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Chapter 5 Conclusion
As a doctrinal concept, the Air-Sea Battle doctrine will substantially effect on U.S. military operations in the future. With it, the traditional U.S. allies will decide their military performance, paying attention to de facto capabilities of the ASB doctrine. Thus, this doctrine has to reflect the war patterns of modern and future war more positively, thereby overcoming the security dilemma in the region. Plus, U.S. will continuously use military power in new security environment in order for status quo, interests, and the grand strategy, so the doctrine should be a decisive variable to determine security of U.S. With recommendation to carry out that obligatory thoroughly, this thesis was written to find a hopeful answer to the question
‘what makes our military forces exist’ and so ‘how the military forces should exist.’
As the first main question suggested, this thesis focused on ‘why that ASB concept should be developed as a military doctrine and which factors have effected on it.’ To observe it objectively, view point, however, put more weight on specific interaction between political context and propensity of military organization than naïve elements in military realm, so it could know that the ASB doctrine exists in the range of regular warfare influenced by conservatism on U.S. military society, not either new or innovative.
The harsh reality in the anarchy imposes a state to search for a way to survive by itself and this is the international relation what realists have said. In the world, a state never condone a rival’s challenge that is at risk for negative results for it and using military forces is a practical mean to solve the problem. The balance theory explaining security dilemma is a good cornerstone to understand aspects of the military competition between rivals and it provided a clear basis for why the doctrine should be developed in terms of political and
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military perspective. Some particular circumstances surrounding a state make the state gain a foothold for the survival through developing its own national strategy, and the maritime power U.S. has developed its hegemonic power by establishing the grand strategy. Therefore, sudden emergence of Chinese military forces is politically a trap to hold U.S.’s ankle and the employment of U.S. military power cannot be excluded from the state’s strategic efforts for overcoming the security dilemma as always. In a way, the ASB doctrine suggests specified principles for conducting effective war compelled by the military strength reduction of U.S., but it was eventually developed by the intention to resolve the dilemma.
Clausewitz said ‘war is the continuation of politics by other means.’159
Although Chinese political regime has maintained flexible policies under the modified communism by growing economic success since 1980s, but the political entity is fundamentally communism. This is inconsistent with American democracy and these opposing ideologies could incur an ideological conflict between two great powers again after the era of Cold War. China imagines a regional hegemony power founded on the political War can work decisively by political intention at a crucial moment for a state’s survival. To achieve its political goal, the war should not be conducted by worn-out ideas led by ‘blindness’ and
‘back and white’ because the opposite will always exploit the enemy’s weaknesses as an opportunity striking the enemy’s spots. The concept of hybrid war is criticizing ‘mannerism’
of U.S. military culture derived from materialism in technology era, stressing on blurring war pattern integrating regular and irregular warfare into the complicated combat spectrum, It is really doubt that how much the ASB doctrine pursuing conventional war understands the essence of war, and how much it can also cover change of war patterns and involved trends.
159 Carl von Clausewitz, On War, trans. Michael Howard and Peter Paret (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1984), 87.
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ideology and furthermore it has challenged the world only super power, the United States gradually. While China has expanded its influence offensively through armed modernization of PLAs, U.S. has tried to deter the challenge by preparing military counter-measure such as the ASB doctrine because the potential enemy would impede the power projection capability and ‘freedom of navigation’. However, it is not simple to solve the dilemma by war. The reason is that the hi-tech centric war of U.S. has no insight to observe what the real threats of the enemy is due to the conservative professionalism, and any perfect military policies (especially, military doctrine) cannot be created under that circumstance.
Together with the doctrinal definition, studying the question ‘what is the basic concept on the ASB doctrine’ clearly showed the insufficient capabilities of the doctrine against the China’s hybrid warfare grasping the new war theories mentioned onto it. When a doctrine offers principles of war to military organizations as its role, the doctrine is not God’s grace that appears suddenly, but it develops and gets far steadily within the military’s view point.
However, the military also has a simultaneous duty to lead innovation of the doctrine for performing the sacred obligation ‘national defense’ by compromising with the world outside the military and by observing the phenomenon of war transparently. Certainly, war is now evolving, and the patterns of war are also appearing in different ways from the past. Even this situation, the ASB doctrine doesn’t think outside of the box which U.S. military organizations have built up by themselves.
In fact, China has concealed their military doctrine and intention and U.S. has not yet opened the Pandora’s box. Nevertheless, the decision making process of the U.S. is seeing the potential enemy’s threats in self-centered view point. Even though the political regime that is above the military organizations stresses on flexible approaches, U.S. military forces are still persisting that ‘war is just the military’s possession.’ As the definition shown, in the ASB
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doctrine the military only described the A2/AD threats in the regular war concept, but also it regards the threats as all of Chinese ones. By this fixed cognition, the doctrine is just a joint operation concept to deter, destroy, and demolish the enemy’s regular forces by exploiting the synergy effect between stereoscopic domains, but it is unilateral and implicit. Plus, the basic concept only considers concentration of regular forces onto the Chinese operation theater for compulsive operation entry as well as the physical blockade campaign whereas it cannot provide other principles to cover different crisis in different region. Be that as it may, the doctrine cannot guarantee a victory clearly in the face-to-face confrontation against the Chinese tactful stratagem. Moreover, the U.S. military forces did not develop a military doctrine dealing with ‘smart war’ which can prevent protracted war whereas minimizing casualties in the military conflicts against the less strong terrorists or irregular forces than Chinese military. In the end, the dragon’s huge shadow will expose embarrassing matters on the ASB doctrine and the U.S. Military Forces by the lethality of hybrid war while more darkening its identification than the unusual afterimages of existing war.
