Force reductions have weakened the U.S. military’s role as a stabilizing influence in the Western Pacific. Asian leaders see—and plan to fill—the power vacuum. This instability conceivably could turn Japan’s fiery H-II rocket into a future ICBM. It is time to think about a new War Plan Orange.
It is easy to imagine that in a remote comer of the Pentagon an interservice planning group is thinking about the Pacific Ocean, working on a new War Plan Orange—the logical successor to the plan which, in the 1930s, foretold the Japanese threat to peace in the Pacific and laid out the defensive plan that ultimately would yield “the inevitable victory” called for by President Franklin E). Roosevelt on 8 December 1941.
As in the 1930s, our Pentagon planning group of the 1990s cannot know with certainty that the threats they foresee will ever emerge. But they can see the signals of the repetitive cycle of conflict—power shifts; conflicting claims over territory, resources and trade; maneuvers for Position; growth in armaments; doubts, distrust and threats; reciprocal accusations; divisions among allies; weakness of international institutions; and the repeated failure to take timely and adequate preventive action.
Like the end of World War I, the end of the Cold War promised a new era of plenty and peace. But just as the residual effects of the World War bred the disputes which led to World War II, the politics of the Cold War suppressed old disputes—which are surfacing once again. The new wealth of East Asia, for example, is buying weapons, both conventional and strategic.
Today in the Western Pacific a loose network of oceanic powers—Japan, South Korea, and the Republic of China on Taiwan, together with the littoral States of Southeast Asia—faces a continental power, China, home to one-fifth of the world’s people, with the world's largest standing army. China has a growing list of “vital" national interests—the “renegade province” of Taiwan; claims to national sovereignty over the high seas and islands; the oil wealth, and the living wealth of the South China Sea and the East China Sea, and its development and sale of nuclear and missile technology—which put these two sides in opposition. China’s claims to ocean space counter her fears of encirclement by Russia, a modern by-product of ancient animosities, but they conflict with modern international law of the sea.
A series of bilateral treaties link that loose oceanic network to the United States, which still is credited with being the “world’s only remaining superpower.”1 If the debate over Bosnia is any indication, it is an unwilling one. Reluctant to become entangled, and torn between domestic and international interests, the United States is being drawn forward by one universally held interest: The imperative need for peace over war, and for order over chaos.
Today, the United States and Russia, their economies pinched by the long decades of heavy defense costs, are eager to reduce naval, air and ground armaments, reciprocally if possible, or unilaterally, if necessary; strategic weapons arms reduction process has continued since 1972. That process is now considered a historic breakthrough, but the hope that it could be expanded to include China and other undeclared nuclear powers has remained unfulfilled, the victim of China’s “go it alone” nuclear policy.
The strategic weapons of the interwar years were battleships and by February 1922, the United States, Great Britain, and Japan had agreed in the Washington Naval Arms Limitation Treaties, to limit both warships and bases in the western Pacific. Japan was granted naval superiority in her sphere of influence in the Western Pacific by the 5-5-3 ratio of capital ships between the United Kingdom, the United States, and Japan respectively, because the United Kingdom and the United States had to keep fleets in both the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans. In addition, an agreement not to fortify naval bases in the Western Pacific effectively left military superiority in the region to Japan, which had taken over Germany’s Pacific possessions after World War I. Finally, England was required to abrogate her treaty of alliance with Japan.
Today we may be in the process of granting a similar sphere of influence to China in the South China and East China Seas, placing the struggling democracies of East Asia at risk. In dramatic contrast to the situation in 1921, however, rapidly growing East Asian economies are amassing wealth for modernization and expansion of their armed forces. China and the other Asian tigers are enjoying phenomenal economic growth. Trade between members of Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum and the United States reached $687.5 billion in 1993, of which about $485 billion were trans-Pacific. There is an Asian coastal trade of approximately the same magnitude. APEC members on both sides of the Pacific export just under half (45.7%) of all world trade.2
The United States’ post-Cold War arms reductions affect its defense posture in Asia and Europe, in both forward-deployed and reserve forces. But Asian leaders see similarities with the process of Vietnamization in 1973, which led to the total U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam by 1975. They see our present posture as an expression of national will, ratified by the Congress, to decrease our forces and our commitments in the Western Pacific. They fear that, as in the past, our preoccupation with Europe is causing us to neglect Asia. In this judgment, they may be wrong, just as Japan was horribly wrong to doubt our will in 1941. But that is their perception, and they are acting on it.
