editor of International Security put it well in his original correspondence requesting revisions: “The literature of the security dilemma is often confusing. . . . Develop and apply your own model of the security dilemma.”) We have little doubt our approach is imperfect. Indeed, we warned the reader that “the transition from the realm of abstract theory to the empirical world is often treacherous” and that our findings should be considered “preliminary” (pp. 63, 86).Hundman’s letter draws on important works by Robert Jervis and Charles Glaser and makes reasonable points relevant to conceptual distinctions and debates about security dilemma theory—in particular, the importance of differentiating between uncertainty and misperception as a source of misinterpretation of others’ intentions. He also references important debates about distinguishing offensive and defensive forces. We accept several of his points as valuable for theoretical debate. But here we feel compelled to reiterate that our article’s objective is to empirically assess the validity of widespread, often uncritical claims about security dilemmas and arms races occurring across the Asia Pacific—not to engage in a debate about the extent to which our conceptualization of the security dilemma remains faithful to the theory as articulated by [End Page 200] others. We simplified our model so that we could develop an analytically tractable empirical test.Hundman concedes that we recognize misperceptions as important drivers of security dilemmas, but he criticizes our model for “downplaying” them and for not clearly distinguishing between uncertainty and misperception. He also claims that we conflate status quo inclinations and security-seeking intentions, and he criticizes our decision to focus on differentiating between mutual arming dynamics in which states’ interests are aligned but leaders are mutually suspicious largely as a result of uncertainty about intentions and those in which a more basic clash of interests exists. In the very early stages of our project, we tried unsuccessfully to proceed along the lines Hundman implies we should have. Distinguishing these concepts outside the realm of pure theory presents a number of challenges Hundman appears to overlook. We invite him to develop and apply a security dilemma model capable of uncovering evidence of the allegedly “clear” differentiation that he suggests our empirical test lacks.Further suggestive of the difficulty Hundman may have moving from the realm of theory to the complexity of the empirical world are several simplistic all-or-nothing claims. One is his puzzling statement that based on his interpretation of our argument, the presence of a conflict of interest need be mutually exclusive of security dilemma dynamics. His claim seems based on our brief description of a purely hypothetical Type-2 strategic setting. We recognized explicitly, however, that these categories are notional and that both Type-1 and Type-2 logics can manifest simultaneously in a dyad—a fact reflected in our empirical analysis and discussion (e.g., Japan-China). Simply because an existing interest-based dispute may be the primary driver of action-reaction arming does not necessarily mean that other factors (e.g., a security dilemma) are not also at play, and vice versa. Despite Hundman’s assertions, we made no claim to the contrary. Teasing out the causal drivers of mutual arming, as well as their relative weights, is an empirical task—and a difficult one.In his discussion of distinguishing offensive and defensive weapons, Hundman misattributes to us our summary of Jervis’s seminal argument. We did not go into an extensive discussion of the offense-defense variable because disparate levels of military development and the changing nature of military technologies (e.g., long-range precision strike, ballistic missile defense technologies [which can double as antisatellite weapons], cyber, etc.) seem to render the distinction less applicable in shaping contemporary leaders’ perceptions. Because we judged there is no one-size-

