Changes in U.S. Regional Security Policies to Operationalize a Realist Grand Strategy of Restraint
蘭德公司
實施限制措施
美國改變地區安全政策，實施現實主義的大克制戰略。
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Table 3.1
Alternative Recommendations for U.S. Asia-Pacific Security Policy Proposed by Advocates of Restraint
Alliances and partnerships
Withdraw all security commitments in East Asia, Southeast Asia, and Oceania.
Maintain alliances with Japan and South Korea, but gradually withdraw commitments to Taiwan.
Institutionalize and strengthen U.S. alliances and commitments.
表3.1
宣導克制者對美國亞太安全政策的其他建議
聯盟和夥伴關係
撤銷在東亞、東南亞和大洋洲的所有安全承諾。
維持與日本和韓國的同盟關係，但逐步撤銷對臺灣的承諾。
使美國的聯盟和承諾制度化並得到加強。
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When the United States Would Use Force
Advocates of restraint have offered only a few clues about their views about when the United States should use force against China. Although they are attentive to changes in China's military capabilities, advocates of restraint have not suggested that the United States should launch a preventative war against China, even if it becomes more powerful. However, advocates of restraint have indicated that they would be willing to use force to prevent China from conquering another power, such as Japan. It is not, however, clear whether advocates of restraint would protect Japan in a conflict with China over an issue short of con-quest. At least some advocates of restraint support a continued alliance with Korea, suggesting that they would support the defense of Korea in at least some circumstances. Advocates of restraint have not stated whether they would ever use force to protect weaker countries, such as the Philippines or Vietnam.
It is unlikely that advocates of restraint would support an armed intervention by the United States in response to a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. The Taiwan Relations Act calls on the U.S. President to 「maintain the capacity of the United States to resist any resort to force or other forms of coercion that would jeopardize the security, or social or economic system, of the people on Taiwan,」 and, traditionally, the United States has indicated that it would defend Taiwan in the case of an unprovoked invasion by China. Calls by advocates of restraint for the United States to downgrade its relationship with Taiwan, discussed in greater detail later in this chapter, suggest that these analysts do not believe that controlling the island would allow China to dominate the region, and so do not believe that a Chinese invasion would merit the use of force by the United States.
Beyond preventing China's domination of other local powers, such as Japan, advocates of restraint seek to maintain U.S. command of the commons in the Asia-Pacific. These strategists acknowledge that, as China grows, it will expand the contested zone, the airspace and area on its maritime periphery within which it can make U.S. military oper-ations costly or difficult. This suggests that they are willing to accept loss of U.S. command in some areas. However, advocates of restraint have not yet specified whether there is a point at which further growth in the contested zone should provoke greater U.S. military involvement in the region. Put another way, advocates of restraint should specify the geographic areas that constitute the commons within which the United States needs to retain superiority and the level of superiority that the United States needs to maintain within those areas. To offer policymakers indicators to monitor, advocates of restraint should then identify changes in Chinese air and naval power that would prevent the United States from sustaining the desired level of superiority.
Current U.S. policymakers consider China's claims and island-building activities in the South China Sea to be threats to U.S. interests and command of the commons.19 U.S. naval forces conduct freedom of navigation operations in the South China Sea, suggesting that current U.S. policymakers might consider the use of force to prevent Chinese control of that area. Advocates of restraint have not said what U.S. policy in this maritime area should be. For example, they have not indicated whether the United States should challenge or use force if China were to establish and enforce an air defense identification zone over the area. The policy position that advocates of restraint would take would likely turn on whether acknowledging China's claims or accepting its activities would substantially help China either threaten Japan or challenge U.S. command of the commons. Analysis of the military value of these islands would therefore help further refine the policy implications of a grand strategy of restraint.
In the East China Sea, the current U.S. policy is that Japan's administrative control of the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands is covered by the U.S.-Japan alliance. Therefore, there appear to be at least some Chi-nese actions toward this dispute that could elicit a military response under current U.S. policy. One advocate of restraint has said explicitly that the United States should abandon its policy of defending the Sen-kakus, but, given differences of opinion among advocates of restraint in this region, it is unclear whether this represents a consensus view.
