THE SOVIET THREAT TO THE NORTHERN PACIFIC REGION
FROM AN OVERALL POINT OF VIEW
HUA DI
Senior Researcher, Strategy & Foreign Policy
Institute of American Studies
Chinese Academy of Social Sciences
Beijing, The People's Republic of China
Presentation to the Symposium on
"Regional Balance of Power in the Pacific Basin'
sponsored by the US National Defense University
Honolulu, Hawaii, U.S.A.
February 21-22, 1985
THE SOVIET THREAT TO THE NORTHERN PACIFIC REGION
FROM AN OVERALL POINT OF VIEW
Introduction
After its humiliating failure to meet the American challenge during the
Cuban crisis in 1962, the Soviet Union conducted a massive military build-up
at the expense of its national economic growth in civilian sectors.
It has
made the country a global military power on equal footing with another power
of global scale, the United States.
Arbatov boasted in October of 1984 that,
"The emergence of such an equality or parity at the beginning of the 1970's
is the Soviet people's historical achievement and the most tangible and impressive reflection of the changed balance of power in the world in favor of socialism."
Actually, the world at present is bipolar miltarily although multipolar
economically.
The situation of global confrontation between the two military
superpowers will last for a long time, probably into the next century.
Facing such a situation, my personal opinion is that we must always regard
the Soviet threat from an overall point of view in order to analyze the problem.
An overall point of view requires a global scope and long-term considerations.
At the 1983 Williamsburg Summit of seven major western countries, Japanese Prime
Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone succeeded in pursuading fellow participants to add the
following to one of the statements:
"The security of our countries is indivisible
and must be approached on a global basis."
This addition indicates that the western
leaders were moving toward an overall point of view.
In fact, if it is not seen in a long-term global context, any discussion of
the Soviet threat to a certain region such as the Northern Pacific makes little
sense and may even be misleading.
For as the Chinese analyst Wu Xiuquan has said,
"Each Soviet expansionist action is linked to its global strategy rather than
an isolated incident."
Shortsighted and fragmented judgment as such leads to
-2A miscalculation in mind
miscalculation resulting in misdeployment of forces.
might be easily corrected by cheap and quick paperwork, but to rectify a misdeployed military body indeed takes lots of money and time.
It is precisely
the Soviet aim to have its opponents separate and uncoordinated so that it can
gain time for its own military preparedness and efficiency of military expenditure.
Thus, a brief description of what might be the Soviet global strategy is necessary prior to proceeding with any regional threat analysis.
The Soviet Global Strategy
Aiming at world domination, the Soviet Union needs at first to edge the United
States out of the old Euro-Asia-African continent.
In doing this the Soviet stra-
tegists must take the following conditions into account:
(1) The mutual nuclear deterrence makes conventional force the only possible
military force useful against nuclear-armed enemies.
But the same deterrence
of the U.S. nuclear umbrella is not universal, and nuclear blackmail becomes
credible against those who do not possess their own independent nuclear arsenal.
(2) In contrast to strategic nuclear missiles whose effectiveness has little
to do with range of fire, the strength of conventional forces decreases as the
length of logistic supply and reinforcement lines increases.
(3) Despite the drastic expansion of the Soviet Navy under its talented Commander-in-Chief Gorshkov, geographical disadvantages make the Soviet Union destined
to be inferior in open seas.
In case of a major conventional conflict with the
United States, the Red Army will have to rely primarily on its ground forces
with its naval forces playing only an auxiliary role.
Under the aforementioned conditions, a less expensive way for the Soviets to
achieve their strategic objectives with low risk and high certainty of success would
be, as Wu Xiuquan stated in a paper given at Stanford in 1982, "pushing forward
the strategy of a southward thrust" while maintaining "a stalemate on both the Eastern
and Western fronts."
It is because:
(1) Fighting through all the European NATO defense (including Turkey) readily
reinforced by the United States from across the Atlantic, and occupying a ruined
Europe cannot be cost-effectively justified.
Moreover, the battlefield of such
a major war would be too dangerously close to the Soviet economic-political
heartland.
Furthermore, the Kremlin knows that its Warsaw Pact allies may be
depended on to defend their homelands, but less reliable in military adventure
toward the West.
(2) The distant Far East is also an unfavorable area for the Red Army to
initiate any major offensive:
either a land invasion of vast and populous China
or an amphibious intrusion of sea-surrounded Japan would be costly, protracted and
doomed to failure.
