The end of the Vietnam War and especially the Cold War has ushered in an era of precarious peace in East Asia and the Western Pacific. One concomitant of this has been sustained regionwide economic growth and prosperity, notwithstanding the 1997 financial crisis.
While most countries in the region have been the beneficiaries of the post-1975 peace and economic growth, China has benefited the most. Deng Xiaoping's (
ILLUSTRATION: MOUNTAIN PEOPLE
Generally speaking, expanding trade and investment generates economic growth and interdependence, and a mutual stake in the status quo. But the rapid economic rise of China may or may not be conducive to regional stability and peace in the long run. Much depends upon China's long-term geopolitical goals, and the balance of power between "the status quo force" and "the revisionist force." The former better ensures the existing order and peaceful evolutionary change, while the latter is more likely to lead to mistrust, tension, an arms race and war.
The post-war balance of power in East Asia has favored the status quo upheld by the US-Japan alliance and is an outstanding example of the former. The pre-1914 balance of power in the European inter-state system is a distinct example of the latter. A very high degree of economic interchange and interdependence by itself did not prevent the outbreak of World War I.
In East Asia and the Western Pacific, the collapse of the Soviet Union and China's increasing integration into the global economy have thus far forged an unstable balance of power that preserve a precarious peace in the intermediate term. The region has yet to see the emergence of a security community in much the same way as Europe has since 1945. Looking into the future, there are three developments that will pose a threat to peace in the region.
The immediate and certain threat is the North Koreans' pursuit of a nuclear program. The intermediate threat that is often ignored is the possible disintegration of Indonesia into disorder. The long-term possible threat is the rise of a China hostile to and bent on revising the existing order.
An Indonesia that may degenerate into ungovernable or secessionist civil war poses a distinct threat. The possible disintegration of Indonesia has not commanded the attention which it deserves. Indonesia is the largest Muslim nation. Although extreme Islamic fundamentalists are few and far between, there are active terrorist groups inspired by or associated with the Arab Islamic fundamentalists. Three strategic straits connecting the Pacific with the Indian Ocean are located within the Indonesian archipelagos -- the Malacca, Sunda and Lombok straits. The sea lanes of communication passing through these strategic straits are vulnerable to disruption if Indonesia were to degenerate into disorder.
To help preserve Indonesia as a viable political entity is a strategic challenge for the maritime democracies. This is indispensable to the safety of shipping (and to a lesser extent air transport) through the sea lanes of communication along the first island chains off the East Asian coast. The stability of the existing regional order is contingent upon, among others, a viable Indonesia not dominated by a regime hostile to the maritime democracies.
The short-term North Korean nuclear threat
North Korea has acknowledged its pursuit of a nuclear program. Apparently the North Korean elite feels that weapons of mass destruction are indispensable to their staying in power in that failed state. They have exported the know-how and narcotic drugs in order to earn hard currency. However, the Pyongyang pursuit is highly destabilizing and poses an immediate threat to the existing regional order. Their exports will only accelerate the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
The responses to North Korea's apparent resolve to stay the course vary from acquiescence to unconditional opposition.
Russia has claimed that it has little or no leverage over North Korea.
China's response has been mixed. China previously provided some know-how to North Korea, believing this could be used as leverage against Japan and the US.
Yet the nuclear-tipped missiles in North Korea's possession that can reach Japan can also reach most parts of China. China's initiative has backfired. It has spurred India to go ahead publicly detonating nuclear devices. Unless the North Korean pursuit is stopped, Japan will go nuclear too (on top of a strengthened alliance with the US), setting off a nuclear arms race in Northeast Asia. China's interests would not be served.
Beijing's standard response to Washington and Tokyo's demand that it does something has been: "We are impotent. We have insufficient leverage." But under US pressure, China briefly suspended its fuel supply from the Daqing oil field to North Korea in March, demonstrating what it is capable of doing and warning the latter to behave. China is now actively involved the Korean nuclear deadlock in order to prevent a new war. This is a new development.
Japan faces its greatest dilemma since 1951. Ever since the inception of the US-Japan alliance in 1952, Japan has been able to "buy" security cheaply. It has been able to find security with American military protection (including the nuclear shield) at low cost -- granting US forces the right to build bases, sharing the cost of bases, and investing less than 1 percent of its GNP in defense until recently. The North Korean weapons of mass destruction program poses a strategic challenge to Japan. It has set in motion a domestic debate on self-defense, Japan's role in the US-Japan alliance, and the role of Japan's Self-Defense Forces in case of contingencies in surrounding and far away areas.
