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Japan Gets New SAR Aircraft
The Japanese Air Self-Defense Force has ordered five US-I25A search-and-rescue versions of the Hawker 800 and holds options for an additional 22.
U.S. Needs Basing Options
Two events at the end of 1994 point to likely U.S. problems in the future: the hijacking of the Air France airliner in Algiers and the Russian attack on Grozny in Chechnya.
Soon after the airliner was recovered in Marseilles, the French government announced that the hijackers had planned to fly it to Paris and crash it into the city. They were protesting French support for the current Algerian government, in an extremely bloody civil war between a secular regime and Islamic forces. While the hijacking was in progress, it was reported that France has been sending helicopters (and presumably other counterinsurgency equipment and advisers) to the Algerian government; it is already supporting that regime financially.
An Algerian Islamic group announced that as of 1 January 1995 French interests in the Arab world would be at risk. Islamic fundamentalists already have demanded that all foreigners leave Algeria, and have murdered many to make their point. The vast majority of the victims, however, have been Algerians: in December 1994 a leaked Algerian Army document claimed that about 35,000—about 10,000 more than had been reported—had been killed.
The French government fears that an Islamic victory in Algeria would inflame potentially fundamentalist emotions among the millions of Algerians already living in France.
Also, many secular Algerians would flee across the Mediterranean, swamping a French society increasingly opposed to immigrants. In the past, the French government has tried unsuccessfully to convince other members of the European Union that the Algerian problem is a European problem, and that the entire Union ought to try to stave off Islamic victory. Initially, that means money, but ultimately it might well mean armed intervention in a second Algerian War.
The French government has not been altogether united; some ministers prefer conciliation. After all, the civil war began when the secular government canceled elections that the Islamic group appeared en route to winning. It seems likely that the hijacking drama, particularly the revelation of the hijackers’ goal, will push France toward the hardest possible line. It also may be significant that France will soon hold a presidential election. Some observers considered the drama a test of character for the
Prime Minister, M. Bahadur, who hopes to become President.
In the past, the U.S. government has favored conciliation. The U.S. position is partly that a democratic vote that favored the Islamic group should not be set aside. Partly, it seems to be a judgment that ultimately the Islamic group will win, and that it would be better to be conciliatory than to mount a hopeless resistance. Too, the U.S. government has argued that the Islamic group includes many moderates. It is not clear to what extent the savagery of the war has eliminated them, but it seems likely that the United States will continue to oppose military intervention to save the current Algerian government.
History suggests that this fundamental disagreement between the United States and France may be the lever used to break NATO. When NATO was first converted into a military alliance, its rules precluded action south of the 25th parallel, specifically to avoid intervention in French North Africa.
When the British and French attacked Egypt in 1956, the French participated largely in hopes of cutting off Egyptian aid to rebels in what was then French Algeria. The United States intervened to abort the Anglo-French operation and the resulting intense anti-American feeling among our two main European allies failed to break NATO mainly because the governments involved clearly feared Russians more than they disliked the Americans.
It is arguable that Charles de Gaulle ejected NATO (and particularly the Americans) from France a decade later specifically because he felt he could not rely on the United States to support Europeans. The Suez experience probably affected European attitudes toward the U.S. war in Vietnam, as well.
These are not abstract issues. NATO already is under considerable strain over Bosnia. As this is written, a congressional Commission in Washington is examining the future roles and missions of the services. Any such analysis must take into account likely conditions under which the United States will use force. Many seem to believe that we will operate only in cooperation with other powers, and therefore that we will always enjoy base rights near the scene of the action. Given such assumptions, ground-based forces, particularly air forces, can play an important part in any future operation. It therefore becomes legitimate to ask whether, for example, the Air Force
ought to take over all air interception in a battle zone.
The reality is likely to be different. This is hardly new. When the United States bombed Tripoli in 1986, for example, our allies opposed us (the French refused to grant overflight rights for F-l 1 Is launching from British airfields). There will indeed be occasions when we can count on allies and on bases (the two need not be the same), but it seems foolhardy to provide other countries with a veto over U.S. foreign policy.
Independence surely means independence of anyone’s veto over the use of a fixed base. The only overseas bases permanently in U.S. hands are those on U.S. ships. Clearly, naval forces are limited in their combat endurance, but that limit is far more acceptable, one might suggest, than a limit imposed by whoever owns the base we would like to use. The Cold War is over. Once that threat disappeared, granting base rights became less acceptable.
Without bases abroad, we cannot run independently something like the Gulf War, with its large ground forces. Independent U.S. operations are more likely to be brief, such as hit- and-run carrier raids (a la Tripoli) or small Marine landings. For anything more, perhaps we ought to accept the need for foreign ground troops. For large operations, we will generally need foreign help (in the form of bases) anyway.
