Are Japan, Australia, the United States and others prepared militarily to meet the CCP threat?
(Grant Newsham, March 27, 2023)
Transcript available below
About the speaker
Col. (Ret.) Grant Newsham is a Senior Fellow with the Center for Security Policy. He is also a Research Fellow at the Japan Forum for Strategic Studies, focusing on Asia/Pacific defense, political, and economic matters. He is a retired U.S. Marine Colonel and was the first U.S. Marine Liaison Officer to the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force.
He also served as reserve head of intelligence for Marine Forces Pacific and was the U.S. Marine attaché, US Embassy Tokyo on two occasions. Grant Newsham has more than 20 years of experience in Japan and elsewhere in Asia so he is well able to offer the Asian perspective on the strategic challenges China presents to Japan and Taiwan, and how the two of them may face that threat.
Transcript
Robert R. Reilly:
Hello and welcome to the Westminster Institute. I am Robert Reilly, its director. Today we are particularly pleased to welcome back to the Westminster Institute for another presentation on Asia, Grant Newsham, who is a Senior Fellow with the Center for Security Policy. He is also a Research Fellow at the Japan Forum for Strategic Studies, focusing on Asia/Pacific defense, political, and economic matters. He is a retired U.S. Marine Colonel and was the first U.S. Marine Liaison Officer to the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force and was the U.S. Marine attaché to the American Embassy in Tokyo twice.
Grant also served as reserve head of intelligence for Marine Forces Pacific. He is the author of a new book, When China Attacks: A Warning to America, which has just been released this week by Regnery Publishers. Grant has a rare depth of experience in Asia, including more than 20 years in Japan, so he is well qualified to address our subject today on Japan’s new defense policy along with how Australia and others, including the United States, are prepared militarily or not to meet the CCP threat, militarily and in other ways. Welcome back, Grant.
Grant Newsham:
I am glad to be here. Thank you.
Robert R. Reilly:
And congratulations on When China Attacks.
Grant Newsham:
Well, thanks. It was far more work than I expected, but I am glad it is done, so hopefully people will like it.
Robert R. Reilly:
It is well worthwhile, if I may say as one of your earliest readers. Grant, you know Asia like the back of your hand. You particularly know Japan well. You both speak Japanese and you have lived in that country for so long, both as a diplomat in your military capacity and in business.
Grant Newsham:
That is right.
Robert R. Reilly:
So you are very familiar with the domestic politics and foreign policy. Is it appropriate to describe what is taking place today under Prime Minister Kishida as a sea change in terms of foreign [and] defense policy?
Grant Newsham:
Oh, I think it is. You would not have seen anything like this happening even five years ago. Ten years ago, [this] would have been unthinkable, so this really is a huge change, but I would say it is as much as anything a psychological change on Japan’s part; this idea that, well, it is a dangerous neighborhood, Japan cannot rely on the United States exclusively the way it has. It was pathologically dependent, almost, on the U.S. for all those years.
It also allowed Japan to sort of pretend to be pacifist, but it was always a strange pacifism where you are a pacifist, but you are glad to have the Americans nearby to exterminate anyone who threatens you. But this really is a huge psychological change, and it is really from one end of Japan to the other, the political class down to the man on the street. The man on the street probably caught on sooner than the political class did, but nonetheless everything has changed.
But the thing now to watch for is what happens, what are the concrete effects of this, because it is easy to sort of wake up to a danger, but to actually know what to do to improve your national defense, to improve your military the way they need to, that is still in the early stages.
Robert R. Reilly:
Yeah, please describe the nature of the change that we are talking about.
Grant Newsham:
Well, the change is courtesy of Xi Jinping. The Chinese have just scared the daylights out of the Japanese, and the Chinese started bullying the Japanese at least a decade ago, particularly around the southern islands in Japan. The Chinese Coast Guard and Navy have been encroaching constantly, driving off Japanese fishermen from their traditional fishing grounds, so it is the Chinese threat that really is to thank for all of this.
So what Japan finds itself now is now it is saying look, we have to do something, and we have to be ready to fight if necessary. We need to be able to operate with the Americans, with some other partners as well, and it is unusual that Japan has gone about striking up partnerships with all sorts of countries, with the Australians, the British, the Italians, the French, things that were just unthinkable but now they are. Japan sees itself as in a really a fight for its life almost and it knows it needs to do something.
But the problem is the Japanese military has developed in a way that is not very helpful, so on paper it looks very good, but as a practical matter it is not able to fight a war. And the Japanese Navy is an exception to that, and the Japanese Navy also operates very well with the American Navy. But other than that, the three services, or the services in the Japan Self-Defense Force, really are not capable of fighting a war just yet, nor is Japan itself geared to fight at war.
They do not have the hardware. They do not have the ability to operate together. They do not have the war stocks, nothing like what they need. I sort of glibly said that if Japan had to fight, they would have enough for one salvo and maybe a couple hours of fighting, if that: a little glib, but not too far off.
Robert R. Reilly:
Well, their constitution also says they have forever renounced war.
Grant Newsham:
Well, yes, that is what it says. They have been reinterpreting it since almost as soon as the ink dried on it, and Japan has always been willing to do what it needs to do if it sees it in its interests. But they have also used the Constitution as like a get out of jail free card to tell the Americans they do not want to do something, just say it is unconstitutional. But the Constitution has been reinterpreted so many times that I see that as less of an obstacle, but it has shaped thinking to some extent.
Robert R. Reilly:
Considering the history of Japan’s activities in Asia from World War II, there are still some very bad memories. As Japan begins to rearm, will it re-awaken those memories? Is that going to be an obstacle, or is the threat from China so generally shared that those memories will be put to sleep or set aside because we have a different Japan today? What do you think?
Grant Newsham:
Yeah, I do not think it is much of an issue. Of course, the Chinese will use [the issue]. Obviously, some of it is serious, just resentment over what Japan did in that area, but it is also manipulated politically far more than it should be. Korea, the same thing, although the new Korean administration in South Korea has tried to make amends and restore the relationship with Japan that the previous Korean administration really, really hurt.