(3) The region to the south of Soviet Central Asia is economically backward,
sociopolitically unstable, and not steadfastly leaning to the West.
can exploit local turmoil by "fishing in troubled water."
Here the Soviets
Advancing southward,
where the United States does not have pre-stationed forward bases and thus will
have to count on lines of communication prolonged and susceptible to interruption,
the Red Army could make full use of its superior conventional land forces and its
geographical advantages of manoeuvre within a secure interior in a one-to-one duel
against the American Army without other NATO countries and Japan directly involved.
Once the Red Army reaches Gwadar at the northern coast of the Arabian Sea, the Soviet
Union can readily control the vital oil supply and stretch further its power eastward
to India and Indochina, westward to the Mediterranean coast opposite to Europe and
southward to sweep across Africa, and finally subdue Japan and West Europe without
fighting destructive wars there.
A few years ago, General Bernard W. Rogers, the Supreme Allied Commander in
Europe, predicted that if a new world war is destined to occur, it would be
initiated in the area of Near East-Persian Gulf-Indian Ocean.
This author would
pinpoint it at Baluchistane, and views the conflict as a major land war, accompanied
by Soviet naval-air assault on American reinforcement and logistic supply lines in
the Pacific, Indian, Atlantic oceans and the Mediterranean.
-4Now, having the Soviet global strategy as a background of reference, we may
logically and reasonably examine the Soviet threat to the Northern Pacific.
The Soviet Threat to the Northern Pacific Region
(A) General Characteristics of the Threat: Potential Threat of a Derivative
Nature and "If-Then" Type
It is quite clear from the above analysis that the Soviet threat to South Asia is
one of a primary nature; its threat to the Central Pacific roughly between the
Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn would be secondary; and its threat to the Northern
Pacific, tertiary.
The tertiary is derived from the secondary in the sense
that the Soviet Pacific Fleet needs to break through the Northern Pacific before
it can intercept American lines of communication in the Central Pacific.
A secondary
is, in itself, derived from the primary because the Soviet naval assaults on the
Central Pacific are necessary for its ground forces marching toward the Arabian
Sea to overwhelm the resistance of ill-supported American Rapid Deployment Forces.
The Soviet strategists appear to be well aware of such a chain of derivation as
they put it on December 24, 1984.
The Red Star, a Soviet military publication,
stated, "The American ruling group intends to form a US-Japan-South Korea military
triangle to control firmly the Western Pacific in order to secure the movement of
its Rapid Deployment Forces, military reinforcement and logistic supply from
the American Pacific coast, Hawaii and Japan to the Near East and Persian Gulf region."
At present, however, the Soviet Polar Bear is still trying to digest Afghanistan,
and waiting patiently for possible turmoil in Iran after Khomeini and separatist
upheavals such as the Pakhtunistan Movement in Pakistan.
its forces.
It is also building up
Therefore, the Soviet threat to the Northern Pacific region is neither
imminent nor a locally bred and born protothreat, but an indirect potential, derived
from outside.
At one extreme, if one does not support the USA in preventing the Soviet Pacific
Fleet from sailing southward, then there is no threat by the USSR.
The more
-5support to the USA the more threat from the USSR.
The Soviets do not threaten
those favoring a neutral Pacific, because a neutral Pacific is a Soviet Pacific
with its free access to the Indian Ocean.
At the other extreme, if we can manage to keep peace in South Asia forever,
then the potential threat to the Northern Pacific will never materialize.
The
less superior the Soviets are in South Asia the less threatening they are in
the Northern Pacific.
Somewhere in between, if we adopt non-coordinated and short-sighted expedients, then the potential threat to the Northern Pacific will never materialize
one day in the future along with the explosion of the strategic situation in
South Asia.
