US Pacific Command has opened a new channel of communications with the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) in a continuing campaign that has two objectives: To deter China militarily and to reassure the Chinese that the US is not seeking to contain their country.
The latest US envoys in this endeavor have been senior non-commissioned officers (NCOs) who are responsible for the day-to-day care, feeding, training and work of the soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen. It may be trite, but it is true that they are the backbone of US forces.
In the first venture of NCOs into this military diplomacy, the senior enlisted leader of the Pacific Command, Chief Master Sergeant James Roy, led a delegation of 12 senior NCOs to China recently and is preparing to receive a Chinese delegation in a reciprocal visit to US forces in Hawaii this fall.
Roy emphasized the reasons for the trip to China.
“We did not go to help them to build capacity,” he said in an interview, meaning to strengthen their armed forces.
US military exchanges with China have been controversial with critics, including neoconservatives, who contend that the US should not help China improve its forces.
Instead, Roy said: “We went to understand them better and to have them understand us.”
In less diplomatic terms, that meant learning more about the capabilities of the PLA and demonstrating the ability of US NCOs — the men and women of their services — to get things done.
Sino-US military relations have traveled a bumpy road for many years. The current tone appears to have been set by US Admiral Dennis Blair, who headed Pacific Command in 1999. In testimony before a congressional committee, he asserted that US military leaders sought to get two points across to the Chinese:
First, he said: “We’re not sitting here planning to contain China. We’re not sitting here dying to pick a fight with China. We basically are an armed force in a democratic society who will fight if must but prefer not to. And we’ll support American interests if we have to, but don’t mess with us.”
He also said: “We are very aware in our program of not giving away more than we get from these exchanges. We’re not doing it to be nice guys. We’re doing it to get our job done, of teaching the Chinese what sort of capability we have out there.”
In recent years, several US secretaries of defense and top military officers have visited China and received their counterparts in Washington.
In addition, exchanges of middle grade officers, those who will lead their respective services in the next 10 or 15 years, have begun. Now the senior NCOs have been tasked to gauge the quality of Chinese NCOs and to impress the Chinese with US training and experience.
The PLA, having been an unschooled army that relied on human wave tactics in the Korean War and later, has recently begun to develop qualified NCOs. Chinese leaders, a Pentagon report said in March, are concerned that “low education levels in the PLA negatively affect its operating capability and professionalism.”
During the week the US delegation was in China, they engaged in discussions mostly with Chinese officers, not with NCOs, and toured bases in the Nanjing military district. The Chinese, Roy said, asked “very few stray questions. They had a good idea of why we were there.”
Even so, the US concept of a NCO corps puzzled the Chinese.
“The Chinese do not yet understand the role of the senior NCO in the US military service,” Roy said.
Pointing to the chevrons on his sleeve, he said: “They did not understand that a chief master sergeant as the senior enlisted leader of the Pacific Command is not a commander.”
Richard Halloran is a writer based in Hawaii.
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