Fire on the Water, Second Edition: China, America, and the Future of the Pacific

By Robert J Haddick

When Robert Haddick wrote Fire on the Water, first published in 2014, most policy experts and the public underestimated the threat China’s military modernization posed to the U.S. strategic position in the Indo-Pacific region. Today, the rapid Chinese military buildup has many policy experts wondering whether the United States and its allies can maintain conventional military deterrence in the region, and the topic is central to defense planning in the United States.

In this new edition, Haddick argues that the United States and its allies can sustain conventional deterrence in the face of China's military buildup. However, doing so will require U.S. policymakers and planners to overcome institutional and cultural barriers to reforms necessary to implement a new strategy for the region.

Fire on the Water, Second Edition also presents the sources of conflict in Asia and explains why America's best option is to maintain its active forward presence in the region. Haddick relates the history of America's military presence in the Indo-Pacific and shows why that presence is now vulnerable. The author details China's military modernization program, how it is shrewdly exploiting the military-technical revolution, and why it now poses a grave threat to U.S. and allied interests. He considers the U.S. responses to China's military modernization over the past decade and discusses why these responses fall short of a convincing competitive strategy.

Detailing a new approach for sustaining conventional deterrence in the Indo-Pacific region, the author discusses the principles of strategy as they apply to the problems the United States faces in the region. He explains the critical role of aerospace power in the region and argues that the United States should urgently refashion its aerospace concepts if it is to deter aggression, focusing on Taiwan, the most difficult case. Haddick illustrates how the military-technical revolution has drastically changed the potential of naval forces in the Indo-Pacific region and why U.S. policymakers and planners need to adjust their expectations and planning for naval forces.

Finally, he elucidates lessons U.S. policymakers can apply from past great-power competitions, examines long-term trends affecting the current competition, summarizes a new U.S. strategic approach to the region, describes how U.S. policymakers can overcome institutional barriers that stand in the way of a better strategy, and explains why U.S. policymakers and the public should have confidence about sustaining deterrence and peace in the region over the long term.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Naval Institute Press
• Release date: Aug 15, 2022
• ISBN: 9781682478035

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Cover: Fire on the water, Second Edition, China, America, and the Future of the Pacific by Robert Haddick

FIRE ON THE

WATER

SECOND EDITION

China, America, and the Future of the Pacific

ROBERT HADDICK

Naval Institute Press

Annapolis, Maryland

Naval Institute Press

291 Wood Road

Annapolis, MD 21402

© 2022 by Robert Haddick

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Haddick, Robert, author.

Title: Fire on the water : China, America, and the future of the Pacific / Robert Haddick.

Description: Second edition. | Annapolis, Maryland : Naval Institute Press, [2022] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2022000749 (print) | LCCN 2022000750 (ebook) | ISBN 9781682476765 (hardback) | ISBN 9781682478035 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Sea-power—Pacific Area. | Security, International—Pacific Area. | Pacific Area—Strategic aspects. | United States—Military policy. | China—Strategic aspects. | China—Military policy. | United States—Foreign relations—Pacific Area. | Pacific Area—Foreign relations—United States. | BISAC: HISTORY / Military / Naval | HISTORY / Military / United States

Classification: LCC UA830 .H34 2022 (print) | LCC UA830 (ebook) | DDC 355/.03301823—dc23/ eng/20220331

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022000749

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022000750

Print editions meet the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).

Printed in the United States of America.

30 29 28 27 26 25 24 23 22 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

First printing

My impression is that a lot of people sign up to the notion that a military revolution is under way, but very few draw the significant consequences that flow from that belief.

—Andrew Marshall, director of the Office of Net Assessment, Office of the U.S. Secretary of Defense, memorandum for the record, July 27, 1993 (Krepinevich and Watts, The Last Warrior)

CONTENTS

MAPS

MAP 1. Pacific Island Chains and China’s Crude Oil Import Routes

MAP 2. The Western Pacific Theater of Operations

MAP 3. U.S. Military Bases in the Indo-Pacific Region

MAP 4. China’s Anti-Access Capability

FOREWORD

At the 2021 Air Force Association Air, Space, and Cyber conference in Washington, DC, new Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall relayed that when asked at a congressional breakfast what his top three priorities were, his answer was, China, China, and China. His response was certainly appropriate given the recent dramatic increases in China’s military capability. China’s accelerating military prowess in the twenty-first century has been accompanied by alarming land seizures in the South China Sea for the development of military outposts. During 2021, China routinely penetrated Taiwan’s air defense identification zone with advanced fighters and bombers, causing concern that the Communist People’s Republic of China may not be far from using lethal force against Taiwan.

