In recent years the Peoples Republic of China has laid claim to ninety percent of the South China Sea, buttressing this claim by creating artificial islands with dredging equipment. These claims run roughshod over Beijings neighbors, which have competing claims. The discovery in 2016 that China had militarized these artificial islands was not exactly surprising, but just how useful are these islands in defense of Chinas strategic goals?

Chinas campaign to militarize the South China Sea began in 2009, when it submitted a new map to the United Nations showing the now-infamous Nine-Dash Linea series of boundary dashes over the South China Sea that it claimed demarcated Chinese territory. Since then, China has expanded at least seven reefs and islets in the sea with sand dredged from the ocean floor, including Subi Reef, Mischief Reef, Johnson Reef, Hughes Reef, Gaven Reef, Fiery Cross Reef and Cuarteron Reef.

According to the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative, Beijing has created more 3,200 acres of new land. China initially claimed its territory was being developed for peaceful purposes, from aid to mariners to scientific research, yet many of the islands now feature military-length airfields, antiaircraft and antimissile guns, and naval guns. Cuarteron Reef now has a new High Frequency early-warning radar facility for detecting incoming aircraft, a development difficult to square with a peaceful mission. Farther north, but still in disputed territory, China has installed HQ-9 long-range surface-to-air missiles on Woody Island.

On the face of it, Chinas territorial grab and apparent turn away from former leader Hu Jintaos concept of peaceful rise is hard to understand. It has alienated Chinas neighbors and drawn in other powers, including the United States, India and Japan. One theory is that the countrys leadership may have calculated that securing a bastion for Chinas sea-based nuclear deterrent may be worth the diplomatic fallout it created.

During the Cold War, the Soviet Unions ballistic-missile submarines operated from two protective bastions, on the Atlantic side in the Barents Sea, and on the Pacific side in the Sea of Okhotsk. There, Soviet missile submarines could be covered by land-based air and naval forces to them from enemy aircraft, ships and attack submarines.

Chinas nuclear dyad of land- and sea-based missiles relies in part on four Jin-class ballistic-missile submarines. China believes American ballistic-missile defenses threaten to undermine the credibility of its modest nuclear deterrent. In the Chinese view, this makes a protective bastion even more important.

The countrys geography leaves it with basically one ocean, the Pacific, for its own bastion. The Northern Pacific, with the U.S. Navys Seventh Fleet and the nearly fifty destroyers of the Japan Maritime Self Defense Force, is a no-go. The South China Sea, on the other hand, is bordered by a number of relatively weak states that could not pose a threat to Chinas nuclear-missile submarines.

Sailing ships and flying aircraft through the South China Sea is one thing, but a permanent presence on the ground solidifies Chinas hold on the region. It also allows, as the case of the HF radar on Cuarteron Reef demonstrates, the installation of a permanent sensor network.

The ports and airfields under construction will almost certainly grow to defend the region, with help from the mainland, from a complex antisubmarine warfare campaign designed to go after Chinas seagoing nuclear weapons.

More surface-to-air missile batteries such as the HQ-9 and land-based antiship missiles are likely, if only to protect other military installations such as airfields and radar systems. Recent freedom-of-navigation operations by the United States and its allies will be used as a justification for heavier defenses. To paraphrase an old saying about bureaucracy, the military presence is growing to meet the needs of the growing military presence.

This points to the Achilles heel of Chinas island garrisons: in the long run, they are impossible to defend. Unlike ships, the islands are fixed in place and will never move. Small islands cannot stockpile enough troops, surface-to-air missiles, food, water and electrical capacity to remain viable defensive outposts. As Iwo Jima and Okinawa demonstrated, there is no viable defense in depth for islands even miles across.

In any military confrontation with the United States, Chinas at-sea outposts would almost certainly be quickly rolled back by waves of airstrikes and cruise missile attacks, devastating Peoples Liberation Army facilities and stranding the personnel manning them. How China would respond to such an attack on its nuclear bastion is an open question that should be given serious consideration, as victory in the South China Sea may not herald the end of a campaign but a dangerous new turn in the war itself.

Chinas military outposts in the South China Sea are a breach of Beijings agreement to not militarize the sea. Although the region itself has great strategic value, they are a poor defensive solution, prone to rapid destruction in wartime. China would be wise to consider the islands only as a temporary solution, until the Peoples Liberation Army Navy has enough hulls to maintain a permanent presence in the region.

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What Makes China's Fake Island Military Bases in the South China Sea So Dangerous - The National Interest Online (blog)