Transcript 0:00 [intro music] Welcome to Trend Lines, a podcast on global affairs brought to you by World Politics Review. My name is Peter Durrie. 0:11 Richard Weitz of the Hudson Institute will join us for the report to look at China's ongoing military reforms. 0:18 But first, WPR Editor-in-Chief Judah Grunstein joins me as always from Paris for our look at this week's world politics. So Judah, what is the world up to this week? 0:30 Well, we started out the week with a briefing by Samia Khulab, who looked at a series of measures taken by Saudi Arabia to sanction Lebanon for what it perceives as the disproportionate influence of Hezbollah in that country's domestic politics. 0:47 Now, the thing about Levan- Lebanon is that since the end of its civil, civil war, its political system is based on a formula of ethnosectarian rep- representation that's designed to rule out the domination by any one party or another. 1:04 And the danger of that formula and system is policy paralysis and, and that's been, uh, illustrated in Lebanon by, for instance, the parliament's lengthy failure to elect a president and a garbage removal crisis in Beirut. 1:22 And more recently, the Saudis have come to believe that the balance has shifted, the balance in domestic politics and in, in influence in Beirut has shifted too far toward Hezbollah. 1:35 And so, for instance, they, they recently canceled a plan by which they were, they were financing $3 billion in defense purchases from France for the Lebanese Armed Forces, and they also imposed a travel ban on Saudi citizens going to Lebanon, which had a, has a, a major impact in terms of tourist revenues, uh, tourism res- revenues. 1:59 And in the aftermath, the, the Gulf, uh, Arab countries declared Hezbollah a ter- terrorist group, and so, so basically all of these, uh, these responses, all of these sanctions to what the Saudis perceive as a, a, a new imbalance in Lebanese domestic politics. 2:19 And Samia looks at the unintended consequences of these moves, which have actually, uh, rather than weakening Hezbollah, have weakened the Saudi Sunni Muslim clients in Lebanon, and she looks at that in the context of Lebanon's political system, but also the Syrian Civil War and the broader competition for regional influence between Saudi and, or Saudi Arabia and Iran that's going on right now. 2:44 Mm-hmm. 2:45 Seems that Saudi Arabia has a bit of a ham-fisted approach to regional politics lately, uh, also including the kind of the, the Yemen situation, and I've, I've heard that, uh, they have actually turned around that money that was destined to, um, Lebanon and have instead given it to Sudan, kind of striking a new, um, a new alliance there or new, uh, relationship, uh, in, on, on that side of, of, of that country. 3:09 So yeah, interesting development. 3:11 And, and, uh, interesting, in- interestingly as well, Sudan having been sort of a fence sitter between the Saudis and Iranians over the course of, uh, the last five years or so, and, uh, the, the Saudis, uh, making a very major effort to pull them back into the Saudi camp in that, uh, in that rivalry. 3:33 So yes, a ham-fisted approach w- approach with unintended consequences, uh, seems to be the, uh, the policy preference these days in Riyadh. Yeah. 3:44 Um, but yeah, also had another very interesting briefing, uh, by James Hemil on two other, um, uh, on, on two other powers on another continent, on Africa, and he writes about the, um, uh, the developing, uh, South Africa-Nigeria ties and, uh, and, and the development over the, uh, over the last, uh, over the last time because South African President Jacob Zuma has been, uh, in Nigeria for two days earlier this month and, uh, has to try, has tried to patch up, uh, the relationships between those two countries, um, which have suffered since about now, 2009 quite heavily. 4:21 And, uh, yeah, so, uh, that, that was a really interesting development as well, 4:26 uh, both, uh, uh, from the perspective of Zuma, who is very embattled in his own country, and from the, uh, perspective of the economies of the two countries, uh, which have, have deep problems because of the low oil price in the case of Nigeria and the general economic crisis in the case of South Africa. 4:42 And, uh, so in theory, these two countries have really a lot to gain, uh, from, from cooperating stronger, and it would also probably be good for the continent at large if its two major economic and political powers would kind of, uh, get over their differences. 4:58 Um, but I think that James, uh, strikes a kind of a bit, um, uh, pessimistic tone on that, uh, overall. So, uh, interesting development there as well. 5:08 Uh, d- uh, he's covered this in the past for us, and I'm not sure I would call it pessimistic, maybe guardedly pessimistic or guardedly optimistic, [chuckles] uh, in the sense that there, there are all these... 5:22 And again, it's similar to Saudi Arabia and Iran, uh, without perhaps the, the ethnosectarian, uh, dimension. 