Home › Books & Reviews › Capsule Reviews › China's Military Transition

China's Military Transition

Edited by David Shambaugh and Richard H. Yang
Reviewed by By Eliot A. Cohen
November/December 1998
Print Email
Login or Register to leave a comment.

Sign-up for free weekly updates from ForeignAffairs.com.
Edited by David Shambaugh and Richard H. Yang
Clarendon Press
1997
366 pp.
$24.95

The community of academic students of the People's Liberation Army is tiny, and this workmanlike collection of essays represents many of its members. The essays paint a common picture of a large, slowly modernizing military, with many obstacles to overcome before becoming a First World force. But a few of the essays are more suggestive and less conventional -- most notably Nan Li's description of contemporary Chinese doctrine, which suggests discontinuous change, at least in the intellectual realm. The common difficulty among the authors is measuring the rate of modernization of the PLA and assessing its role in supporting Chinese policy.

Related

Essay, Mar/Apr 1996
A Revolution in Warfare
Eliot A. Cohen

The tools and techniques for waging war never stand still, but these are the early days of a revolution in military affairs as momentous as those wrought by the railroad and the airplane. This newest transformation is a consequence of developments in civilian society including the information revolution and postindustrial capitalism. Its satellite imagery and smart bombs will change the forms of combat and armies. Personnel and politics, as always, will be as crucial as technology.

Read
Essay, May/Jun 2001
Virtual Defense
James Adams

The United States may be an uncontested military superpower, but it remains defenseless against a new mode of attack: information warfare. As the military, the private sector, and Washington grow increasingly dependent on computers and information networks, they also grow more vulnerable to cyber-attack. Cyberspace is becoming the new front line of warfare, and private citizens are the new prime target. U.S. policymakers and technology entrepreneurs must wake up to this threat and build a wall of defense -- now.

Read
Essay, Jul/Aug 1996
A Post-Heroic Military Policy: The New Season of Bellicosity
Edward N. Luttwak

The Cold War induced caution in nations that feared uncontrollable escalation. Now that confrontations are less likely to careen out of control, a new season of bellicosity is here. The U.S. military, trapped in a Cold War mindset, has failed to realize this. It is spending far too much on casualty-prone units in all the services, in an age when political opposition to casualties effectively makes these units unavailable for combat. The military should recalibrate its priorities and shift funds to weapons such as high-tech lasers, stealth aircraft, and cruise missiles that can make warfare less lethal for Americans.

Read