Visual images from commercial satellites have revealed that China is embarking on a significant expansion of its nuclear arsenal through the building of silo-based intercontinental ballistic missiles. This evidence is significant because it shows that China appears to be shifting from minimal deterrence to a nuclear first-strike capacity with the potential to grow its nuclear forces to levels equal to or greater than those of the United States. Accordingly, dramatic action is called for by the United States and its allies to achieve an effective conventional deterrent that will dissuade China’s leaders from considering either conventional or nuclear aggression in their march toward global power status.

Robert Haddick’s Fire on the Water: China, America, and the Future of the Pacific has arrived just in time to provide insights toward that objective. He has produced a most timely update to his original work, which was published in 2014. This second edition is not simply an update on China’s growing military might since that time. Rather it is an astute look at where China’s military is going as well as a thoughtful summary of U.S. moves and reactions to China’s growth as a dominant player on the world stage. This book focuses on how the United States and its allies can sustain conventional military deterrence in the Indo-Pacific during what has now been established as a long, open-ended competition with China.

Haddick realistically acknowledges the waning utility of surface warships in the face of China’s technological advances, but he also explains the critical roles they will retain in a long-term competition against China—particularly as part of a cost-imposing element of a new Indo-Pacific strategy. Battle networks composed of ubiquitous sensors and long-range precision munitions have fundamentally changed the character of warfare. Consequently, the Indo-Pacific is no longer primarily a naval theater. Henceforth, long-range airpower and space power will be the keys to success in any effective strategy. And yet the U.S. Air Force is the smallest and oldest force it has ever been. Renewing the necessary number of modern, penetrating long-range aircraft and associated maritime-capable munitions should be a priority if the United States is to maintain escalation dominance over China’s military forces. Haddick observes that without rapid action to correct the deficiency of modern U.S. bomber forces, escalation dominance may shift into the hands of the Chinese, with devastating consequences for the United States and its allies.

Haddick also recognizes that the greatest barriers to implementing a better military strategy for the Indo-Pacific are the existing bureaucratic and institutional interests that resist changes to the defense program. Overcoming those barriers will require inspired leadership that can surmount the decades of tradition that currently paralyzes innovative strategy in the Indo-Pacific.

Fire on the Water is a must-read for those who recognize that China is no longer a future threat we can worry about tomorrow—it is a real threat we must deal with today. For those who are not aware of that perspective this book is even more important.

Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, USAF (Ret.)

Dean, The Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies

PREFACE

The Naval Institute Press published the first edition of Fire on the Water in September 2014. The goal of that book was to raise awareness about the rapid rise of China’s military power, the deteriorating security situation in the Indo-Pacific region, and the potential consequences if those trends remained unchanged. Perhaps most important, the book explained why the U.S. government needed to make major changes to its military forces and policies for the region. Concern about trends in the region was rising then among some U.S. and allied national security analysts, but for most, the problem still seemed distant and hardly urgent.

Today, there are very few in Washington or elsewhere among America’s allies who do not see the menace in China’s military buildup and its markedly more aggressive foreign policy and actions. Seasoned diplomats and senior military commanders now worry that war over Taiwan or elsewhere in the region is looming and perhaps imminent. The first edition described China’s military modernization program and predicted the threats those capabilities would pose to U.S. military forces and concepts by the 2020s. Most of those predictions have come to pass.

But much else has changed over the past eight years. As a result, the editors at the Naval Institute Press asked me to write a second edition. This edition discusses the many political, military, and strategic developments that have occurred on both sides of the Pacific Ocean since the first edition was published. This new edition incorporates that new information and extends the forecast horizon through this decade and into the 2030s. It also reaches new conclusions and recommendations on how the United States should reform its defense program to meet the challenges that China’s military power and increasingly assertive actions present. With so much new since 2014, readers will find an almost entirely new text, with little carried over from the first edition.