(B) General Review on Military Specifics of the Region
(1) Assessment of the Soviet Ground Forces in the Far East
For many years there has been a widespread mistake in saying indistinctly
that 52 Soviet divisions are deployed in the Far East, and according to this
vague statement people are used to marking on their map all the 52 divisions to
the east of Baykal.*
In fact, of the 52 divisions in the Soviet "Far Eastern
Theatre," 7 divisions are stationed in Central Asia around Alma-Ata together
with 22 divisions in the Soviet "Southern Theatre" (4 in Afghanistan, 6 in
Turkestan and 12 in Trans-Caucasus) and belong to the first echelon of the
southward thrust; 6 divisions stationed in West Siberia together with 8
divisions in North-Caucasus and 8 divisions from the Central Strategic Reserve
(5 in Ural and 3 in Volga) belong to the second echelon, all of which are 2-3
days distance from Central Asia; 10 divisions stationed in Trans-Baykal are of
dual use:
either for use together with 8 divisions of the Central Strategic
Reserve in Moscow as the third echelon within a 5-7 day distance from Central
* "Soviet Military Power 1984", Department of Defense, USA, US Government
Printing Office 1984-434-463, p.12-13
-6Asia or for use as reserves under the High Command Far East (HCFE with HQ in
Irkutsk) to reinforce the b divisions in Mongolia and 24 divisions in the
Far East.
Thus, there are a maximum of only 39 divisions [(24+5)+10] for
the Far East in contrast to 69 divisions [(7+22)+(6+8+8)+(10+8)] for possible
disposal in the Soviet Southern Theatre, not including 7 divisions in Odessa
and 10 divisions in Kiev which could reinforce the Soviet Southern Theatre in
one week.
Another mistake is to characterize the situation of ground forces in the
Far East as one of mutually pinning down, the same as in Europe between Warsaw
Pact and NATO.
Europe.
It is true that there is a mutually pinning down stalemate in
It is because the economic-political centers of both sides are too
close to each other and none dares to leave its ground border not heavily
guarded, thus troops and military inventories of both sides are mutually tied
down.
It is totally different in the Far East.
The Soviets cannot successfully
wind up any large-scale ground operation it launches here.
In case of a contin-
gency elsewhere the American ground forces may be lifted up from here with ease.
Nor can we (China) tie down all the Soviet troops here by posing any real threat
to the Soviet Far East.
The Soviet Union certainly does not like to fight on
two fronts simultaneously.
It is, however, so huge a country that to speak of
its anxiety about being encircled is merely a banality.
all of Siberia toward Moscow.
None can fight through
It is nonsense to enter Siberia and then to
retreat from there before severe winter comes.
After all, any blow in the dis-
tant Far East would not be fatal to the Soviet Union which might well give up
temporarily a part of its territory there and strike back later to take vengeance on intruders after it has settled things elsewhere.
Neither China nor
Japan would be willing to open a second front, which would almost certainly be
unsuccessful in pinning down Russians here, in order to release Americans elsewhere.
On November 1, 1983, a report by William Kennedy in The Chicago Tribune to
-7the effect that, "The transfer of a single US marine division and air wing to Alaska
with the means to conduct exercises along the Aleutian Islands would place a greater
burden on Soviet defense resources than does our five-division military presence in
Europe.
Their presence in Alaska and the Aleutians would signal a threat to rela-
tively isolated Petropavlovsk and to the entire Soviet strategic position in Asia.
The Soviets would be forced to reinforce that endangered flank, drawing on resources
that now threaten NATO and the Persian Gulf."
Such a notion seems a sheer absurdity!
Even transfer of all three American marine divisions to Alaska means nothing to
Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy which is as far from Anchorage as San Francisco.
The
Soviets do not need to have heavy ground forces there to protect their nuclearmissile submarines' home base.
And there is no certainty that the American infantry
brigade now stationed in Alaska may not move elsewhere in case of necessity, leaving
only local National Guard to prevent possible Soviet subversive activities.
(2) Assessment of Naval-Air Confrontation in the Region
Admiral William Crowe, Commander in Chief of the US Pacific Forces, now Head
of the US Joint Chiefs, was quoted by US News and World Report on October 22, 1984
as commenting that, "1 look at my military problem as fundamentally an air and
naval problem."
Responding to the question on what is the current state of balance
in the Pacific, he added, "In the Pacific, it's essentially a naval-air threat.
Anytime it's naval-air, we start at less of a disadvantage.
and we have a terrific Air Force.
We have a great Navy,
Man for man, unit for unit, the Soviets can't
match us".
Due to redeployment among four Soviet Fleets in recent years, its Pacific fleet
has become the largest one with about 40% of total Soviet naval forces in it,
including two of three Kiev-class V/STOL aircraft carriers they have in service
("Ninsk" and "Novorossiysk" with 14 Yak-36 Forgers on each), all two amphibious
assault transport docks ("Ivan Rogov" and "Alexander Nikolayev") and a command
ship "Marshal Nedelin," the first and most sophisticated in the entire Soviet
Navy with modern electronic equipment similar to the flagship of the U.S. Seventh
-8Fleet, the "Blue Ridge."
