There was a report in the Sunday Times that the United Kingdom’s Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst recently graduated a Chinese Officer, and that there are plans for a second cadet from the People’s Republic of China to enter the Academy soon. As I have not seen corroborating stories from other sources, I don’t know how accurate all this is. However, the story reports that this has angered many, particularly in the US defense establishment, because of concerns that it might give the Chinese an edge in some future conflict, and because it violates an Arms Embargo that has been in place since the Tiananmen Square incident.
This raises an interesting question about whether our paradigm of security, which defaults toward secrecy, is the right model for the information age. Certainly there is an advantage to be gained by keeping ones methods of military operation as secret as possible. Whether one reads Sun Tzu, von Clausewitz, or Fredrick the Great, all make it clear that surprise is of supreme benefit in warfare. Of course, surprise is aided by keeping ones tactics, strategies, and doctrines under wraps, or, looking at it from the other angle, the enemy can anticipate ones actions better if they have insight into ones mode of operations. This all favors secrecy, but it is not the whole story.
There are invariably costs that offset the benefits of secrecy, and one should consider the cost in comparison to the marginal benefit of the act of secrecy in question. Let’s first consider the benefit to be gained. It should be noted that I am not getting into the whole issue of whether there is a benefit of the embargo with respect to changing Chinese behavior to be more palatable to the West. I suspect that there is little or no advantage in terms of such secondary and tertiary objectives as advancing human and political rights. A nation as powerful as China is not likely to be levered into changing its human rights policy based on the promise of increased military cooperation. I realize that if one were to do a true cost-benefit analysis, one would want to consider such issues, but one quickly gets into moral arguments that seem intractable. All I am considering is whether the strategic benefit of a prohibition on military cooperation is worth the cost. In other words, will the Chinese gains in terms of understanding NATO and member country doctrine be so great that it outweighs the benefits of cooperation.
I tend to think that the benefit China gains in terms of becoming better prepared to fight a war with the US or Europe is small. First of all, as we live in the information age, a broad amount of information is readily available. Alot of military doctrine is freely available on the web, and most of what is discussed in classroom settings, even at military academies, is probably “For Official Use Only” (a very weak security classification) at most. I once heard this put well by the head of several old martial arts lineages, Soke Masaaki Hatsumi, who said that we now live in an era of information inflation where individual pieces of information buy one less than they would have in the Warring States Period. China has considerable resources to obtain the kind of information that this cadet has received, be they open source, technical, or clandestine.
The other side of the equation is the benefit of having more military cooperation. First, information flow is a two way street. When we consider the risks that the Chinese cadet might learn something beneficial, it should also be considered that British cadets may learn something that could benefit their side as well. However, more importantly, there is a benefit to mutually beginning to look at each other less adversarially. There is a potential benefit to exposing military leaders so early in their careers to a culture that sees the benefit of allowing voices of dissent and that practices moderation in regulating the activities of its citizens and businesses. Furthermore, if events with Russia continue to unfold as they have, we might need every friend we can get.
I may be wrong, but my intent is to call for an updated paradigm of the interface between secrecy and security. This is a difficult task that involves finding a means to value the benefit of secrecy as well as its costs, neither of which are easily established.
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