fits-all explanation for the entire region, the first question in our four-question framework—“what is the offense-defense balance in the Asia Pacific?”—while motivated by Jervis’s theoretical insights, proved impracticable to address empirically. Regarding the second question—“are allegedly defensive measures/weapons distinguishable from offensive ones?”—our analysis raised doubts about whether (1) a given technology’s offensive or defensive nature is objectively definable based on characteristics of the technology itself, and (2) more importantly for our purposes, whether leaders react based on such objective assessments. Because our approach required us to evaluate perceptions and behaviors from the perspective of policymakers, this was a crucial finding. No clear evidence demonstrated either side systematically distinguishing between offensive and defensive measures based on the actual characteristics of the technologies themselves or on some elusive yet prevailing offense-defense balance in the system. Rather, leaders [End Page 201] frequently interpret the procurement of new weapons systems through a sharply political lens , one often tinted by mistrust and suspicion of others’ motives. Perceptions and politics thus often appear to trump any objectively definable reality of such a balance .Although we did not include an in-depth analysis of these issues in our article, our empirical analysis reflects our awareness of them. For example, capabilities procured or policies adopted by one side for defensive reasons are often interpreted by the other side as offensive and threatening—be it measures the United States and its allies adopt for the stated goal of strengthening deterrence against perceived attempts to change the status quo, or China’s allegedly defensive aircraft carrier program and conventionally tipped ballistic missile arsenal.We disagree with Hundman’s claim that the offense and the defense must be distinguishable for transparency to offer leaders any insight into another state’s motives. Again, his point seems based more on a theoretical assumption than on how policy-makers behave in the dyads we examine. To claim that unless one can judge whether weapons are inherently offensive or defensive military transparency is useless for judging others’ intentions strikes us as not empirically justifiable. Indeed, transparency can be a key factor in shaping leaders’ threat perceptions, often trumping judgments about actual capabilities. For example, among states with mature democratic systems transparency significantly ameliorates what might otherwise be major distrust and uncertainty about other states’ intentions. Policy debates and budgets are relatively open and transparent; policymaking processes are significantly less opaque; and external actors can more easily assess—or even shape—policy outcomes. For example, holding capabilities constant, if U.S. military decisionmaking, capabilities, and expenditures were as opaque as Beijing’s, even countries that currently worry very little about their security vis-à-vis the United States would be far more suspicious of its intentions. We therefore disagree with Hundman’s desire to write transparency off categorically, in both general terms and specifically with regard to our cases. In the Asia Pacific, transparency—or lack thereof—manifests empirically as a powerful factor shaping contemporary policy debates about China in Washington, Tokyo, Canberra, and beyond.We are further puzzled by Hundman’s inaccurate claim that our article “implies that any security dilemma dynamics in the Asia Pacific are solely China’s fault.” He then seems to correct our alleged claim by pointing out that the security dilemma is a “fundamentally dyadic phenomenon.” We repeatedly noted, however, that security dilemmas are dyadic and acknowledged insecurity as a key driver of China’s calculus. Space constraints prevented an extensive assessment of Beijing’s own threat perceptions, something that one of us has offered elsewhere using Chinese-language sources.5 Furthermore, we noted several instances where others—including the United States—could do more to reassure China about their intentions. That said, China’s rapid development and military modernization are the primary drivers of changing power balances in the Asia Pacific. Its capabilities and interests are expanding, and Beijing is increasingly well situated to attempt to achieve objectives coercively or even though military force. This ability is likely to increase over time, and regional states are clearly concerned about China’s intentions.Hundman’s related request for us to call on the United States to reassure China by [End Page 202] increasing its own military transparency implies a false equivalence of responsibility for political mistrust and uncertainty that we do not accept on empirical grounds. The United States, Japan, Australia, and several other regional actors, though imperfect, are significantly more transparent than China regarding their decisionmaking and military capabilities, budgets, and intentions. Furthermore, throughout the post–Cold War period Northeast Asia’s two other major players—the United States and Japan—have a history of engaging China and have shown restraint in not attempting to change the status quo through coercion or force, despite having enjoyed enormous capabilities advantages over China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) for decades. In contrast, and despite regional leaders’ repeatedly stated concerns, Beijing’s military transparency remains relatively low. Top PLA experts identify China’s military as “the blackest of the black boxes,” while influential China scholars and former high-level U.S. government officials bemoan how much remains unknown about Beijing’s basic policy decisionma-king.6 China’s budget transparency remains significantly lower than that of the United States and its major Asia Pacific allies, despite some recent progress.7 We readily acknowledge that Chinese leaders have sincere security concerns, but official and unofficial policy discourse suggests strongly that Beijing’s opacity disproportionately exacerbates political mistrust and uncertainty.Finally, we are further perplexed by Hundman’s criticisms of our case selection as “undermining [our] analysis.” One should evaluate case selection mechanisms based on a study’s research objective. The entire premise of our project was to empirically assess the validity of widespread, often uncritical claims that the Asia Pacific is rife with security dilemmas and arms races. By its very nature our project thus required us to, in Hundman’s words, “foreground[] adversarial dynamics” in our empirical survey. We selected the cases most frequently eliciting the claims that motivated our study. We recognize and appreciate numerous positive developments taking place in the region. And we stated that the