The preface to the first edition asserted that the rapid rise in China’s economic, political, and military power would likely be the most consequential national security challenge the United States would face over the next two decades. That now seems to be the consensus view among national security strategists in Washington and elsewhere. China’s economic capacity and apparent dynamism will make the magnitude of this challenge as great as that presented by the Soviet Union during the Cold War, another point mentioned in the preface to the first edition. For the United States and its partners, meeting the challenge will be strenuous. But as this edition will make clear, U.S. policymakers and citizens should have confidence that with a good strategy they can achieve a favorable outcome for U.S. interests at a reasonable cost, and that people throughout the Indo-Pacific region, including in China, can enjoy a century of peace and opportunity.

Achieving this outcome will require policymakers to refashion America’s legacy defense program and push through significant reforms over the objections of some resistant interests. Many readers will find some of the book’s conclusions controversial. If so, good. A healthy debate over America’s policies for Asia is welcome because the stakes for the United States are so high. This book will succeed if it sparks further research on these issues and more discussion among policymakers and the public—but hopefully not too much more research and discussion. Almost a decade has passed since the first edition was published, and yet U.S. military forces in the Indo-Pacific region are little better prepared for a Chinese threat that has since compounded. The danger is here, and those in authority need to act.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I have received much support during the process of completing this project. The Naval Institute Press continues its century-long work of publishing history, analysis, and reference books critical to America’s security. I am honored to continue my association with this august institution. I thank Adam Kane, the press’ director, for taking on the first edition of Fire on the Water in 2013 and for engaging me to write the second edition. Padraic (Pat) Carlin expertly managed the second edition’s publication process. Mindy Conner skillfully edited this new edition, greatly improving it. I thank Chris Robinson for updating Charles David Grear’s maps for this second edition of the book. The U.S. Naval Institute’s Emily Martin performed miracles in getting the second edition’s images ready for publication. The Naval Institute Press continues to sustain its excellence, a product of the professionalism of these people and their colleagues. Naturally, any shortcomings in the book are my responsibility.

My colleagues at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies were an invaluable asset to me during this project. Lt. Gen. David Deptula, USAF (Ret.), the Mitchell Institute’s dean and author of the foreword, remains a tireless advocate for a better national security strategy and smarter defense policies. I benefited from the insights and support of Doug Birkey; Maj. Gen. Larry Stutzriem, USAF (Ret.); and Col. Mark Gunzinger, USAF (Ret.), all strategy intellects at the Mitchell Institute.

Finally, my wife, Susan, encouraged me to press on with the second edition and get the manuscript over the finish line. To her and everyone else involved, thanks.

Introduction

In February 2021, the Council on Foreign Relations published a report written by Robert Blackwill and Philip Zelikow that discussed the prospect of a Chinese attack on Taiwan. The authors, both former career U.S. diplomats and senior National Security Council staff members for Democratic and Republican presidents, concluded,

China is now in a prewar tempo of political and military preparations. We do not mean that we know that China is about to embark on a war. We simply observe that the Chinese government is taking actions that a country would do if it were moving into a prewar mode. Politically, it is preparing and conditioning its population for the possibility of an armed conflict. Militarily, it is engaging now in a tempo of exercises and military preparations that are both sharpening and widening the readiness of its armed forces across a range of different contingencies on sea, air, land, cyber, or in space.¹

Similarly, Adm. Philip Davidson, the commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command until May 2021, reported to Congress in early 2021 that China is likely to attempt an invasion of Taiwan sometime this decade, perhaps in the next few years.² And in March 2021, Kurt Campbell, coordinator of Indo-Pacific policy at the Biden White House and a former U.S. assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, explained to a private conference hosted by the University of California at San Diego that China’s leaders in Beijing had become impatient on the mainland’s reunification with Taiwan.³

The Indo-Pacific region has long been a challenge for the United States. Over the past century, America fought four wars in the region and struggled with a dangerous four-decades-long competition against the Soviet Union. But with these challenges and tragedies have also come opportunity, trade, wealth, and cultural enrichment for countless millions on both sides of the Pacific Ocean. America’s ties with the region have delivered millions of jobs, higher standards of living, growing investments, and cultural interactions that have enriched all.

