Last month I blogged – Timeline of CCP attacks on Australia from 2008
The 2011 book Energy Security 2.0 is available at Art of Victory as a 3.5Mb pdf (scroll down right hand side)
Chapter VII By Yossef Bodansky – is titled – Energy: the Driver of the Grand Strategy of the PRC
I have copied and pasted Ch VII below and will work through removing paste errors and “bolding” text that hits me as contributing to explaining/understanding our current issues with China. I might add a note or two myself bold inside brackets.

Energy: the Driver of the Grand Strategy of the PRC
By Yossef Bodansky
THE RISING ECONOMIC AND STRATEGIC power of the People’s Republic of China(PRC) is clearly the key dynamic of Indo-Pacific and Eurasian geopolitics for the coming decade, and the PRC’s focus on fossil fuels as an integral component and priority of this grand strategy will drive both energy markets and security issues for much of the world in the coming decade and more. In 2009-10, the PRC was at a crucial junction in its historic ascent as a global strategic power, an ascent which began meaningfully in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union some two decades earlier. There were two major milestones in the evolution of the PRC’s post-Cold War grand strategy. The first phase ensued from the analysis by the PRC’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) of the collapse of the Soviet Union, the then-nascent US-led globalization, the shape of hi-tech wars as demonstrated in the US-led Operation Desert Storm against Iraq (1990-91), and the trauma of the PRC’s own Tiananmen Square confrontation (1989).

These issues were studied in the context of Beijing’s resolve to surge as a global hegemon (an historic term of the early Imperial era revived by the contemporary Chinese Communist
Party) and fill the global vacuum created by the end of the Cold War.
Starting in the early-1990s, the PRC’s High Command carefully studied the military aspects of the implementation of the forthcoming strategic surge. The conclusions were presented in a June 1993 textbook of the PLA High Command called Can the Chinese Army Win the Next War? in which the PLA defines the US as the PRC’s principal strategic
adversary and argues for regional wars by proxy. Beijing concluded that “the conflict of strategic interests between China and the United States … is now surfacing steadily” to the point that Washington “absolutely cannot tolerate the rise of a powerful adversary in East Asia”. With the PRC determined to become the region’s leading power, “the military antagonism between China and the United States” could reach the point of armed confrontation. The textbook examined numerous scenarios of regional and global wars. The book reached the conclusion that conventional hi-tech armed forces of the type the PLA
was becoming were insufficient and ill-suited for the type of confrontations and challenges awaiting the PRC.
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Shortly afterwards, in mid-1993, PRC leader Jiang Zemin and the Central Military Commission issued new military strategic guidelines which instructed the PLA to prepare for fighting and “winning local wars under modern especially high-technology conditions”. There followed
a series of military and regional studies about modalities for implementation, particularly in and around Asia. One of the first key themes was the centrality of the Trans-Asian
Axis, a term loosely used by the PLA to describe the system of military and security alliances involving the PRC, the DPRK, Pakistan, and Iran in order to better control and/or
influence Central Asia and the Greater Middle East.(wow Trans-Asian Axis – sounds like Belt & Road Initiative years before we heard the term) The near-war with the US over the Taiwan Straits in the mid-1990s awakened the PLA General Staff to the complexities of sophisticated warfare and just how ill-prepared the PLA still was. This sentiment was later reinforced by the PLA’s intense lessons learned from the US bombing of Serbia during the Kosovo crisis of 1999. The various solutions conceptualized by the PLA General Staff were tested in a series of major military exercises throughout the 1990s.
The most important conclusion of this era of strategic-military transformation was the PRC commitment to vastly expand the scope of state-run asymmetric warfare to include criminality, terrorism, subversion, and cyber warfare in order to compensate for the concurrent PRC weakness in conventional hi-tech warfare as well as to buy the PRC the necessary time to catch-up and even surpass the US-led West.
This led to the second, and current, phase in Chinese strategic thought. Starting in the late 1990s, there began a growing emphasis on “irregular warfare” against the United States in PRC strategic thinking. Such a strategy was elucidated in the book, Unrestricted War, by Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui,
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published in Beijing in February 1999. Both authors were PLA active-service colonels and their writing represented the new strategic thinking among the PLA’s senior officers.
“We realized that if China’s military was to face off against the United States, we would not be sufficient,” Wang explained.
“So we realized that China needs a new strategy to right the balance of power.” Indeed, Unrestricted War became one of the hottest military books in the Summer of 1999. In their book, colonels Qiao and Wang presented a flow chart of 24 different types of war applicable for confrontation with the US including international terrorism, drug trafficking, environmental degradation, and computer virus propagation. They argued that the more complicated the combination of forms of warfare—for example, terrorism plus a media war plus a financial war—the better the results. “Unrestricted War is a war that surpasses
all boundaries and restrictions,” colonels Qiao and Wang wrote. “It takes non-military forms and military forms and creates a war on many fronts. It is the war of the future.”
Essentially, Unrestricted War spelled out the implementations of the time-honored principles of Sun-tzu in the era of modern military high-technology and economic globalization.
Significantly, Qiao and Wang identified, in a series of seemingly unrelated recent events, the precursors of future warfare in pursuit of the PRC’s strategic aspirations.