But other than that, if you go throughout Asia, you will find the Japanese are actually well regarded and the war is not much of an issue, if any. In fact, some places, like Indonesia, for example, and Vietnam, actually see the Japanese as having helped them to get rid of their colonial masters, the Malaysians as well. The Malaysians do not really have any bad wartime memories of the Japanese. The Chinese Malaysians do, but not Malays, they did not, so that is another issue.
Singapore has been willing to let bygones be bygones, as have the Australians. The Indians actually do not see anything wrong with what Japan did in World War II. That is overstating it slightly, but not much. So actually, if you go throughout Asia and you count up countries that sort of like Japan and have no concern about a Japan that has a proper military, there is a whole lot of them. But it is the Chinese and the Koreans who sort of create the impression that everybody is worried about Japan.
But that was 75 years ago now, and Japan even if it had the interest in causing trouble, it could not do it. It just does not have the military to do that even if it wanted to it, so it is really very hard to think of Japan going on a rampage like that. It is just not able to do it. It has been a very responsible nation for an awfully long time. More than anything, it is probably at risk of being attacked and dominated by the Chinese. But Japan itself could not do that.
Robert R. Reilly:
So the kind of innate militarism that we saw before World War II is not there?
Grant Newsham:
That is right. If you want to see it, you go to China. It sounds an awful lot like the old Imperial Japanese, but in Japan it is just not there.
Robert R. Reilly:
Alright. Oh, by the way, I read a remark by a South Korean recently who said, ‘We may not like the Japanese, but we need them.’
Grant Newsham:
There are South Koreans who recognize that, but like anything with historic experience, it lasts a long time and many generations. You just ask the Irish. You know, it is easy to tell people to get over it, but that is not a good answer in a lot of cases. But you have to have leaders at the top who are able to keep that in check.
Robert R. Reilly:
You describe the problems, those sort of large gaping holes in Japan’s defense capabilities. How is it going about filling those?
Grant Newsham:
Well, it is not, really. It has announced that it is going to double defense spending in about five years, which is a big deal but keep in mind that it has been underfunding defense for the last 50 years, so it is a bit like a company that announces it is going to make a $50 million dollar contribution to the employee’s retirement fund.
Well, it is underfunded by about $3 billion, so your $50 million looks good, but it is not a huge amount. They have at least decided they are going to spend the money, and that is a big deal because for many years Japan insisted it did not have an extra five cents, and now suddenly it has found an extra $50 billion.
But it is always had the money, but now it has decided to do it, but it does not know what to spend it on. But you can bet that there are defense contractors, particularly overseas, foreign ones and even in Japan there are some, that have plenty of ideas on what to spend it on, which is a lot of whatever they sell. But in terms of buying the hardware and buying the capabilities that they actually need to fight a war and to be ready for that, I just do not think they have any idea what to do.
And what I would like to see happen is for some good American war planners to be sent to Japan and quietly linked up with the right Japanese and say, look, this is what you have to do, you know, you are going to need these kinds of forces, these kinds of units, and these numbers, this sort of hardware, and particularly, you are going to need this logistics support, you know, things like taking care of casualties. How are you going to do that? Transportation requirements, they really do not have a sense of that, and that is because they have not had to for so long that you are trying to figure it out almost on the fly.
And I would like to say I would like to see us offer some real advice to the Japanese instead of expecting them to figure it out, so it is almost the Socratic method versus the lecture approach to things.
Robert R. Reilly:
I did notice in recent weeks a report that Japanese forces have been sent to a tiny island south of the Senkaku Islands that they now have troops and various equipment on, so they must be alert to the possible threats in that region for them, since obviously, most particularly the Chinese claim the Senkakus for themselves.
Grant Newsham:
That is right. The Chinese have also said not just the Senkakus but the entire Ryukyu chain [belong to China], and those are those islands that go from Kyushu, Japan’s biggest southern island, all the way almost to Taiwan. And the Chinese have said they belong to China as well, and when the time comes, they will get it, they will try to.
So the Japanese have been putting some units down on those islands and these include particularly army units with anti-ship missile batteries. They will have some anti-aircraft capability, the ability to collect intelligence as well. They are putting all that down. And I actually went down there in around 2011 and those islands were empty. The only government presence was maybe a couple policemen here and there, and that was about it. And Japan has woken up and they are putting forces down there.
They do need to make it more of a unified effort, so the Japanese Army, Navy, and Air Force cooperate in that defense scheme. It is not there yet, and I do not know when that is going to happen. The Americans also need to get involved there and there have been some favorable signs that the U.S. Marines and the Navy are going to going to deploy into that area with the Japanese, so that is a good move.
Robert R. Reilly:
Now, there has been a lot of attention recently paid to the demographic decline that is coming in China and the aging population. All of those trends are as evident and even more severe in Japan. How is that going to reflect on trying to get a larger military when there are fewer young people than there may need to be?
Grant Newsham:
Well, it does not need to be a hugely bigger military. You need, obviously, in the Navy less than 300,000 people in the whole Japanese Self-Defense Force. You need more people in the Navy. You need more in the Air Force. The Army is about the right size. You just need to reconfigure and redeploy.
Robert R. Reilly:
Which is about what size?
Grant Newsham:
140,000-150,000, but the Navy ideally would be doubled in size. That is not likely to happen, but it probably should be both in terms of ships and manpower. The Air Force needs to be expanded as well. And the Japanese have been missing their recruitment targets by about 20 percent for years, so you can see the problem there.
Robert R. Reilly:
It sounds like the U.S. Army.
Grant Newsham:
Yeah, well, the Marines met their targets last year by eight people, by eight, and that is because they jiggered with the figures a little bit. But it is a problem. And the excuse usually is because the population is shrinking, there are not enough young people. But the thing is it is more, I think, that it is not an attractive profession. The salaries are low. There is no GI Bill. Retirement pensions are not very good. Housing is basically terrible.
And you know, for one example, if you PCS, if you move, you are in the service, well, generally, it costs the service people a lot of money out of pocket, and also, they have to arrange the moving. They have to do the packing, all of that, the unpacking. If you did this in the U.S. military, you would have divorce rates skyrocket. They would be through the roof. But that is what the Japanese military is expected to do, so it is really almost a life of servitude in a way.
