In my recent fulmination regarding Time Magazine’s trumpeting of the non-existent danger posed to America by the launch of China’s first aircraft carrier, the reconstituted hulk formerly known as the Varyag, I assumed that only Time would be crass enough to try to make geo-political hay out of the launch of a naval museum piece. Well, as usual, how wrong I was. Andrew Sullivan, not normally a go-to guy when it comes sea-going ordnance, has a squib that links to three more sites discussing the launch.
Over at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Bonnie S. Glazer wants to know “Is China’s Aircraft Carrier a Threat to U.S. Interests?” As it turns out, the more you know, the less frightening the Varyag gets. Bonnie tells us why.
The carrier is fitted with a “ski jump” ramp rather than the catapult used by U.S. carriers. The carrier’s smaller size and ramp greatly reduces the number of aircraft it can carry and how many it can operate at any one time. Additionally, in order to take off, the fighters will carry lighter payloads and less fuel, greatly limiting their firepower and range of operations. Chinese Defense Ministry spokesman Geng Yansheng stated that the ex-Varyag will be used for “scientific research, experiment and training.” Indeed, the carrier may not be well-suited to combat, but it will give China the opportunity to train sailors and pilots in aircraft carrier operations. Mastering the challenges of operating, defending, and maintaining a carrier, as well as a possible accompanying carrier task force, will take at least a decade.
I like Bonnie’s style, but even she can’t quite summon up the nerve to answer the first question someone might ask about the “ex-Varyag.” Is she nuclear-powered? Time didn’t say, and neither does Bonnie, so the answer has got to be “no.”
But even with her reticence about the ship’s power source, Bonnie is a model of intellectual integrity compared to “Galrahn,” aka “Howlin’ Mad Galrahn,” as he’s often called, over at “Information Dissemination: The Intersection of Maritime Strategy and Strategic Communications.” According to Galrahn, in a fatuous passage quoted by Sullivan, who perhaps should be spending more time worrying about Sarah Palin’s toenail polish
The aircraft carrier itself will unlikely ever be used as a significant military capability, rather the next step towards the development of what the Chinese believe to be the single most evident strategic military capability of world powers. We should expect China to highlight every step of their aircraft carrier development leveraging their development as a strategic communication tool intended to both inspire domestic audiences regarding Chinese achievements and influence foreign audiences in their strategic calculations. In many ways the ex-Varyag is evidence of the unmistakable strategic influence that seapower is capable of during peacetime.
The Chinese believe the United States is in a perpetual decline that cannot be prevented, while they themselves are in a perpetual ascension that cannot be impeded. In following some of the political messaging of the Chinese this morning, I found it interesting how the Chinese juxtapose the sea trials of their nations first aircraft carrier as a positive benchmark of ascension against the backdrop of the downgrade of the US credit rating - a negative benchmark suggesting US decline. The Chinese intentionally frame their narrative in a way so that the rise of their national seapower is perceived as part of a larger system of broad Chinese advancement, not unlike the way the US looked upon sea and space achievements before the end of the cold war.
I find the contrast in outlook stark in comparison. As the Chinese set near term, small goals at the political level and strive to meet those goals, the intention is to continuously inspire their population with advancement through otherwise insignificant small steps. They basically apply very simple political visions forwarded with reasonable expectations for scientific achievement that reinforces national confidence when those stated goals are achieved. Their current model of modest steps that allows for maximum political benefit in an information age is good governance 101.
Perhaps another example, straight out of good governance 101, is China’s brand spanking new fleet of bullet trains, so admired by President Obama. You know, the ones that were involved in the wreck that killed 40 people and injured almost 200, which was desperately hushed up by the Chinese government, and which led to the recall of the locomotives involved, a reduction in speed over existing lines, and a moratorium on new construction? Is that what Galrahn had in mind?
Afterwords
There is so much that is ludicrous about the hype over the launch of the ex-Varyag that I could use another ten fingers to type them all. The Japanese, after all, were making world-class aircraft carriers, to say the least, back in the 1930s. Yet here we are more than half a century later, and the Chinese are supposedly inspiring the masses by buying and refitting a second-hand Soviet hull, the product of perhaps the most mute, and least glorious, navy in the history of the sea. I could also point out that even the nuclear-powered flat tops in the U.S. fleet are the battleships of the modern era—that is, they’re obsolete. The U.S. Air Force, and the aging carrier pilots who run the U.S. Navy, must be cursing the day the U.S. ever got in a real war and exposed the fact that drones are the wave of the future. In another decade—two, at most—it will be possible to make drones that will outperform today’s grotesquely expensive, “state of the art” fighter bombers. And they will be less costly, because surely half the price of today’s planes is tied up in the massive support mechanisms necessary to keep the pilot alive. So the Chinese are spending billions on an obsolete prestige project that is entirely useless for any meaningful military purpose. I guess they have caught up with us after all!