Japan has already decided to purchase PAC-3 air-defense missiles. It has also ordered additional AEGIS air-defense systems and platforms. It has also been moving slowly but steadily towards a more relaxed interpretation of Article 9 of the Constitution, which renounces war forever and pledges not to maintain military forces of any sort. The successive Cabinets since the mid-1990s have managed to persuade the reluctant and sentimentally pacifist Diet to legislate a series of enabling acts aimed to allow Japan and the Japanese Self-Defense Forces to play a more active role in the strengthened US-Japan alliance.
If North Korea continues its pursuit, and the US fails to stop it, Japan will have to make a hard decision in the not-too-distant future whether or not to build a nuclear force as a deterrent, on top of a missile defense system against ballistic and cruise missiles.
Japan has actively supported the US' efforts to stop the North Korean nuclear program. If all peaceful means fail and the US resorts to a preemptive strike against North Korea's nuclear installations, how will Japan respond? Tokyo has no decisive influence over Washington when it comes to the issue of a pre-emptive strike. Yet such action is sure to invite a North Korean retaliation, including a massive artillery attack on Seoul and possibly launching nuclear-tipped missiles targeting Japan's cities. This is a maddening scenario. But we are dealing with a ruthless and cruel North Korean elite whose record over the past decades is not reassuring.
In short, Japan is confronted with a strategic dilemma. It wants North Korea to stop its nuclear program, but it has no effective leverage, either by itself or in collaboration with Washington and Seoul. It cannot remain neutral on the US-North Korea clash. Nor can it prevent a US-North Korea showdown, which would begin with a pre-emptive strike, a move likely to escalate into a region-wide armed conflict involving South Korea and Japan, and possibly China and Russia.
South Korea's dilemma is the most acute of all. It does not want the North Korean nuclear program. It has tried to dissuade the latter with all sorts of carrots, but to no avail. It wants a peaceful resolution, but it cannot prevent Washington from launching a pre-emptive strike, should the latter decide that that is the only option. But such an "ultimate solution" will set off North Korean retaliation.
Some analysts hypothesize that there must be some people in South Korea who privately do not mind the North Korean nuclear pursuit. For they might feel that an united Korea with nuclear bombs will somehow give it prestige or leverage (however defined) over its bigger neighbors.
US efforts to denuclearize North Korea have resulted in a stalemate. With Operation Iraqi Freedom largely over, the US has got a new sense of urgency and the flexibility to address the issue. The completion of the redeployment of American troops from the demilitarized zone to a location further south beyond the artillery range will give Washington additional options. As of now the American troops in the demilitarized zone are hostages to the North, instead of a trip wire, as originally intended.
Washington has called upon Beijing to help out. China might have tried to help, motivated by a correct assessment of national interest. The multilateral talks held in Beijing last month brought Washington, Pyongyang, Beijing, South Korea, Japan and Russia to the table, but there has been no breakthrough.
All the parties concerned support the US non-proliferation policy and wish North Korea will comply. But none of them support a pre-emptive strike as an option for fear that this may lead to an escalation sucking them all in. Though none of them, individually or collectively, can stop Washington resorting to the ultimate option. For Washington has identified proliferation and terrorism as its top priority.
The ongoing drama is reminiscent of a Greek tragedy. The process is unforeseeable, but the outcome is predictable if the stalemate is not resolved peacefully. All concerned countries will be sucked in, regardless of their subjective wishes.
The rise of China
The economic rise of China is a good thing. Since Deng's rise to power, China has pursued a peculiar development strategy -- forging an "unholy" alliance between the communists as the ruling class with the international capital to ruthlessly exploit the vast reservoir of historical serfs. Consequently the quality of life for the majority of China's population on the coastal cities has improved dramatically. Foreign trade has generated an accumulated foreign exchange reserves second only to that of Japan. For the first time China has the hard currency to import everything from grain and oil to jet airplanes. The foreign exchange reserves have also enabled China to purchase advanced arms from Russia, which is badly in need of hard currency.
The high economic growth rate has also enabled the government to allocate an ever increasing budget for defense. In the years following the Tiananmen massacre, the annual increase in the defense budget has been in double digits, averaging 17 percent. With Russia ceasing to be a threat and the US interest in the region being preserving peace and an orderly status quo, why has China steadily and vastly increased its defense expenditure?
The official explanations are innocuous and reasonable -- to restore the balance between quantity and quality of the armed forces and to modestly modernize the obsolete platforms and projectile weapons.
But China has been silent on the most compelling reason. The investment in military modernization is essential to China's pursuit of a long-term goal -- the political use of modernized armed forces to bring about a change in the regional order over the long haul.