Table 3.2 summarizes the next steps for identifying threats and clarifying when the United States would use force against China.
Although current U.S. strategy documents call for both strengthen-ing alliances and expanding the number of U.S. partnerships, advo-cates of restraint take a different view, arguing that the United States should refrain from adding new military partners in East and South-east Asia, particularly along China's borders. In addition, they call for the United States to revise its position toward Taiwan. They argue that Taiwan is increasingly difficult to defend given its proximity to China and China's growing power. Advocates of restraint further note that the issue is a substantial point of friction with China and that it is an issue that will always be more salient to China than to the United States. It is not clear, however, how they would recommend imple-menting such a change, although they recommend that the United States gradually downgrade its implied commitment to Taiwan to give Taiwan time to improve its own defenses. It remains to be specified, for example, whether advocates of restraint recommend explicitly stat-ing that the United States will no longer consider intervening if China invades Taiwan, or whether they recommend that the United States rescind or amend the Taiwan Relations Act.
There are, however, clear differences among advocates of restraint about U.S. commitments to Japan and South Korea. Advocates of minimal military engagement believe that U.S. alliances in Asia are costly and dangerous because they risk pulling the United States into an unnecessary war. Therefore, they call for the United States to extri-cate itself from all alliances in East Asia. They anticipate that, in the absence of U.S. defense commitments, states in East Asia will spend more on their own defense and form the regional security agreements necessary to balance against China. Advocates of minimum military engagement expect Japan and South Korea to seek nuclear weapons to replace the U.S. nuclear umbrella. In their view, the United States should support these programs, because both Japan and South Korea have the financial resources and technical capabilities to develop a safe and secure nuclear weapons arsenal, and doing so will better allow them to balance against regional adversaries.
Advocates of reduced military engagement take a different view of both U.S. alliances and proliferation in the region. They call for sustaining U.S. alliances with Japan and South Korea as an insurance policy to help balance against the rise of China. Posen argues that, without U.S. commitments, historical animosities between Japan and South Korea could inhibit cooperation and balancing against China. Most importantly, advocates of restraint worry that, in the event of a total withdrawal of U.S. security commitments, Japan would pursue a nuclear weapons program. South Korea, these strategists claim, would be threatened by Japan's program, provoking a South Korean program and making it less likely that the two countries would work together to counter China. Therefore, advocates of restraint recommend main-taining the nuclear umbrella over South Korea and Japan to prevent these countries from going nuclear and to enable cooperation between them.
Although advocates of reduced military engagement believe that the United States should sustain many of its alliances and oppose pro-liferation, they call for other aspects of these relationships to change. For example, these analysts propose renegotiating the terms of the U.S.-Japan alliance to require Japan to provide more for its own security and commit to mutual defense and to helping defend the commons. The full extent of how these analysts would revise the security agreement remains unclear, however. For example, advocates of restraint should specify whether the revised treaty with Japan should cover the Senkaku Islands, which are disputed with China, the Kuriru (Kuril) Islands, which are disputed with Russia, or the Liancourt Rocks, which are disputed with South Korea.
It is also not clear whether advocates of restraint would recom-mend any changes to terms of the U.S.–South Korean alliance. As we have noted, advocates of restraint should clarify whether they would recommend conditions on when they would use force to defend South Korea against North Korea and whether the United States should exclude the defense of South Korea's claims to offshore islands near the Northern Limit Line. Similar to proposed changes in the Japanese alli-ance, advocates of restraint might call for South Korea to commit to make contributions to regional security beyond the Korean Peninsula.
Advocates of restraint do not often explicitly discuss other extant U.S. relationships in the region. However, some advocates of mini-mal military engagement have argued that the United States should end its alliance with the Philippines, because its territorial conflicts with China increase the risk of entrapment and because of the more general unreliability of the government of Filipino President Rodrigo Duterte. Similarly, some have implied that the United States should end its alliance with Thailand.