When the Naval Institute Press published the first edition of Fire on the Water in 2014, China had begun pressing previously dormant claims for maritime territory in the East and South China Seas. Since then, China’s actions have accelerated and include the establishment of heavily armed air and naval sites in the Paracel Islands and Spratly Islands in the South China Sea; peremptory dismissal of an international tribunal’s ruling against China’s claims in the South China Sea; ongoing incursions by China’s coast guard and maritime militia fishing fleets into the exclusive economic zones of Japan, Vietnam, Indonesia, the Philippines, and elsewhere; and regular harassment of Taiwan by Chinese air force bomber and fighter aircraft. China’s apparent goal is to demoralize its neighbors and compel them to agree to its unfounded territorial claims over the Near Seas in the western Pacific. If successful, China would tighten its control over some of the world’s most vital economic lines of communication and gain control of vast hydrocarbon, mineral, and fishing resources. But these gains would come at the expense of its neighbors, most of whom are now resisting China’s increasing pressure.

China’s well-designed modernization of its air, naval, missile, and military space power has similarly accelerated over the past decade and has become the most rapid and sustained peacetime buildup of military power since Germany’s in the 1930s.⁴ According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) database of military expenditures, China’s defense spending rose seventeen-fold between 1995 and 2019, a 12 percent compound annual growth rate.⁵ Although China’s defense spending growth has slowed during the past few years, its defense budget remains on a pace to double every decade. By one analysis, China’s annual procurement of military weapons and defense hardware will overtake that of the United States in 2024.⁶ China’s massive investment in military power has given it the ability to challenge the United States and its allies for dominance over the air and sea lines of communication in the western Pacific.

The stakes are immense. The Indo-Pacific has long been the most economically dynamic region in the world. A major conflict there would cripple the global economy. Many of America’s largest trading partners are there, and more than 10 million U.S. jobs are tied directly or indirectly to the export of U.S. goods and services to customers in the region. From a strategic perspective, the United States has six formal and many more informal security relationships in the Indo-Pacific that benefit U.S. security but are also a measure of America’s credibility as an ally. Finally, since its founding the United States has both relied on and defended the freedom of navigation and rights to the global commons. Today’s disputes in the western Pacific, tied to China’s territorial assertions in the region, place these principles at risk.

The first edition of Fire on the Water used the pre–World War I era as the metaphor to describe the building security competition between China and the United States and its partners, citing former secretary of state Henry Kissinger: The relations of the principal Asian nations to each other bear most of the attributes of the European balance-of-power system of the nineteenth century. Any significant increase in the strength by one of them is almost certain to evoke an offsetting maneuver by the others.⁷ In 2013, former Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd described East Asia as a 21st-century maritime redux of the Balkans a century ago—a tinderbox on water, referring to the nationalist hothouse that sparked World War I.⁸ Kurt Campbell similarly compared the ongoing tensions between China and Japan over small islands in the East China Sea with tensions in Europe at the beginning of the twentieth century: There is a feeling of 1914 in the air. Just as with tensions between European armies at the turn of the last century, both Tokyo and Beijing are absolutely certain of the rightness of their positions. More importantly, both believe that with a little further pressure, the other side is on the verge of blinking and backing down.⁹

In their 2021 report for the Council on Foreign Relations, Blackwill and Zelikow ominously switched the metaphor to the period just before World War II. They described Taiwan as analogous to Czechoslovakia in 1938 and wondered whether the United States and its allies should make their stand against aggression in Taiwan or instead cast Taiwan away to appease China in the hope of avoiding war. In their Czechoslovakia analogy, the United States and Japan represent Great Britain and France, respectively, which in the 1938 crisis were divided on how to respond to Germany’s demands. Unable either to rally or to prepare, they chose abandonment. Today’s leaders in Washington and Tokyo should take note.¹⁰

The 2014 edition of Fire on the Water described the magnitude of any threat as the product of a competitor’s capabilities and its intentions. The book implored strategists to focus on capabilities. Intentions may change from benign to hostile, but that matters little without powerful capabilities to back them. China’s military capabilities, already formidable in 2014, now pose an even greater danger to U.S. and allied military forces in the Indo-Pacific region. China’s leaders in Beijing know this, and that does much to explain the marked increase in their belligerence since 2014—they now have the military capabilities to back up their intentions.

