Carnegie Reporter, Vol. 4, No. 4

William A. Owens, a recently retired Trustee of Carnegie Corporation of New York and Chairman and CEO of AEA Holdings in Hong Kong, previously served as Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the nation’s second-ranking military officer. He was responsible for reorganizing and restructuring the armed forces in the post-Cold War era. He has also served as the Commander of the U.S. Sixth Fleet in Europe and as deputy chief of Naval Operations for Resources, Warfare Requirements and Assessments. Additionally, he served as the senior military assistant to Secretaries of Defense Frank Carlucci and Dick Cheney. Prior to that, Owens served as Director of the Office of Program Appraisal for the Secretary of the Navy, and as Commander of Submarine Group Six, the Navy’s largest submarine group. Earlier in his career, he commanded Submarine Squadron Four, and the submarines USS Sam Houston, and USS City of Corpus Christi. A prolific author—his most recent book is Lifting the Fog of War (Farrar Straus Giroux, 2000)—who has written extensively about national security, he comments here on potential developments in the relationship between the United States and China.

The United States and China are entering a “tipping period.” It’s not really a “tipping point”—far too complicated for a single event to determine the future. But, it’s increasingly clear that the next several years—as the new leadership in both countries takes hold—are likely to set the basic direction of U.S.-China relationships toward either greater competition or collaboration. It is not hard to list factors pushing in either direction. Americans have concerns with Chinese military spending, and the Chinese concerns about U.S. military support to Taiwan. These factors push us towards competition. But there are also points for collaboration. For example, stopping North Korea’s nuclear weapons development and the growing bilateral trade are viable points of cooperation. But the most important aspect of all this is the context in which the balance between competition and collaboration will emerge and how the new leaders of both countries think about the choice.

The context is the “new commons” —global areas and phenomena that all nations share, use, and are becoming increasingly dependent upon. Open seas were the first, emerging a millennia or more ago in a dual orientation to collaboration and competition. The seas offered both the mutual benefit of expanded trade as well as routes to and an arena of winner-take-all conflict. Around 100 years ago the air above the seas became the same kind of commons. Fifty years ago exospheric space joined. Twenty-five years later cyberspace entered. About a decade ago, arguably, a new global economy, driven by what cyberspace enabled and what the collapse of the Soviet Union facilitated, completed what is now the new commons. As with its original sea component, the new commons can be either an arena of competition—up to and involving modern, deadly military forces—or collaboration. It currently has aspects of both. The new commons is where China and the United States will forge the relationship about how we lead the direction for a peaceful world. A balance favoring competition promises undesirable costs for each and perhaps another cold war or worse. A balance favoring collaboration offers new opportunities for each...and for the rest of the world.

It is of the greatest importance that China and the United States opt to emphasize collaboration and the opportunities it opens. Competition can only reduce the opportunities and mutual benefits of the commons to all. Collaboration results in direct benefits to both countries and the world; expanded peace, wealth, health, and happiness for our children and grandchildren.

Here, perhaps, are some new ways of adding collaborative weight to the balance:

A no-first-use agreement on cyber attack.
Cyberspace offers prosperity to those who use it because it spreads knowledge, transactions, commerce, and synergy at the speed of light. But it can also spread viruses, bots, and other destructive information artifacts that can bring modern societies to a standstill, shutting down electrical grids, pipelines, and untying the other sinews that now knit nations and the world together. The notion of cyberwar is no longer science fiction. An agreement not to be the first to employ a cyber attack does not eliminate the capability to do it. But it adds inhibitions, and in the process expands the basis for discussion.

Collaborative anti-piracy operations on the high seas.
The United States and China both oppose piracy, but do not coordinate their opposition. They could drive the coordination into real solutions, from database and information exchanges to combined exercises, patrols, and counter-piracy operations.

A collaborative, space-based information umbrella for global military transparency.
The notion of collaborative information gathering and exchanges regarding piracy need not end there. Why couldn’t the collaboration extend, literally, much higher? China and the United States could jointly establish and make globally available the information generated from a space-based, global surveillance system capable of near-real-time tracking of major military operations anywhere on the surface of the earth. They could, in effect, provide the world with an information umbrella of global military transparency. Why would they even consider this kind of collaboration (which is already technically and financially feasible)? Because it would be the sort of breakthrough collaboration that would not only establish a qualitatively new U.S.-China international relationship, and because it would accelerate the obsolescence and abolishment of the industrial age militaries that make indiscriminate mass destruction feasible and likely. Military cooperation could also allow both countries to gradually reduce their defense budgets and commit the funds to long-term initiatives focused on global engagement in education, health, and environmental preservation. If both militaries become locked in competition, these opportunities disappear.

Collaborative pollution reduction of coal power generation.
China and the United States together burn over half the coal the world uses to generate heat and electricity. Both have extensive reserves of coal, and, along with the rest of the world will draw on coal as the primary source of energy for at least the next fifteen years. Coal combustion produces most of the man-made carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide that the overwhelming number of scientists believe is driving global warming. Together, China and the United States have the scientific and engineering base to resolve what may be the major environmental threat facing mankind, and, in the process, alter the goading competitive role petroleum production, access, and demand play in international security. If the United States and China were to announce the establishment of a ten billion dollar clean coal research fund, it is feasible to estimate that oil prices might drop as much as thirty percent—regaining the billions invested in a single day. If there is a single issue in which significantly resourced, dedicated U.S.-China collaboration could make an historic difference in world affairs and establish a collaborative relationship in to the future, it lies in the close mutual effort to reduce coal-generated pollution.

Commitment to no weapons in space and the reduction and eventual elimination of nuclear weapons.
China’s recent space exploration is both exciting and important, but it is equally important that it not spark a new arms race. By committing to a weapons-free space, China and the United States can work to ensure a peaceful and stable exploration of this new commons. China and the United States can also lead the world in reducing the number of nuclear weapons. This not only precludes the launch of another arms race, but helps prevent existing nuclear weapons from falling into the hands of terrorist organizations, which have grown increasingly fragmented and dispersed in the past six years. By taking a firm, proactive stand and leading by example, we can reduce the threat these weapons create. Should this prove successful, China and the United States could conceivably lead by example and commit to a program that safely eliminates both countries’ nuclear weapons and gives other nations incentives to follow suit.

None of these potential collaborative efforts are beyond the reach of China-United States collaboration. They are all technically and financially feasible. They would tip the U.S.-China relationship toward collaboration, and save future generations from the very real potential horrors and cataclysms of a slide into competition.