“When people begin to lean toward and rejoice in the reduced use of military force to resolve conflicts, war will be reborn in another form and in another arena, becoming an
instrument of enormous power in the hands of all those who harbor intentions of controlling other countries or regions.
In this sense, there is reason for us to maintain that the financial attack by George Soros on East Asia, the terrorist attack on the US embassies by Osama bin Laden, the
gas attack on the Tokyo subway by the disciples of the Aum Shinri Kyo,
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and the havoc wreaked by the likes of Morris Jr. [the so-called “Morris worm” or Internet virus of November 2, 1988, one of the first major Internet attacks] on the Internet, in which the degree of destruction is by no means second to that of a war, represent semi-warfare, quasi-warfare, and sub-warfare, that is, the embryonic form of another
kind of warfare.”
Significantly, these were not empty contemplations for the PRC,which concurrently increased both the active support for, and encouragement of, a myriad of local crises.
Starting in the early-1990s, both an assertive PRC and an Iran-led Islamist world committed to the undermining of the post-Cold War Pax Americana while exploiting Russia’s weakness and inward preoccupation. By the mid-1990s, the first pillar of the anti-Pax Americana grand strategy was Beijing’s consolidation of a “Trans-Asian Axis”, the pillars of which were, and still are,China and Persia—the historic allies of Silk Route lore—and with Pakistan serving as the lynchpin between the PRC’s traditional alliance system and the Muslim World.
Around the turn of the new millennium, Beijing defined “the Vancouver-to-Vladivostok [V-to-V] bloc” — which unifies the predominantly White/Caucasian Judeo-Christian
industrialized North—as the principal strategic challenge driving to contain the ascent of the PRC. With that, Russia has been deemed an enemy rather than a potential ally.
The second pillar was the encirclement and stifling of India, a subcontinent with an ancient civilization which would not succumb to the strategic overlordship of either Chinese or Muslim political-civilizations. Indeed, in “Can the Chinese Army Win the Next War?”, the PLA High Command defined India as “the greatest potential threat” for the PRC itself because the implementation of the PRC’s
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Trans-Asian Axis strategy threatened India’s vital interests and thus might lead to a military clash. The PLA stressed that they “see India as a potential adversary mainly because India’s strategic focus remains on the Indian Ocean and Southeast Asia”.
In late-2000, Professor Hu Siyuan of the National Defense University in Beijing, one of the PRC’s leading authorities on Indian Military Power, stressed the irreconcilable
strategic differences between India and China. “India’s international status and its global rôle are rather limited,” Hu explained. “But India will never give up its goal of becoming
a world power. And once realizing the dream of becoming a world power, India could pose a security threat to its neighbors.” And the PRC is adamant of negating this trend.
Hence, starting in the early 1990s, the PRC embarked on numerous steps in this campaign, ranging from expanding the transportation infrastructure north of India, strengthening Myanmar and preparing to block the Strait of Malacca, rebuilding Sri Lanka’s maritime infrastructure, helping modernize Iran’s technological and military prowess, bolstering the military and nuclear potential of the PRC’s closest ally — Pakistan — and to developing and consolidating the economic potential of both Pakistan and Afghanistan, and to sponsoring numerous Maoist insurgencies destabilizing India from within. In the first decade of the 21st Century, as the US escalated its war in Afghanistan as well as intensified the efforts to strategically and economically cajole Pakistan, the PRC intensified its efforts to strategically encircle and stifle India, as well as undermine
its stability through Pakistan – and Chinese-sponsored terrorism and subversion.
The transformation of Pakistan into the regional power—a strategic development which has been stated to neces-
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sitate the Pakistani control over the bulk of the territory of Afghanistan—would ultimately become the most important facet of implementing the PRC ascent.
Throughout, there was a palpable sense of imminent crisis and war among the key members of the PRC-led Trans-Asian Axis. Starting in early-1999, several of these key players
openly declared their expectations of a future war against their neighbors and strategic foes. In early 1999, the PRC and Pakistan tested the West’s tolerance of the changing
strategic posture by having Pakistan launch the Kargil War in northern Kashmir. Not only was the Pakistani decision to launch the war an integral part of the PRC-inspired strategy, but the most senior officers of the Pakistani Army (led by then Chief of Army Staff Gen. Pervez Musharraf) went to Beijing for consultations on the eve of the war. The Washington-led pressure on New Delhi — the subject of invasion — to compromise lest the nuclear escalation
Islamabad was threatening be put to a test, convinced Beijing that its assertive strategy was correct. This conviction was further reinforced in December 2001, when Washington
once again coerced New Delhi into self-restraint after the ostensibly Pakistan-sponsored attack on the Indian Parliament which came close to assassinating the entire
cabinet.
Meanwhile, starting in the late 1990s, Beijing was increasingly alarmed by numerous developments, such as the US-led military intervention in the Balkans, the growing
active interests of the US and the EU in exploiting the energy reserves of Central Asia, the revival of Russia as a great power with grand-strategic pursuits, and the growing Indian
assertiveness. There emerged the possibility that the aggregate impact of these separate events would be the stalling of the PRC’s ascent as a continental and global hegemon.