The views of U.S. national security officials have hardened since 2014. Gone is the time when the top U.S. commander in the Pacific expressed more concern about natural disasters and climate change than the growing power and assertiveness of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Commanders today discuss when the war over Taiwan might begin rather than whether there will be war. Similarly, following the policy established by President Richard Nixon in 1969, U.S. policymakers until recently had hoped that engagement with China would lead that nation to become a responsible stakeholder in the international system. In a Foreign Affairs article published in September 2019, however, Kurt Campbell and Jake Sullivan, who is now President Joseph Biden’s national security adviser, announced the unceremonious close of the engagement era.¹¹ The public national security strategy documents of the Trump and Biden presidencies leave no doubt that China and its challenges to the international system are now the top national security priority of the U.S. government.

But while much has changed since the first edition of Fire on the Water was published, America’s military culture and the institutions that sustain it have not. The services remain mostly unwilling to implement the innovations that will be required to maintain conventional deterrence in the Indo-Pacific region. As the epigraph for this edition notes, a revolution in military technology and concepts has been under way for more than three decades. In the United States, it began after the Vietnam War and started to bear fruit in the 1991 Persian Gulf War. This military-technical revolution is linking vast arrays of sensors with inexpensive, long-range, and deadly precise missiles. These battle networks, which can span entire regions, have upended legacy military systems and warfighting concepts. The PLA is exploiting the military-technical revolution with lethal efficiency.

The military-technical revolution has created winners and losers inside the immense U.S. defense bureaucracy, and the potential losers are strenuously resisting change. Although the U.S. military services are now finally experimenting with new systems and ideas, they have come late to the game now long afoot in the Indo-Pacific. Senior U.S. defense leaders spanning numerous administrations and Congresses have yet to develop a competitive military strategy to counter the Chinese threat, make the necessary hard choices that any good strategy requires, and impose those results on obstinate defense bureaucracies. The U.S. and allied military posture in the Indo-Pacific is now exposed to the dangerous consequences of this resistance.

This second edition of Fire on the Water focuses exclusively on how the United States and its allies can sustain conventional military deterrence in the Indo-Pacific during a long, open-ended competition with China. This single facet of the U.S.-China competition is large enough to merit a book-length examination, and it warrants such an examination because so much disagreement exists among strategists on how to proceed. Other areas of the U.S.-China competition such as trade policy, technology transfer and competition, public diplomacy, finance, cyber espionage, and gray zone competition are important as well, but we must leave them for their own book-length treatments.

The conventional military balance is the most important facet of the competition. U.S. failure to maintain conventional military deterrence will lead China’s leaders to believe that they possess the military options they need to employ the PLA in decisive fait accompli military campaigns. Believing that, they might choose to employ these options irrespective of how either side might be faring in the other competitions just mentioned. And next to a nuclear exchange, a failure of conventional military deterrence would have the costliest consequences. In testimony to Congress in March 2021 Admiral Davidson warned, The greatest danger we face in the Indo-Pacific region is the erosion of conventional deterrence vis-à-vis China. Without a valid and convincing conventional deterrent, China will be emboldened.¹²

This edition of Fire on the Water will explain how the United States can sustain conventional deterrence against China over the long run and at an affordable price. This is not a facile problem; China is a true peer competitor the likes of which the United States has not faced since it became a great power more than a century ago.

In his landmark book The Causes of War, historian Geoffrey Blainey explained that when two countries agree on their relative strength—that is, when the leaders of the two countries agree which is stronger and which is weaker, or when they agree that they are evenly matched—then war is unlikely to occur. But when they disagree on which is stronger or if a balance exists, perhaps both thinking they are the stronger, then war is much more likely to occur.¹³ A decade ago, few doubted that U.S. and allied military forces enjoyed superiority in the Indo-Pacific region. That certainty has vanished. On current trends, Washington and Beijing will soon disagree on which is the strongest, and that disagreement will bring a grave escalation in the chance of conflict.

Within the next decade China’s leaders might conclude that they, and not the United States and its partners, possess escalation dominance, and that China’s leverage would improve during a crisis in the western Pacific. During such a crisis, the PLA could put into readiness—and perhaps into action—more and more of its land-based air and missile power. U.S. commanders would not relish the prospect of sending their naval and airpower into such tactically unfavorable circumstances. They would presumably have to report this analysis to policymakers in Washington, who would similarly have to ponder the consequences of a visible and substantial military setback. The policymakers would inevitably shift their attention to face-saving de-escalation of the crisis that would sacrifice U.S. negotiating leverage.