Robert R. Reilly:
And what is the length of service?
Grant Newsham:
It would be about comparable to ours. You can do short-term contracts.
Robert R. Reilly:
But is it a professional military?
Grant Newsham:
Yeah, very much, there is no draft. And the last example is that it is said that in the summertime, Japanese families, military families, often will not turn on their air conditioning because they cannot afford it. And so, it reminds you a lot of the situation [in 1980], remember when Mr. Reagan took over, [with] the U.S. military, all the problems we had. And he was able to fix it, and it does take money, but also it takes some respect, and those two things can make a big difference. And I wish the Japanese would recognize this.
I have tried to point it out all the time to Japanese audiences and they understand it, but at the political class level it does not seem to be a vote getter, and they just puzzle over why not enough people join. In fact, the people who do join are excellent and you would have to say real patriots, you know, because they do not get anywhere near the benefits or the respect that we do. But the ones they do have are good, and they ought to have more. It just takes a different approach.
Robert R. Reilly:
What about the state of readiness of the other countries in Asia and Southeast Asia that recognize the problem that China is presenting? Let us start with Australia.
Grant Newsham:
Well, the Australians’ military actually is very small. I think the whole thing is about 50,000 people and it is unbelievably small. You get the impression there is a lot more of them than there are because they have been so willing to join in all the fights that we have been in and do what they could, which has been considerable, but it is a very small military.
And now they are trying to come to terms with what sort of capabilities to develop that allow them actually to defend Australian territory from way far away, so long-range missiles, for example, the nuclear submarines that they one day will get in conjunction with the Americans and the British.
Robert R. Reilly:
Yes, just pause on that for a moment, Grant, because it has received a huge amount of attention as a big step forward, but what is the timing on it?
Grant Newsham:
Well, actually, they could get U.S. nuclear submarines or access to them, and actually get some of their people aboard those to sort of figure it all out, fairly soon, and that would be a matter of years. But to actually get submarines of their own, that is at least a decade away. But you see the idea is to be able to cause an enemy trouble far away from Australia rather than waiting for them to come, and that is a real shift in thinking because for so long Australia has seen itself as just out of the way, facing no real threat.
But now they are needing to figure out how to deal with that and also, you know, what sort of military do they need, you know, if it is a whole lot, for example, a whole lot of Army, or do you need a bigger Navy, a bigger Air Force, you know? What sort of mix is required? But Australia is trying to deal with that. They, of course, claim they do not have the money and they do not have the people, but they do.
Robert R. Reilly:
So you do not see the same political willingness to increase defense spending in Australia as you do in Japan?
Grant Newsham:
Well, they are willing to spend it. It is different because it has been so underfunded in Japan that you just have to do it, but Australia has always spent a fair amount. I think they have also thought they have spent enough. You know, they have shown they are willing to spend a lot of money if you look at, well, one, what recent governments have done, but also the submarine deal. And that is hugely expensive, and the question is are they spending it on the right thing, and that is being heavily debated in Australia.
And I think they there is some good thinking going on. If you are in Australia, you want to look at it from the perspective of, say, an enemy, say, China, and what would you least like to have happen, which is if you sort of move on Australia, you start taking casualties 1500 miles away before you even get anywhere close to Australia.
And I think that is understood and the Australians recognize it, but it is being debated that New Zealanders, however, have allowed their military to lapse to the point that a fairly small Chinese force could probably take over the entire country. It is that bad in New Zealand. The Australians are in much better shape.
Singapore, of course, remains [formidable]. You know, it has a punch, but it is a very small military. The Vietnamese, well, they are always the Vietnamese, and I think even the Chinese are not too keen to tangle with them. But they really are not much of an add-on to what America and its friends have going in the region.
The Philippines has a small military, underfunded, but has a lot of good fighting experience, actually, against guerrillas for a number of years, and it is game. The Americans are finally getting back into the Philippines, and they will be doing a lot more with the Philippine military, so it has some potential for helping. And the Chinese have accomplished what successive American administrations could not do, which is to get the rest of Asia to sort of take their military seriously.
Robert R. Reilly:
I would just like to raise that timing issue. When you speak of how long the submarine program would take for Australia, how long a defense built up in Japan would take, obviously, China is cognizant of the stirrings of these countries and the growing awareness of the threat that China presents. Would that not be a motivation for them to move sooner rather than later, to not wait until their prospective opponents are stronger?
Grant Newsham:
Well, they do need to do it quickly and there is a sense of urgency, but having that translate into concrete improvements is going to take a while.
Robert R. Reilly:
I mean there is a motivation for the Chinese to move sooner rather than later.
Grant Newsham:
Oh. I see. Oh, I think they see they have got a window and the window will not stay open forever. I would say it is at least open for a few years. [That] would be my guess, but they definitely think about that, and they look at also how willing are the Americans to weigh in, and also how able are the Americans to get involved.
Robert R. Reilly:
Let us move to that next after we just go back to Australia for a moment because this is an issue you mention in your book, and that is that the Australians woke up to the amount of Chinese infiltration in their society, the amount of political corruption in their elite funded by Chinese infiltration, and that the exposés of this, in some sector of the Australian press, sort of blew the lid off and sort of changed the political atmosphere in favor of Australia defending itself and recognizing who the enemy is here.
Grant Newsham:
Oh, they did and what you described, and it had a very good effect by shining light on the problem, and it forced the Australian government to do something, but it also created public awareness of this. And the Chinese were definitely on a roll before, really, a couple of books, a book and an exposé that were written by an Australian professor and Australian journalist.
Before that, the Chinese were really just running the table and there was nothing to stop them. And they were forced to back off, but they have always had a constituency in Australia that is effectively pro-China, and these are some retired politicians [and] additionally prominent businessmen who effectively do China’s bidding. They will fiercely deny it, but let the facts speak for themselves.
So Australia did fend off the Chinese influence for a bit, and they have still got, you know, their hands up. But the pressure is all over. It is still coming.