5:31 But it's, it's two major heavyweights, major regional powers that have every reason to cooperate and improve ties, and at the same time are engaged in, in a rivalry for, for regional, uh, 5:47 perhaps not domination, but, uh, preeminence. Um, and, uh, y- y- and that has often gotten in the way of, uh, of the broader agenda, especially as you said, for Africa in terms of democracy promotion and security, uh-... 6:05 developments on the continent. So yes, very, very interesting look and, um, and, uh, a very important relationship. 6:12 But in another case, uh, there seem to be, uh, a bit, uh, there seems to be a bit of diplomatic progress and you had, uh, a story on recent developments in the US-Cuba relationship. Yes. 6:24 Uh, William Leogrande, uh, who in a briefing today is offering a preview of Barack Obama's presidential visit to Cuba, the historic presidential vis- visit that sort, in, in, in some ways caps this initial phase of the normalization process. 6:44 And so William s- begins the briefing by, by looking at some of the progress that's been made to date, uh, in terms of the various chapters that are being worked on and some of the cooperation agreements that have already been reached. 6:58 And then he also looks at some of the obstacles that remain and the missteps really on both sides, uh, to some of the, the 7:07 solutions that they're trying to put into place, particularly with regard to regulatory approaches to promoting US trade and investment in Cuba. And then finally he looks at the, the, 7:21 the Obama administration's diplomatic opening to Cuba's intended and actual impact on human rights and political liberalization there. 7:30 Um, in, in a lot of ways as he, as he explains, the visit is an effort by Obama to really cement his, this opening and make his Cuba policy permanent US policy, uh, and less vulnerable to subsequent rollback f- for instance by a future US president. 7:51 And he explains really what, why the, the visit is taking place now for instance, uh, despite the, the fact that progress has been 8:01 somewhat limited, uh, in the normalization progress, process and what will need to take place over the course of the remaining 10 months of Obama's time in office to really accomplish that goal of, of 8:15 s- cementing this policy into place. Very interesting stuff as always. Thanks. Thank you. It's been a pleasure. [Instrumental music] China has the largest military in the world, the People's Liberation Army. 8:30 For several years now, the Chinese leadership has looked at implementing some far-ranging inf- reforms across its armed forces. 8:37 Richard Weitz of the Hudson Institute took an in-depth look at these reforms for World Politics Review in an article titled PLA Military Reforms, Defense Power With Chinese Characteristics. 8:48 For this week's report, he shares some of his insights with Trent Klatt. Richard Weitz, Senior Fellow, Hudson Institute, uh, focusing on Russia, China and their interrelationship. 9:08 The Chinese military is the largest armed forces in the world. Uh, it's about, uh, uh, presently about 2.3 million, uh, active duty personnel 9:22 of which approximately three-fourths are in the army and a s- much smaller proportions are in the navy and the air force. Uh, and, and on paper the capabilities look very impressive. 9:36 Uh, what no one knows is how effective they'll perform in practice. They have not engaged in, um, a large scale conflict, uh, in the, since their, uh, intervention in Korea. 9:48 They had a short war against Vietnam in 1979, but they did not perform well. 9:54 Uh, the thinking is they've got a lot of modern equipment and now they need to develop some of their other, uh, sort of softer components, uh, be that training, uh, uh, and exercising and integration, uh, to achieve, um, basically synergistic effects. 10:13 Um, what they're trying to do is comparable to what other major militaries have been doing, um, but it's a bit, it's a bit of a break with Chinese tradition. 10:23 They're trying to con- And they've already done this, go down further in size, uh, achi- but they're also trying to achieve greater integration among their forces. 10:37 So i- in, in traditionally the army has been the dominant force, um, and the navy and the, and the air force have been seen as ancillary. 10:49 Now they're trying to achieve greater integration, greater equality, rebalancing some of their capabilities, um, but also allow for, for example, an army general to command a naval force or an, or a navy com- admiral in principle to command a joint force. 11:03 Basically they wanna go for jointness, uh, inter-service, uh, integration, um, being able to employ the optimal force or capability regardless of service, regardless of platform, um, which is the same, uh, effort that the, the US and Russian and other, um, modern militaries have been striving for. 11:27 Uh, they have, um, basically, uh, re-juggled some of their, um, k- distribution of commands and so on. 11:38 In the past the navy and the air force had a separate command, but the army never did because basically the army was the P- was the entire People's Liberation Army, uh, PLA and, uh, now they've given the army a separate command, which is actually something of a demotion because that means it's on par with the navy and the air force. 