And one of the two Kirov-class nuclear-powered mis-
sile cruisers ("Frunze" with a displacement of 28,000 tons, about 2.5 times
as large as the American Virginia-class counterpart) will be deployed here
later this year.
Despite all of these, the Soviet Pacific Fleet barely holds
the ideal within the Seas of Japan and Okhotsk.
The United States still main-
tains the overwhelming naval superiority in open oceans that it has enjoyed since
the end of WW-2, although its nuclear superiority and general conventional equality
were lost in the 1970s.
For years to come, the Soviet naval surface combatant forces
cannot survive any face-to-face engagement with US carrier task forces, even if
the Soviets build up their own nuclear-powered CTOL carriers (the keel was laid for
the first such one early in 1983).
Soviet carrier task forces would face great
difficulties to get through the narrow straits of the Japan Sea.
Without forward
bases spread in the Pacific to provide them with aircraft coverage and logistic supply, their unimpeded passage over great distance and combat sustainability seem to
be doubtful.
The Soviets place stress on their superiority in numbers of attack submarines,
102 of which (among the total 278) belong to its Pacific Fleet.
It must be noted
that 9 of 10 subs they build annually are attack subs equipped with guided torpedoes,
SS-N-9 and SS-N-19 anti-ship cruise missiles, and SS-N-15 and SS-N-16 ASW missiles.
Six of the nine attack subs annually built are nuclear-powered.
Moreover, recent
Soviet subs are titanium-hulled which may operate at great depths and speeds and
thereby are more survivable.
Soviet attack subs would play hide-and-seek with
Americans: to seek and strike transport vehicles while hiding from battle ships
with ASWs.
Reconnaissance satellites, nuclear-powered propulsion systems and
guided weapons have changed the balance between subs and surface ships in favor
of the former while modern sonar technology can help the latter mainly in limited
water areas.
Once Soviet subs get into the vast Pacific, they may inflict big
troubles on American vessels which have to take 20-25 days sailing from the American western coast to the Arabian Sea at an average speed of 20 nautical miles per hour
-9The balance of power in the air is about the same as that in water.
The Soviets
have air superiority over the seas of Japan and Okhotsk, but their Mig and Su
fighters cannot master distant airspace over the open Pacific, without AWACs and
refueling tankers following and without support of carriers and airbases from underneath.
However, the battle for control of the air over passage between the seas
and the ocean promises to be fierce.
Soviet long-range strike aircraft, especially
the 76 Tu-26 Backfires, may reach as far as the Central Pacific if refueled, but
without escort by fighters they would just play the same hide-and-seek in the air
as their subs do under water:
their object would be to seek and strike targets
by use of standoff weapons for single shot kills while evading American interception,
(3) Assessment of the Soviet Nuclear Threat to the Region
In order to maintain a global nuclear deterrence and sustain a protracted
nuclear war if it occurs, the Soviet Union has deployed in the Far East ICBMs
(most of them are single-headed or 3-MIRVed SS-11), SLBMs (mainly SS-N-6, -8,
-17, and -18 on 15 Delta-class and 9 Yankee-class nuclear missile subs) and longrange strategic bombers (subsonic Tu-95 Bears B/C, refueled Tu-26 Backfires B
and new not-yet-in-service Blackjack A supersonic bombers).
the Soviet strategic TRIAD.
They are a part of
They provide a shield behind which the Soviet con-
ventional forces become usable, and they are operated under a unified Soviet global
nuclear strategy which is beyond the topic of this paper on regional threat.
The
Soviet regional theatre nuclear forces, including 135-140 SS-20 mobile medium-range
3-MIRVed missiles and unrefueled Tu-26 Backfires, may reach all the Asian continent
and the American Clark and Subic Bay bases in the Philippines.
They pose a cer-
tain threat to countries in the region, particularly to Japan (See discussions
below).
But they should not very much worry China who has its own independent and
survivable nuclear retaliatory capability, and southeast Asian nations who do not
seriously hamper the Soviet Far East Fleet as it displays its might in the Pacific. Bearing in mind that there is no clearly declared policy regarding the necessity oi
-10a flexible response in this region, an escalation of conflict from conventional to
nuclear is less likely to take place here than in Central Europe.