U.S. policymakers are unaccustomed to dealing with an adversary in possession of escalation dominance, and that could lead to a costly miscalculation or an embarrassing back-down in a crisis. Most dangerous of all would be a situation where both sides perceived they would benefit from escalation. In that case, a conflict would be virtually certain. That once unthinkable scenario is now plausible. China’s leaders and PLA commanders might have great confidence in their naval, missile, and aerospace power, while the confidence of U.S. policymakers in a crisis could rest on comforting, but possibly mistaken, memories of military dominance. Needless to say, it cannot be the case that both sides would benefit from escalation.

This edition of Fire on the Water describes a strategy for a more hopeful outcome, a program for preserving peace and security in the Indo-Pacific region. Doing so will require the United States to remain the region’s security guarantor. Against a great power like China, this will be a burden, but America’s defense institutions can maintain conventional military deterrence against China’s military challenge at an affordable price. Perhaps most important, this edition will explain why U.S. policymakers and citizens should be confident that America can sustain this responsibility over the remainder of this century.

Chapters 1 and 2 consider the sources of conflict in Asia and explain why America’s best option is to maintain its active forward presence in the region. Chapter 3 discusses the history of America’s military presence in the Indo-Pacific and explains why that presence is now vulnerable. Chapter 4 explains in detail China’s military modernization program, its shrewd exploitation of the military-technical revolution, and why China now poses a grave threat to U.S. and allied interests. Chapter 5 examines the U.S. responses to China’s military modernization over the past decade and explains why these responses fall short of a convincing competitive strategy.

The remainder of the book describes a new approach for sustaining conventional deterrence in the Indo-Pacific region. Chapter 6 explains the principles of strategy as they apply to the problems the United States faces in the region. Chapter 7 examines the critical role of aerospace power in the region and how the United States should urgently refashion its aerospace concepts if it is to deter aggression, focusing on Taiwan, the most difficult case. Chapter 8 considers how the military-technical revolution has drastically changed the potential of naval forces in the Indo-Pacific region and why U.S. policymakers and planners need to adjust their expectations and planning for naval forces there. Finally, chapter 9 discusses what lessons U.S. policymakers can apply from past great-power competitions, examines long-term trends affecting the current competition, summarizes a new U.S. strategic approach to the region, describes how policymakers can overcome institutional barriers that will stand in the way of a better strategy, and explains why policymakers and the public should have confidence about sustaining deterrence and peace in the region over the long term.

The goal of a new American strategy in Asia is to prevent conflict while preserving an existing international order that benefits all. The United States will have to implement specific military reforms to deter China’s employment of its military power in a prospective fait accompli assault. This is not a war plan; it is instead a strategy for managing a peacetime competition in a highly dynamic region. Success will be measured in terms of the crises that never occur, the wars that are never fought, and the long continuation of the region’s prosperity and development.

The Indo-Pacific region is crucial to the U.S. economy, and yet current U.S. policies for the region are falling short. Getting on the right course will not be easy for policymakers. But the rewards for doing so will be immense. The risk of war in the Indo-Pacific is rising. But the United States and its partners in the region have the power to prevent another tragedy and to shape a better future that will benefit all.

1

A Four-Decade Drive to a Collision

It was inevitable that China and the United States would collide in a long-term and open-ended security competition. Both countries are now great powers with global and overlapping interests. This fact alone, however, is not reason enough for the diplomatic rivalry, multidimensional arms race, and war planning in which they are now engaged. The additional ingredients required for an increasingly dangerous security competition—the fear, honor, and interest Thucydides discussed in his history of the Peloponnesian War—have also appeared. Aside from fearing each other’s military and ideological power, the leaders of both nations are under domestic political pressure to protect their country’s culture and

Reviews for Fire on the Water, Second Edition

[steve6clason · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A survey of current military capabilities in the South and East China Seas ( the "Near Seas") with a projection of future weapons and strategies. The author argues that the US military must quickly re-fit and adapt to meet the threat China poses to free navigation to sustain its primary mission of guaranteeing freeedom of the seas. Recommendations for refit focus on long-range strike aircraft, manned and not, and submarines.Not exactly a page-turner, but readable with good footnotes and bibliography.