Robert R. Reilly:
You do have the former Australian prime minister who is now the [Australian Ambassador to the U.S. and who was the] president of the Asia Society, who has written several books about China, Kevin Rudd. He seems to have a keen appreciation for the nature of the problem, and he also is a Mandarin speaker. What do you think of his take on the problem?
Grant Newsham:
I am perhaps less impressed than many people. I think speaking a language only gets you so far. But there is something about him, you know. I have seen him very weak on China in public. I think privately he may be a little stronger, but he seems to have a sense of what the popular thinking is. A little bit of a self-promoter would be my take on it, but obviously I am not as impressed with him as some are. That is just me.
Robert R. Reilly:
Alright, well, let us get to the substance of your book, When China Attacks. Grant, you begin this very sobering book with a fictional representation of what could happen in a year or two should China choose to move kinetically, as they say, against Taiwan. Let me say, it is a wake-up chapter. I certainly had not thought of a number of the ways in which the Chinese may move, some of which could give it a plausible deniability on attacks even on U.S. forces in using fishing fleets. Could you give us a little sneak peak of that chapter? It is quite a shocker.
Grant Newsham:
Sure. It is sort of what I came up with when I started writing the book, and I have been thinking about the issue for an awfully long time, and my thinking was that we tend to expect either the Chinese to do nothing or to do to launch this all-out assault on us, say, another Pearl Harbor, and that is kind of how we perceive it. And the way I would characterize the future is that I think everything goes to Taiwan, and I think this will be the main objective of China.
But to successfully attack Taiwan, China has to deal with the Americans because we are the ones who can intervene and could cause the Chinese a lot of trouble, could cause their invasion to fail. And to do that, they are going to have to somehow neutralize us. I thought the most effective way for them to do that is, one, to go hard and fast against Taiwan, and in the meantime, though, cause the Americans just enough trouble, enough problems, that they are not able to respond.
You know, I talk about things like, as you mentioned, the fishing fleet, the Chinese fishing fleet, you know, hitting American naval ships moving west with anti-ship missiles, surreptitiously dropped, sea mines, say, off the Japanese ports, Yokosuka and Sasebo. You could have a Chinese fifth columnist in Japan, say, operating out of a solar field, a solar energy field that they have funded along with Japanese organized crime, on the departure pass from Iwakuni Marine Corps Air Station, so hit those with anti-aircraft missiles.
And additionally, there have been cases off of southern California over the last few years of drones, you know, harassing U.S. Navy ships. Nobody seems to quite know where those come from, but those could easily be employed as well. You have Chinese companies that are in U.S. ports, foreign ports as well. They can cause trouble when the time comes as well.
But what you are trying to do is to make it hard for the Americans to respond, the American military to respond, but also affect them psychologically to the point [that] a government in Washington, an administration, thinks, well, we just cannot [help], you know, we want to do something, but we cannot do it. And also, if it looks as though the Chinese have gone hard and fast against Taiwan, an administration might say, well, we would like to [help], but there is nothing we can do, it is a fait accompli, there is just not much we can do.
But the fishing fleet, the maritime militia, these are all effectively parts of the Chinese military. That is how they see it, you know. We do not see our own fishing men or fishing ships as an adjunct of the U.S. Navy. To the Chinese, it is all part of the same thing, all intended for one purpose, so we could find ourselves having to run this gauntlet of really non-naval, non-military resources, ships, drones, etc., just trying to get to the fight, and that is something that I cover in the book.
Robert R. Reilly:
And as you point out, our Navy would be very hesitant to act against a Chinese fishing vessel until the Chinese fishing vessel first attacked it, by which point it might be too late.
Grant Newsham:
That is right. You know, whoever gets the first shot has the advantage. And the Australians trying to come up from the south, for example, to help Taiwan are going to probably find their numbers have shrunk also. And there is always plausible deniability, you know. If you are the Chinese, you just say, well, we did not do it, yeah, we do not know who did, and you know, it is just fishing boats. What are you talking about? There are going to be people on our side who are willing to accept that excuse.
Plus, you have to ask, well, if we lose ships, how are we going to replace them? How are we going to repair them or replace them? I mean, we do not make ships the way we used to. We talk about how we used to build like one a day, one liberty ship every day during World War II. Well, that was 75 years ago, and these days we do not build things the way we used to. And I do not know what we will do to handle battle casualties, both ships and/or people.
Robert R. Reilly:
You point out in the book that for every naval vessel the United States builds, China builds, what, first five and now seven?
Grant Newsham:
That is right. I think about last year it was about seven-to-one, and then over the last decade it has been about five-to-one, so for every one we put in the water, they have put five in. Their shipyards are much, much bigger than ours, and they have built pretty good ships. You know, they have learned their lesson. We have helped fund them. We – us and the Japanese and the Europeans – have provided them with a know-how to help build their shipbuilding industry. They are just as smart as us. They just needed a little help and they have run with it.
Robert R. Reilly:
Now, there is one place we have not mentioned in terms of its capabilities, and Grant, you just came from there, and that is Taiwan. Tell us what it can and cannot do. We could also put this in the political context because as we speak, a former President of Taiwan from the Kuomintang is in mainland China, the first former president or president to ever go to the mainland since 1949.
Grant Newsham:
Yeah, he reflects the political warfare that China has successfully waged against Taiwan for decades. You know, Taiwan is a free society these days, but like any society, you are going to have different opinions, different political persuasions. And he and the KMT – and there are different reasons why – do have sort of a soft approach towards China.
And the former president himself, Ma, I have heard some people say, well, he hopes to be named Governor of Taiwan after the Chinese take it. There is a real sense in a lot of his party that it would not be so bad to be part of China. And for the other parts of the political world, the other part of the spectrum, wants nothing to do with that.
But it does show just how disparate the opinions are in Taiwan. And in the last presidential election, about 40 percent of the population voted for a candidate that was considered soft on China, so it is not as if 99 percent of the people in Taiwan think that way. But do keep in mind that people in Taiwan, like anywhere, vote on their personal economic situation, and that really does weigh in into the equation.