China issued a defense White Paper in 2001. The White Paper, in no unambiguous terms, states China's extreme dissatisfaction with the existing regional order, which it characterized as a continuation of the gunboat diplomacy, neo-economic colonialism and unfair economic interchange. It also deplores the existing international system, which it characterizes as one dominated by the US, with several major powers playing a distant secondary role.
Rhetoric is one thing. Action is another. And action speaks louder than rhetoric. How does China's rhetoric jib with its action? Very closely. China has territorial disputes with virtually all the neighboring countries, with the exception of Myanmar. Its school textbooks identify virtually all the small islets in the South China Sea including those very close to Indonesia as its sacred territory by virtue of the South China Sea being "historical water" (whatever this means) dating back to the Han dynasty.
It launched an attack on and expelled the then South Vietnamese troops stationed in the Paracell islets after the Americans pulled out of the south and before the north conquered the south. One year after the US air force and navy pulled out of the Clark airbase and Subic Bay, Chinese forces occupied the Mischief island and set up a sophisticated reconnaissance and monitoring system there, calling it a shelter for fishermen. It has claimed Senkakus (Diaoyutai) as its territory, and has drawn an extended exclusive economic zone in the East China Sea, at the expense of Japan and South Korea. More recently it has secretly coerced Vietnam to cede a piece of land on its borders.
The Taiwan question
Its statements on Taiwan are even more outrageous. Its official statements have time and again claimed that there is only one China, and Taiwan is part of that one China, and that it reserves the right to use force to incorporate Taiwan. Taiwan has been the focal point of the Chinese armed forces' modernization program. Taking the lesson of Operation Desert Storm, China has deployed some 400 ballistic missiles (M9 and M11) in Fujian and Jianxi provinces targeting Taiwan. Some 50 missiles are added annually. At this rate, China will deploy a total of 750 ballistic missiles targeting their "compatriots" on Taiwan by 2010.
The political use of the deployed missiles is obvious: to intimidate or coerce Taiwan into submitting to its "one country, two systems" formula. Failing this, the People's Liberation Army may launch surprise missile attacks to execute preemptive "decapitation" strikes, aimed at eliminating Taiwan's political leadership and Taiwan's command, control, communication, computer, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (C4ISR) system, in much the same way as the American forces did at the start of Operation Desert Storm and Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Other high-priority targets are the jet fighters deployed in the four airbases on Taiwan's west coast. The hope is that such a decapitation campaign will bring Taiwan to its knees, accepting "one country, two systems" before US intervention comes in.
If the Chinese communist leadership's desire to incorporate Taiwan was driven by a bizarre mind-set -- "Once China's, forever China's," it is now reinforced by a strategic calculation. China's long-term goal is to bring about a Chinese hegemony in East Asia and the Western Pacific. Control of the South China Sea is a prerequisite. Taiwan commands the northern access to and exit from the South China Sea. Control of Taiwan will enable China to control the shipping passing through the Bashi channel and the Taiwan Strait, through which more than 70 percent of the Middle East oil destined for Japan and South Korea passes.
Controlling Taiwan and the South China Sea will thus enable China to disrupt, in time of tension and war, the navigation along the sea lanes of communication along the first island chain passing through the South China Sea and the Malacca Strait into the Indian Ocean.
A Chinese nuclear submarine fleet based in Suao port on the Pacific coast of Taiwan will present a nightmare to all the countries using the sea lanes of communication passing a few kilometers off the shore. Within minutes after a submarine leaves Suao, it will submerge to whatever depth it is capable of. There will be no way to detect or monitor it.
Deterrence and prevention is better than remedy aimed at restoring the status quo in the wake of a fait accompli. What is the best way to do so? Preserve the existing balance of power that favors maritime democracies. The US and Japan should continue to engage and interchange with China in all dimensions. This will facilitate China's transition away from the one-party dictatorship to authoritarian and then liberal democratic rule. This is the best way to bring about democratic peace in the long run.
The US and Japan have a combined GNP over 40 percent of the global total, and a combined defense budget amounting to two-thirds of the global total. The US, whose defense expenditure exceeds that of the rest of the world combined, can afford to continue to invest 3 percent of its GNP on defense as it has in recent years. Japan could also take on a little more of the burden and play a more active role in the US-Japan alliance, the most important alliance in the world. Maintaining a robust but non-provocative US-Japan alliance that can address the regional contingencies is the most economical way to deter an economically rising but revisionist China from attempting to disrupt the regional order.
Chen Pi-chao is former deputy minister of the Ministry of National Defense and currently advisor to the Presidential Office. This article was originally prepared for a seminar on "East Asia Security, the US-Japan Alliance and East Asian Economic Situation and Prospect" held in Tokyo on July 25.
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