Coping with the Dragon: Essays on PLA Transformation and the U.S. Military

Despite the fact that armed conflict between the United States and China is in no one's interest, China's burgeoning power requires that critical factors in U.S. plans for the defense of Taiwan be examined. This collection of essays offers just such an examination. It looks at China's growing strength, the strategies underlying U.S. plans for military intervention in the Strait, U.S. vulnerabilities, and options for how these vulnerabilities might be overcome through the development of new technologies and strategies. The U.S. defense commitment to Taiwan, though tacit and conditional, has been a long-standing strategic constant. America's ability to prevent the invasion or coercion of Taiwan, however, is more variable. The People's Liberation Army (PLA) has embarked on a concerted effort to modernize, with the goal of being able to conduct (and counter) the sort of rapid, precise, information-intensive operations of which the U.S military is now capable. Of particular concern in a Taiwan scenario is China's growing ability to track, target, and destroy U.S. carrier strike groups (CSGs), which are the fulcrum of American military strategy in the region. China's growing capabilities demand that the United States carefully review the evolving military balance in the western Pacific and consider the implications for future strategy. Each essay addresses a key part of the Taiwan intervention puzzle. These essays were written independently of one another. They are not intended to present a systematic or comprehensive review of the subject at hand; left largely untouched are such disparate but important subjects as the role of U.S.-China economic ties and the relative need for U.S. submarine forces. Taken together, however, they offer insights into the dynamics of the U.S.-China balance of power in the Western Pacific and make a valuable contribution to ensuring that the U.S. military remains capable of preserving American interests in the region.