situation in the Asia Pacific is far more stable than it was in Europe before World War I or during the Cold War—both flawed analogies employed much too frequently in scholarly and public discourse on China’s rise. We also concluded that despite ongoing regional competition, a traditional arms race is not occurring and that conflict is by no means inevitable. We mentioned several cooperative U.S.-China exchanges, called for more, and offered five proposals for ameliorating frictions. Given this, Hundman’s claim that our article engages in “threat inflation” and “fuel[s] the intensification of security dilemma dynamics in the Asia Pacific” is hyperbolic, to say the least. It also appears empirically groundless, as his largely theoretical letter contains no clear evidence to support his claim that we exaggerated (or, conversely, undersold) anything, much less for holding us responsible for fueling regional military competition. Meanwhile, Hundman’s assertion that our selection of certain dyads biases our conclusions makes sense only if we had put forth a one-size-fits-all argument (we did not), or if our stated research question was “what explains variation in the degree of balancing against China among Asia Pacific states?” (it was not). In the interest of case diversity, [End Page 203] we included two U.S. security allies cum democracies and two nondemocratic non-allies—including a historical, communist-led adversary (Vietnam). Given the objectives of our article, what alternative dyads could be of greater practical, or even theoretical, importance than those we chose?Because Hundman shares our view that “identifying security dilemma dynamics” in the Asia Pacific is of “enormous importance,” we are disappointed by the generally negative approach of his letter, in both substance and tone. Particularly frustrating is a core contradiction that seems to undermine his critique: Hundman criticizes our analysis throughout his letter, yet concedes in a single sentence at the end that we are basically correct in arguing that “[s]ecurity dilemma dynamics are undoubtedly creating additional challenges in the Asia Pacific.” This contradiction is a bit jarring given that his letter provides no clear empirical basis for reaching that conclusion. It is also ironic, given our stated motivation for writing our article in the first place.conclusionOur article was motivated by frustration with the tendency of many observers of the contemporary Asia Pacific to play fast and loose with the terms “security dilemma” and “arms races” as descriptors for the sources and consequences of regional political frictions and military competition. In our view, these terms are loaded with theoretical and real-world significance, yet few scholars have developed, much less systematically applied, an analytical framework to evaluate their appropriateness. Our article constitutes a preliminary attempt to do so.The security dilemma is a fundamental concept in international relations theory. Yet the theoretical and practical shortcomings in its associated literature, and the disconnection between them, have yet to be resolved. We offered a conceptualization of the security dilemma that we considered empirically operationalizable. As we noted at the outset, moving from abstract theory to applied empirical tests presents numerous challenges. It also requires a willingness to recognize the complexities and nuances of how policymakers perceive, and operate in, the real world. We hope that our article and this correspondence help to bridge the gap and move the scholarly debate forward, while shedding light on the challenges associated with such an enterprise. We thank the editors and our critics for the opportunity to contribute to this debate.

CCP hates the aff

CCP doesn’t want to be challenged about the SCSLayton 16 - Visiting Fellow at the Griffith Asia Institute, Griffith University[Peter Layton, South China Sea: Beijing is winning, but here's how to retake the initiative, Feb. 26, 2016, http://www.lowyinterpreter.org/post/2016/02/26/South-China-Sea-Beijing-is-winning-but-heres-how-to-retake-the-initiative.aspx] doa 5-17-16

China appears determined to seek a zero-sum outcome. It wants territorial ownership of the islands it claims, so cooperative strategies in which benefits are shared among all parties appear impractical. So if 'balancing' and 'rule of law' are both ineffective strategies, what will influence Chinese policymakers? Two different approaches to impose costs on China for its behaviour in the South China Sea appear possible.The first strategy would be to target specific issues the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is particularly sensitive about. The fundamental aim of the CCP is regime survival, which hinges both on retaining popular legitimacy and on repression. To this end, the state maintains the 'great Chinese firewall', suppresses dissenters, censors news and rewrites history. Today’s CCP leadership is particularly sensitive to threats to the political status quo, creating pressure points that could be exploited by states wanting to influence China's behaviour in the South China Sea. Meeting the Dalai Lama, openly discussing China's human rights problems, supporting a free press, assisting open internet access or vigorously marketing China’s true history are all options.

CCP wants the SCS – use propaganda to fight for itPhilipp 15 – Epoch Time Staff [Joshua Philipp, China Answers US Challenge in South China Sea With Propaganda, Epoch Times, October 27, 2015, http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/1886224-after-us-exercises-in-south-china-sea-china-shows-that-propaganda-is-its-main-weapon/] doa 5-17-16

The Chinese regime was quick to mobilize its own forces after the U.S. Navy sent the USS Lassen destroyer late Monday to patrol within 12 nautical miles of China’s man-made islands in the disputed South China Sea.Rather than send warships or jets, however, the Chinese regime mobilized a very different system—its vast network of propaganda agents, state-run news outlets, and systems to control the flow of information.The response highlights the approach the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has built to fight modern conflicts. It uses what the Pentagon has branded a “non-kinetic” form of fighting, which targets human perception and forms the CCP’s core strategy for taking the South China Sea.Almost all the CCP’s propaganda channels use an identical line.

