Book review; Leveringhaus on Cabestan, 'Facing China: The Prospect for War and Peace'

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Leveringhaus on Cabestan, 'Facing China: The Prospect for War and Peace' [Review]

H-Net Reviews

Cabestan, Jean-Pierre.  Facing China: The Prospect for War and Peace. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2023. 248 pp. $34.00 (paper), ISBN 9781538169896.

Reviewed by Nicola Leveringhaus (King's College London)
Published on H-Diplo (November, 2024)
Commissioned by Seth Offenbach (Bronx Community College, The City University of New York)

Printable Version: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=60707

Facing China offers an accessible all-in-one analysis of the risk of war with China, whether over Taiwan, the South China Sea, the Diaoyu/Senkaku islands, or the Indian border. A great merit of this book is its clarity of expression: the reader need not be an International Relations or area specialist to understand the cautionary arguments about the prospects for war today. The idea for the book stems from an article by the author in 2018 that evolved into a monograph published in French in 2021.[1] This English-language translation of the book, published in 2023, remains as timely as ever, with questions around the inevitability of conflict and all-out-war in Asia still looming large.

The author engages wholeheartedly with the dominant US debates on China’s rise and the potential for conflict, including the now-everywhere analogy of a Thucydides trap.[2] The introduction states plainly that Graham Allison’s 2017 book Destined for War “inspired this one” (p. 7). As such, this book sits squarely and comfortably in US debates about Chinese grand strategy and the challenges China’s rise seemingly poses to US primacy in Asia and beyond—from Destined for War to Rush Doshi’s 2021 The Long Game. 

In assessing possible risks of war, four areas of inquiry are outlined: (1) the potential for nuclearization, namely whether major war can avoid escalation to the nuclear level; (2) alternative domains for conflict: cyber and technological arms racing; (3) the likelihood that China seeks military conflict with Taiwan, over the South China Sea and with Japan as opposed to continued grey zone tactics; and finally, (4) Beijing’s ability and desire to use force beyond the region to protect its interests and impose its will on the world. Of these four, the book excels in addressing the third concern: possible conflict over Taiwan, the South China Sea, and Japan.

By far the strongest analysis of the book comes in chapter 3, on Taiwan. Indeed, this was one of the richest and most balanced accounts of possible conflict over Taiwan that the reviewer has read, offering meaningful political, social, and military accounts of conflict from the perspective of the PRC, Taiwan, and the United States. The discussion of Taiwanese debates and readiness at a social and military level is especially thoughtful and relevant. Indeed, in 2025, Taiwan will be streaming a new TV series, Zero Day, to further sound public alarm about the prospect of conflict. The sobering conclusion to this chapter is twofold: first, if the PRC does seek to take the island by force, then the war in Ukraine illustrates for Beijing the “need for speed” (p. 109) to secure military victory; and second, only democratization of the PRC can truly end the prospect of conflict over Taiwan. Both claims, though thought-provoking, could have been more fleshed out. For instance, how might “need for speed” be affected by possible crises occurring in parallel in the region such as between the DPRK and ROK? The second claim, though compelling in its boldness, is left unproblematized, not least because the wider democratic peace thesis in International Relations does not offer much reassurance here.[3]

The book’s main analytical strength—on the prospects of war over Taiwan—is reflected in the length of the third chapter, at over forty pages. By contrast, the chapter on the South China Sea (chapter 4), is half the size, at just over twenty pages. This chapter is excellent as an introduction to the topic, offering a succinct historical account of claimant narratives as well as the legal implications of the 2016 international arbitration case presented by the Philippines against China. The subsequent chapter, on the Diaoyu/Senkaku islands (chapter 5), is only fourteen pages; and the border conflict with India is even shorter, at nine pages. A reorganization of the chapters might have rebalanced the proportions, for example, given the importance Japan now attaches to the security of Taiwan, the discussion of China-Japan conflict might have flowed better if it had come straight after the chapter on Taiwan, rather than following the South China Sea chapter. The India chapter is too short to engage fully in widespread public debates in India on China. The last chapter, on missions abroad, is, as the book makes clear, really about the aspirational projection of future military power, not present or near-term capabilities. One wonders if these last two chapters—on India and missions abroad—were needed. Removing them would have allowed for longer empirical treatments of the South China Seas and Diaoyu/Senkaku islands, matching the depth of analysis in the Taiwan chapter.

Beyond Taiwan, the book sparks important thinking in the nuclear domain. The first of these is how changes to US strategic capabilities and doctrine since the early 2000s have affected China’s own calculations of military readiness and victory in war. For decades, Chinese scholarship has cautioned that US capabilities in the strategic domain seek not mutual vulnerability but underpin a desire for damage limitation and superiority against China.[4] Chapter 2 triggers these questions but misses an opportunity to examine Chinese concerns directly or deeply, whether in terms of US extended missile defense arrangements in East Asia since the 1990s or a series of US nuclear posture reviews since George W. Bush’s presidency (2001, 2016, and 2020) that speaks to a desire for damage limitation. Claims that the People’s Liberation Army has not ruled out using a neutron bomb in the Western Pacific (p. 19) are also off the mark given that officially China has no neutron bomb capabilities.[5] A second nuclear question relates to the catalyst for nuclear war between China and the United States over Taiwan. The scholarly debate on possible nuclear weapons use between the United States and China within the nuclear field is much less sanguine than the book presents. While most nuclear scholars would agree that the prospect of deliberate nuclear use is relatively low over Taiwan, many would assert that the risk of accidental use is worryingly high (and since the war in Ukraine, the risk of nuclear signaling/threats has arguably grown, too).[6] This concern over accidental use is in large part because there exist very few guardrails, whether in the form of official track 1 nuclear dialogues or other agreed confidence-building measures between the United States and China. Shockingly, despite repeated attempts (the most visible one by former US president Barack Obama in 2008) nuclear forces on both sides have yet to meet and dialogue with one another. Moreover, the official crisis hotline that exists has been tested at various points (in 1998 following the accidental NATO bombing of the Chinese embassy and in 2001 during the EP-3 incident, for example) and has not proved effective, with China seemingly reluctant to engage quickly through that platform.[7] Wider literature on entanglement speaks compellingly as to how technology (especially dual-use, hot-swappable warheads such as the DF-26) can confuse rivals and raise the stakes for escalation in a crisis.[8] In this vein, the third chapter, on Taiwan, would have particularly benefited from reference to entanglement and misunderstandings, engaging perhaps with Catilin Talmadge’s seminal work in 2017 on whether the United States might accidently push China into a nuclear corner over Taiwan.[9]

