The Tao of A2/AD: China's Rationale for the Creation of Anti-Access

China’s mighty military is making headlines all over the world but know this: Beijing can’t beat Washington on the battlefield—at least not in a fair fight. Beijing has concluded the best strategic approach to defending China's “core interests”—preserving Beijing’s state system national security sovereignty and territorial integrity along with promoting the continued stable development of China’s economy and society─is an approach Chinese planners have termed “counter intervention operations” or what Western military experts have dubbed Anti-Access/Area Denial (A2/AD). In broad terms such a strategy’s goal is to impede enemy forces from gaining access to a military theater of operations through the utilization of what some consider a classic layered defense approach. Through the development and deployment of advanced sea mines ultra-quiet submarines and increasingly advanced cruise and ballistic missiles Beijing would force U.S. military planners to make an awful choice: suffer unthinkable casualties or abandon allies’ in future military conflicts. Why did China choose such a strategy? What is America doing to counteract it?