Implications for United States' Military Strategy and Policy of China's Asymmetric Anti-Satellite Capability.

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This dissertation argues that a military power shift has occurred in the Pacific. Prevailing international relations theorists believe that United States' military retains a decisive power advantage in the region. This paper offers the argument that the Chinese have adopted an orthogonal approach to increasing their military bargaining power by pursuing a strategy of exploiting US military overdependence on space enabled warfare. To prove this, the paper offers proof the Chinese have pursued and created a kinetic anti-satellite (ASAT) capability capable of destroying US space assets. The Chinese strategy can be effective only in combination with an extant operational and strategic US vulnerability on space. The paper further proves through a comparative case study approach that the US is indeed over dependent on space. The factors of over dependence on encrypted radio communications of the German Navy in World War II and the Battle of the Atlantic are identified in a historical case study. Those factors are then tested for in the US case of space dependence to determine exploitable vulnerability. The conclusions of the study decisively identify a vulnerable US position with highly proliferated dependence on small numbers of space assets, the concentration of risk in those assets, and the existence of a constructive relationship between US space enablers and US military operational doctrine. These facts combined with the Chinese ASAT capability reduce the US bargaining position in a crisis. The survivability of mobile Chinese ASAT assets and the threshold differences between attacking on orbit assets versus pre-empting Chinese ASATs in mainland China create a condition where the US must start a war with China in order to preserve the ability to win. The ability therefore to hold US space assets at risk gives the Chinese escalation dominance in a crisis situation. This research is the first methodical analysis of the impact of the Chinese ASAT program on US-Chinese military power relations, and an important addition to the growing body of work on Chinese anti-access, area denial (A2/AD) strategies. It also expands scholarship in the area of rising challenger strategies shaping responses, offering an approach where a rising challenger seeks to expand power without triggering significant balancing responses from the reigning global power by focusing on reigning power vulnerabilities instead of strengths.