Abstract
Active Defense is a must-read for any scholar with an interest in the study of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), China’s security strategy, and more broadly international security. Relying on a trove of Chinese-language sources, M. Taylor Fravel’s book offers an extraordinarily detailed analysis of the evolution of the People Republic of China’s military strategy over the last 70 years.
Fravel’s theoretical framework is of elegant simplicity. Change in China’s military strategy, Fravel argues, results from the conjunction of two factors: the existence of observable shifts in the conduct of warfare among great powers or their clients and party unity. The first variable clearly anchors the book in the realist research programmes: major shifts naturally constitute a ‘strong external incentive’ (p. 24) for states to adjust their plans since not doing so would negatively impact their security and chances of survival. The originality of Fravel’s argument is that these ‘external shocks’ constitute a necessary but not sufficient condition for change in military strategy. For socialist states, and China in particular, external shocks only operate as a cause of change when the party is united, that is, when there is an ‘agreement among the top party leaders on basic policy questions’ (p. 20).
The framework allows Fravel to explain the three major changes in China’s military strategy that occurred in 1956, 1980, and 1993. The 1980 change might be here the most significant, because external incentives – the presence of a Soviet threat and changes in the conduct of warfare illustrated by the Yom Kippur War – predate the actual change of strategy by more than half a decade. The significant delay between the appearance of external conditions that should be conducive to change and the actual adoption of a new military strategy by Beijing is convincingly traced back by Fravel to the absence of party unity during and in the years immediately after the Cultural Revolution. Chapter 5 shows that while PLA leaders such as Su Yu had clearly identified the shift in the conduct of warfare, ‘fragmentation at the top’ (p. 153) prevented the adaptation of strategic guidelines in 1977, and change in military strategy only became possible once Deng Xiaoping secured his position as uncontested leader and re-established party unity.
Party unity still plays a role in the absence of major shifts in the conduct of great power warfare. Fravel demonstrates that change in military strategy can still occur under such conditions, but at a more minor level. This occurred on four occasions in 1960, 1988, 2004, and 2014, when strategic guidelines changed in the absence of a clear external shock. The only outlier case in Fravel’s framework is 1964, when the ‘luring in the deep’ strategy was adopted in the absence of both major observable changes in the conduct of war and party unity, but as part of Mao’s endeavour to reassert his leadership over the party after the Great Leap Forward. There is a final ‘exception that proves the rule’ (p. 269): China’s nuclear strategy, which has remained largely unchanged since China acquired the bomb. This can be explained, Fravel argues, by the fact that the party maintained tight and exclusive control over China’s nuclear posture over time, insulating it from changes that occurred in the conventional domain and guaranteeing stability.
For China and PLA watchers, the book contains important insights. Of particular significance is that it shows unequivocally that Chinese strategists have been keen to draw ‘lessons from other peoples’ wars’ (Andrew Scobell, David Lai, and Roy Kamphausen (eds), Chinese Lessons from Other Peoples’ Wars, Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, 2011) and to adapt when changes in the conduct of warfare highlight Chinese weaknesses and vulnerabilities. Of equal importance might be Fravel’s hypothesis that the critical variables that determine the formulation of China’s strategy have remained stable over time. In his perspective, China’s military strategy continues to be determined by the prevalent ‘way of war’ and on the party’s ability to maintain cohesion. Finally, and perhaps more indirectly, the book shows how difficult it remains to gauge the evolution of Chinese thinking on military affairs. Strategic guidelines which define the overall direction of China’s military strategy remain entirely inaccessible – including those published half a century ago. In many ways, this is what makes a book like Active Defense essential to understand the current and future trajectory of the PLA and, more broadly, the consequences of China’s ascent.