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The PRC was initially calm regarding both US unilateral military undertakings—in Afghanistan and Iraq—since the US would not tackle the grand-strategic issues and focused only on perceived transient interests. More worrisome was the spate of the US-sponsored “color revolutions” which both Beijing and Moscow interpreted as Washington’s efforts to consolidate regional hegemony in areas they considered theirs. Thus, by the turn of the new
millennium, Beijing resolved to proactively forestall all “conspiracies” and “grand designs” which might impede the PRC’s ascent. By the middle of the decade, Beijing decided
to prioritize the undermining of the US strategic posture in the eastern hemisphere.
The most important driving force behind the formulation and adoption of this grand strategy was General Chi Haotian, Chief of the General Staff in 1987-92 and Minister of Defense in 1993-2003. It can be argued that these rather limited (in global perspective) strategic surges, and those that are still unfolding, are the first steps and harbingers of
the PRC’s global surge outlined by Chi Haotian in the series of secret lectures he delivered to the Chinese High Command in 2003-04, at the peak of his power.
Chi’s main point was that there was an historic transformation of the PRC’s global posture. He argued that “if we refer to the 19th Century as the British Century, and the
20th century as the American Century, then the 21st Century will be the Chinese Century. …We must greet the arrival of the Chinese Century by raising high the banner of
national revitalization.” To become a global power, the PRC must reassert itself politically and militarily. In this context, Chi articulated the urgent imperative for the PRC to surge and take control over the energy and mineral resources crucial to its economic development, as well as the worldwide transportation routes. Chi went as far as antici-
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pating such global struggle to escalate to a fateful war against the US which would involve the use of chemical and biological—but not nuclear—weapons against the continental US.
Chi argued that becoming a leading world power necessitated a profound shift in the PRC’s involvement in world affairs. “What is a world power? A nation employing hegemony
is a world power! … All problems in China … in the end are all problems involving the fight for Chinese hegemony.”
However, the war for the ascent of the PRC as a global hegemon need not be a conventional war. Rather, Chi envisaged the PRC benefitting from the aggregate impact of seemingly unrelated “incidents” and “crises” worldwide with the PRC getting directly involved only in the final decisive phase. Chi was convinced that such multi-faceted war was inevitable and a precondition for the global historic ascent of the PRC.
“Marxism pointed out that violence is the midwife for the birth of the new society. Therefore war is the midwife for the birth of China’s century. As war approaches, I am
full of hope for our next generation.” The key element of the post-Chi PRC grand strategy was (and is) the conviction that the West had no staying power, strategic-military
resolve, and ability to withstand prolonged attrition. PRC military analysis of the US/NATO war in Afghanistan stresses this point. At the beginning of the 21stCentury, the PRC focused on both nuclear and non-nuclear contingency plans for a war with the US over Taiwan which would inevitably evolve into a fateful war for the control of the Pacific and EastAsia. These contingency plans would have a decisive impact on the PRC’s grand strategy toward the Heart of Asia. The turning point was a series of internal Strategy Documents
authored and issued by the Military Commission of
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the CPC Central Committee between August 1999 and February 2000. At the core of these documents is Beijing’s conviction that “the possibility of dramatic use of military
means”, including nuclear weapons, “has markedly increased”. The August 1999 Document elucidated the logic for war over Taiwan. The PRC was convinced that the
“American intervention” could be most destructive but not strategically decisive. Hence, “even if the situation becomes very bad”due to US stand-off strikes, the PRC“can still take
control over Taiwan before the US forces reach their full strength. Then the US will be left with the option of a war of revenge like the Gulf War against Iraq or the aerial war
against Yugoslavia.” Moreover, the PLA’s analysis of US operations suggested that the US would be exhausted and the logistical and support system be near collapse at the end of an intense first round of operations. “After the first strike, the US forces will face problems of supplies and equipment, giving us the opportunity for great offensives and triumph in major battles.” At this point, Beijing concluded, the US would have to either withdraw or cross the nuclear threshold. Either way, south-east China would have been ruined by then.
The February 2000 document stressed that point.
The US objective was to confront and contain the PRC and thus create a new Cold War-type environment. The document warned that Washington was misreading Beijing.
Recent military experience had made the US complacent to the point of failing to notice that the PRC was neither Iraq nor Serbia. Therefore, a US intervention in a future war with the PRC would most likely be an air campaign. For the PRC, the document cautioned, this meant
that the coastal economic and civilian infrastructure would be hit whenever the PRC reunited Taiwan by force. However, the study concluded, China should be able to with-
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stand a long war because of its great strategic depth and rich strategic resources.
Ultimately, the outcome of the war with the US over Taiwan would be decided by the ability to withstand long term attrition and tolerate mounting losses, a stoicism which had always been China’s strongest point. In the Autumn of 2000, Beijing resigned to the inevitable destruction of its main economic power base in any future war with the United States. Hence, by late 2000, Beijing determined that the PRC would be able to prevail in any US military
intervention aimed to disrupt the reunification of Taiwan by force if China had in place the mechanism for economic resurrection.
Therefore, Beijing resolved that in order to survive any future war, the PRC must embark on a crash building of a “behind the Urals” alternate national infrastructure.
