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A Falklands Strategy to Avoid War over Spratleys

China seeks to aggressively expand its territorial claims in the Spratley Islands. Despite being largely uninhabitable,  the Spratleys lay along a highly traversed sea-lane, with critical fisheries and possible petrochemical reserves. China, Vietnam, the Philippines, and Malaysia all lay claim to parts of the archipelago. The Spratleys are just one subset of a larger problem. The U.S. has developed the oft-debated AirSea Battle (ASB) concept to confront this and similar strategic challenges in its “Asia Pivot. Butto check perceived Chinese aggression and expansionism it should draw lessons from a similar crisis: The British experience in the Falklands. 

U.S. strategy to address Chinese expansionism remains murky. Deployments of Marines to Australia and a small Littoral Combat Ship squadron to Singapore demonstrate our interest, but have apparently done little to thwart Beijing. The most talked about American solution appears to be AirSea Battle: an operational concept that often waivers between a Chinese focus and a disavowal of Chinese specificity. While much of ASB is technically classified, there is much available in the open source that allows for a brief analysis of its relevance to the problem.

ASB is a highly technical and violent concept that many see as the U.S. security strategy. Offensive counter space, strikes on mainland China, attacks on Chinese shipping, and blockades supported by aggressive mining operations are the hinted-at baselines for ASB. Landpower, if it has any role, will be limited to guarding air bases against missile attacks. Essential to this concept is a robust inventory of stealthy aircraft such as the F35 and long-range bombers. Needless to say, any such implementation of ASB would involve a near total conventional war with China as a precursor to an occupation by Western aligned forces. What China would do with their robust nuclear capability in response is one area that ASB proponents have yet to address.

Explicit in the ASB planning assumptions is that the area of operations will be initially controlled by highly capable Chinese air, sea and land forces. That situation currently does not exist anywhere except for mainland China.  Unless current U.S. policy advocates for the overthrow of the Chinese government, ASB is, for now, a vision for the futurea future filled with thousands of F35s and hundreds of stealthy bombers where the U.S. and its allies have already surrendered the contested areas to China.

If we wish to deter China before they can establish de facto sovereignty in the Spratleys, Beijing must be presented with unacceptable risk by the nations whom they seek to disenfranchise.

Should China realize its territorial objectives and create a casus belli with the United States, it will seek to defend them against an anticipated American response. Beijing will try to deny access to American forces and then minimize their freedom of action. The Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments described these challenges as Anti-Access and Area Denial, or A2/AD, respectively. The A2/AD problem appears to drive the operational planning and procurement desires of the ASB proponents.

A2/AD is ultimately a defensive strategy to deny access to the presumably stronger expeditionary power. Now, in the Spratleys, that stronger expeditionary power is China.  A successful A2/AD campaign plan executed by the weaker powers in the Spratleys could avoid a full-scale war with China without requiring the assumed deterrence of thousands