In May, Japan held its first-ever defense show, in Yokohama. The event coincided with an attempt by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to modify Japanese laws so that Japan can participate fully in collective defense, meaning that the Japanese military can, for example, join U.S. forces under attack in Asian waters. Current law forbids such action. Thus U.S. naval forces can assist Japanese units in, say, protecting shipping en route to or from Japan—shipping on which Japan’s existence depends—but if those forces (and not the Japanese ones) come under attack, the Japanese cannot help. These laws are a legacy of the pacifist constitution imposed by the victorious United States after World War II. Japan has found a way to build defensive forces since the 1950s, but only on the grounds that the constitution cannot take away the inherent right of self-defense. The proposed changes can be traced in part to the rise of China and the relative decline of U.S. forces, particularly naval forces, in the Far East.
Prime Minister Abe’s initiative has been met with vigorous opposition from Japanese who see their pacifist stance as both a guarantee of their country’s safety and also an example of great and unique virtue. Asked for a case in which collective defense would demand fighting by Japanese forces far afield, the prime minister’s office suggested a mine-clearance operation in the Strait of Hormuz, through which much of Japan’s oil flows. The proposed laws are framed in terms of threats to Japan’s existence, and the office pointed out that anything that blocked the flow of oil would do exactly that. A Defense Ministry official opposed to the change said that this kind of reasoning would allow engagement anywhere in the world, because Japan is so dependent on imports.
To anyone who takes sea power and the maritime world seriously, that is a very reasonable point, not an absurdity. A nation reliant on imports—which is more and more the case everywhere—cannot disengage from distant countries that supply what it needs in order to live. The new U.S. maritime strategy emphasizes this connection to the world via the sea, the least expensive of all modes of transportation. Unfortunately it is very difficult for people living on land to visualize this connection, and it has become even harder now that virtually all overseas travel is by air.
A New Danger?
To further complicate matters, at about the same time the Japanese defense show opened and the new bills were announced before the Japanese Diet (parliament), North Korea announced that it had successfully tested a submerged-launch ballistic missile, and that it had miniaturized a nuclear warhead to fit it. The test has been described in various ways, either as a demonstration of ejection and ignition or as a full-blown but short-range shot. In either case it apparently came from a submerged barge rather than a submarine. However, a new type of submarine has been seen in North Korea sporting the sort of enlarged sail the Russians used for their early-generation ballistic-missile submarines. In those craft the missiles were in the sail. North Korea is thought to have obtained the design of the Russian R-27 (SS-N-6) submarine-launched ballistic missile (Iran is also said to have obtained this design).
It takes a great deal to make a successful submarine-launched ballistic missile system: not just the missile, but precise navigation (now conveniently supplied by GPS), a sophisticated reprogrammable guidance system (which can take into account exactly where the submarine is when it fires), and even internal submarine systems that can handle the sudden change in weight as the missile leaves the vessel. No one observing a test can know to what extent the North Koreans have solved such problems. The consensus seems to be that North Korea can have an operational missile submarine by about 2018.
Analysts have considered the possible threat such a submarine would present to U.S. bases in Asia and even to the West Coast. The North Korean submarine is probably quite noisy, and during the Cold War it would easily have been detected by the U.S. long-range acoustic surveillance system. However, that system has been largely dismantled. The U.S. Navy has generally turned from its Cold War concentration on antisubmarine warfare toward specialties more in keeping with the disorder and sub-national strife of the Middle East.
The appearance of the North Korean threat suggests that heavy investment in strategic antisubmarine warfare will be needed even though there will probably never be very many North Korean submarines; the consequences of even a single missile hitting a U.S. city are too serious. Most U.S. missile defense is focused on land-based threats rather than on the much more versatile underwater ones. The problem is that the submarine cannot be attacked until it fires its missile, or obviously prepares to do so (which may take a few minutes, and may create characteristic sounds). Finding and tracking it is not enough, unless those who are tracking it can also shoot down its single missile as it rises from the water. That is probably possible for a fast-reaction system like Aegis, but not for anything less elaborate. Would we want to devote our whole Aegis fleet to dealing with a single North Korean submarine?