It is why I wish the Americans would give the Taiwanese a free trade agreement. Help their economy. Give it a boost. You would find that would do as much as any military support we could provide, not to say the military support is not important. But you get a sense in Taiwan that the isolation is really bothering people and it just tends to wear you down over time, the sense you do not have any friends, there is this scary country to your to your west that says they are going to do all sorts of things to you, and you are not sure if your good friend the Americans really are that committed to helping you, and so it gets tiring.
And you have seen it in Taiwan’s military capability, that they have pretty much been isolated for 40 years, so think of it as like a baseball team that never plays a real game. You just play intra-squad games. You divide up your players and play yourselves, and you do not really get any better, or you get better very slowly that way, and they have to break out of that isolation, so the Taiwan military has not developed the way it should.
And also, in terms of operating concepts, you know, how you fight. They could use some clear thinking on that. There are people who understand it very well, but it is a Confucian system, and they really are not going to tell the top guys to, you know, step aside and let us handle it, so they could use some help there. But really, it is that sense of isolation.
And finally, it looks as though the Americans are doing something to address that, and we may be doing some more training with them, but you will find that the psychological effect, the morale effect in the military but also in the civilian world, would be considerable. With Taiwan, their military capability is lagging, [but] it could cause an attacker plenty of problems if it had a mind to, and I think they could.
They are getting more and more anti-ship missiles. They are paying attention to sea mines and the kind of weaponry you can use to fend off an assault. They are paying attention to that, but they need to bring in a lot more of it or make it themselves, and they do manufacture a good bit on their own, but they need to import a lot. There is a huge backlog on weapon imports, particularly from the U.S.
Robert R. Reilly:
Well, that is particularly distressing of how far behind the United States is in meeting the supply of weapons which we have promised to Taiwan. I mean, it is years behind.
Grant Newsham:
Yeah, we are a long way behind. I think it is something like they have paid for about $15 billion dollars’ worth of imports, arms imports. They paid for it, [but] they have not gotten delivery yet, and it does not look like it is coming too soon. We do think that we know best what Taiwan needs to defend itself. You will hear that expression ‘turn it into a porcupine,’ which means buy certain long-range precision weapons and just hunker down, and that is all you need. You do not need conventional weapons, you know, the F-16s, tanks, etc. or certain types of naval ships.
The argument is, well, they will all be sunk or shot down. Well, yeah, it is going to be hard if they are attacked, but there is peace time and then there is when the war starts, and you do a lot of things in peacetime that you would not do or could not do in wartime, but you have to do it. You have to show the public that, one, that you can and will defend the country. They have to see that.
You know, if they see a squadron of Chinese fighters coming over Taipei at low level and nobody is challenging that, think of the psychological effect. But also, the enemy looks at it. China looks at it and says, okay, well, you are a porcupine? Well, we are going to do everything we can, and we are going to get as close as we can, and one of these days we are going to hit you, but you do not know when.
Robert R. Reilly:
It seems they are very close to flying over Taipei.
Grant Newsham:
They have not done it yet, and that is because, one, the Taiwan military still can defend the country, but also that would just be too much, and they are not sure what the Americans would do in response.
So my point is they do need a reasonable number of conventional weapons, and they do have to pay for all of this, you know, that is a requirement, that they do have to get out the checkbook. But for us to tell them, well, you only should do this [is inappropriate]. Nobody likes to be lectured to, and I am not so sure that our track record on these things is all that good.
Robert R. Reilly:
Well, I mean, the porcupine analogy is one. Another is an unsinkable aircraft carrier.
Grant Newsham:
Well, that is what it is for us, you know. It is potentially a very useful operating platform for us and for Taiwan as well. But also, if it comes into Chinese hands, it remains an unsinkable aircraft carrier.
Robert R. Reilly:
Well, I mean, Grant, again, we want to get into some of the vast range of things that you cover within your book, but on this particular subject you do spend a good bit of time describing the strategic significance of Taiwan. And whereas we seem to be preoccupied with China reuniting with Taiwan [through] peaceful means, supposedly we would not have any problem if it happens that way, and we only oppose war as an instrument for achieving that end. However, whether it is done peacefully or through war, as soon as China gets Taiwan, it has a strategic asset that puts us and our allies in a very bad situation. Could you explain that?
Grant Newsham:
Sure. First, Taiwan is not going to go to China willingly, so we say peacefully. It will not be voluntary. It will be the result of absolute coercion and a sense of abandonment on Taiwan’s part.
Also, Taiwan has never been part of the People’s Republic of China. And actually, in all of Chinese history it was only about 10 years during the Qing Dynasty, who were not even Chinese, they were Manchus, that Taiwan was under effective Chinese control or controlled by the mainland, so 10 years out of whatever, five thousand years.
I just have to point this out because it is a Chinese talking point, reunify, and yet it has never really been part of China. And it is used to sort of weaken our resolve, to have people – because you will hear people say, well, look it makes sense [that] it goes back to China.
Robert R. Reilly:
Well, we have capitulated on that point since Nixon and Henry Kissinger, right?
Grant Newsham:
We have allowed the Chinese to shape the description of that deal where we acknowledged the Chinese position, but we did not accept it. I just have to point that out. But [as for] the significance of Taiwan, there are a couple things. Militarily, it is the position. The location is very strategic terrain. It is right in the middle of the first island chain, that string of islands going from Japan to Taiwan to the Philippines down to Malaysia. It effectively blocks the Chinese military from leaving the mainland, at least with any ease, and it is hard to get into the Pacific if your opponents control it.
Taiwan is right in the middle, so think of it as like a castle wall being breached, and that is a good thing if you are the attacker. It is a bad thing if you are the defender, and we are the defenders. If the People’s Liberation Army swings up to the north, it can surround Japan, isolate Japan. It can swing down to the south and cut off Australia from the United States. And it is an excellent platform from which to begin dominating the entire Pacific region.
But there is also a psychological/political effect to all this that is worth considering, and that is if the 23 million free people on Taiwan are allowed to come under Chinese Communist domination, it sends a message that the U.S. military could not stop it, U.S. economic and financial weight and power could not stop it, and U.S. nuclear weapons could not stop it, so that would, I think, make an awful lot of people around the world who are counting on U.S. help pretty uncomfortable, and so there is both an operational/military reason to be worried about Taiwan and to help [it] stay free, and I think [there is] also a very important political reason for getting in to help it as well.