12:03 Um, and they've also elevated a new force, um, to that same rank. The, it, it's, it's something of a new force. 12:11 The PLA's, um, it's called the Strategic Rocket Forces but- But the Russian equivalent is a better term, I think. It's called the Strategic Missile Forces. 12:20 So basically what they've done is they've given a separate command for all their long-range and intermediate-range missiles. But then there's a little difference from the U.S. and Russian pattern. 12:32 They've put conventional forces under that command. They've also given it command of the air and naval strategic aviation and strategic submarine fleet, which in the U.S., 12:46 it's basically you've got some control by strategic command, but you've got a major role for the Air Force and Navy. And you can see this in some other trends. 12:58 They bond the basic line, but some differences than what others are doing, which makes sense since their capabilities and missions are different. 13:11 China is sending more troops to join the UN peacekeeping mission in South Sudan. The 130-strong team will join the 570 Chinese troops already in the country's capital, Juba. 13:22 It is the country's first deployment of a full infantry battalion to the UN. Well, the missions have been changing. This is not the latest round as far as I'm aware. 13:35 It was more earlier they've been getting these new missions, basically. That's the term they use. That would be peacekeeping, humanitarian operations, and a series of others. 13:49 What they're doing now is they're developing more their new types of forces, as they call that. And these are thought to be enabling capabilities such as cyber information operations, 14:06 strategic logistics, some electromagnetic operations and electronic warfare they can use to jam anti-satellite weapons. These are new capabilities. The mission is understood to be 14:24 exploit the vulnerabilities of, for example, the U.S. military. So the U.S. military is very dependent on satellites, very dependent on computers. 14:31 And if you can disrupt those, you can exploit the vulnerabilities of what is basically in paper and probably in practice is a superior conventional nuclear force to the Chinese. 14:45 The major change in threat perception was, of course, the end of the Cold War. During the latter phase of the Cold War, there was a major split between China and the Soviet Union, and they had a massive 15:00 deployments along their borders. They even had a border clash in 69 and beyond. And so the main function of the PLA was to fight an army, a ground-based campaign, probably one of attrition. 15:13 If the Soviets were to invade, you'd try and weaken the forces over time, basically how they won the Civil War in China in the 1940s. And at some point, basically you force the Soviets to withdraw. 15:27 At the end of the Cold War, there was a series of events that shifted that. 15:32 The collapse of the Soviet threat, the new Russian and other former Soviet republics did not have any desire to go into an armed conflict with China. They had signs of demilitarization and force withdrawals. 15:45 At the same time, you had the Tiananmen Square incident in which the West and others thought that the PLA had intervened inappropriately, killing hundreds of people, using Western weapons. 16:02 And so they put on a lot of arms export bans. And since then, the relationship between China and the U.S. and Japan and particularly those two have been 16:20 not good in the security domain. And so the Chinese have been shifting more towards naval and air forces. 16:30 And you could say that's impacting the current reform in that they're trying to raise the role of the Air Force and Navy. They're trying to promote more jointness. 16:42 Since if you're going to fight the Americans to take Taiwan or you're going to fight the Japanese over their islands, you're going to need to establish air superiority or at least negate American intervention forces. 16:57 And that's where it comes in. What I would also say is that the Chinese have always made claims to these disputed territories. At least they claim they have, and I don't have any way of disproving that. 17:10 But what's new is they now have the capabilities to try and enforce it. So now they're setting up zones where they want any plane that flies within disputed territory to identify themselves to Chinese authorities. 17:24 They're sending in their ships, particularly paramilitary ships and airplanes and so on, into the area. They're building up artificial islands. 17:33 So now what's different is China is able to enforce its demands because of its growing capabilities. The current government under President Xi, there's been a re-emphasis on ideology. 