The Maritime Rung on the Escalation Ladder: Naval Blockades in a US-China Conflict

摘要

What options do great powers have to end future conflicts over limited political objectives without resorting to nuclear threats? This article examines a naval blockade as an option for militarized coercion that has been largely overlooked in existing scholarship on the conflict escalation ladder for great-power war in the nuclear era. Some US scholars have recommended a naval blockade of Chinese merchant shipping to coerce Beijing in a future war scenario. US leaders might select this blockade option because they believe it poses a lower risk of nuclear escalation than conventional strikes on the Chinese mainland and lower costs than directly engaging Chinese air and naval forces off China's shores. Neither China nor the United States might be willing to risk nuclear war to achieve their limited political aims in future conflicts over Taiwan, North Korea, or disputed maritime territories. Existing literature has not sufficiently scrutinized the feasibility of a blockade and China's military plans to respond to it, despite raising doubts about the effectiveness of a blockade to force a change in Chinese behavior. This article argues that an interception-style blockade at the Southeast Asian straits designed to minimize escalation risks is feasible. But the campaign would place severe demands on US naval forces and require extensive support from other countries. Chinese-language materials suggest China could respond militarily to that campaign with intentional escalation using nonnuclear weapons, which may be preferable to inadvertent nuclear use that could result from a US attack on the Chinese mainland.