Robert R. Reilly:
So as soon as they are able to freely go through that first island chain, the second island chain is not as impressive?
Grant Newsham:
It is a lot less. You have just got more room to move with, plus in the second island chain the geography is more spread out and it is easier to operate, but Chinese political warfare throughout the Pacific, these small Pacific Islands that are in the middle of the map that nobody thinks about much, they have really got footholds into most of these places, and that once again helps them. And China looks at the whole map and they have made huge economic/political inroads in Latin America, so the intention is to, before too long, have the Chinese Navy operating from China as far as the Latin American coast and off the U.S. west coast as well.
Robert R. Reilly:
It was certainly a wake-up call, if not for us for Australia, [that] the Chinese now have a security agreement with the place where the battle for Guadalcanal took place, which the United States paid a very high price for in order to continue its operations in the Pacific. And in your book, you go through a number of those islands that you just mentioned, and showed how China’s influence has infiltrated them in a number of ways, by bribery and also upfront economic development, ports and other things, which the United States has neglected and therefore their influence has [increased] and our influences greatly lessened.
Grant, in that in the time that remains, let us go to When China Attacks. After this alarming opening in which you show what China could do if it chooses to take Taiwan in a military operation, you point out that China has been at war with the United States for considerable period of time, though we do not recognize that. We prefer to call it strategic competition. But as a whole of government effort on the side of the Chinese, they are operating with economic warfare, psychological warfare, information warfare, and warfare in every realm that to our minds is separate from any government effort.
I know that is a lot to ask you to put into a few minutes, but could you give us a précis of that so that some of our viewers can know how tremendously rich what you offer here is? I am just going to say as part of an advertisement that you put everything in one place, so for those who are wondering what one book can you go to get a kind of detailed overview of what they are doing, When China Attacks will do it.
Grant Newsham:
Well, thanks. The idea turned out this way and it was intended that way is, for example, you saw when the Chinese spy balloon floats over the United States, you know, people look up and say wow, what is that? What is going on? Well, this book is the answer to that and the idea – because most people do not live and breathe foreign policy or Asian affairs, and they might have a sense that there are some concerns with China, but then they see this, and this is the idea, to show what has happened, how we got where we are, what could happen if we lose, and also something about what to do about it.
And when I thought about how to write it, I thought of different things, but the usual expectation is to have a big description of a fight against China in a sort of a war story, effectively, and with naval battles and fighter jets fighting each other, and then somebody wins, and B.S., of course, because we always win.
But thinking about it, what I try to get across is that the shooting war is almost the last step from the Chinese perspective because they have been at war against us on different fronts for at least the last 30 years with the intention of softening us up, just causing us to, one, hate each other more than anyone else, to weaken us, and so when the time comes, we will be less able to resist. And even if we can resist, we may find ourselves in a position where we cannot move at an acceptable cost.
Robert R. Reilly:
You make that excellent point several times in the book, Grant, where you say they the Chinese do not think in a binary way war or peace, that they are both on a continuum.
Grant Newsham:
Yeah, and we look at war as, say, a hundred-yard dash where the participants get to the start line, shake up, shake themselves a bit, get in the crouch, and someone says go, and then the shooting starts. That is how we look at it, but from the Chinese perspective, as you said, they go after us on the economic front.
You just think of what they have done to us economically, and even better they have got us to think that it is a good idea. They have got our business class, Wall Street, to think you have to be in the Chinese market, you have to manufacture in China because they do it so efficiently, they are so cheap. And when you do that, we have weakened ourselves as a society and as a country, and you shipped all that to your main enemy, to your main opponent. And they are the ones who call us the enemy, so that is an economic effect.
[They have used] economic warfare, biological warfare, [and] the COVID virus. You can argue if it came out of a laboratory or [the wild], and I think it did [come out of a laboratory], but it came from China, and they certainly ran with it once that happened. And look at what effect that had on us politically [and] economically. It has been an absolute disaster for us.Robert R. Reilly:
Explain that, [how] they ran with it.
Grant Newsham:
Well, they seeded it, seeded it around the world, and got us and everyone else to give up our liberties, to imprison ourselves. They put our economies just into reverse. Our economy was really humming along, and it just stopped overnight, and we have not recovered yet. There has been so much [money spent on fighting COVID]. We spent so much to try and deal with this that we have debased the U.S. currency. This inflation is hurting us. From a Chinese perspective this is excellent because financial warfare is another front on which they attack us.
Robert R. Reilly:
But let me just point out, Grant, they did that to themselves as well.
Grant Newsham:
They did, and I would say fortunately because certainly their response to it, particularly at the end, did wake some people up. But remember for a long-time people were saying oh, the Chinese really know how to deal with this, you know, they have 4,000 cases, four thousand deaths in the entire country, as if anyone should believe that. But we have had plenty of people who are willing to say oh, look at what the Chinese did. They were so successful. At the end it, as I said, woke a few people up. But I think they will find it was worth it, you know. And they will think that they could recover, but you look at what the effect has been on the United States, and it is just staggering.
Chemical warfare is another front, and I would point to the fentanyl scourge that killed 70,000 Americans last year. And this has been going on for some years now, and it is going to keep going. 99 percent of that comes from China. They could stop it if they wanted to, but they do not want to. But you would look at our response, effectively nothing, you know. We too often will not even say there is a Chinese connection.
That has worked very well. Cyber warfare: [China] stole our military secrets, the F-35 fighter, some say the F-22 as well, C-17 transports. These are all things that China is using to build up their own military, which has become a formidable military in the last 20 years that could hurt us [and] maybe defeat us in certain circumstances. They have also stolen all sorts of commercial technology know-how for their own benefit.
But we do not look at this as war. This is all intended in the Chinese perspective to strengthen them and weaken us. And when the shooting starts, either directly against us or, say, Taiwan, we are less able to respond as a result of this, and that is what I try to get across in the book, that we have been under attack.
