 Welcome to the U.S. Naval War College, the Navy's home of thought. NWC Talks features our world-class experts examining national security matters. We hope you enjoy the conversation. The Pentagon tells us that the Indo-Pacific is our priority theater and that China is the main pacing threat in the region. Therefore, China is important to the U.S. military today. Competing effectively with China means convincing friends and potential foes that we have the capability to do what we say we will, as well as the willpower to do it, whether it's keeping our alliance commitments to our friends or defeating potential antagonists. So to deter China and to give heart to America's friends, we have to understand China's military strategy and prove that we can beat it. Which brings me to the meat of the talk. This is NWC Talks and I'm Professor Jim Holmes, J.C. Wiley Chair of Maritime Strategy at the Naval War College. To help explain China's maritime strategy, I will invoke three things. One big strategic concept from China itself, three metaphors, two from China, one that I've come up with myself, and two old operational concepts that are made new by time and by technology. The strategic concept comes first and it's called active defense. It comes from Mao Zedong, the founding chairman of the Chinese Communist Party all the way back almost a century ago now. Active defense, as Mao puts it, is nothing more than using offensive tactics and operations to weaken a stronger foe while you remain on the strategic defensive yourself. You can gather your resources for battle, you can harness new resources, you can try to get the opponent to divide its forces, or you can try to break your opponent's alliances and weaken the opponent that way. Over time, the weak will make themselves the stronger contender, go on the strategic offensive, and win. China's 2015 military strategy affirms that active defense remains the essence of Chinese Communist strategic thought here almost a century into its existence. Not just valid, the essence of Chinese Communist strategic thought, which commends it to our attention. This leads to the first metaphor that I used to describe Chinese maritime strategy to you, the rope-a-dope. This is a metaphor that comes from Mao himself as well. Mao talks about Chinese military strategy in terms of boxing. He points out that only the foolish boxer goes brushing in and starts flailing away at his opponent when the bell rings to start the bout. Rather than do that, the savvy boxer lets the other guy, the other boxer, flail away, waste his energy and thus weaken himself leading into the later rounds so that this gives the wise boxer an advantage in those later rounds. And ultimately, he can go on the offensive and hope to win. This is much the same strategy that the great Muhammad Ali took in 1974 in the famous rumble in the jungle against the world champion, George Foreman. Ali was smaller, everybody thought he would be pummeled by Foreman who was bigger and beefier, but yet Ali let the Foreman chase him around the ring. He stayed on the ropes, he let the bigger beefier Foreman wear himself out to a point where in the late rounds Ali was the stronger contender, was able to go on the offensive and win in a stunner of about in Zaire. So this is a concept that explicates well what Mao thinks about Chinese military strategy. China assumes that it will go into any conflict as the weaker contender and therefore it behooves it to do things to let the adversary weaken itself while also doing things to weaken that adversary as a precursor to the strategic counter offensive. So that's that's metaphor number one. The second metaphor also comes from Mao himself and this is the idea of the hand. Let me explain what I mean here. Mao noted that the Red Army could be stronger than the enemy at a particular place on the map at a particular time even while it remained weaker on the whole. He taught commanders to seek out opportunities to encircle and annihilate isolated enemy forces and weaken them that way. It was better, he said, to cut off one of the enemy's fingers entirely than to bash them all. Cut off your enemy's fingers one by one and pretty soon it's hard for him to make a fist. This is what Chinese strategists today call systems destruction warfare. If China's enemies fight as a system, PLA commanders strike at whatever holds that system together then overpower isolated units or formations one by one just like cutting off the fingers off of your enemy's hand. This these two metaphors add up to the third metaphor one of my own coinage the crumple zone. What do I mean by that? The crumple zone in your car if you think about automotive design it's a sacrificial component designed to collapse in a controlled way upon impact. It absorbs the energy from a collision before it harms what you care about namely the people in the cabin. Now overlay that metaphor on the map of the western Pacific. China's defensive crumple zone is oriented to blunt the impact from US forces coming from the east from Hawaii or the west coast. China's active defenders do not kid themselves that they can block US forces out of regional waters and skies altogether. Any more than car designers see the crumple zone as an infallible and unbendable defense against shock and collision. Instead active defenses designed to raise the price of entry into the western Pacific higher than any US president would pay and thus deter America from keeping its alliance commitments. Failing that it seeks to slow us down so that China can finish what it starts before we can reach the scene of battle and make a difference in the outcome of the conflict. Successful active defense would compel us to undo a done deal dislodging the PLA from whatever it had seized in the meantime whether it's China whether it's the Senkaku Islands whatever the case may be. And since tactical defense is the strongest form of warfare military logic would be an ally for China in this in this contest. So those are the three metaphors I would offer for you the rope a dope the hand losing its fingers and the crumple zone. I hope these help to explicate what China's maritime strategy is all about. How will the PLA how will China put that strategy into practice sucking the energy out of our cross-Pacific counter offensive. Let's talk about that for a few minutes. As I contended at the outset it will do so by making two old concepts new. The first old concept made new comes from Alfred Thayer Mahan our second president here at the Naval War College and it's the idea of the fortress fleet. A century ago Mahan was deeply critical of operating fleets within range of shore fire support but back then the range of a gun was a few short miles. Fleets could accomplish little while remaining within reach of supporting coastal artillery. Now does this critique hold up today? I don't think so. What if coastal artillery could strike effectively at moving fleets at sea scores if not hundreds or even more miles offshore. Such as such an extended reach artillery would let a fortress fleet roam across fast expanses while still enjoying shore fire support. Precision long-range coastal artillery is precisely what the PLA has fielded with manned aviation and a family of anti-ship crews and ballistic missiles. Coastal sites today can reportedly strike more than 2,000 miles out at sea, out to Guam and potentially even beyond. 2,000 miles is a heck of a lot of maneuvering space for the PLA Navy surface fleet. Bottom line, ultra long-range coastal artillery provides fire support to the fleet while weakening U.S. forces banned for the region. The other concept comes from the 19th century French Navy, the Jeuneco or the New School of Naval Warfare. This means nothing more than super-empowering submarines and small surface craft with heavy-hitting new weaponry to threaten battleships and other capital ships. If all a coastal state cares about is denying a global Navy access to its coastal waters, a fleet of inexpensive small craft can do the trick. Back then, it was torpedo boats and torpedo armed diesel submarines. Today, it's subs and small craft sporting torpedoes, cruise missiles and potentially other exotic armaments. Jeuneco craft fan out in the crumple zone. Between them and the coastal artillery overhead, they could give U.S. forces a bad day indeed. If the active defense strategy works as planned, the PLA Navy battle fleet can remain in reserve until very late in the conflict, letting coastal artillery and small craft soften us up as a precursor to a major engagement. What are the takeaways from all of this? First, this is a strategy that conforms to communist Chinese strategic traditions. Studying China's way of war is a must. Second, the PLA Navy battle fleet probably will not offer battle far out in the Pacific. Commanders will let the coastal artillery and the Jeuneco do their work before they risk that pricey battle fleet. And lastly, active defense calls on the PLA to break up enemy systems so that the PLA can cut off our fingers one by one and achieve the effects that Mao prescribed for them. So we must tend to the resiliency of our systems, whether it's a fleet, an aviation squadron, a brigade or whatever. Mutual support is crucial to our future success. So there you have it. China's maritime strategy in one big idea, three metaphors, and two concepts given new life by time and technology. This is NWC Talks, and I'm Professor Jim Holmes. Thank you.