To summarize, Vuving does make a number of valuable points and I concur with parts of his assessment, including especially his clear-eyed view of the military balance and his rejection of high-sounding, but quite inappropriate rhetoric. As noted above, I do accept that Beijing has made some incremental gains with its new facilities in the Spratlys both with respect to “gray-zone” operations and also in underlining its military superiority versus Southeast Asian states, though I don’t think these marginal gains should be exaggerated, since they do not fundamentally alter previous strong advantages held by Beijing. Far and away the biggest problem in Vuving’s critique, and among many like-minded hawks, however, is the misguided notion that there is a clear and discernible line between non-military methods of coercion (“gray-zone” operations) and actual combat that rational leaders in Beijing, Manila, Hanoi and Washington certainly will not cross. That binary assessment is a gross simplification of these situations that will inevitably be confused by the “fog” of crisis and thus gravely underestimates the potential for escalation to war. A step in the right direction would be for such hawks, advocating for containment policies and the like, to be more candid and recognize that their recommendations carry significant risks, not only of heightened tensions and wasted resources, but also of direct armed conflict among nuclear armed superpowers.

Lyle J. Goldstein is Associate Professor in the China Maritime Studies Institute (CMSI) at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, RI. The opinions expressed in this analysis are his own and do not represent the official assessments of the U.S. Navy or any other agency of the U.S. Government.

Image: Flickr/U.S. Pacific Fleet