This infrastructure — and hence the key to the PRC’s ability to prevail in, and rebound from, a future US-Sino war—is in the remote western parts of China. A late November
2000 study for “the top leadership” in Beijing defined “the enormity” of the forthcoming crash program. The study stated that “the top leadership harbored a more in-depth strategic idea in making up their minds to engage in large-scale development of west China, namely, they want to break through US containment and build China into a country with strategic emphasis on its western regions”. To accomplish these strategic objectives, the study
stated up-front, the PRC would have to “improve China’s economic structure and the environment of west China, and build ideal homes for 500-million people in these regions”.
The study stressed that the imperative of the PRC’s “consideration for the westward switch of its strategic emphasis is to contend for the core of Asia. Xinjiang is the heart of the
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Asian continent. The Tibet and Qinghai plateaus are China’s ‘Golan Heights’, without which China’s land territory will diminish 40 percent. Even without mentioning their abundant resources, their geographical locations alone are important enough for China to protect these two strategic heights with all-out efforts.” (Note their April 2008 mobilization of thousands of thugs to combat a handful of Pro-Tibet demonstrators at the Canberra Olympic Torch rally)
The study emphasized the grand strategic ramifications of the strategic shift.
“After China completes the westward switch of its strategic emphasis, the impact will expand to the Black Sea in the west and the Indian Ocean in the south. These are exactly the strategic hinterlands of Russia and India,” the study pointed out. “It can be predicted that the large-scale development of west China will have a far-reaching impact on the entire region. China’s relations with its two strong neighbors — India and Russia — will become very tense and unstable.” The study stressed that given the grand strategic ramifications
of this strategic evolution for both India and Russia, a building confrontation with both countries was all but inevitable. “Unquestionably, geographically speaking,
China’s western regions average 3,000 to 4,000 meters above sea level, overlooking the North-West Asian plateau and the Indian Peninsula, both of which being the backyards
of Russia and India. … For India and Russia, this is very terrible. By then, Kazakhstan and Mongolia, which rely heavily on Russia, as well as India’s neighbors Bangladesh
and Burma, might possibly incline toward China. Thus, China’s build-up in its western regions will be like a serious disease in the vital organs of India and Russia.” For Beijing, however, the grand strategic benefits visà-vis the United States were far more important than coping with the adverse ramifications vis-à-vis Russia and India.
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If medications have not been flourishing, your physician may recommend the best ways to keep the treatment safe prix viagra pfizer for you. When a man suffers from the problem, he does not achieve or keep erections sturdy enough for a normal sexual intercourse with the female partner. 100mg viagra You can also regularly online pharmacies viagra practice walking and jogging. When the raisins will get swollen, consume the raisins and then drink the generic viagra canadian full glass of milk. The study argued that the principal “advantage of switching the strategic emphasis to western regions is to gain the initiative in contending with the United States.
Dealing with the United States in new regions can help China get away from US containment and make the US encirclement line longer.” Ultimately, the study stressed, the
fate of the PRC as a great power depended on its ability to quickly shift the strategic emphasis westward. Handling this westward surge properly “will enable China to break
through the US encirclement line. In Chinese history, dynasties that successfully exercised control over Xinjiang and other western regions flourished and prospered, and
dynasties that lost these regions finally met their doom. This is the strategic value of developing China’s western regions. This is also the more in-depth reason why the central
authorities are using such huge resources to build ‘another China’ in western regions, whereas other political and economic objectives only serve as a foil.”
In order to implement the massive build-up of strategic-industrial infrastructure, as well as sustain operations at times of war and post-war resurrection, it was deemed imperative for the PRC to have independent energy supplies for the “behind the Urals” alternate national infrastructure. Hence, the quintessence of Beijing’s assertive strategy
throughout the Heart of Asia would become dominating the region’s energy resources and supplies while preventing all real and potential foes from either access to the energy
reserves or ability to threaten the PRC’s access. Through the Trans-Asian Axis, Beijing would be able to dominate the energy resources of the Persian Gulf,Central Asia, the Caucasus, and the Far East as well as control the on-land energy supplies to East Asia through the Pan-Asia Continental Oil Bridge. The Chinese naval build-up and
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surge was poised into the oil-rich South China Sea, and via Myanmar, also to controlling the Strait of Malacca, the main commercial sea lanes to East Asia for both oil and exports. Beijing was, and still is, convinced, and not without reason, that the dominance over the flow of energy into East Asia could be transformed into regional hegemony. By the middle of the first decade of the 21st Century, Beijing was amazed that the US wars remained futile and debilitating. The US made no effort to pursue strategic goals such as the containment, let alone stifling, of Iran despite heated
rhetoric about the Iranian nuclear program. Nor did the US attempt to contain Pakistan despite growing evidence of Pakistan-origin sponsorship of jihadist terrorism in India
and the Taliban in Afghanistan. For the history- conscientious China, most alarming was the evolution of the European Union-Russian Federation (EU-RF) relations into a
genuine “heartlands” geo-strategic bloc projecting presence into Central and South Asia, the Middle East and North Africa. The Iran-sponsored subversion and undermining of the greater Middle East, North Africa and the Sahel proved effective in the short-term stalling of the EU-RF progress, but also incapable of reversing the predominant mega-trends. Hence, Beijing resolved to escalate and expand its own surge.
By now, the evolution of the PRC economy and patterns of industrialization necessitated the expediting of the shipment eastward of Central Asia’s hydrocarbons via the Indian Ocean in order to quickly reach the industrial zones of South-East China.
