The U. S.-China Military Balance Seen in a Three-Game Framework

David Frelinger and Jessica Hart

This chapter presents an alternative framework for approaching the dis­cussion and assessment of the “military balance” between the United States and China, with an emphasis on the effect of People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) modernization. This approach provides for a more comprehensive means of thinking about the military balance and illuminates some deficien­cies in current assessments. The framework assesses PLAAF modernization through the lenses of three “games”—the Game of Influence, the Battle over a Third Party, and the Great Power Game—that represent the range of relation­ships the United States and China could forge, with a focus on the military aspects of those games. As this analysis will demonstrate, the effect of PLAAF modernization is most fully understood not as an input in one overall U. S.- China military balance, but as a series of moves occurring in the context of the game or games the United States and China are playing.

Why a New Framework?

The U. S.-China military balance is most often spoken of in Cold War terms of force-on-force counts, defense expenditure comparisons, and other metrics that are relatively straightforward to calculate. These calculations are then used to define the balance within future “worlds” that could exist between the two nations.1 These analyses assume that the United States and China are playing the same game in these worlds, that both recognize the other side is playing that game, and that the game remains dominant and consistent for an extended period of time. Assessing the balance through this narrow aperture misses important nuances in what is in fact a fluid military context—one in which PLAAF modernization plays many roles. This type of assessment also does not account for the facts that powers may play more than one game simul­taneously, that both sides are not necessarily playing the same game, and that both may fail to recognize what game the other has chosen.

An alternative framework is necessary to address these analytical defi­ciencies. By acknowledging the range of games and the fluidity of their context, the framework allows for a fuller assessment of the effects of PLAAF modern­ization on the military balance within the games. This avoids viewing PLAAF modernization through the lens of only one game while also highlighting the fact that there is not one military balance, but several. By adopting a more comprehensive framework, this assessment also avoids utilizing familiar—and inappropriate—analytical narratives. Many attempt to frame at least a portion of the U. S.-Chinese interactions in Cold War terms—what we call here the Great Power Game. In the Cold War, the positions of the United States and the Soviet Union as the only two remaining great powers were relatively ossified from the outset, and the overarching ideological narrative provided a ground­ing framework for understanding the game that both sides were playing. This is not the case for the United States and China. The relationship is not yet mature, and there are multiple, competing narratives about interests and goals on both sides. Those narratives as well as U. S. and Chinese actions provide no convincing indications that either side has made a deliberate decision as to which game it wishes to be playing—much less what game the other is play­ing or will choose to play in the future. Instead there are elements of multiple games that must be assessed.