China: Exit Counter-Intervention, Enter Peripheral Defense

The article has made quite a splash, with The Diplomat's Franz-Stefan Gady going so far as to call it 'The One Article to Read on Chinese Naval Strategy in 2015.' I have to disagree with this assessment. This is not to say that those interested in China's military modernization can afford to gloss over Fravel and Twomey's article - they cannot, and should not. It is an important corrective provided by two leading scholars and, as such, should induce us to adapt the vocabulary we rely on in describing Chinese military planning vis-à-vis the United States. But don't stop reading just yet, and don't fall into the strange constructivist trap of believing that a strategy suddenly ceases to exist because the language we used to describe it is shown not to be in widespread use among its makers.