Strategically, this requires the PRC to control the same pipeline routes southward via Afghanistan and Pakistan it was accusing the US of conspiring to obtain in the 1990s.
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Cognizant that its surge westward was profoundly altering the geo-strategic and geo-economic posture in Central Asia, the PRC elected to gradually revive the Russian-Chinese “Great Game” in order to contain and deter Russia from challenging its surge, thus also ameliorating the Europeans’ competitive access to the region’s energy resources.
The PRC resolved to undermine the inherently pro-Russia political order in Central Asia by using the spread of jihadism and narco-criminality from Afghanistan and Pakistan as its primary instrument. With Russia on the defensive, there grew the local need for PRC economic and political support and, consequently, consent to the diversion of hydrocarbons away from the West. Concurrently, the PRC intensified its surge through the Indian Ocean by exploiting the international effort to fight the pirates off the Horn of Africa. Once completed, this
PRC surge westward would link-up with the growing PRC strategic-economic presence in west and central Africa. In sub-Saharan Africa,PRC intelligence is using Iran’s jihadist
proxies, particularly within the HizbAllah-affiliated Lebanese- Shi’ite community, for a myriad of covert operations. The PRC objective is to consolidate strategic hegemony in
order to dominate its access to and control over the regions’ vast hydrocarbon and mineral resources, as well as their safe transport to China via east Africa and the Indian Ocean
SLOC.(what is SLOC? exactly?)
This global pincer surge westwards comes on top of the intensifying Chinese efforts to strategically encircle and stifle India, as well as undermine its stability through Pakistan-and PRC-sponsored terrorism and subversion. The transformation of Pakistan into the regional power — a strategic development which some analysts have felt would necessitate the Pakistani control over the bulk of the territory of Afghanistan—would be the most important facet
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of implementing the PRC ascent in the Heart of Asia. All the while, Washington’s wars continued to be focused on the attainment of political instant gratification. The US
strategic posture and war aims have not changed as the entire world—most notably the surrounding region—have been going through an historical grand-strategic transformation.
The US has remained focused on establishing “viable political order” in Baghdad and Kabul even as the Middle East and South Asia have profoundly changed. However, the PRC and its allies could not ignore the fact that the US and the NATO allies have been sustaining large
military forces and undertakings, as well as high-cost warfare, in these theaters for close to a decade.Hence, there existed the possibility that Washington would one day discover
the grand-strategic high-stakes involved and redirect the existing US and NATO forces and resources to pursuing the meaningful objectives. Such realignment would find a willing and eager partner in the EU-RF “common Eurasian home” alliance, thus creating a global posture detrimental to the PRC ascent. In this context, Beijing and its allies consider the Georgia crisis in the Summer of 2008 a milestone event because it exposed both the strategic weakness and inaction of Washington — the driving force behind Tbilisi’s reckless gambit—and the decisive assertiveness of Moscow which reacted and acted as a superpower. As well,
Beijing remained most furious at Washington for exploiting the PRC’s time of glory—the Beijing Olympic Games—as a strategic diversion for the US anti-Russian provocation. (note again the Apr 2008 Canberra Olympic torch rally thuggery by thousands of CCP loyalists bussed in – an event poorly understood at the time)
Currently, it seems certain that Beijing has been convinced that there emerged for the PRC a narrow window of historical opportunities between two milestones. The first milestone is the continued US self-debilitation, now aggravated by the economic crisis in which the US is
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economically beholden to the PRC and thus reluctant to act decisively.
The second milestone is the evolving ascent of the EU-RF bloc. Since the EU-RF heartland strategic posture would not go away, it became imperative for Beijing to cajole and/or coerce Washington to abandon its war efforts.To do this it had to prove that the war effort was unwinnable and futile, while facilitating acceptable/honorable exit and closure.
Iran has already done so for the Iraq war. All the while, the PRC and its allies—mainly Iran and Pakistan—have intensified their own strategic surges in pursuit of both their own regional self-interests and furthering the PRC global grand-strategic interests. The deployment of PRC and Iranian fighters in Autumn 2010 to a joint exercise in Turkey—where they substituted for the disinvited US, Israeli, and NATO air forces — epitomizes the profound transformation of the regional strategic-military posture.