(4) Assessment of the Soviet Military Presence in Viet Nam
By acquiring previous US bases in Cam Ranh Bay and Da Nang, the Soviet Pacific
naval-air forces have succeeded in pushing southward for 2,300 nautical miles from
their home base in Vladivostok.
14 Mig-23 Floggers, 16 Tu-16 Badgers, 8 Tu-95
Bears/D (electronic reconnaissance) and more than 20 combat ships represent the
most solid Soviet permanent military presence to the South of the Tropic of Cancer.
The presence is continually growing.
not be exaggerated.
Its strategic significance, however, should
Many people, laymen and strategists as well, see it as the
Soviet intention to encircle China from the South.
This is wrong! As a French
source remarks, "Encirclement of China was the Soviet purpose in the past, but that
has gone obsolete."
past intention.
The Soviets have eventually recognized the foolishness of their
China is too large, as the Soviet Union itself is, to be encircled
and isolated, much less a China with an open-door policy.
Some strategists overestimate the potential of the Soviet threat with its forward bases in Viet Nam.
They sometimes recall the Japanese militaristic achieve-
ments in the early 1940s: Sweeping entire Indochina up to the Burma-Indian border,
gaining control of the Malacca Strait and most of Indonesia down to Rabaul and Bougainville in Melanesia, occupying the Philippines and assaulting Micronesia.
How-
ever, the geopolitical environments today are totally different from those in 1941.
The Soviets can never duplicate that Japanese militaristic history, and they need
not go that way.
With American bases in the Philippines in the east, the Indonesian
Natuna Island base in the south and the Chinese Southern Fleet in the north, the
sphere of action for the Soviet naval-air detachment in Viet Nam would be limited
to the South China Sea.
The Soviets know that in case of a major war their naval
forces will not be able to go through Bashi Channel eastward and Malacca Strait
westward.
For their part, the Soviets will not let opponents sail through the
South China Sea and fly over the Indochina Peninsula, thereby making sea and air
-11lines of communication between the Northern Pacific and South Asia as long as
possible.
What the Soviets can do, to the maximum, is to mine Sunda, Lombok,
Makasar and Molucca Straits in order to force opponent vessels to detour farther
to the south.
(C)
Possible Development of the Soviet Threat to the Region:
Analysis of
Extreme Cases
The current Soviet potential threat to the Northern Pacific may not
materialize in the near future under two possible circumstances.
At one extreme, if the balance of power in South Asia shifts so radically
in favor of the Soviet Union that the Red Army could launch a blitz war to
capture Baluchistan in 7-10 days by use of mechanized ground forces pushing
southward from Afghanistan at 50-70 km a day coordinated with paratroops
descending and holding the coast of the Arabian Sea, then the U. S. sealines
of communication through the Pacific would become useless.
There would be no
The
possibility of delivering sufficient counterbalance to South Asia in time.
battle of South Asia could end before warfare takes place in the Pacific.
In
such a case, the current Soviet potential threat to the Northern Pacific would
not materialize at the first stage of the Soviet global strategy.
However, the
threat postponed to the next stage could be fatal to the region and the entire
world in the future.
At the other extreme, if the Soviet Pacific forces expand so drastically in
the future that the American Pacific sealines cannot be effectively defended,
then the United States would ask China for ground and airlines of communication
which the Soviet dare not attack.
Provided the United States stops interfering
in China's Taiwan affairs in time, the Sino-U.S. cooperation could make the
Soviet southward thrust impossible.
Thus, the Soviet threat to the Northern
Pacific would fade away together with its threat to South Asia.
-12-
(D)
A Specific Scenario Analysis for Japan
In naval-air confrontation between two superpowers in the Pacific, Japan
may play a crucial role for which the Soviet Union keeps on posing a heavy
threat to Japan.
The tasks assigned to the Japanese mainly consist of blocking
straits and territorial air space to deprive trie Soviets of free access to the
open Pacific and defending sealines of communication out to 1000 nm from Japan,
according to public statements given by Zenko Suzuki in January 1981 and Yasuhiro
Nakasone in January 1983.
Indeed, as Admiral Crowe commented in the interview
of October 2, 1984 already mentioned, "They do aot have such a capability now.
Is Japan spending enough money to do that?
At this point, they are not."*
Japan's inability, however, cannot get cured just by spending over 1/i of GNP
on defense.
