This post originally appeared in Foreign Affairs on December 9, 2013
China’s recent announcement of an Air Defense Identification Zone in the East China Sea has generated a great deal of confusion and alarm, much of which, I suspect, is a function of the fact that an ADIZ is an unfamiliar concept. Few people know what one is, what it is for, and what its implications are—including, apparently, the Chinese government and military.
An ADIZ is a defined area in which unidentified aircraft are liable to be interrogated and, if necessary, intercepted for visual identification prior to entering a country’s sovereign airspace. The United States was the first country to proclaim air defense identification zones (it now has four) shortly after the Korean War. Their primary purpose was to reduce the risk of surprise attack from the Soviet Union. In addition to this particular national security motive, the United States considers them useful today for combating illicit drug flows, decreasing the risk of midair collisions, and minimizing unnecessary search-and-rescue or intercept missions. This last justification is particularly interesting and important. An unintended consequence of an ADIZ is that it reduces uncertainty about when, where, and how aerial interception might take place. Put another way, an ADIZ increases transparency, predictability, and strategic stability. As such, it is a valuable, if inadvertent, confidence and security building measure (CSBM).
There are no international agreements governing any aspect of an ADIZ. States are neither explicitly authorized to establish them, nor explicitly prohibited from doing so. In no way are they legally obliged to comply with another country’s ADIZ requirements, but they often do because they reduce risks. Air defense identification zones commonly extend hundreds of miles into what is universally acknowledged to be international airspace, even by the countries that maintain them. Accordingly, they neither signal nor confer any sovereign rights whatsoever. If they did, no one would respect them. They are about security and safety, not politics or law.
Why did China establish its East China Sea ADIZ?
It is clear that reducing the risk of surprise attack cannot have been part of China’s calculus, because there was no serious risk of this to begin with. Tensions in the region may be high just at the moment, but this is not your grandfather’s Cold War. If there is one thing everyone agrees on, it is that no one wants a major shot to the heart of the global economy. The danger of surprise attack is only acute when at least one party to a conflict considers war inevitable and thinks that getting in the first blow confers a decisive military advantage. To the extent that China’s ADIZ has deepened regional fears about China’s long-term intentions, it has actually increased this risk.
The East China Sea is not a significant drug smuggling route, so this cannot have been an important consideration. Given the multiple and overlapping maritime jurisdiction claims, there is no shortage of willing search-and-rescue providers. Reducing the necessity for these was clearly moot, too. Not surprisingly, neither motive figured in the Ministry of National Defense statement on the establishing of the zone.
What about reducing the risk of midair collisions? As we learned from the 1981 EP-3 incident, this is indeed an issue in the region—but it is not a risk that can be reduced by a Chinese ADIZ. On this point it is worth distinguishing commercial from military flights. Commercial air traffic in the East China Sea is already under good regulation; anyone on the planet with an Internet connection can monitor it in real time. There is no problem here in need of a fix. Military flights are a different matter. Here the risk of midair collision is primarily a function of conflicting understandings of overflight rights. The United States insists that all countries’ militaries have a right to fly in international airspace, and allows this even in its own air defense identification zones, subject to observation. China, in contrast—with a small number of other like-minded countries, such as Brazil—insists that coastal states have the right to regulate at least some military operations in the airspace over their exclusive economic zones. This difference of opinion led directly to the EP-3 incident. Since proclaiming an ADIZ merely puts pressure on China to increase interceptions, it actually increases this risk as well.
Does China’s ADIZ increase transparency, predictability, and strategic stability? Quite the reverse. China’s move has generated nervousness and confusion among airlines, and led immediately to ostentatious displays of noncompliance on the part of the U.S., Japanese, and South Korean militaries. In view of the fact that China’s ADIZ overlaps with Japan’s, there is now a very real possibility of conflicting instructions to aircraft and simultaneous interceptions. What happens when Japanese controllers order an unidentified aircraft to land in Japan while Chinese controllers order it to land in China? Which of two countries’ scrambled fighter planes should it follow? What happens if a Chinese fighter pilot takes exception to the bogey obeying Japanese rather than Chinese instructions or vice versa?
From a security and safety perspective, China’s announcement makes things worse, not better. All of this, surely, was predictable in advance.
So why did China announce its ADIZ?
The common wisdom—no less wise for being common—is that Beijing believed that an East China Sea ADIZ would buttress its position vis-à-vis Japan over the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands. Chinese leaders may have believed this for one of two reasons: (1) either they believed that an ADIZ signals or confers sovereign rights; or (2) they believed that declaring an ADIZ covering the disputed islands would give them political leverage. The former is demonstrably wrong, and if this is what they believed, they should immediately fire their international lawyers. The latter belief would only be justified if Washington and Tokyo could be cowed. This has proven demonstrably wrong, too, and if this is what they had in mind, they should fire their political analysts.
It is evident that China miscalculated. But China is not the only country that is worse off as a result. East Asia has suddenly become a more dangerous place. What is to be done?
It is unrealistic to expect China to walk its ADIZ back unilaterally. This would represent a major loss of face both for the PLA and for the regime, and would immediately be interpreted by a mobilized nationalist public as an intolerable humiliation. But so also would further ostentatious displays of noncompliance and strident statements that inadvertently reinforce Chinese misconceptions about the legal implications of an ADIZ. By taking a hard line, China’s adversaries put Beijing in an even bigger bind.
Sometimes when someone does something embarrassing in public, the smart thing to do is to pretend not to notice. Admittedly, this is now somewhat difficult; Washington, Tokyo, and Seoul have already reacted. But they can stop talking about it, and they can quietly arrange with Beijing rules of the road that let it save face with its own people and yet effectively return to the status quo ante operationally. China is on record having established an East China Sea ADIZ; the United States and its allies are on record having rejected it. Let the conversation end there. At the end of the day—as far as sovereignty is concerned—it is all much ado about nothing anyway.