If Elbridge Colby, who has been nominated by U.S. President Donald Trump to serve as Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, gets the Senate’s approval, it will lend further credence to the narrative that Beijing, not Moscow, is Washington’s real source of concern.
Colby is reportedly the loudest among Trump officials who have argued that the U.S. focus should shift away from Europe and Russia and be concentrated on China and its growing challenges in the Indo-Pacific.
For him, nothing else in the international system is as fundamentally dangerous to U.S. interests as a possible Chinese “hegemony” over the Indo-Pacific, “dramatically undermining Americans’ security, freedom, and prosperity”.
However, if Colby faced tough questions during his confirmation hearings in the Senate Armed Services Committee meeting last week, that too from Republican Senators led by Tom Cotton (R-Ark), it was about his “shifting” thoughts about defending Taiwan.
Senator Cotton asked him, “Over the past couple years, you’ve started to say … that Taiwan is a vital interest, but it’s not [an] existential interest to us or it’s not essential to us. Could you explain to us why you’ve seemed to soften somewhat about the defense of Taiwan?”
Colby responded that he always has said that Taiwan is “very important” to the United States, but he argued it’s “not an existential interest”, given the change in the “military balance” between the United States and China.
“What’s changed senator … is the dramatic deterioration of the military balance,” he said. “It’s different to engage in a futile, in an overly costly effort that would destroy our military,” asserting that there’s a “lack of preparedness on our part” to take on China in its own sphere of influence.
Colby argued that Taiwan’s defense spending is well below 3 percent of its gross domestic product and needs to be boosted to 10 percent of GDP. According to him, Taiwan has an “alarming lack of urgency” in strengthening its defense capabilities.
It may be noted that Taiwan’s President William Lai last month pledged to boost military spending to 3 percent of GDP, from 2.45 percent this year, aimed at showing Trump its commitment to defending itself. But Lai’s main problem is the opposition-dominated legislature (Yuan) of Taiwan, which has led to cuts and freezes to the defense budget this year.
However, Colby told the Senators that he would continue bilateral communication and policy advisories, urging Taiwan to step up its military strength to match that of South Korea, which he believed was “not only feasible, but fair to the US people and troops who have invested heavily in its defense”.
Colby’s present thesis, which he would like to pursue if confirmed as the Under Secretary of Defense, is the strategy of “Denial” inside what is called the ”First Island of China” that could prevent China from seizing Taiwan.
He argues that American policy in the Indo-Pacific against Chinese hegemony should be pursued in ways “that correlate the risks and costs the American people incur in doing so with the stakes, which are vital but not genuinely existential. In practice, this requires working together with Asian states in an anti-hegemonic coalition focused on denying Beijing dominance over the region”.
The idea here is to keep the costs and risks to American citizens “at a level proportionate to the stakes at issue”.
Based on the premise that China cannot establish its hegemony in the region without resorting to military means, Colby says that the U.S. can prevent China from doing so if it ensures “an effective denial defense along the first island chain, one that includes Taiwan within its perimeter.”
He describes “Denial Defense” to be a military strategy that is derived from Washington’s geopolitical goal, “which is to provide sufficient defense for our allies that they believe it prudent to stand up to China together with us—and thus prevent Chinese domination of Asia. If the United States can succeed in this military strategy, the coalition should stand strong and resist attempts by Beijing to crack it apart. Even better, Beijing might see this strength and never try to break it apart in the first place”.
For Colby, a denial defense strategy, in practical terms, “generates a minimum military standard of being able to prevent China from seizing and holding the key territory of our allies—essentially, the core political and economic areas of a country. If China cannot seize and hold these areas, it will not be able to bring enough coercive pressure on a resolute ally to abandon the coalition. History and logic indicate that most countries are prepared to hold on even in the face of bombardment, blockade, and harassment if it is a matter of their independence and autonomy, especially if they believe relief will arrive. Crucially, this creates a need for a forward defense for U.S. allies against China”.
However, Colby emphasizes that “a forward denial defense is not a static, unimaginative, or fixed defense. It is about meeting a standard—denying China’s ability to subordinate a U.S. ally—not prescribing how to do it. Indeed, forward denial defense is consistent with unorthodox, imaginative, and nonlinear forms of military action and force structure, so long as they materially and efficiently contribute to the goal. It is consistent with any number of different approaches to military operations: high-tech and low-tech; at sea, in the air, space, and cyberspace, and on the ground; at long-range and short. If a naval mine meets the standard better than a long-range hypersonic missile, so be it. But the reverse is true, too: If a new approach is required to make a denial defense work, even at the expense of treasured old platforms and ways of operating, so must it be”.