East Asian leaders have reacted by buying or building arms to defend their separate national interests and to fill a perceived power vacuum. A relative power shift is taking place, and barring a change in our naval policy, it will continue over the next decade.
Today as in 1922, there is a weakness in international security organization. The United States finds such regional security agreements as SEATO and ANZUS abandoned, or nearly so. Its bilateral defense treaties are slowly becoming anachronistic or obsolete, as the need for regional unity becomes more glaring. There is a widely perceived need for a broad and effective regional security treaty system for the Western Pacific—a Pacific Treaty Organization (PATO)—but that is impossible under the current rudimentary state of regional political development.
Just as China is absent from the arms negotiation table today, Germany was not admitted to the Washington Treaty system in the 1920’s. Defeated, defenseless, burdened by reparations demands, it was not thought to be a threat in 1922. But 17 years later, having extracted itself from the Versailles restrictions, Germany set off a conflict which engulfed the globe. In the Pacific, its ally Japan struck while most of the British fleet was tied down in home waters, leaving the United States as the only credible opponent in its plans to establish its Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere through aggressive war.3 Although the U.S. fleet was redeployed to Pearl Harbor as war approached, that action was not enough to deter Japan.
The desire of the United States and Russia for conventional—and nuclear—arms reduction is not shared by the nations of Eastern Asia. Now as in 1921, the great naval powers have an economic motivation to limit naval tonnages, but Asian naval powers are motivated to expand, rather than contract, their navies. The U.S. and Russian construction limits are therefore unilateral and the future of East Asian naval expansion is uncontrolled and non-negotiable. The United States already has missed the sole chance it had to forestall this arms race. It now faces the challenge to control it short of nuclear escalation.
The U.S. naval construction program is in caretaker status, with only enough projects to retain vital technical skills and plant capacity against future needs. Our current naval inventory will meet our needs for the next decade, while the fleets of East Asia expand with new designs and new construction. We now parallel the situation of Great Britain in 1922—the possessor of great, but aging, warship tonnage that we cannot afford to replace.
We must avoid repeating the failures of the interwar years. The great question is whether that is possible in the weakened political environment of the region. The essential task for U.S. policy makers is to bridge the political and diplomatic gaps despite our sharply diminished national-security resources.
In the best of all worlds, open lines of communication within healthy regional security institutions would smooth the way. As the NATO alliance shows, such institutions require a core superpower to lead the way. In the Atlantic, the United States still leads, however reluctantly. In the Pacific, however, there is a crisis of confidence. There is neither a Pacific NATO nor a Pacific Treaty Organization. Nor is there anything analogous to the European Union- There is ASEAN, which has only just begun to address security issues, and there is APEC, which seeks economic development within the region, resembling in its infancy the European Coal and Steel Community of the 1950s.
As in the interwar years, political quarrels divide nations and deter unified response. The political foundations for a multilateral security organization that would span the Sea of Japan and the Taiwan Strait simply do not exist. In the 1920s, the divisions were the residue of a World War; in 1996, they are the residue of the Cold War. But the solutions that worked in Europe could take decades, and the problems of Asia must be addressed effectively today.
Former U.S. Ambassador to China and Korea James Lilley characterized China’s arms program as a “major program of military modernization and power projection.”4 Its North Korean ally is suspected of a continuing nuclear arms program, and its May 1993 test of the Rodong-I intermediate range ballistic missile on a trajectory from Wonsan to waters off Japan’s Noto Peninsula, have caused anxiety in Japan and South Korea. In a similar action in 1995 and 1996, China tested missiles to an impact area uncomfortably close to Taiwan, reinforcing its claimed right to retake Taiwan by force. China continues nuclear testing at Lop Nor, has acquired Russian Su-27 attack aircraft and MiG-31 fighters at bargain prices, and has reportedly made a decision to build an aircraft carrier.5 To defend its claims of sovereignty over the South China Sea, China has already constructed an unsinkable aircraft carrier on Woody Island in the Paracel Group. That airfield, with its associated fuel and support facilities, will allow its Su-27s to support military operations in the Spratly Islands.