Robert R. Reilly:
And I would just mention their successful espionage or bribery by which they obtained the plans for the C-17 and our other military aircraft, which they duplicated. When people compare the size of the U.S. defense budget and say, well, it is, you know, three times the size of China’s, they do not understand that China has no sunk capital costs in developing these weapons. If they have our plans for them, they can just build them, just as in their economic development, thanks to industrial espionage or reverse engineering equipment from Germany and the United States, which they then can manufacture at much lower cost than we can, so it is apples and oranges, not apples and apples, right?
Grant Newsham:
It is different. It has allowed them to, one, advance an awful lot more quickly than would otherwise be the case. There is such a telling anecdote of how we let our guard down, how we were basically psychologically manipulated. It was in 2009. The then-commander of PACOM, today’s USINDOPACOM, Admiral [Timothy] Keating, went to China. And he was asked, well, what about the Chinese aircraft carriers? He said, well, I think if the China wants to develop them, I think we would do everything we could to help them. And that is how the thinking was, that they were not a threat, but they have also developed their carriers probably a few decades faster than the experts thought they could.
But also, on the budget part of it, the Chinese defense budget is deceptive, and I think they only announce a figure to keep the Americans happy because we need a figure. But if the expenditure is in Chinese currency, their defense budget is literally unlimited. It is not like Xi Jinping gets an allotment from Congress and can only spend that. No, they will spend what they need to have a military that can defeat us.
Where they have problems is for the things they need to buy in foreign currency, in dollars, that they have to earn dollars. They have to get them from foreign investment somehow, so if you want to buy Australian iron ore to make steel, to make ships, you have to pay in dollars, and that is where they have a huge vulnerability. That is where the real shortcoming is. But in terms of their defense budget, I think $250 billion is the announced figure, [but] I think it is probably three, four, five times bigger than that.
And also, you ask what they get for it. You know, if they are turning out ships five to one over us, well, they are getting some results from it. It is worth [mentioning that]. You do not hear that mentioned much, and I am surprised you do not because I think it is an important thing. We tend to look at it as a limitation, that, well, they just cannot be that good because they do not spend as much as we spend.
Robert R. Reilly:
Well, as you point out as well in the book, Grant, the Chinese personnel costs in their military are far lower. They do not pay them much, and we pay very well. In fact, even though our defense budget is declining in real dollars, the pay has increased for U.S. military by some 5 percent. That is an even larger chunk of our defense [spending].
I just want to give one example, since you [mentioned] a senior military officer’s [comments about helping China] get those aircraft carriers, a somewhat improved [perspective from] today. Here is [a quote] from Lt. Gen. Charles Flynn, commander of the US Army Pacific, recently said about China, “They are rehearsing, they are practicing, they are experimenting, and they are preparing those forces for something. You do not build up that kind of arsenal to just defend and protect. You probably are building that for other purposes. I cannot go into great detail here on what is happening on the ground, but I can tell you that the PLA Army, and the PLA Rocket Force, and the strategic support forces are in dangerous positions.”
Grant Newsham:
I am glad they figured it out. In 2014, the then-head of the U.S. Army, General Odierno, went to Beijing and he was asked about that that, a question like that. He said, ‘I do not see any threat from the Chinese military. In fact, I want him to get strong,’ something like that, and that was nine years ago, so you can see how things were.
But the general statement here is correct. It is always worth remembering that nobody has ever talked [about] attacking China, and there has never been a country more welcomed into the realm of civilized nations than China has been. And when you do build a military like that, it is not for good purposes.
After Tiananmen Square, actually, the Chinese military was given orders to be able to defeat a country that has aircraft carriers, and that is kind of the start date that I use for my frame of reference. Others will choose different ones. They have been after us for a long time.
Robert R. Reilly:
Grant, you mentioned in your book the way China proceeds, whether it is a claim to Taiwan as their historic property or their Nine Dash Line for all of the South China Sea, which they more or less possess, and how they set up trial balloons, maybe first in an obscure publication, watch for the reaction, take it up another [notch], then take it up another [notch].
I was reminded of that because of a news story very recently that the United States sent a guided-missile destroyer through the waters around the Paracel Islands, which China claims is its sovereign territory, and that China issued a warning to us that if we do that again, there will be “serious consequences.”
So that seems to be the final ratchet up, and they are claiming a sovereign territory, territory that has never been sovereign to China. Now they physically possess it, they put military forces on it, and they challenge U.S. shipping that is in international waters, saying do not do that again.
Grant Newsham:
That is how it works. And you notice they never back off, you know. They may get caught out and/or embarrassed or forced to stop, but they never say oh, we are sorry, what were we thinking, and then move back. It never happens. If you think of a dog that you tell them to stay out of the kitchen during dinner time, and he gets right up to the line, and then he goes a little more, and then you yell at him a little more.
But they will keep going and that is the M.O., see what you can get away with. And that is not surprising. We should recognize it and deal with it. There has always been a sense, though, that if we just accommodate a little more, if we do not upset them, show them we are not a threat, that they will change their behavior.
And it has been misguided. It always has been, but that has been the way too often we have dealt with the Chinese Communists. And there is an important distinction to make. It is the Communist regime in China that is the kind of regime that is a threat to us.
Robert R. Reilly:
Grant, we have not had time to go into part of the book which is extensive, and that is Chinese infiltration into American society, American institutions, obviously the American economy, and we could say American technology. And let us just discuss TikTok, the Chinese platform which is so popular with American teenagers.
Now there is a bipartisan bill in the U.S. Congress to give the Commerce Department the authority to limit or ban TikTok and other such platforms that compromise U.S. national security. Do you see it that way and would you recommend such a ban?
Grant Newsham:
Oh yeah. The Indians banned it just in an afternoon, and a lot of other apps, too. I think we really need to do that. It is just, from a Chinese perspective, a wonderful platform for espionage, but [also] really influence. And the evidence of that is overwhelming. The evidence of TikTok’s connections to the Chinese government. It should not even be debated.
But what really struck me is just how hard this has been, and it shows you just how effective Chinese influence efforts have been in the U.S. This should not take this much effort, but also when you looked at the testimony the other day of the TikTok CEO giving his answers to the questions, to me the more interesting part was lined up behind him was a phalanx of Americans, TikTok’s lawyers, their lobbyists. And they are the ones who are basically doing the Chinese Communist Party’s bidding.