In the latter part of the first decade of the 21st Century, the PRC committed to a still unfolding strategic surge at the Heart of Asia in quest for both grand-strategic posture as
well as privileged access to the hydrocarbon reserves and their transporting routes to China. The sense of urgency was motivated by Beijing’s realization that, in 2007, the PRC became a net importer of hydrocarbons after almost two decades of self-sufficiency. Energy
security thus becomes an issue of paramount significance. Beijing’s first priority is to restore stability in Pakistan — “our Israel”, in the words of a very senior PRC official —
while diminishing US influence. The PRC supports and encourages the restoration of what was perceived as the one-time Army-Islamist alliance in Islamabad. Secondly, the PRC wants to reduce the level of violence in Afghanistan in order to expedite the withdrawal of the US and NATO forces. Having sponsored a negotiated agreement
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with the Taliban, Pakistan would then emerge as the dominant power in Afghanistan, and the PRC would be able to build the TAPC pipelines from Central Asia to Gwadar on Pakistan’s Arabian Sea (Baluchistan) coast. To the west, the PRC is helping Iran in consolidating an
anti-US posture in the Middle East based on the wave of alliances between Iran-Iraq-Syria (which delivers Lebanon and Gaza Strip) and Turkey—as demonstrated in the Autumn
2010 Anatolian Eagle exercise. Simultaneously, the PRC is capitalizing on the warranted and growing anxiety of the Gulf Arabs, and especially Saudi Arabia, in order to position itself as the arbiter and guarantor against Iranian attacks. The main instrument was promising Riyadh — both directly and via Islamabad — a nuclear umbrella against Iran. Toward this end, Pakistani Ghauri-II SSMs (1,400 mile range) deployed to the military garrison in Al-Sulaiyil, south of Riyadh,where the Pakistani crews keep
conducting “exercises”. Meanwhile, at least two nuclear warheads permanently stored in Kamra were earmarked for the defense of Saudi Arabia to be deployed on the personal instruction of King ‘Abdallah bin ‘Abd al-’Aziz al Sa’ud or his brother, Prince Muqran bin ‘Abd al-’Aziz al Sa’ud, Director General of Saudi Arabia General Intelligence Directorate. (Kamra is in the Punjab so I cannot see that giving the Saudis much comfort in an emergency)This arrangement also provides Pakistan with second-strike capabilities against India. This nuclear umbrella arrangement with the PRC-Pakistan has been formulated along the lines of the M-2 IRBMs agreement of 1988 which proved very successful during the 1991 Gulf war when both Pakistani and PRC crews deployed to Saudi Arabia as promised and launched a few missiles at the orders of then King Fahd. The PRC impetus to move fast came in Spring 2009 in response to rumblings in Washington that the US ability to begin implementing a new energy policy would largely
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dominate the pace and extent of the US disengagement and withdrawal from Afghanistan and Pakistan. Both Beijing and Islamabad remember that the pursuit of a TAPI (Turkmenistan-
Afghanistan-Pakistan-India) pipeline led the Clinton White House to initiate comprehensive dialogue with both Pakistan and the up-and-coming Taliban Administration in Afghanistan. By the late-1990s, the jihadist supreme leadership — both the Taliban leadership and Osama bin Laden’s inner-circle — were cognizant of the importance of the pipelines to the White House and were willing to make deals with Washington on security arrangements for both Afghanistan and an Islamist Pakistan. The gist of the “understanding” between the Clinton White House and the Taliban leadership was that in return for securing the pipelines across Afghanistan and preventing the jihadists (particularly bin Laden) from launching strikes against the heart of the West, the US would heavily subsidize the Taliban Administration and would recognize its legitimacy. Numerous captured jihadist documents
leave no doubt that since Autumn 1998 the uppermost jihadist leadership was fully briefed about the US-Taliban negotiations and that bin Laden agreed to technically abide by such an agreement should one be reached. (Indeed, the preparations for, and ultimate control over, the spectacular strike which would become 9/11 were moved to Pakistan and Persian Gulf states in order not to implicate the Taliban.) Meanwhile, Islamabad insisted that TAPI be made into TAP (that is,no oil and gas be shipped to India) and instead offered the US preferential conditions for loading oil and LNG at Pakistani ports. In May 2009, the Obama White House began floating the idea that since US forces were to remain in bases and installations throughout Afghanistan for the next few years, they would be in a position to also de-
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fend and secure a TAPI-type pipeline. (The new US megabase in Dasht-e-Margo is near where key TAPI facilities were to be located.) By then, however, the PRC was putting finishing touches on its own version of a southwards pipeline: TAP Cor Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-China pipeline. The growing cooperation between the PRC, Iran, and Turkmenistan
in the energy field is focused on the PRC’s long term plans to ship gas from both Turkmenistan and Iran to the port of Gwadar, Pakistan, where the PRC is building strategic naval facilities, and where the Iran-Pakistan (IP) and the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan (TAP) pipelines were originally supposed to intersect. The implementation of the PRC plans would deprive the US of the ability to construct and control a TAP pipeline. On top, there
came, in early June 2009, the Iranian proposal to purchase huge quantities of gas from Azerbaijan in the context of this strategic development, thus making Azerbaijan a potential
culprit in the Chinese-Iranian initiative. On June 4, 2009, the PRC signed a deal with Turkmenistan according to which the PRC would provide $3-billion as a “loan” for the development of the vast South Yolotan natural gas field in return for preferential access to Turkmenistan’s vast reserves. The Yolotan field is located near the Afghan border. The Yolotan field likely holds at least six-trillion cubic meters of gas, making it one of the five largest deposits in the world. The PRC announced the acceleration of the construction of a 4,300-mile pipeline from Turkmenistan to China with the new timetable for the
completion of construction by the end of 2009. However, with an annual capacity below 40-billion cubic meters of gas, this pipeline is already insufficient to meet all the PRC’s
needs. Moreover, the bulk of the PRC’s increase in gas consumption is in the industrialized and urban centers along
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the southern and eastern shores, and the Chinese internal pipeline network is incapable of moving the necessary quantities of gas from the north-west (the border with Central Asia) to the south-east. Concurrently, the PRC’s China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) signed a deal with Iran for about $4.7- to $5-billion for the development of the upstream sector in
the offshore South Pars giant gas field. Daily production at the site would reach some50-million cubic meters, or some 18-billion cubic meters a year. The deal is so important for
Tehran to warrant the unilateral cancellation of an outstanding contract with France’s Total (ostensibly because of delays in development work). However, Iranian senior officials stressed that in the PRC “Iran has found its long-sought-after partner to help develop part of the world’s largest natural-gas field”. Although CNPC acquired rights to use the nearby Pars LNG project and loading facilities, PRC officials indicated the PRC was apprehensive
about the safety of shipping in the Persian Gulf. Hence, the PRC considers the construction of a pipeline to Chah Bahar and Gwadar—that is, a version of the IP pipeline— as the optimal long-term solution. In its dealings with both Iran and Turkmenistan, the PRC expressed interest in buying as much gas as possible, with no questions asked and no haggling over prices. The PRC was also eager and ready to help — both financially and technologically—with the construction of the TAP and IP pipelines to the gas liquefaction facilities they have been planning to build in Gwadar. The PRC success is potentially a mortal blow to the US
and the West’s strategic posture in the region. The PRC is the closest special ally of Pakistan and is willing to rely on Pakistan for furthering the PRC’s own strategic objectives. The construction of a TAPC pipeline would require PRC
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and Pakistani dominance over the entire route from Kushka on the Afghanistan-Turkmenistan border to Gwadar. As well, Iranian dominance is imperative in the Herat area.
