The long-term cost of a US-China war over the South China Sea could easily be five trillion dollars. It’s not a good idea but great powers often do stupid things
If the United States' bottom line is that China has to halt its activities, then a US-China war is inevitable in the South China Sea,” said an editorial in the Global Times last week. The Global Times is an English-language daily paper specialising in international affairs that is published by the People’s Daily, the Chinese Government's official newspaper. So we should presumably take what it says seriously.
But really, a US-China war in the South China SeaIJ Over a bunch of reefs that barely clear the water at high tide, and some fishing rights and mineral rights that might belong to China if it can bully, persuade, or bribe the other claimants into renouncing their claimsIJ The gross domestic product of the United States is $16.8 trillion each year, and China's GDP is $9.2 trillion. All the resources of the South China Sea would not amount to one trillion dollars over 50 years.
Great powers end up fighting great wars. Counting a pre-war arms race, the losses during the war (even assuming it doesn't go nuclear), and a resumed arms race after the war, the long-term cost of a US-China war over the South China Sea could easily be five trillion dollars. Are you sure this is a good ideaIJ
Yet stupid things do happen. Consider the Falklands War. In 1982, Britain and Argentina fought a quite serious little war (more than 900 people were killed, ships were sunk, etc) over a couple of islands in the South Atlantic that had no strategic and little economic value.
Maybe that's not relevant. After all, Argentina had never been a great power, and by 1982, Britain was no longer really one either. The war in the Falklands was, said Argentine writer Jorge luis Borges, “a fight between two bald men over a comb.” Yet it is a bit worrisome, isn't itIJ It didn't make strategic or economic sense, but they did it anyway.
let's look at the question from another angle. Who is the messenger that bears such alarming news about a US-China warIJ The Global Times, although published by the Chinese Communist Government, is a tabloid newspaper in the style of the New York Post or the Daily Mail in Britain: Down-market, sensationalist, and not necessarily accurate. But it has never published anything that the Chinese authorities did not want published. So the question becomes: Why did the Chinese authorities want this story publishedIJ Presumably to frighten the United States enough to make it stop challenging the Chinese claims in the South China Sea. This is turning into a game of chicken, and China has just thrown out the brakes.
Would Beijing really go to war if the United States doesn't stop overflying the reefs in question and carrying out other activities that treat the Chinese claim as unprovenIJ Probably even the bosses in Beijing don't know the answer to that. But they really do intend to control the South China Sea, and the US and its local friends and allies (the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, and Taiwan) will not accept that.
The Chinese claim truly is astonishingly brazen. The ‘nine-dash line’, an official map published by the Beijing Government in 1949, claims practically all the uninhabited reefs and tiny islands in the shallow sea as Chinese territory, even ones that are 700km from the Chinese coast and 150km from the Philippines or Vietnam.
Since the islands might all generate exclusive economic zones of 300km, China may be planning to claim rights over the entire sea up to an average of about 100km off the coasts of the other countries that surround the sea. It hasn't actually stated the details of that claim yet, but it is investing a lot in laying the foundations for such a claim.