Colby’s idea of flexible approaches, whether high-tech or low-tech, to standing up to China together with the U.S. to prevent Chinese domination of the Indo-Pacific has found many supporters, including many from the U.S. Marine Corps.
In a prize-winning essay, Lieutenant Colonel Joel N. Rea, U.S. Marine Corps, suggested that the allies and partners can follow the Indonesian example to checkmate China.
Rea has explained how since the 1970s, China has employed a layered “cabbage strategy,” using the People’s Armed Forces Maritime Militia (PAFMM), China Coast Guard, and, the outermost layer, the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) to seize sovereign territory from neighboring states in China’s so-called near seas—inside the first island chain.
It may be noted that American strategic planners describe China’s maritime approaches as chains. Originally from being “one” in the 1950s, the number now has risen to 6 (six) by the strategic experts, of which three are more pertinent.
The “first island chain” designates the islands stretching from the Kurils, the Japanese home islands, and the Ryukyus to Taiwan, the Philippines, and Indonesia. The “second chain” stretches from Japan through the Marianas and Micronesia, and the” third chain” is centered on Hawaii.
In recent years, two additional chains have been identified to explain the emerging Chinese maritime strategy. The “fourth island chain” passes through the middle of the Indian Ocean, reflecting China’s ability to challenge its geostrategic neighbor India with dual-use facilities in Gwadar, Pakistan, and Hambantota, Sri Lanka. A “fifth island Chain” is described as originating from China’s base at Doraleh, Djibouti, to cover Chinese interests in Africa and beyond.
Rea, like Colby, believes that if the Chinese designs can be resisted within the first chain, it will have a salutary impact in other chains. According to him, Indonesian operations against Chinese boats fishing illegally in its exclusive economic zone (EEZ) could be the one way to do so.
He suggests that “in concert with Asian maritime allies of the United States, the U.S. Sea Services should apprehend and destroy PAFMM vessels—fishing boats, mainly—in international waters in China’s near seas. When the boats are flouting international laws and norms, destroying them could act as a forward-denial defense against future territorial seizures. Such targeted aggression could halt further Chinese expansion”.
Incidentally, China’s “fishing” fleet is viewed as a vital enabling capability for the seizure of key maritime terrain, including the sovereign territory and economic rights of U.S. allies. Therefore, Rea argues, its operations cannot be allowed to persist. “It must be denied by vigorous patrolling, and its assets must be destroyed when necessary.”
Apparently, Jakarta has the so-called “Indonesian Protocol,” under which the Indonesian Navy apprehends a boat that enters its waters illegally, removes all personnel from the vessel, and impounds it. Once the offense is adjudicated by Indonesian courts, the Indonesian authorities destroy the apprehended vessel in a public spectacle.
Other countries facing the Chinese threat can, it is said, practice the same through the PAFMM, but in a coordinated manner, with the support and backing of the U.S. Marines.
“This task organization would also include maritime law enforcement detachments led by host-nation security forces and augmented with U.S. Marines, Coast Guardsmen, and sailors. Host-nation security forces would be at the forefront and make the actual arrests. Host-nation white hulls in concert with U.S. Coast Guard cutters should be the most visible maritime enforcement presence for these operations”, Rea suggests.
Will China not see U.S. participation in operations like those Indonesia pioneered as extremely provocative, leading to military escalation and potentially war? Not really. “The Indonesian Protocol merely allows the U.S. Sea Services to compete above the threshold of violence but below the threshold of lethality or war”, Rea replies.
On the other hand, he counter-questions – What escalation could lead to worse outcomes than already have occurred? “The 2020s are widely understood to be the critical decade for China’s prospective seizure of Taiwan. In preparation for that assault, China has manufactured from the ocean floor militarized islands to control its near seas, undeterred by U.S. freedom of navigation operations. Were PLAN gray hulls to attempt to trade missiles with U.S. Navy warships, the Navy’s surface fleet has the capability to intercept hostile missile salvos, as demonstrated against Iranian proxies in the Red Sea. It is doubtful China would use tactical or strategic nuclear weapons over the loss of some fishing trawlers”.
To sum up, the essential premise behind the denial defense concept is that the United States should play spoiler to the rising Chinese powerhouse with the active collaboration of its allies and partners in the first island chain, allowing them to play the leading role. And here, Indonesia seems to have provided the American strategists some food for thought.
- Author and veteran journalist Prakash Nanda is Chairman of the Editorial Board of the EurAsian Times and has been commenting on politics, foreign policy, and strategic affairs for nearly three decades. He is a former National Fellow of the Indian Council for Historical Research and a recipient of the Seoul Peace Prize Scholarship.
- CONTACT: prakash.nanda (at) hotmail.com