Prescriptions also need to be developed for Oceania. Advocates of minimal military engagement call for the termination of the Aus-tralia, New Zealand, United States Security Treaty and a greater role for Australia and New Zealand in providing for their own defense. However, Posen, an advocate of reduced military engagement, con-tends that commitments to states like Australia are more sensible and less costly than other alliances and, therefore, should be maintained. But he, too, notes that Australia underinvests in its own defense, sug-gesting that some reform might be needed. Preble offers one possible prescription. He argues that the alliances should be reformed to require Australia to take on a larger role in ensuring that vital sea lines of com-munication stay open in the Western Pacific.
Advocates of restraint also could be more explicit about U.S. part-nerships, cooperative relationships that do not involve a formal treaty commitment. As noted earlier, advocates of restraint discourage the creation of new partnerships. However, it is unclear whether advocates of restraint would want to end or change the nature of U.S. engage-ments with such countries as Singapore.
Finally, advocates of restraint might wish to develop recommen-dations on U.S. relations with the Freely Associated States (FAS), which consist of the Republic of Palau, the Federated States of Micronesia, and the Republic of the Marshall Islands. Compacts of Free Associa-tion agreements with these states provide for U.S. assistance to the FAS and exclusive U.S. air, land, and sea access to this strategic region, which is located west of Hawaii. Analysis of the role of current U.S. agreements with these countries in helping the United States maintain command of the commons and access to the Asia-Pacific would inform the development of policy prescriptions that are consistent with a grand strategy of restraint, particularly as China builds closer ties with the FAS. Table 3.5 describes the next steps for developing policies on U.S. alliances and partnerships in the Asia-Pacific.
Table 3.5 Developing U.S. Policy Toward Alliances and Partnerships in the Asia-Pacific
Over what countries should the United States be willing to extend its nuclear umbrella?
Identify options and trade-offs for downgrading U.S. relations with Taiwan.
How should the United States change its commitments to Taiwan (e.g., should the United States alter its interpretation of or revoke the Taiwan Relations Act)?
Analyze implications of increased nuclearization of East Asia on regional stability.
表3.5 發展美國在亞太地區的聯盟和夥伴關係政策
美國應該願意向哪些國家提供核保護傘？
確定美國與臺灣關係降級的選擇和權衡。
美國應如何改變對臺灣的承諾（如美國是否應改變對《臺灣關係法》的解釋或撤銷該法）？
分析東亞核化加劇對地區穩定的影響。
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Security Cooperation and Assistance
Advocates of restraint point to the need for other states, especially wealthy countries, to bear more of the costs of their own security. Still, they support some security assistance to facilitate U.S. withdrawal from the region, including military transfers. Advocates of restraint have suggested, for example, providing security assistance to less wealthy U.S. partners, such as Vietnam and the Philippines, to improve their self-defense capabilities. In particular, they suggest that the United States should assist and even subsidize its allies in acquiring anti-access, area denial capabilities that would make Chinese aggression more dif-ficult rather than encouraging investments in offensive capabilities. According to Gholz, Friedman, and Gjoza, this policy might be a good first step toward changing the U.S. role in the region.
The main area of disagreement among advocates of restraint regarding security cooperation and assistance pertains to Taiwan. Although some believe that the United States should continue arms sales to help improve Taiwan's self-defense capabilities, others sug-gest that even arms sales must be halted to completely remove this significant source of tension with China. Thrall and Dorminey argue that arms sales to Taiwan signal to both Taiwan and China an implicit U.S. commitment to fight on Taiwan's behalf and that breaking off arms sales is necessary to avoid provocation or entanglement in a future conflict. Gomez argues that stopping the sale of arms to Taiwan could lead China to make concessions of its own, such as reducing the number of short-range ballistic missiles that are within firing range of Taiwan.
Advocates of restraint also should develop policy recommenda-tions on what priorities should guide security cooperation activities that remaining U.S. forces would undertake in peacetime. If advocates of restraint seek to reduce U.S. commitments while increasing or sus-taining security cooperation, another important analytic question will be how to manage allies' and adversaries' perceptions. The act of pro-viding arms to a country, especially one facing a common adversary, could have effects on beliefs about U.S. commitments, as analysts have argued is the case in the current U.S.-Taiwan relationship. Therefore, continuing security cooperation might inadvertently continue to signal a U.S. commitment to the ally while also remaining provocative to the adversary. More analysis of how security cooperation and assistance affect allied and adversary assessments of a state's intentions could help advocates of restraint refine their recommendations on these activities. Table 3.7 describes the next steps for designing security cooperation and assistance policies for the Asia-Pacific.
