On Aug. 18, I expanded on the concept of “backyard wars” in order to provide U.S. policymakers with a basic rubric for dealing with such conflicts. Specifically, my aim was to help policymakers as they try to come to terms with the complexities and interrelationships involved in improving strategic foreign policy results while enhancing and synchronizing the unity of efforts needed to strengthen domestic security.
In order to understand the symbiotic relationship of foreign policy activities and domestic security, we must focus on the significance of China vs. U.S. “backyard war” — actually a series of conflicts taking place concurrently across the globe in locations ranging from Asia to the Middle East. Although primarily non-military in nature with the “fighting,” as it were, restricted mostly to the political and economic spheres, these conflicts are being waged in dead earnest and for very high stakes. Unfortunately, China seems to have a better grasp of those stakes and has acted accordingly.
Southeast Asia is a case in point. Chinese power there has grown significantly in the past decade, to the extent that China now poses a major threat to the U.S., Australia and other nations in the so-called Five Eyes alliance. This threat is multifaceted, encompassing the political, economic and military spheres. And it is best understood as an expression of China’s ambitious plan for dominating all of Southeast Asia and negating western-aligned nations’ security influence in the Pacific, the achievement of which will considerably advance China in its drive for superpower — and, ultimately, hyperpower — status.
If allowed to continue unchecked, the expansion of Chinese power in Southeast Asia will result in China controlling the sea lanes of the Indian Ocean and the western Pacific. In that event, China can be expected to reduce, if not eliminate outright, the flow of free trade through those oceans.
The U.S. is countering China’s strategy by pressuring Iran, a key China ally, to renegotiate the Iran nuclear/economic deal with the West while at the same time allowing India — one of our most important allies in Asia — to develop the Iranian port of Chabahar. The U.S. has also approved a plan for India and Iran to jointly build a rail head through the Iranian West into Afghanistan, thus eliminating our current dependency on Pakistan (a Chinese ally) to provide logistical support via its Karachi ports for U.S. and NATO operations in the region.
China’s response to this gambit is to build a trading network with Syrian ex-pat merchant settlements in the southwestern Chinese trading hub city of Yiwa. These settlements, formed after the Soviet collapse compelled the Syrians to fish for a new partner, serve as a conduit for the transshipment of goods to Latakia. The movement of these goods is facilitated by Hezbollah, which imposes a hefty tax on every shipment, enriching itself in the process — and, not coincidentally, giving the terrorist organization the financial wherewithal to fund its never-ending war with Israel.
Of course, China has seized upon the U.S. retreat in Syria, Afghanistan and possibly Iraq as an opportunity for cozying up to Syrian President Bashar Assad and his supporting nations, who have granted Beijing (as well as Russia and Europe) portions of contracts worth an estimated $400 billion to rebuild Syria’s war-ravaged infrastructure.
China’s actions in the Middle East have prompted the current POTUS to prepare the political/economic battlespace between the U.S. and China for a trade war. This entails, on the president’s part, the unspoken threat of using the most potent weapon at his disposal, namely the devaluation of the U.S. dollar. Devaluation is a frightening prospect for Chinese leaders, because it gives us an advantage in the economic fight. It could have catastrophic consequences for China’s economy and, by extension, for Beijing’s geostrategic ambitions.
The willingness of the U.S. merely to threaten dollar devaluation indicates that it is finally cognizant of the reality and nature of the Backyard War concept and is readying itself for the conflict in ways that only a few years ago would have been unthinkable. The president and his administration have continued to hammer home economic and intellectual trade sanctions, and the Chinese are beginning to feel their effects.
Moreover, if the current unrest in Hong Kong spirals out of control and Beijing responds by dumping the “One China, Two Systems” model for “One China, One System,” the provisions of a new bill concerning the U.S. relationship with Hong Kong, introduced in June, will be activated. Hong Kong will then lose its special economic status with the U.S. and become just another Chinese city. The Chinese leadership knows that this could have a devastating effect on the nation’s economy, already imperiled by the threat of a looming trade war.
In the early 1990s China revised its decades-old strategic engagement plan against the U.S. in order to hasten the collapse of the Soviet Union. It was motivated to do so in part by the unprecedented and unexpected success of U.S. military technology against Soviet (and Chinese) equipment and doctrine in Iraq during Desert Storm. A resulting study by two Chinese intelligence officers was later deemed so important that it was translated into English by the CIA. The outline of the report, titled “Unrestricted Warfare,” constitutes a blueprint and a battleplan for China’s Backyard War against the U.S. over several decades. So far, the Chinese have followed this plan assiduously.
It is now more important than ever to develop an effective counter to Chinese “Unrestricted (Backyard) Warfare.” Failure to do so may well lead to a comprehensive Chinese victory in its quest for geopolitical dominance.
LTC Sargis Sangari, of Skokie, a retired veteran of the U.S. Army Infantry and Special Operational Forces, is CEO of the Near East Center for Strategic Engagement, a policy research institution.