Irrespective of raising defense spending to whatever level,
enforcement of a naval-air blockade and engagement with the Soviet Fleet will
remain beyond Japan's ability owing to two reasons:
(1)
A Japanese blockade would be returned by a Soviet blockade of Japan's
resources supply, especially oil supply from the Persian Gulf and Indonesia, by
means of Soviet forces in Viet Nam and the mining of Japanese sea lanes and ports,
(2)
Japan may readily be suppressed by Soviet nuclear blackmail.
Because,
under the doctrine of mutually assured destruction, a homeland-to-homeland
nuclear duel (i.e., American Guam, Pearl Harbor, San Diego and San Francisco in
exchange for Sovietskaya Gavan, Petropavlovsk, Vladivostok and Irkutsk
respectively) would be unacceptable.
Outside of the homelands of the two
superpowers, we see a roughly symmetrical antithetical parity of mutual nuclear
hostages, except for Japan:
American NATO non-nuclear allies versus Soviet
Warsaw Pact non-nuclear allies, American Subic Bay and Clark bases in the
Philippines versus Soviet Cam Ranh Bay and Da Nang bases in Viet Nam, etc.
Japan
-13-
is a unique asymme~try.
That there is no antidote for the Soviet nuclear
blackmail of Japan makes the Soviet blackmail credible and the American umbrella
incredible.
In short, Japan is an aircraft carrier unsinkable, as Prime Minister Nakasone
phrased it, but vulnerable to resources cutoff and nuclear bluff.
Indeed,
right after the "Washington Post" published on January 19, 1983 a Nakasone
interview the day before about Japan as an unsinkable carrier, the Soviet News
Agency TASS reacted promptly on the same day and the day after with two
consecutive dispatches repeatedly declaring that, "In contemporary nuclear era,
unsinkable aircraft carrier is impossible," and "In era of modern technology,
unsinkable aircraft carrier does not exist."
Therefore Japan would most likely keep a nominal neutrality without direct
involvement in combat actions in the region, as long as the Soviet Union does
not launch an offensive against it.
What Japan can do to the maximum is to
provide Americans with logistic services, as it did during the Korean and
Vietnamese wars, and with early-warning, monitoring and intelligence collectingprocessing services.
The combat tasks originally assigned to Japan would be
left for Americans themselves to complete.
In order to lessen the likelihood
of being punished by the Soviets, Japan would have to pretend to be in an
awkward position and incapable of stopping Americans exploiting bases in Japan.
The situation would be actually adverse if the Soviet Union brandishes its
nuclear sword to force Japan to get away from a U.S.-Soviet conflict for control
of the 43km wide Soya Strait between Hokkaido and Sakhalin.
In such an emergency,
the U. S. has to step up efforts to defend Japan by pouring in more troops in
addition to those 50,000 now stationed in Japan, according to a "top secret"
Japan-U.S. joint operational plan signed in Tokyo on December 26, 1984
Thus,
-14American Rapid Deployment Forces necessary for use in South Asia would be
diverted to Hokkaido.
The probability of such a dangerous perspective is
growing, given the fact that the Soviet Union has placed nearly a division on
the Japanese northern islands it occupies, equipped with long-range guns and
ground-attack helicopter gunships, and a squadron of 12 Mig-31 Foxhounds, the
first true look-down/shoot-down-capable aircraft in the Soviet inventory with
long-range AA-9 air-to-air missiles.
1984.
These have been in Sakhalin since April
The only way for Japan and the U. S. to get out of this awkward situation
is to play down the strategic significance of the Soya Strait (Tsugaru and
Tsushima as well) by substituting the Pacific sealines of communication with
secure ground and air lines as above mentioned.
American Grave Mistakes Playing into the Soviet Hands
Since the early 1980s, American top officials have publicly admitted that
the United States alone cannot cope with Soviet expansionism, nor can it by
having only its NATO allies and Japan together.
To meet the Soviet challenge,
in my opinion, the United States must strengthen cooperation with not only its
allies, but also all forces resisting Soviet hegemonism.
Some people see China as an Asia-Pacific regional power.
Yet, only two
superpowers who can thrust their military forces all over the world are global
powers.
China, however, is a regional power of glooal significance.
Ln contrast
to Japan, China is not only a country of the Far Last but also a Central Asian
country.
China has a long common border with the Soviet Union up to Central
Asia, and Vladivostok is 50 oiiles from northeastern China whereas Baluchistan
is 1,000 miles from southwestern China.
Without China, the chain stretched
from the American western coast to the focal spot in South Asia would be
interrupted halfway in Japan, unless it detours far away through the vulnerable
-15-
Pacific and Indian Oceans.
