It’s Time We Talked About War With China

Hugh White

Security, Asia

It is easy to start a war expecting a quick fight and an easy win. But America and its allies do not have overwhelming military superiority, and nor does China.

Whether Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull intended it or not, his new Defence White Paper has been widely interpreted as sending a clear message that Australia is willing to join our allies in using armed force if necessary to defend the “rules based global order” from China’s strategic ambitions in Asia. Moreover, most people apparently think that’s a good message to send.

So it seems wise to ask whether this message is really true. Would we go to war with China over any of the issues which now loom as tests of the future order in Asia—in the Spratlys, or the Senkakus, or even Taiwan? 

Most people who approve of the White Paper's message probably do so with complete confidence that the issue will never arise. They assume war won’t happen because they are sure the Chinese would always back down rather than risk a clash. Maybe they are right. Confronted with U.S. and allied resolve, Beijing might decide that even Taiwan was simply not worth the immense costs of conflict.

But we shouldn’t bet on that, because the Chinese probably think the same about America and its allies. They think a war would be just as costly to us as to them, and they believe the issues at stake matter more to them than to us. So they are likely to assume that, whatever we say now, on the brink we would back off rather than fight. And the more confident they are of that, the less likely they are to back down. It has happened before: in an escalating crisis, both sides assume the other will step back, and so neither does before it's too late. This is exactly what happened in July 1914.

Remember, the stakes are high for both sides. This is a contest over the future of the Asian order, and we should not for a moment assume that China is any less committed to building a new order than we are to preserving the old one. Unless one side or the other abandons its core objective, the chances of a crisis in the Western Pacific escalating to the point that we face a decision about going to war is already quite high, and is growing steadily.

So we ought to think seriously about what war with China over one of these issues would actually look like.