Japanese naval and industrial power is essential to stiffen the defense of East Asian sea lanes, but is acceptable to its neighbors only in the context of a U.S. presence. Japan is crippled by its unwillingness to respect its neighbors’ feelings about its aggression and atrocities in the first half of the 20th century. If Japan were to seek a superpower role, it could well set off a chain reaction that Would strengthen China and actually defeat its economic and security interests. Japan still needs U.S. forces, despite weakening public support for hosting them.
As we near a new century in which U.S. power will continue to deploy at reduced levels to East Asia, what accommodation will East Asian nations make to China’s hegemonic aspirations?
The East Asian power balance could be turned upside down in just a few years. Japan has a long-held position of refusing to abrogate permanently the right to build nuclear weapons. At the June 1993 economic summit in Tokyo, the Clinton administration pressed the Japanese for a commitment to “indefinite and unconditional” extension of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty past its expiration date in 1995. Tokyo refused, pressing the nuclear Powers instead to phase out their own nuclear weapons. It is estimated that within five years Japan could have a stock of 5-10 tons of plutonium reprocessed from its nuclear power program. Its H-II rocket, developed for launching satellites, will have sufficient thrust to serve as an ICBM.
South Korea is also rumored to have a dormant nuclear program, truncated years ago by American demands, but probably still salvageable if and when needed.6 The Republic of China on Taiwan has acquired new F-16 and Mirage 2000 fighter aircraft, and has leased warships from the United States. Many other regional naval powers have begun naval expansion programs.7
U.S. Ambassador to Tokyo Walter Mondale has proposed a Theater Missile Defense program between the U.S. and Japan, involving eight Japanese corporations led by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, to counter North Korea’s Rodong-I missile threat.8 The Republic of China on Taiwan has asked the United States to participate in the program, and also has asked for advanced submarines and Patriot missiles.9
Asian leaders are reacting to a decades-old historical process and to the arms buildups of their neighbors, despite assurances from President Bill Clinton given before taking office and again since then. On 7 July 1993 at Tokyo’s Waseda University, he proposed building “a new Pacific community,” and in Seoul, he assured the National Assembly the United States intends to stand by Korea. He stopped U.S. force reductions in the region because of the North Korean threat. President Clinton spelled out four principles:
- Continued American military commitment to the region
- Stronger efforts to combat proliferation of weapons of mass destruction
- New regional security dialogues
- More support for democracy and more open societies10
Admiral Charles Larson, then Pacific Forces Commander-in-Chief, announced in 1992 a new policy shift from “containment” of the Soviet Union “to strategic engagement” with Russia. The closure of the Subic Bay Naval Station in November of that year was welcome, yielding savings of $180 million a year." Limited-access agreements with Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, and most recently, the Philippines, replace some, but not all, services that had been available at Subic Bay.
The defense relationship between the United States and the Philippines has been damaged. U.S. Ambassador Richard Solomon said in Manila, “There is a mutual defense treaty. The question is whether it’s going to have any reality.” 12 At the same time, Manila is concerned that it will not have the support of the U.S. Navy if its conflict with China over the Spratly Islands should turn violent once again. Philippine Foreign Under Secretary Thomas Syquia claimed that the United States is obligated to render aid under the mutual defense treaty if the islands of the Spratly group that are claimed by the Philippines are attacked." It is the United States position that the treaty does not extend to disputed territories. There would appear to be a de facto mutual disagreement on the meaning of the U.S.-Philippines defense alliance.
The South China Sea dispute is complicated by renewed signs of Russo-Vietnamese naval cooperation. When China took the Paracels by force from South Vietnam in 1974, it did so at the last possible moment before North Vietnam, backed by the Soviet Union, could occupy them—which would have exacerbated China’s strong fears of strategic encirclement by Russia. China’s sensitivity toward Russia has a long history beginning with territorial acquisitions that China claims were the result of "unequal treaties.” During the years of the Sino-Soviet split, China built large earthen structures along its northern border, designed to survive a nuclear conflict.
Major initiatives to develop new political and security arrangements better attuned to the new political environment are now imperative if the danger of further arms escalation, including nuclear arms, is to be avoided. Samuel P. Huntington warns of a Confucian-Islamic connection that threatens western interests in both East Asia and in Southwest Asia.14 Fouad Ajami dissents, affirming the primacy of the nation-state in shaping world events.15 Either model, however, rationalizes and explains what we in fact see: the alignment of China with Pakistan against India and Russia, in which China has transferred M-11 missiles to Pakistan and Russia has transferred missile technology to India.