Significantly, the original motive for the creation by the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) — with the US Central Intelligence Agency—of the Taliban movement, at
the behest of the US in the mid-1990s, was to control the Kushka-Herat-Qandahar-Quetta road and secure the then-anticipated construction of TAPI. Many observers believe that Pakistan could restore control over these routes quite quickly and effectively. That could be achieved by the ISI’s reaching out and openly allying with its former allies and protégés; that is, the tribal and jihadist forces now spearheading the war against the US and NATO forces, as well as ceasing the war against the tribal and jihadist forces inside Pakistan. Such an initiative would significantly reduce the level of anti-US and anti-NATO violence in Afghanistan, reduce the jihadist insurgency in Pakistan’s tribal lands, but it would also seal the fate of the Hamid Karzai Administration (he is still there a decade later) in Afghanistan as a viable ostensibly-pro-US entity. It has always been Islamabad’s strategic position that such deals and cooperation were preferable to the perpetual unwinnable fighting the US is coercing the region to undertake. Now, it could be
construed, the PRC patronage—motivated by geo-strategic and geo-economic considerations—provides Pakistan with the formal excuse and political protection to drastically change its policy. In December 2009, Beijing consolidated its first strategic victory in the new energy struggle. Chairman Hu Jintao embarked on a triumphant trip in energy-rich Central Asia. In Ashgabat,he chaired an energy summit with the leaders of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and
Turkmenistan. As part of the summit, the four presidents
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inaugurated a new 1,200-mile pipeline connecting the Turkmen gas fields with China’s Xinjiang region. This was the first operational component of the Pan-Asia Continental
Oil Bridge, the system of pipelines connecting the north-west PRC with the three countries which were due to become fully operational in 2012. In his speech, Hu stressed that the opening of these pipelines constituted the beginning of a “long-term comprehensive strategic relationship” between the PRC and the states of Central Asia. Meanwhile, the PRC demand for oil increased at a record pace in 2010, jumping by 7.1 percent compared to the same period in 2009. In late 2010, oil imports accounted for 55 percent of available supplies for the economic-industrial market. There was also an increased demand for natural gas. By late 2010, imports soared to approximately 15.3-billion cubic feet of LNG, a 30 percent increase relative to the same period of 2009. Significantly, the underlying cause of this increased demand was the sustained economic growth. This increase also means increased reliance on oil and gas imports, making the security of oil and gas supplies an issue of paramount importance for Beijing.
Moreover, forecasts prepared for the US Defense Department in late 2010 predicted that the PRC would import almost two-thirds of its oil by 2015 and four-fifths by 2030. The change in LNG consumption was expected to be even more dramatic. In late 2010, oil met nearly 20 percent of the total energy consumption in the PRC, while gas accounted for three percent. According to PRC projections, gas was expected to constitute 10 percent of the energy use by 2020. And while the PRC has been expanding the drilling in the South China Sea (with tremendous security challenges due to the PRC’s unilateral territorial demands)(never worried the CCP when they made their territorial grab in 2014), there is no substitute to the growing volumes of imports and strategic storage of hydrocarbons.
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Furthermore, in late-2010, Beijing committed to the accelerated construction of the second phase of its strategic petroleum reserve: a key element of the “behind the Urals”
alternate national infrastructure. When completed in late-2011, the national reserves would hold around 45-million tons of crude oil. The first phase of the strategic petroleum reserve
was completed in 2009, holding some 26-million barrels. Beijing stressed that this storage of oil “aims to ensure the availability of supplies during extraordinary circumstances”;
that is, the possible future war with the US in which the economic-industrial basin in south-east China will be destroyed. Meanwhile, by the middle of the first decade of the 21st
Century, as the US George W.Bush Administration was becoming more assertive in stressing the US right to unilaterally go to war, Beijing became increasingly apprehensive about the consequences of the escalating US face-off with the PRC. There was renewed apprehension in Beijing about the possibility of confrontation with the US over the growing PRC assertiveness and ascent, particularly in relation to Taiwan or the Heart of Asia, escalating into US bombing campaigns. Given the immense strategic value of Afghanistan
and Pakistan, the PRC’s intelligence community reportedly found it incredulous that the US would just walk away from such a crucial region once “the al-Qaida threat” had been removed.
