Active Defense and China’s Sputnik Moment
The Gulf War was China’s Sputnik Moment. Only one month after Iraq’s defeat by US-led coalition forces, CCP General Secretary noted "[China’s] backwards technology means taking a beating."
In 1957, the Soviet Union launched the first artificial Earth-orbiting satellite, Sputnik 1, and achieved a critical Cold War milestone before the US. The American public was shocked to learn that the Soviets, far from being technologically behind, were ahead of the US – and so the “Sputnik Moment” marked the launch of the Space Race, providing the wake-up call the US needed to invest in science and technology and beat the Soviets to the Moon in 1969. That’s the tidy version of the narrative, anyways. The reality is more complicated, as President Eisenhower and the CIA were tracking Soviet satellite developments closely and were not actually surprised by the Sputnik 1 launch.
Regardless, “Sputnik Moment” entered the lexicon to refer to a single event that spurs a country into realizing they need to change the status quo to remain competitive. In defense circles, the term is ubiquitous. President Obama even used it in 2010, calling the recession “our generation’s Sputnik Moment” and that we cannot go back to an economy “built on financial speculation.” Like many an overused idiom, Sputnik Moment has lost its potency, particularly when used by the US defense establishment (today, everything China does is a Sputnik Moment, but, ironically, nothing is severe enough to warrant a change). However, the term is useful when considering what events may have served as other countries’ Sputnik Moments.
The Gulf War (1990-91) was China’s Sputnik Moment. Only one month after Iraq’s swift and stunning defeat by the US-led coalition forces, China’s senior leaders, during party speeches, perfectly capture the sentiment of a Sputnik Moment: Jiang Zemin, CCP General Secretary, noted “[China’s] backwards technology means being in a passive position and taking a beating;” Liu Huaqing, Central Military Commission (CMC) Vice Chairman, said “We should face this reality squarely. In no way should we be satisfied with our present situation and hold an arbitrarily optimistic stance (pg 190).”
The Highway of Death televised for immediate consumption probably expedited China’s realization that war had changed and, as Zemin summarized, “modern war is becoming a high-tech war.” As M. Taylor Favel writes in his excellent (albeit dry) Active Defense: China’s Military Strategy Since 1949, the Gulf War thus “ignited a wholesale reconsideration of future warfare within the PLA.” This is reflected in the CMC 1993 strategy, which is the most significant of the strategies adopted by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and is the basis for China’s military strategy today, following adjustments in 2004 and 2014. The circumstances that forged the 1993 strategy have all the attributes of a Sputnik Moment.
Element of Surprise
Much as the American public was shocked by the Sputnik 1 launch, so China was surprised by the outcome of the Gulf War.
“In the early 1990s, China’s senior party and military leaders believed that China’s regional security environment was the “best-ever” since 1949 (pg 182).”
“Chinese military analysts predicted that coalition forces would become bogged down in a protracted conflict against the battle-hardened Iraqi army and that air power would play only a marginal role in the war (pg 188).”
Immediate Understanding of the Need to Change the Status Quo
A Sputnik Moment requires that people with the authority to implement change start crusading for it:
Students at the PLA’s National Defense University were urged to “Use the Gulf War to clarify what kind of war modern war will be (pg 189).” Zhang Zhen, President of the National Defense University, 1992.
“As can be seen from the Gulf War, modern war is becoming high-tech war, becoming multi-dimensional warfare, including electronic warfare and missile warfare;” and “we really do lag behind in weapons and equipment, and in some areas, the gaps are increasing (pg 189).” Jiang Zemin, 1991.
“The Gulf War was a high-technology local war [that] shows that the development of high technology is the ‘dragon’s head’ of national defense and economic development;” and “The Gulf War used the largest variety of new weapons since World War II (pg 189).” Liu Huaqing, 1991.
Major Changes Enacted in Direct Response to An External Stimulus
The 1993 strategy was defined by “local wars under high-technology conditions (pg 182).” [1] This translated to increased offensive capabilities, as priorities shifted from defense of the homeland to the more ambitious goals of “winning territorial disputes along China’s periphery and unifying Taiwan.” The operational doctrine to support these changes included the first-ever campaign outline for joint operations among the services, a direct response to the Gulf War’s “obvious characteristic” of the “integration of land, air, sea, space, and electronic capabilities.” With the focus now on destroying an opponent’s operational system, new technologies were required, including “precision-guided weapons, intelligent support systems, electronic warfare systems, and automated command systems (pg 191).” [2]
The force structure also changed with a reduction of 500,000 personnel in 1997. The army took the largest hit and shrunk by almost 20%. These changes were made to increase the quality of the force and strengthen the navy and air force.
Conclusion
In the 1964 film Dr. Strangelove, the titular character points out that the Soviet Union’s doomsday machine is only an effective deterrent if everyone knows about it. As nobody knows about it until it is too late, nuclear apocalypse ensues. While this line of reasoning is pretty intuitive, the game theory becomes complex when one thinks about how much to reveal and when to reveal it.
Sputnik Moments are therefore interesting to analyze not only from the perspective of the party with the inferior technology, but also from the perspective of the party with the superior technology who, willingly or not, shows their hand. Superficially, it seems that the hand is forced more in a war that needs to be won than in the revelation of an important but non-essential capability. The counterfactuals are very interesting here: What trajectory would the US Space program have taken if the US beat the Soviets to the first satellite launch? How much would China’s military modernization have been delayed if the Gulf War had never happened? These are unanswerable questions, but a flavor of them undoubtedly occupies many a defense strategist.
[1] The 1993 strategy was a result of the Gulf War, but it was delayed by two years because of divisions within party leadership after Tiananmen and politicization of the PLA. It was not until unity was restored at the Fourteenth Party Congress in October 1992 that the PLA was able to pursue the change in strategy.
[2] Although this language is 30 years old, it echoes US Defense strategy now; joint force operations remain a challenge for the US and Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2) is everything and nothing.