In the Western Pacific, the chief stabilizing force of the last half of this century, the United States, has been weakened by force reductions and redeployments. Asian leaders see a power vacuum worsening in the future, and the logic of arms escalation has already affected both conventional and nuclear programs. The United States has already lost the battle to forestall this arms race. Whether the race can be contained is yet to be seen. In the interwar years, inadequate naval diplomacy failed to deter aggressors. As a new century begins, the security of East Asia—and indeed the world—will depend on wise naval diplomacy.
The question is whether these issues will be addressed with sufficient authority now, when the tools of naval power, international law and diplomacy can be effective, or whether the world’s only remaining superpower will continue to be seen as lacking in will and commitment, until we ultimately will be challenged as we were at Pearl Harbor—in a final repetition of the experience of the interwar years.
1vAdm. William Crowe, USN (Ret.), as quoted in the Honolulu Advertiser, Friday, Nov. 26, 1993, p. E4: The United States is “the world's only remaining superpower.” There is a dilemma between those who would use US power to enforce peace, and isolationism. “As leader of the free world, we are obligated to remain engaged, and to do it in an ethical manner.” “I don’t believe Americans want to get involved in every dispute, and constantly impose our will on an unwilling world,” but, he said, “I know of no Americans who do not deplore atrocities.” He is not worried about the pace of defense cutbacks. “We’ve got the world’s premier military. We can handle two wars."
2 Wall Street Journal. Thursday, 16 November 1995, p. A17.
3 For an interesting account of the breakdown the Washington Treaty system from the point of view of Japan, see Sadao Asada, “The Revolt Against the Washing- ! ton Treaty: The Imperial Japanese Navy and Naval Limitation, 1921-1927,” in Naval War College Review, Newport, R.l, vol. 46, no. 3, sequence 343 (Summer 1993).
4 Quoted in a UPI article published on Clarinews network article carried on the Internet dated 8 September 1993.
5 UPI, 28 Sept 1993, published in Clarinews.
6 Selig S. Harrison, “Japan’s Second Thoughts About Nuclear Weapons," in The Washington Post, Weekly Edition, 8-14 November 1993, p. 23-24.
7 Joseph R. Morgan, “Porpoises Among the Whales: Small Navies in Asia and the Pacific,” East-West Center, Honolulu, Hawaii, East-West Center Special Reports, no. 2, March, 1994.
8 As reported by UPI and published by Clarinews 16 September 1993. Hidcjiro Kotani. “Japan Must Have a Missile Defense System,” Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 21 October 1993, p. A20. Carried originally in the Sankei Shimbun, Tokyo.
9 Ian Johnson of the Baltimore Sun reported, in an article reprinted in the Honolulu Advertiser of Sunday, November 26, 1995 (p. A9) that ROC military officers had made the request in mid-November.
10 “Clinton Vows Protection for All Asia,” Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 11 July 1993, p. A15. Ian Johnson of the Baltimore Sun reported, in an article reprinted in the Honolulu Advertiser of Sunday, 26 November 1995 (p. A9) that ROC military officers had made the request in mid-November.
11 Adm. Charles Larson, CinCPac, "Subic base closure blessing in disguise, admiral suggests," in Honolulu Advertiser, Saturday, 21 November 1992, p. A3.
12 U.S. Ambassador Richard Solomon as quoted in a UPI news article dateline Manila, 4 November 1992, as reported by Clarinews.
13 Reuters news report, "U.S. has defense obligation," in Honolulu Star-Bulletin. 11 November 1992, p. A-10.
14 Samuel P. Huntington, "The Clash of Civilizations?" Foreign Affairs, vol 72, no. 3 (Summer 1993): pp. 22-49.
15 Fouad Ajami, "The Summoning," Foreign Affairs, vol. 72, no. 4, pp. 2-9.
After retiring from the Navy in 1976, Dr. Allen earned his Ph.D in political science, and joined the Law of the Sea Institute at the William S. Richardson School of Law, at the University of Hawaii. He is a specialist in ocean law and policy. '