Table 3.7 Designing Security Cooperation and Assistance Policies Toward the Asia-Pacific
What kinds of arms, if any, should the United States sell to Taiwan?
Identify types of arms sales and other forms of security coopera-tion that could most help allies and partners defend themselves.
What type of security coopera-tion activities should the United States undertake, and with whom?
Assess whether different types of arms sales to Taiwan are more or less provocative to China.
表3.7 制定面向亞太的安全合作和援助政策
美國應向臺灣出售何種武器（如果有的話）？
確定最能幫助盟友和夥伴自衛的武器銷售類型和其他形式的安全合作。
美國應進行哪類安全合作活動，以及與誰合作？
評估不同類型的對台軍售對中國的挑釁性是多還是少。
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Summary of Next Steps to Develop Prescriptions for U.S. Policy Toward the Asia-Pacific
Advocates of restraint have had more-thoughtful discussions about the possibility that core assumptions about local balancing could prove incorrect for the Asia-Pacific, compared with Europe. Although advocates of restraint find common ground on such issues as increas-ing cooperation with China and removing any U.S. commitment to Taiwan, they differ on the prospects for local balancing. For some advocates of restraint, the threat of balancing failure is sufficiently low that the United States ought to retain only a minimal presence in the Asia-Pacific. Therefore, they would recommend ending all U.S. secu-rity commitments and withdrawing most forward forces. However, because China's relative power is greater and the relationships between local states are more fraught than in Europe, others in the restraint community see greater risks if their assumptions prove incorrect. As a result, they have proposed a reduced, rather than minimal, military engagement—that is, maintaining some continued U.S. presence and commitments as an insurance policy against greater Chinese growth or under-balancing by key states, such as Japan.
There are several questions for which more-detailed development is still needed. For example, advocates of restraint need to define the extent and nature of the sphere of Chinese influence that they think the United States should be willing to live with in Asia. Advocates of restraint also must consider whether and how the United States should respond to unwelcome Chinese behavior that remains below the threshold of major war, such as gray zone activities, the weapon-ization of space, and nonmilitary coercion. Would these actions ever be sufficiently threatening to U.S. interests to merit a change in U.S. strategy? Is there a role for the U.S. military to play in gray zone activi-ties in the region, or should these be handled exclusively by allies and partners? Lastly, advocates of restraint should generate more-detailed posture options for Asia. A key intellectual building block is to identify the scenarios for which the U.S. military must prepare.
Develop Scenarios to Guide U.S. Department of Defense Planning
Advocates of restraint have offered the broad outlines of U.S. posture by region. However, they have not yet conducted detailed analysis to identify how significantly the United States would change its posture under a grand strategy of restraint. One critical piece of information to inform such analysis consists of warfighting scenarios. Advocates for restraint clearly articulate the types of war that the United States should avoid (e.g., promoting democracy, protecting human rights) and offer specific examples of past interventions that they believe the United States should not have undertaken (e.g., the 2003 invasion of Iraq). However, they have not yet articulated scenarios in which the United States should be prepared to use force.
DoD uses defense planning scenarios, precise situations, and threats against which DoD judges the capabilities and capacity of U.S. forces to inform many aspects of planning, such as posture and force structure. Current defense planning scenarios are not publicly avail-able, but the 2010 QDR offers some insights. This planning docu-ment includes such scenarios as continued stability operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, a U.S. response to regime collapse in North Korea, a major conflict with China over Taiwan, Russian coercion of the Baltic states, a nuclear-armed Iran, loss of control of nuclear weapons in Paki-stan, and homeland defense and cyberattacks on the United States. As we discussed earlier, advocates of restraint likely would not support a U.S. intervention in all of these scenarios. The next step, therefore, is to offer more detail on the conditions under which the United States should be prepared to use force under a grand strategy of restraint.
台灣軍事新聞評論專欄研析2021
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Posted - 02/06/2021 : 07:15:40
