Tom Rogan
In late June, former acting Director of the Central Intelligence Agency Mike Morell interviewed John Culver on his CBS News podcast.
That should interest you because Culver was a career CIA analyst (like Morell, retired) who ended up as the intelligence community's top officer for East Asia. Culver is extremely well regarded at the CIA. He was seen as a leader committed to his people and to speaking truth to power, especially on matters concerning China. That makes him worth listening to.
Here are some top takeaways from the podcast episode.
Culver says that China poses a "strategic challenge decades in the making, it's not Germany in the 1930s." Resisting the notion that the best intelligence material comes from secret sources and the shadows, Culver observes a need for the U.S. intelligence community to leverage open-source and commercial opportunities to gather valuable information. An example of what Culver is talking about is offered by the Bellingcat investigative journalist outlet. Making heavy use of commercially available cellphone records and data, Bellingcat has tracked the movement of Russian intelligence officers in proximity to incidents of major significance. These include the attempted murder of activist Alexei Navalny, for example.
Culver also notes the paranoia that drives Xi Jinping and his Communist Party inner circle. For these officials, there is an obsession with real and imagined threats. As Culver puts it, "for an authoritarian, every day is existential." These leaders are perennially determined to "validate their [political] system as legitimate."
One takeaway from this point is that as the United States seeks to challenge Beijing's economic, military, and human rights policies, Washington must be aware of how its actions might be perceived as a direct threat to the regime itself. This is not to say that the U.S. shouldn't challenge China, but simply that it should closely consider and take into account how its challenges will be perceived.
On this question of where politics, perception, and power intersect, Culver provides some broader context. He suggests that there is significant concern in the Communist Party that Xi has "over-accumulated power." It bears reminding that Culver has had access to the entire spectrum of the most sensitive U.S. intelligence on China. Very few Americans are in a better position to know the corridor politics in Beijing.
Considering Xi's obvious penchant for absorbing ever more power into his office, it will be interesting to see how this tension plays out over the coming years.
It is Culver's assessment of the People's Liberation Army that will perhaps be of most interest. He offers the critical observation that the PLA is not a national military but the "armed wing of the Chinese Communist Party." This loyalty to party above all else is imbued in PLA doctrine.
Considering the PLA's threat to the U.S., Culver says that China's spending on its military actually remains lower than that of the U.S. as a percentage of GDP. He also reminds us that the last time the PLA fought a major conflict was in 1979, against Vietnam. But where traditionally "all [the U.S.] had to do was show up" to challenge Chinese military expansionism, the PLA of today is a very different force. Referencing its increasing capabilities, Culver explains that military intervention against China is now "fraught for a U.S. president to decide, in a way that it wasn't in the 1990s."
Interestingly, Culver observes the PLA's very significant investment in "undersea warfare," in an effort to reduce its capability gap with the U.S. That bears added note in light of this week's disclosure of priority Chinese cyber-espionage efforts to steal undersea-related U.S. technologies.
What most concerns Culver when it comes to military relations is that U.S. and Chinese forces are now in near "constant contact" in the South China Sea. In turn, alongside the possibility for miscommunication, the "ingredients for potential crisis" are abundant.
Culver adds that growing nationalist sentiments in China mean Beijing might feel "it could not back down" in an escalation spiral with the U.S.
Whether you agree or disagree with Culver's assessments, his experience and knowledge mean that they demand close attention.
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