There is also another consideration. In the past, comparisons of land base versus carrier vulnerability have usually been cast in terms of the ability to blow up a fixed base versus the ability to sink a ship, always using conventional military forces. For the next few years, however, those we oppose often will be irregular or weak military forces associated with terrorists. Terrorists can disable a fixed base; they would have more difficulty disabling a moving base hundreds of miles at sea.
Moreover, it is virtually certain that any land bases we will be permitted to use will be under local control, not controlled fully by the United States. Some of that government’s employees may well sympathize with our enemies; we learned in Vietnam that infiltration can be quite effective.
Unless we face this reality, we probably cannot hope to maintain an effective yet affordable military force. Ironically, during the Cold War actual military effectiveness often did not matter, since the two sides rarely came to blows. Appearance was important, but in most cases, the ability to conduct sustained operations was not tested. The post-Cold War world is likely to require very frequent military operations. How well we do will determine how often we are challenged. We did extremely well in the Gulf War, partly because the Reagan administration pushed so hard for military effectiveness, and partly because so much money was available that pet fantasies could not drain all of it away.
Now we are in a period of both austerity and military challenge, and fantasies, such as the continued availability of bases, probably are getting less and less affordable.
Russians Attempt to Cow Chechnya
Then there is Chechnya. The Chechen Republic was part of the old Russian Federation. Despite its name, it was not a nominally independent country on the level of, say, Ukraine, so it could not break away when the old Soviet Union was dissolved in December 1991. Even so, the Chechen local government decided about two years ago to declare independence. As the name suggests, the Chechens are an ethnic group distinct from most Russians (although many ethnic Russians live in Chechnya). They are Moslems, and Chechnya was conquered and added to the Russian Empire only in the last century.
Now Boris Yeltsin has sent in the tanks, and television viewers around the world—and at home in Moscow—are being treated to the usual horrifying scenes of civilians being massacred by air attack and by bombardment. The Chechen capital, Grozny, may have fallen by the time this is published.
At least some editorial writers in Europe—and many Russian journalists—have argued that the war in Chechnya is pointless, that it would be far better for Yeltsin to let the Chechens go in peace. The Russian military is by no means united on any need to attack Russian civilians in a remote corner of the country, and some accounts suggest that some officers and troops have refused to obey orders. Some commentators claim that the Russians have used air strikes precisely because ground troops were unwilling to storm the city, but that seems most unlikely. Too, apparently many members of the Russian legislature, the Duma, have opposed the operation.
Boris Yeltsin clearly faced a very uncomfortable situation. Chechnya is not the only region with the potential to secede from his Russian Federation. Like the old Soviet Union, Russia proper is an empire, built up and generally maintained by force rather than by popular sentiment. In many places, a local non-Russian majority feels nationalist stirrings. Yeltsin can argue, very reasonably, that if the Federation shatters, the pieces will not survive economically; they will become mere victims of the slightly more unified states, many of them former Soviet republics, on their borders. All will probably do better if they stay together, particularly if the economic reforms now under way succeed.
Yeltsin (and any student of Russian history) must sense that the country can disintegrate easily into what it was when the Duchy of Moscovy first began to expand half a millennium ago. Is President Yeltsin another Abraham Lincoln, bent on holding his country together against secessionists? Surely Russian nationalists want the country held together. If Yeltsin fails, they will probably gain power. From a Western perspective, any victory by the nationalist right may well be disastrous.
Yet there must also be uneasiness about the attacks on Chechnya. If the West supports Yeltsin, must it also support Russian operations in the “near abroad,” the former Soviet republics, particularly in Central Asia? There is some evidence that Russian foreign policy is ultimately to reconstruct a Soviet Union. To what extent, if any, is foreign opinion a deterrent?
To some extent, Yeltsin benefits from foreign condemnation. Many Russians, disappointed by the apparent failure of economic reform, blame foreigners. Yeltsin cannot afford to be portrayed as an agent of the West; he must show that Russian interests come first. He will, therefore, adopt traditional Russian views in places like Serbia.
The problem extends further. In the interest of nonproliferation, the United States pressed Ukraine and Kazakhstan to surrender their nuclear weapons to Russia. In the process, both probably gave up the single effective deterrent to future Russian military pressure. To some extent, the U.S. government tried to solve this problem by offering guarantees, although it should have been quite clear that U.S. and NATO forces cannot enforce them effectively.
It seems most unlikely that Yeltsin himself will want to test the guarantees; his successors, however, may have to do so. The Soviet government tried to unify the country by spreading key industrial plants throughout the republics. It is extremely difficult for any one republic to manufacture anything complex, such as an airplane or a warship. Now, however, the economic disaster makes it difficult for firms in any one republic to buy from any other. Apparently many military systemsTequire items from both Russia and Ukraine (although the Russians are trying hard to solve this problem). Also, many of the industrial workers in Ukraine are ethnic Russians who might well prefer to remain within the Russian Federation. What would happen to the guarantees if those Russians were to complain to the Russian government that they were being oppressed? Historically minded readers will recognize unfortunate parallels with this situation.