There is a widespread assumption that the United States could impose a “far blockade” on Chinese maritime trade passing through the Malacca Straits, and thereby gain an advantage in a conflict with China. Some scholars have even posited that China’s insecurity about the so-called “Malacca dilemma” might deter it from military aggression.
This article rejects both arguments, drawing on Chinese-language primary sources and five case studies of far blockades imposed by the Royal Navy between 1770 and 1945. We find an emerging consensus in Chinese open-source scholarship that the threat of a Malacca blockade is exaggerated. Far blockades rarely succeed and often backfire, and their architects appear systematically to overestimate their chances of success; the key problem is that neutral states face powerful price incentives to subvert the blockade, so blockaders must either accommodate neutral states or coerce them into participating. Both approaches are costly and undermine the operation’s effectiveness over time.
Eyck Freymann is a Hoover Fellow at Stanford University, where he studies the geopolitics of climate change and strategic deterrence in the Taiwan Strait. His first book is One Belt One Road: Chinese Power Meets the World. His writing on current affairs has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs, The Economist, War on the Rocks, Foreign Policy, and The Atlantic.
Before Hoover, Freymann held concurrent postdoctoral fellowships at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center and the Columbia-Harvard China & the World Program. He earned his doctorate in China Studies from Balliol College, University of Oxford; two masters degrees in China Studies from Harvard University and the University of Cambridge, where he was a Henry Scholar; and a bachelor's degree cum laude with highest honors in East Asian History from Harvard College.
phiwong on May 26th, 2024 at 10:04 UTC »
Tend to agree with the speaker. There has never been a successful blockade between two almost equal nations in modern times and certainly none where both countries are as large and economically developed as it would be China and the US.
It would be a viciously fought hot war before a blockade could be established and the problem, as pointed out, is that it is unlikely that the rest of the world would easily or quickly agree to take sides. In a war between two giants, no country wins if they enter it. For the conditions of a blockade to even start to make sense, the US (presumably the enforcer) would have to degrade China's navy. This would mean actively sinking Chinese ships wherever they are encountered and causing thousands of casualties.
Then it would need to demonstrate that it would similarly sink civilian vessels - this is the fastest way to deter those private cargo vessels. In modern economies, transportation is NOT primarily controlled by governments as in the past. Private profit motives will not easily be extinguished without brutal action. In WW2, the Germans simply sank civilian cargo and passenger vessels. The US would have to be willing to do this, at scale, to even stand a chance to enforce a blockade. This will not be something many nations and very likely not even the US general public will stand for very long.
Given the physical size of China and their population's productivity, a blockade would take many years to start showing much impact. Meanwhile the US would have no practical means to stop Russia from supplying China with oil and fertilizer. Given a few years, China can build the roads, railway and pipelines necessary. The average Chinese citizen will suffer but that is not likely to degrade their military capability.
The defense of Taiwan will have to primarily rely on giving Taiwan the ability to destroy any reasonable amphibious assault from China. It would need to be a gift since Taiwan, despite being highly developed, simply does not have the population and economic size to purchase or produce this capability itself. The dilemma is that doing so has a significant likelihood of precipitating aggressive reaction from China.
GhostOfKiev87 on May 26th, 2024 at 09:23 UTC »
The authors state that one of the biggest myths among foreign policy analysts is that a blockade of the Malacca Straits could be an effective strategy against a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.
This is a superficially attractive argument since the majority of China’s imports pass through Malacca. But in the authors research, which was a study of the history of blockades, the effectiveness of blockades are often wildly overestimated. The central reason blockades have historically failed is when there is the so called “neutral state problem”. A country attempting to blockade another country must try to convince neutral states to abide by the blockade or it defeats the whole purpose of a blockade. This is often difficult to do because there is a huge free market incentive for neutral states or companies located in neutral states to profit off of blockades. Even companies from the aggressor states often pushed their governments to relax blockades. In the current world, which is increasing multipolar and with many states that may remain neutral in a US vs China conflict over Taiwan, it may prove impossible to maintain a blockade on China.
The authors also point out that any Malacca blockade would require the support of the littoral states (Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia) which is by no means guaranteed. Singapore has a strong stance on promoting free trade. Malaysia and Indonesia are likely to remain neutral in a war between the US and China over Taiwan.
Furthermore, the authors argue that even if the US could secure the support of the littoral states of the Malacca Strait, the US does not have enough capacity to maintain a blockade of the Malacca Strait. The authors point out that ships are not tracked by satellite imagery or some other such technology as is commonly assumed, because that is not currently possible. The current system of tracking ships is much less advanced than that, and relies on ships turning on their transponders and accurately reporting their cargo. The authors argue that this system could break down when neutral parties would have a huge incentive to run a blockade by turning off their transponders, faking their port of destination, or smuggling contraband to China. The US doesn’t have the capacity to investigate every ship passing through the Malacca Strait. The authors likened the issue to the drug war, where lucrative profits make it very difficult to completely stamp out drugs.
The authors also highlight a quote from the British Admiral Fisher: “prolongation of war tends to raise up fresh enemies owing to the exasperation of neutrals”. They point to examples where the British Royal Navy was even forced into war with neutral parties, such as the Netherlands and Russia, as its blockade attempts backfired and necessarily put it into conflict with neutral states. Any blockade of the Malacca Straits will have a huge impact on all the countries in the Asia-Pacific region, including US allies such as Singapore, the Philippines, South Korea, and Japan. These allies may not support a US blockade of the Malacca Strait due to the effect on their own economies.
Finally, the authors point out that those arguing for blockades usually believe #1 it will reduce the military capacity of a country and/or #2 a blockade will cause social unrest and a capitulation of the blockaded country, due to shortages of goods. However, in their study of historical blockades, states are almost always able to maintain their military capacity indefinitely by rationing civilian consumption. For example, they point out that the PLA only uses 13% of total Chinese oil consumption. The authors also point out that blockades often backfire and create a stronger resolve among blockaded populations to support their government. Popular resentment is targeted at the aggressor country and not their own government.
GhostOfKiev87 on May 26th, 2024 at 08:35 UTC »
Submission Statement:
There is a widespread assumption that the United States could impose a “far blockade” on Chinese maritime trade passing through the Malacca Straits, and thereby gain an advantage in a conflict with China. Some scholars have even posited that China’s insecurity about the so-called “Malacca dilemma” might deter it from military aggression.
This article rejects both arguments, drawing on Chinese-language primary sources and five case studies of far blockades imposed by the Royal Navy between 1770 and 1945. We find an emerging consensus in Chinese open-source scholarship that the threat of a Malacca blockade is exaggerated. Far blockades rarely succeed and often backfire, and their architects appear systematically to overestimate their chances of success; the key problem is that neutral states face powerful price incentives to subvert the blockade, so blockaders must either accommodate neutral states or coerce them into participating. Both approaches are costly and undermine the operation’s effectiveness over time.