Nuclear questions aside, two other factors are left for greater development in the book. The first of these is the role of economic statecraft in any coming conflict with China. Here, the role of not just the United States, but also Southeast Asian, South Asian, and European states would have added an interesting angle to analysis. Indeed, any military conflict with China over Taiwan is now predicted to cause significantly more economic harm in Europe than the ongoing war in Ukraine. For its part, the Russian factor when facing China does not receive much treatment beyond what the war in Ukraine means for the region at the time of the first edition of the book (2021). Yet since then, Russia has deepened its security relationship with China, as well as other states in the region like North Korea—how does this affect the prospect of war across Taiwan, the South China Seas, and the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands? It should be said that assessments of Russia’s support for China in any future conflict with the United States remain poorly appreciated in the wider scholarship. Since at least 2019, Russia has been open about its collaboration with China on space, satellite, and laser technologies, which might offer China the ability to develop a launch-on-warning (LOW) capability it does not yet have that could be useful in any future conflicts with the United States. Other areas of China-Russia collaboration include joint military exercises, which have not ceased during the ongoing war in Ukraine. These exercises have so far not included a nuclear element but might perhaps in the future. A third area for expansion relates to basing, with the potential for Russia to open up and share its bases for the PLA in any future conflict against the United States.

As with nuclearization, the role of economic statecraft and the China-Russia factor in any possible future conflict with China is ongoing and difficult to assess. This book offers a great introduction (and, on Taiwan, an especially robust deep dive) on what remains one of the most, if not the most, important geopolitical question of our times. Above all, this book is both scholarly and policy-relevant—what more could a reader ask for?

Notes

[1]. “Le piege de Thucydide vu de Pekin. Affirmer son leadership, eviter la guerre [Beijing’s view of the Thucydides Trap: Asserting leadership, avoiding war],” Le Debat, 202 (November-December 2018): 4-15, and Demain la Chine: guerre ou paix?[China Tomorrow: War or Peace?] (Paris: Gallimard, 2021).

[2]. Gideon Rachman, “Year in a Word: Thucydides's trap,” Financial Times, December 18, 2018; and for a rejection of the term in our understanding of US-China relations, see Hal Brands and Michael Beckley, Danger Zone: The Coming Conflict with China (New York: W. W. Norton, 2022).

[3]. Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, James D. Morrow, Randolph M. Siverson, and Alastair Smith, “An Institutional Explanation of the Democratic Peace,” American Political Science Review 93, no. 4 (1999): 791–807, doi:10.2307/2586113. ISSN 0003-0554. JSTOR 2586113. S2CID 54953575.

[4]. A recent technical assessment can be found in Bin Li and Riqiang Wu, “U.S. Strategy of Damage Limitation vis‑à‑vis China: Long‑Term Programs and Effects,” China International Strategy Review 6 (2024): 9-21, https://doi.org/10.1007/s42533-024-00153-w.

[5]. It developed that ability but abandoned the program during the Cold War. Jonathan Ray, “China’s ‘Capitalist Bomb’: Inside the Chinese Neutron Bomb Program,” CIRA, January 1, 2015, https://cira.exovera.com/research-analysis/china/red-chinas-capitalist-bomb-inside-the-chinese-neutron-bomb-program/

[6]. Sheryn Lee, “Towards Instability: The Shifting Nuclear-Conventional Dynamics in the Taiwan Strait,” Journal for Peace and Nuclear Disarmament 5, issue sup. 1 (2022): 154–66, https://doi.org/10.1080/25751654.2022.2055912.

[7]. Christian Ruhl, “Beijing Is Unavailable to Take Your Call: Why the US-China Crisis Hotline Doesn’t Work,” Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, June 24, 2024; and Brad Glosserman, “If a Phone Rings in a Forest and No One Answers, Is It a Hotline?,” Japan Times, July 2, 2024.

[8]. Tong Zhao and Li Bin, “The Underappreciated Risks of Entanglement: A Chinese Perspective,” in Entanglement: Russian and Chinese Perspectives on Non-Nuclear Weapons and Nuclear Risks, ed. James M. Acton (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2017), 47–75, http://carnegieendowment.org/files/Entanglement_interior_FNL.pdf.

[9]. Caitlin Talmadge, “Would China Go Nuclear? Assessing the Risk of Chinese Nuclear Escalation in a Conventional War with the United States,” International Security 40, no. 4 (2017): 50-92.

Dr. Nicola Leveringhaus is senior lecturer in war studies in the Department of War Studies, School of Security Studies, King’s College London, UK.

Citation: Nicola Leveringhaus. Review of Cabestan, Jean-Pierre. Facing China: The Prospect for War and Peace. H-Diplo, H-Net Reviews. November, 2024.
URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=60707

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