There is no other way to look at that on this app, that is pernicious, to say the least. It harms Americans, but it shows you what a good paycheck will do. But you look at that phalanx, and you just shook your head, and say how can we win if we have this?
Robert R. Reilly:
You point out it is not the only platform. I think of the five most popular in the United States, four are Chinese.
Grant Newsham:
Yeah, and it is always good idea that when everybody is looking at one thing, you should probably be looking where they are not, and there are a lot of other platforms, apps, etc. that are out there, so yeah, we could close down TikTok, and I will bet you that six or seven other ones become problems. They probably already are, but you will see the problem expand. There is more to it than just this one. It is not like you have solved your problems.
And [as for] that phalanx of lobbyists, I was even told there have been Republicans and Democrats, former staff members. Apparently, there is even someone who was in the Department of Justice’s National Security Division, advising TikTok on this. Apparently, a former staff member of Kevin McCarthy’s [is working for TikTok].
I do have a chapter on so-called proxy warfare, which is the best of all worlds because you can you have your opponents, your enemy, and you can get him to have his people furthering your interests. It does not get any better than that, and sometimes you would step back in awe at what the Chinese have been able to do on the warfare front, setting us up.
Robert R. Reilly:
You mentioned in the book that one counterstrategy of the United States should be reciprocity. For instance, Google and Facebook are not allowed in China, yet we allow these Chinese platforms in the United States.
Grant Newsham:
Well, you could apply that in all sorts of areas, you know. Look at our, for example, media. Western reporters, American reporters, have huge problems operating in China. Effectively, they cannot [report], but the reverse was not true until Mr. Trump came [into office], but even he had some trouble really cracking down, so the Chinese are free to send any number of reporters / MSS agents, Ministry of State security agents, to the United States to operate freely.
And we say this is such a sign of our strength. Well, sometimes you have to be a little wiser than that and protect yourself, but it is not that hard. If we are not allowed to sell something or do something in China, well, we should not let them do it here. And we should probably be even less so because it is a regime that is bent on our domination if not outright destruction.
Robert R. Reilly:
Well, you mentioned that under the Trump Administration there was a crackdown on the Confucius Institutes, which were present on many American campuses, and they have just morphed into some other kind of institution. Is that right?
Grant Newsham:
It seems that way. It is not one for one, but a lot of them have sprung up under different names, different organizations. But the universities were given a choice: either do business with the U.S. government or have a Confucius Institute. They shut them down, a lot of them, most of them very quickly, but they do come back, and the Chinese are persistent.
It is not as if one victory on our side, one defeat on theirs is going to cause them to surrender or give up. No, they just keep coming on, as I say, a number of different fronts, pushing to see where there is no resistance. But when they are sort of faced with effective resistance, then you can win, you can have a real victory.
Robert R. Reilly:
You mentioned how seriously infiltrated American higher educational institutions are by Chinese money. I just think of an episode from a few years ago when Chen Guang Chen, the Barefoot Lawyer who finally got out of China, was in Columbia University, speaking out in New York, and the university basically pulled the rug out from under him because of the amount of Chinese money they were getting.
Grant Newsham:
Sometimes you have to sort of work hard to figure out what the dynamic is, [but] not with academia. It is so clear-cut that it is embarrassing or should be. You know, you think of the old days with South Africa and the Apartheid era when the universities were at the forefront of opposition to that system. And here you have a regime that is really is worse in every respect than the old Apartheid era South Africa, and you have universities saying nothing, no problem here. All it takes is a nice donation, a lot of full tuition-paying Chinese students, a few first-class tickets to some seminars in China, and your principles can be checked at the door.
Robert R. Reilly:
Grant, there certainly has been some continuity between the China policy of the Trump Administration and the China policy of the Biden Administration. Are you encouraged by that?
Grant Newsham:
A little bit, you know, and I do try to call things as I see them. And there are some things that the Biden Administration has done well, the so-called Chips Act. They are trying to crack down on some of the technology exports to China. They have done some things that they deserve credit for, but then there will be other things that that really make you wonder.
And what is an example?
Well, the Trump Administration was trying to get Chinese companies de-listed from the American stock exchanges, and they were having some success, and the Biden Administration looked like they were going to continue it. And now they have just started letting Chinese companies list again, after receiving some bogus promises from China as to what they would allow in terms of sort of inspections of the company’s records. But nobody believes that [or] should believe that those things are going to be effective.
But now we have let them back onto the markets. They can raise capital, raise U.S. dollars. That is the convertible currency that is the lifeblood of the Chinese regime, so we crackdown in one area and tighten restrictions, and then in another one we say come on in, welcome, and here are our dollars to go with it, so you have to wonder just how committed this administration is.
And you know, I am not saying this with any sort of satisfaction at all because it does not matter [which party is in power]. I do not care what the party is, I want them to succeed and to have a decent policy towards China. And I hope they get a little tougher on more fronts.
But even the Trump administration had huge internal fights between the people who wanted to protect American interests, and the ones who wanted business as usual with China, reflected say by the Secretary of Treasury on one side, and then Mike Pompeo, and Matt Pottinger, and Miles Yu, and some others on the other. But this was the Trump Administration, you know, the best of all of them when it comes to dealing with China, and they had that much trouble, so it is never easy for any administration, and this one has opportunity to excel, I think, in this area.
Conclusion
Robert R. Reilly:
Well, I am afraid that is all the time we have, and I would like to thank our guest, Grant Newsham, for joining us today to discuss changes in Japanese defense policy and how prepared Australia, Singapore, the Philippines, and the United States are for meeting the China challenge, and for discussing with me today Grant’s new book, When China Attacks: A Warning to America.
I invite our viewers to please go to the Westminster Institute website and to our YouTube channel, where you will find other presentations on the subjects of China, Taiwan, Japan, as well as the Russia-Ukraine war and other foreign policy subjects, including a recent program on the causes of inflation. I am Robert Reilly. Thank you for joining us.