The US-China Military and Defense Relationship during the Obama Presidency

The first chapter outlines the book’s overarching arguments, rationale, and contribution to the broader discourse pertaining to contemporary United States–China security relations. It begins with a background and context section that elucidates the genesis, criticisms, and strategic objectives underlying the Obama administration’s signature ‘pivot’ (or rebalance) to Asia policy. Next, it introduces the military and defense dimensions of the ‘pivot’ (notably the Air–Sea Battle concept), which received an outsized amount of attention from both scholarly and policy-making communities. Specifically, this chapter highlights the ways in which the ‘pivot’ unnecessarily (and even inadvertently) antagonized Beijing and worsened United States–China relations. The chapter ends with a brief section detailing how the book’s chapters are structured and sequenced.

This chapter contextualizes the security dilemma concept to view contemporary United States–China relations. It begins with a brief theoretical overview of the security dilemma theory that includes the concepts’ shortcomings, misuses, and contemporary revisions. Next, it contextualizes the application of the security dilemma by scholars and policy-makers to elucidate United States–China security relations and, in particular, the emergences of a ‘China rise’ discourse. Finally, it proffers a conceptual framework of analysis for applying the dilemma concept to view United States–China military and defense relations during the Obama era, and addresses several gaps in the existing literature.

Chapter 3, the first of four case study chapters, builds on the current (albeit limited) literature that elucidates the key driving forces behind U.S. analysts’ interpretations of the Chinese anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) challenge in East Asia. The Obama administration became increasingly concerned that China’s A2/AD capabilities would put at risk U.S. military assets operating in the Western Pacific, which could allow China to deter, delay, and deny U.S. intervention in future regional conflicts and crises. This case study demonstrates how U.S. perceptions of Chinese A2/AD-influenced U.S. decision-making and defense planning in the Asia-Pacific. In particular, it focuses on the strategic ambiguities associated with A2/AD which provided fertile ground for U.S. misperceptions of Chinese strategic intentions to grow. This chapter concludes that the analytical baselines (or framing assumptions) used by U.S. analysts to interpret Chinese A2/AD were overly reliant on pure material risk assessments to determine Beijing’s strategic intentions that overlooked the evolution of Chinese operational and doctrinal preferences. Specifically, U.S. defense analysts frequently and often erroneously conflated a Chinese operational capability with an underlying strategic intention, which conceptualized the United States as its primary (if not sole) target. This chapter demonstrates that the strategic ambiguities and opacity associated with China’s A2/AD capabilities reinforced Washington’s reliance upon capacity-based assessments, which in turn exacerbated misperceptions, confounded by the cognitive bias of Beijing’s strategic intentions.

This chapter builds on the military-technological theme and discusses the strategic implications of a new generation of stealthier and increasingly survivable Chinese antiship missiles (ASMs) for U.S. naval surface fleets and carrier strike groups operating in the Western Pacific—especially the ability of these weapons to evade U.S. missile defenses. This chapter argues that the proliferation of China’s maturing precision-strike missile regime could presage a new military-technological paradigm on the future networked battlefield in the Asia-Pacific. It finds that the development and diffusion of these asymmetric precision-strike weapons increase the risks of miscalculation, deterrence failure, military escalation, inadvertent war, and an intractable security dilemma in this highly contested domain—or missile ‘salvo competition’.

The final chapter draws out the book’s key findings, themes, and contribution to the existing literature. It begins with a brief review of the overarching arguments made by each of the case studies. Firmly grounded in the experience of the case studies, this chapter returns to the empirical and theoretical gaps in the literature, described in Chap. 2, and underscores the book’s contribution to the scholarly understanding of United States–China security relations. As a corollary, it affirms the continued relevance of the security dilemma concept to elucidate the deterioration of United States–China military and defense relations during the Obama presidency. Next, the chapter reflects on possible future directions for United States–China relations in the military realm under the stewardship of the new Trump administration. Early indications do not bode well for the trajectory of this crucial security dyad, or for strategic stability in the increasingly volatile, militarized, and crisis-prone Asia-Pacific. Finally, it highlights several implications that follow from the findings of this research, and suggests viable directions future research might take from where this book leaves off.