India likes the aff

India supports the affSingh 3 – 1 – 16 - Senior Fellow at the Observer Research Foundation where he heads the Maritime Initiative[Abhijit Singh, India and the South China Sea Dispute, March 01, 2016, http://thediplomat.com/2016/03/india-and-the-south-china-sea-dispute/] doa 5-17-16 The South China Sea (SCS) is witnessing a dramatic rise in maritime tensions. Last week, China landed two fighter jets on Woody island – a subset of the Paracel group of islands – just days after the PLA placed surface-to-air missiles at the same location. With a range of about 200 kilometers, the new HQ-9 missiles can target aircraft approaching China’s claimed spaces in the South China Sea. To add to regional worries, the latest satellite images of several of the Spratly Islands showed probable radar infrastructure, suggesting that the PLA may already have established full radar coverage over the SCS.Needless to say, there has been much speculation over China’s “strategic” intentions in the South China Sea. The act of placing missiles on disputed territory has been widely interpreted as a hardening of Beijing’s maritime posture – not just on account of the direct threat the missiles pose to foreign air-operations in the South China Sea, but also because the new armament complements the PLA’s existing air warfare capability on Woody Islands.While India isn’t party to the South China Sea dispute, four aspects of the recent developments might interest New Delhi. First, irrespective of the claims and counter-claims by the United States and China, it is clear that Beijing operates from a position of strength in the South China Sea, wherein it has physical control over critical islands in the region. China has shown the U.S. and its allies that what matters in a maritime territorial dispute is the actual ‘possession’ of the islands, and as long as the PLA exercises military control over the features, it will exploit their location to support broader territorial claims. For New Delhi, which has been concerned about the security of its trade-flows and energy interests in the South China Sea, however, Beijing’s placement of missiles points to a sober reality. As the disputed islands are militarized, it could imperil freedom of navigation, making Beijing the main arbiter of the accepted range of ‘legitimate’ operations in the South China Sea.Second, China’s exertion of authority over areas of maritime interest is mostly through indirect means. In the immediate aftermath of the new radar installations in the Spratly’s and deployment of missiles on Woody Island, it looks increasingly likely that Beijing would impose an air defense identification zone (ADIZ) in the South China Sea, ensuring the PLA’s dominance over the surrounding air-space and seas. At present, the likelihood of Chinese aggression occurring outside the disputed maritime spaces in Southeast Asia looks remote. Yet, there is no discounting Chinese maritime assertion in other areas where Beijing might have strategic interests – including critical spaces in the Indian Ocean. For Indian observers, it is useful to extrapolate known Chinese positions in the IOR, to assess Beijing’s likely strategic behavior after the PLA has established a foothold in critical Indian Ocean states. Could the PLA, for instance, play a role in assisting Sri Lanka, Pakistan or Maldives in securing vital sea and air pockets in the Indian Ocean? What could the implications of such a move be for India? As a key security provider in the Indian Ocean, New Delhi appreciates the need for greater stability in the region. Will India, however, accept an expanded Chinese role in securing important spaces in its primary area of interest?

India supports US involvement in the SCSSingh 3 – 1 – 16 - Senior Fellow at the Observer Research Foundation where he heads the Maritime Initiative[Abhijit Singh, India and the South China Sea Dispute, March 01, 2016, http://thediplomat.com/2016/03/india-and-the-south-china-sea-dispute/] doa 5-17-16 Lastly, the recent developments emphasize the need for India to strike a balance between maritime security imperatives in the Indian Ocean, and its legal stance on freedoms enjoyed by user states in territorial waters. New Delhi’s real dilemma is that while it opposes Chinese aggression in the South China Sea, it also disagrees with Washington’s interpretation of maritime law and the freedoms enjoyed by foreign warships in littoral spaces. In particular, India does not concur with U.S. attempts at claiming a “right to uninterrupted passage” in coastal waters without the prior permission of the subject state – especially in areas that are deemed to be within a nation’s territorial waters. New Delhi’s view on the subject, in fact, broadly corresponds with Beijing’s – particularly on the need for prior notification by foreign warships before entering a coastal state’s territorial waters or EEZ claiming innocent passage.Viewed through an Indian prism, unannounced forays through territorial waters and EEZs under the rubric of “innocent passage” or absolute “freedom of navigation” are a challenging proposition . Even though

the UNCLOS permits continuous and expeditious passage – necessitated by the requirements of navigation – New Delhi does not concur with the practice of conducting maritime operations to score political points. New Delhi know it cannot support a U.S. maneuver, whose logic could be used to justify greater Chinese maritime activism near the Andaman Islands. For this reason alone, it is unlikely that U.S. and India will conduct joint patrols any time in the near future, even though New Delhi broadly supports the U.S. position on the territorial disputes.