On the contrary, China strategists have upgraded the indigenous war philosophies for a long time. They could also reinterpret their doctrinaire thoughts as befitted with modern war.
In the respect, the theory of hybrid war helps to understand the China’s expectable threats while suggesting a key concept that hybrid war/warfare will appear by blurring several boundaries between regular war and irregular war, and between military realm and non-military realm, mixing invisibility of non-military operations, asymmetry between offense and defense into the boundaries irregularly as well as multilaterally. In fact, Sun Tzu’s Art of War and Mao’s the people’s war have been a driving force to defeat the strong enemies despite the disadvantages, while the ideas have dominated doctrinal thought and perspective of Chinese military organizations. In the era of modern war, Chinese communists didn’t ignore those
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ideas although they have stressed on diverse slogans focusing on armed modernization since Gulf War. So, it cannot ignore the traditional ideas when military policy makers calculate the enemy threats.
In a sense, ASB doctrine missed opportunity to calculate the threats from the oriental context. Moreover, it should be developed, having critical questions ‘which factors could really effect on development of the threats and how we can fight with the real threats.’
Therefore, the point on the latter part mainly focused on inducing the China’s hybrid threat/warfare from fundamental background with the question ‘why the ASB doctrine could have limitations and which element on the hybrid threats could make the doctrine insufficient.’ In terms of ‘timing’, the ASB is faithful to sequential operation phase, but it cannot be success if the sequence is broken. In addition, the doctrine is inadequate for covering the enemy’s threats in terms of physical space because it limited the operation theater within Chinese region, so China will unfortunately win the U.S. over by foul means in other place, not the operation area of ASB concept. Moreover, the American war-fighting style must attain objectives on war with minimizing collateral damages in the Chinese theater including densely populated areas and the extreme situation of war will generate unintentional results massive casualties whether it is friendly soldiers or innocent Chinese civilians with deployment of U.S. ground forces.
Our world was changed. The proliferation of information and its impact are becoming one of lethal weapons for everyone thanks to globalization and remarkable advance of technology, while destruction power of the modern weapons gets more powerful. States have not been able to prevent the WMDs easily because the formidable threats are now blurring between every domains, not only their militaries. So, this new problems are positioning as a fundamental threat aiming at fall of the enemy’s political regime directly while inducing
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political justification and legal debates for example. Still, the ASB doctrine doesn’t reflect those challenges on any part of it because the U.S. forces disparage those things as an extra stuff.
Meanwhile, it is highly unrealistic to develop another doctrines independent from the ASB doctrine in order to cover the hybrid threats, because it is physically impossible to reform some problems hard to apply into ‘perfectly’ new things due to the military organization’s characteristic reluctant to reflect unverified innovations into its policy. Rather, it would be more practical to analysis present situations of the doctrine by itself and to excavate opportunities from the results. Then, the doctrine could be improved well for cover the hybrid threats.
If a reader asks that the hybrid warfare can be really unfolded as expected in this paper, it might be a question of who does not appreciate the essence of war exactly. Because, any military organization, any paramilitary force, or even any individual combatant will not reveal their own attack plans in terms of a secret affair. Even if the expected threats are really executed like that, it is just a part of threats that the enemy are considering in nature, so it is not sure that China’s hybrid threats will hold in that way. Moreover, official documents or reliable materials published by Chinese government are hard to find under this investigation and this situation made this study difficult to anticipate those threats. Nevertheless, concerning the unusual and unconventional threats would be a good chance to induce improvement of the unstable doctrine, although our modern war just argues the latest weapons and material warfare in every time. With that, I strongly believe that this study will be meaningful by newly recognizing a new war pattern which we have to encounter, rather than giving undue value to simply enumerate the expectable threats.
All things considered, alternatives for the ASB doctrine must be mentioned more strongly
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for the sake of counter-hybrid warfare. As known, this study has spent a lot of time on criticizing the conventional war-fighting style of U.S. Military Forces while focusing on developing a basis for the balanced doctrine integrating regular and irregular warfare.
Consequently, it could not suggest a series of alternatives considering the hybrid war concept such as a doctrinal alternative, a modified operation procedure, and required tactics &
weapon systems for example. So, I am just leaving the following process behind a next task, arguing that a concrete requirement institution and its appropriate grounds must persuade policy makers before an improved defense policy.
Whether a state or a non-state organization, actors on war have always held enemy’s mistakes as the best opportunity for achieving goals. From ancient time to now, human’s war always proved the truth, and our future war will exploit it too. Nevertheless, differences between the endless wars would only depend on the way how a military organization can utilize its doctrines innovatively, overthrowing fixed ideas on war.
Unlimited threats lurking in fogs of war is not an imaginary monster unilaterally described by one who is threatened, but it can be generated by one who is threatening him. Moreover, potential enemy’s threat will not sweep with a palpable pattern. Therefore, a military organization must be able to accept threatening elements calculated resolutely by contemplating the enemy’s fundamental backgrounds.
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