The submarine obviously can also threaten South Korea. It is a threat to Japan, too, and quite possibly the best example of how events at sea can affect that country. Seventy years after the end of World War II in the Pacific, Japan’s role in the conflict is still very emotive. Japanese aggression in two wars (1894-95 and 1937-45) is the unifying theme used by the Chinese Communist Party, hence a major theme in current Chinese nationalism. It has been built up to the point where the Chinese government has found it difficult to welcome official Japanese visits, whatever its desires. China was the earliest victim of Japanese imperialism, and it suffered badly during World War II; the usual figure is that the Japanese killed 15 million Chinese in the course of the war. Japanese aggression is also a major theme in both North and South Korea; Koreans suffered horribly during World War II but also as subjects of a Japanese colony before that. A North Korean promise to obliterate parts of Japan might be quite popular in South Korea.
How to Meet the Threat
Conversely, this seems to be the time for the Japanese to think seriously about what it might take to neutralize such a threat. That would be rather different from their current naval posture, which emphasizes trade protection (antisubmarine warfare and mine countermeasures) and sea-based ballistic-missile defense against missiles launched from land sites in North Korea or, perhaps, China. For example, if the North Korean submarine operated under an umbrella provided by shore-based aircraft, the destruction of North Korean air bases might turn out to be a prerequisite for dealing with the submarine, or even tracking it in open waters.
This type of calculation has not yet penetrated to the Japanese public. The Japanese displays at the Yokohama show emphasized mine countermeasures, harbor security, and communications. Lethal weapons such as torpedoes and antiship missiles were not shown, although the firms that attended certainly make them. Perhaps surprisingly, radars and large sonars were not on display, although Japan produces both. The main ship models were a 19,500-ton helicopter-carrying destroyer (which would be a helicopter carrier in other navies), the submarine Japan may be about to build for Australia, and an underway support ship. The airplanes were the P-1 maritime patrol aircraft and a mine-countermeasures helicopter.
Reportedly the Defense Ministry is just now trying to decide what sort of surface combatants it will build as part of its next multiyear program (for 30 ships), perhaps including some high-speed units for quick reaction. No such vessels were on display; the only ship models were shown by foreign builders hoping for contracts. The only foreign aircraft on display were helicopters. The only foreign weapons (other than mine countermeasures) on display were Bofors guns offered by BAE (the U.S. stand offered torpedo brochures but showed no models or photographs).
A few of the foreign exhibits suggested that the Japanese may be interested in something more like a carrier in the future. BAE showed its helicopter-borne airborne early warning radar, which the Royal Navy has adopted for its carriers. No such radar makes much sense unless it can be used to guide shipboard fighters. The U.S. company General Atomics showed the electric catapult and arresting gear it is making for the Ford-class carriers. A scaled-down version might be useful to launch unmanned aircraft like the U.S. X-47B Pegasus, giving them sufficient acceleration down a short deck, but catapults suggest something larger. The large flat deck of the 19,500-tonner on display would certainly suffice to support both the F-35B short-takeoff/vertical-landing version of the Joint Strike Fighter and the V-22 Osprey, neither of which was on display.
During the Cold War the United States pursued collective defense as a way of limiting the cost of protecting its overseas allies. It succeeded in Europe; NATO was built around West Germany, which provided much of the industrial might and much of the NATO army in Europe. That was possible because the Germans successfully mended fences with the countries they had invaded and occupied throughout Western Europe. They faced their history. A U.S. attempt to create a Far East NATO failed because in the early 1950s the countries involved regarded Japan as a worse threat than the Soviet Union or China. One reason why was that the U.S. administration of Japan, headed by General Douglas MacArthur, made no attempt to force the Japanese to face their past. Many Japanese are aware of their history, but their textbooks tend to gloss over it. If you are Chinese, hearing the Japanese call the eight-year rape of your country “the China incident” is not at all satisfactory.
The war is still emotive elsewhere. The opposition leader in Australia condemned the planned submarine program by referring to Pearl Harbor, the Japanese air raid on Darwin in northern Australia, and Japanese atrocities against Australian prisoners of war, all of which are more than 70 years in the past. Yet any collective defense in Asia must include Japan, which is by far the largest economic power in the region, just as NATO had to include West Germany. Much may hinge on what Prime Minister Abe says at the commemoration of the end of World War II in the Pacific.