Hence, the Central Military Commission (CMC) and the PLA High Command focused anew on preventing and deterring the US. In 2004, on instruction from Hu Jintao (by then President of the PRC and Chairman of the CMC), the PRC tacitly adopted the doctrinal tenet first conceptualized by Jiang Zemin back in 2002 (then President of the PRC and Chairman of the CMC). “China developed strategic nuclear weapons, not to attack but for defense,” Jiang ob-
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served. The PRC’s nuclear forces are “a kind of great deterrent toward nuclear weapons states and makes them not dare to act indiscriminately”. Indeed, in 2005, the Second Artillery Corps introduced new “command and control decision making during a joint
campaign” principles that raised the possibility of using nuclear weapons in response to the new generation of hi-tech weaponry the US might use in a future war with the PRC. Formally, however, as articulated in two authoritative doctrinal statements issued in 2006 and 2008, the PRC remained beholden to the no-first-use policy. For example, the 2006 Science of Campaigns notes specified that the PRC would launch nuclear counter-strikes “only after the
enemy implements a nuclear strike against us” so that Chinese nuclear strikes would only be “implemented under nuclear conditions”. However, as the PRC grand-strategic ascent and assertiveness are adversely affecting US vital interests both in the Heart of Asia and in North-East Asia, there emerged the imperative for Beijing to clearly warn the US against escalating any regional crisis to even non-nuclear strikes against the PRC or its military forces (on the high seas, in the Korean Peninsula,(the CCP 100% controlled little mate) or while invading Taiwan). In Autumn 2010, this crucial doctrinal change was made official with the issue of a Central Military Commission document containing instructions to the Second Artillery Corps titled “Lowering the Threshold of Nuclear Threats”. According to the Commission’s document, the Second Artillery Corps
“will adjust the nuclear threat policy if a nuclear missile possessing country carries out a series of air strikes against key strategic targets in our country with absolutely superior
conventional weapons”. The document further instructs that the PLA “must carefully consider” a nuclear response to conventional-
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weapon attacks on PRC sovereign territory (a definition which includes all lands and ocean-spaces unilaterally claimed by the PRC). The document specifies that non-nuclear
strikes against any “leading urban centers” as well as “atomic or hydroelectric power facilities” could now trigger a nuclear counter-strike. 43 Moreover, any non-nuclear
strikes deemed“an existential threat to the Chinese government” or “crucial interests” warrant nuclear retaliation. Fearing confusion, the document stresses that the Second
Artillery Corps “must strictly follow” the orders of the Central Military Commission
and “must not adjust”its nuclear stance independently, that is, in accordance with the PRC’s
publicly stated doctrine. Presently, Beijing is observing the West’s resolve as an indicator
of what’s ahead for the PRC’s own global ascent. If the US leads an expedited withdrawal—as the Obama White House yearns to do—the US would not only hand over the venue to a region of crucial importance for the energy security of the West, especially Europe. Such a withdrawal
would also confirm Beijing’s conviction about the US’s vulnerability to attrition and prolonged conflicts to the point of giving up vital strategic interests rather than
committing to open-ended military commitments. It has therefore become imperative for Beijing to test the US resolve and commitment to the Heart of Asia. PRC grand strategy is characterized by historic long term and broad vista. Implementation is characterized by
miniscule-yet-irreversible steps. The West often misses the nuanced maneuvers and undertakings until it is too late. A priority strategic objective
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43 The PRC’s Three Gorges Hydro Dam, by itself, has more than four times greater electric power generation capacity than the entire Western Australian south-west system (22,500MW versus 5,500MW). Aside from the massive loss of life and disruption from the wall of water, should this dam be breached by military strike, the removal of it would shut down a large section of the PRC grid, which is why it warrants such escalation threats in PRC nuclear strategic doctrine. A priority strategic objective of the PRC has been to stifle India, the historic nemesis. India is China’s irreconcilable foe because the five-millennia- old Hindu civilization would never tolerate hegemony by the comparably old and proud civilization. The current Indo-PRC face-off over the Indian Ocean, the Heart of Asia and, ultimately, leadership of the developing world are merely contemporary manifestations of this age-old enmity. In this dynamic, Pakistan is the PRC’s instrument of choice and closest ally. Facilitating and assisting Pakistan’s ascent and consolidation of control overmuch of Afghanistan not only strengthens Pakistan, but also improves the PRC’s own energy supplies while blocking India’s access to energy resources in Central Asia and Iran. PRC strategic thinking is that the US and NATO presence in the region is a major irritant which has to be defeated and banished.(Check! Done-well at least largely banished) As a result, the PRC must be expected to continue bolstering its presence in South Asia, attempting to dominate Pakistan, and empowering, at least in some ways, the Taliban in the process.
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