17:49 So he made a speech, for example, just I think it was yesterday or the day before, calling on the military to respect party leadership. And 18:04 that's been a major theme, not just in his military reforms. He's cracking down on corruption. And this is something of what I call reaction to older versions of the communist doctrine. 18:22 I mean, I don't think there's any formal change in doctrine. It's now being enforced more. 18:26 But it's, these, these may not have a, a, an entirely positive effect on China's ability to achieve its reforms since they're somewhat in tension with other dimensions of the reform. 18:38 On the one hand, they want their military to create more professionally, they want, uh, their, to show more initiative, um, they want to achieve seamless integration. 18:49 Uh, on the other hand, they're, them want people to be loyal to the party. 18:54 So if you come into attention, you have two competing officers for a command, it is possible you'd select the person who is more, uh, ideologically, uh, obedient than professionally competent. 19:06 [Instrumental music] A disputed island and now also a militarized one. 19:14 Satellite images appear to show eight surface-to-air missile launchers being installed on Woody Island by the Chinese military between February 3rd and February 14th. 19:24 Reports confirmed by both US officials and Taiwan, which also claims the island. The Chinese argue that, 19:35 uh, uh, that what's happening is the US is a, uh, whether deliberately or through its, um, rebalancing to Asia, is encouraging Japan, the Philippines, and others to contest Chinese claims. 19:52 And so they worry that the, these countries are trying to drag the US into a conflict with China to, to, to defend their territories. But it's not a major break. 20:08 Even before this, there's been a growing feeling in China that, uh, the next, uh, any, uh, a future conflict is more likely to involve, uh, the United States and its allies than, than, for example, uh, s- the former Soviet bloc. 20:28 Some outliers, you know, there's tensions with Vietnam and India and some, some other countries which aren't clearly, uh, US, uh, military allies in this context, but the general, the general trend has been moving in that direction. 20:41 They've never actually fought a war, so they don't... The f- nobody knows how well they would actually do in practice. 20:47 I mean, the Russian military did not very well when it, when it, it went and engaged, for example, in the Georgia war, um, but then it made a bunch of reforms and performed pretty well in Syria. 20:58 Uh, now we, we just don't know, I mean, and neither does Chinese leadership know how well their military would fight. There's uncertainties about some of these capabilities. Um, there... For example, the cyber, it is 21:13 one means by which China tries to capture gains from foreign industries is to, uh, steal through cyber techniques their, uh, their, uh, information and, uh, and technology and so on. 21:29 And now if what they have on their systems is, for example, stolen Microsoft operating systems, well then they may not be updating themselves to the latest security hole, so they could be vulnerable in that regard. 21:42 Uh, there's just, um, other uncertainties, and I think that's a good reason why the Chinese leadership is still reluctant to in- actually engage and to try and use their military, uh, to, to confront a for- a country, a, a major military power such as the United States or Japan. 22:02 It's not that the reforms are going to make the, the leadership more likely to, to use the military. 22:10 It's more the leadership, the current leadership seems more willing to assert China's strength, and so it's trying to strengthen the military accordingly and which one of those tools is the reforms. 22:22 So the, the bottom line is I think the, this leadership is a bit less reluctant than its predecessors to basically keep a low profile and build up their strength quietly. 22:36 But, you know, to be fair, unlike many rising powers, China has not 22:42 engaged in aggressive military wars of conquest the way, for example, Germany or Japan or, you know, way are France or England or others have done when they were on a, a rose in, in, in risen in strength relative to other countries. 22:59 Many thanks to Richard for taking the time and sharing these insights. Make sure to check out the full article and WPR's full coverage of China at worldpoliticsreview.com. 23:09 And thanks to you for joining us again this, this week. If you haven't done so already, make sure to subscribe to Trendlines. 23:16 All you need is to search for Trendlines in the iTunes Podcast Directory or in any podcast app on your smartphone. Trendlines is produced and edited by me, Peter Durie. 23:25 You can follow me and World Politics Review on Twitter, and you can find links to pieces covering the issues we talked about in the show notes on worldpoliticsreview.com. 23:34 The additional audio used in the report was sourced from CCTV and France 24. Have a fantastic weekend and see you next week for a new episode of Trendlines. [Instrumental music]
