Deterrence in the Indo-Pacific

As China's military might and tendency toward regional aggression grow, the United States and its allies are increasingly concerned with deterrence. Their strategies seek to prevent Beijing from disrupting the rules-based order in the Indo-Pacific by, for example, invading Taiwan or conducting gray-zone operations in the South China Sea.

One of those strategies was to revive the Quad grouping with Australia, Japan, India, and the United States in 2017 to protect freedom of navigation and promote democratic values.¹ In the period since, the Quad has become implicitly—or explicitly, at least on the part of the United States—aimed at countering China's malign activities in the Indo-Pacific region.² Statements from the February 2022 Quad Foreign Ministers' Meeting highlighted the threat of "unilateral attempts to change the status quo by force and coercion" in the South and East China Seas while also reaffirming the Quad's commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific.³ Although the Quad has been reluctant to directly address security cooperation, the 2020 and 2021 joint military Malabar exercises revealed a shared focus on improving interoperability.⁴

Yet deterring China with minilateral groupings of states is more complex and difficult than traditional deterrence theory might suggest. This essay lays out some of the unique characteristics of the China challenge before considering how minilaterals can best enhance deterrence in these circumstances.

Coalitions and Deterrence

States have long searched for allies to deter aggression against themselves. External balancing, alliance formation, and coalition building—while each having differing degrees of institutionalization—are ultimately geared toward aggregating capabilities across countries to improve military effectiveness and thus deterrence. Indeed, while the Quad leaders go to great lengths to argue that their efforts do not constitute a military coalition (interestingly, China makes the same efforts with respect to Russia), this is undoubtedly a part of the calculation. The Quad leaders obliquely expressed their desire to deter Chinese aggression in a March 2021 joint statement: "We strive for a region that is free, open, inclusive, healthy, anchored by democratic values, and unconstrained by coercion."⁵ Mike Pompeo, then secretary of state, put it more bluntly when in October 2019 he claimed the Quad "will prove very important in the efforts ahead, ensuring that China retains only its proper place in the world."⁶

While the Quad has the potential to enhance deterrence against China, the reality is not as straightforward. From a simple correlation of forces perspective, the U.S. military is already superior to China's even without factoring in U.S. allies and partners. For example, the United States spent approximately $778 billion on defense in 2020, compared to China's estimated $252 billion.⁷ The United States boasts over 13,000 military aircraft to China's 2,500.⁸ Similarly, the United States leads significantly in aircraft carriers: it has eleven nuclear-powered aircraft carriers while China has two conventionally powered carriers.⁹ Additionally, the United States has the unfortunate boasting rights of being involved in over one hundred foreign military interventions since 1947, while China has not fought a war since 1979 (and even then, its performance was widely considered a failure).

Because China is outmatched, since the mid-1990s, Beijing has focused on developing and implementing an anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) strategy toward the United States.¹⁰ Chinese strategists do not doubt the United States' military might, but they believe China can be victorious if Washington cannot mobilize and use that power in a timely manner in a conflict in the Indo-Pacific.¹¹ If U.S. forces are unable to operate from the region—either because countries are reluctant to grant access or because China takes out U.S. Pacific bases through missile strikes—then the relative balance of power becomes largely irrelevant. The United States currently does not have enough military assets close to potential Indo-Pacific flashpoints that are readily available to fight. It has 2 air bases within 1,000 kilometers of the Taiwan Strait, while China has 39 within 800 kilometers of Taipei.¹² It can take weeks...