Without China, Japan would appear to be the dead end
of a broken chain, and cannot bring its strategic value into full play.
Without
cooperation with China, preservation of peace in the Pacific region and the
world as well is hardly possible.
That's why the U. S. Defense Secretary,
Caspar Weinberger, speaking at the Press Club in Washington, D. C., on December
12, 1983, termed China "a potentially decisive factor in global balance of
power."
That is why Admiral Crowe said when asked which country is more
important to the United States over the next 20 years China or Japan "That's
a real toughie.
answer is:
It depends a great deal on what develops.
I just don't know."
I guess the real
In 1980-82 China was given the first place,
but since then Japan has moved from the second to the first because of the
temporary absence of the "China First" policy.
Actually, China represents a
hope for meeting the Soviet challenge and for the preservation of world peace
at less cost and with higher certainty.
Unfortunately, as Deng Xiaoping remarked in October 1984, "Americans have
been shortsighted; they can see only small things but not big problems."
While against Soviet expansionism, the United States itself is conducting an
imperialistic policy, a concentrated expression of which is the so-called
"Taiwan Relations Act."
"The hurt that the Taiwan Relations Act inflicts upon
the Chinese people should not be underestimated.
As long as the Taiwan issue
remains unsettled, an abrupt incident between the PRC and the U.S.A. would
remain possible."
Fortunately, unlike those narrow minded politicians and pedantic academicians
who can accomplish nothing in a real war but confuse everythiang in peacetime,
American military officers who shoulder the heavy burden of national security
and will have to fight directly on the battlefield have not been heard to be
fanatically adhering to the Taiwan Relations Act.
It is a real pity that they
-16-
are not policy makers.
pessimistically.
They can do little but wait passively, if not
Admiral Crowe was right when he said, "It is premature right
now for us to do things jointly or in any real close, cooperative way.
A
better and closer military-to-military relationship probably will evolve as
political ties and economic ties strengthen."
that "It should come from the Chinese.
it.
However, he was unfair in saying
If they want to do that, then let's do
If they don't want to do that, well, then let's don't do it."
described the causality conversely:
Deng Xiaoping
"Some changes in our view on global strategy
mainly stem from changes of the United States, the deepest of which is about
the Taiwan issue."
American narrow vision and its stubborn attitude toward
the Taiwan issue make it impossible for China to realize its invaluable
strategic significance for the benefit of the United States.
value is also being reduced.
Japan's strategic
Moreover, only after reunification with the
Mainland will Taiwan be able to play a role in monitoring and intercepting any
Soviet air or naval forces in its nearby area.
In fact, as early as August
1980, the Commander of the Chinese Air Force, Zhang Tingfa, suggested even a
joint air defense system with Taiwan in order to protect airspace from the
Soviet Tu-95 frequently traversing the China Seas by flying from Vladisvostok
to Vietnam and back.
A settlement of the Taiwan question could clear the shadow over Sino-U.S.
relations and the shadow of the Soviet threat over the Pacific as well.
Another American mistake, maybe a bit less grave, in the Far East is its
policy toward the Korean Peninsula.
The relaxation of tension on the Korean Peninsula is apparent to all.
All
major powers around the region, including the USSR, have no interest in supporting
any large-scale war between the North and the South.
And without major powers
-17-
involved, an overall conflict cannot occur here, only small incidents.
Isn't
it ridiculous to deploy an infantry division to South Korea to raise tension
here while American troops are very much needed in South Asia to release tension
there?
Is it logical that in a case of emergency the United States can rapidly
redeploy its forces from Okinawa to distant South Asia but not to South Korea
at one-tenth the distance?
Isn't it the largest absurdity, which must be
corrected as soon as possible, that a state of war still exists indirectly
between China and the United States for lack of a peace treaty instead of the
Armistice Agreement?
American policies toward Taiwan and the Korean Peninsula are touchstones that
show the lack of an overall and long-run point of view in the U. S. global
strategy.
All in all, these American policy faults have led to a series of
inefficient expedients in deployment and military preparedness which result in
loss of time, resources and eventually, if not revised, the whole game to the
Soviet Union.
Conclusion
An overall and long-term point of view is the key to understanding and
treating the Soviet threat to the Northern Pacific correctly and efficiently.
To possess such a point of view, the United States must at first abandon
unreasonable elements in its policy toward this region.
In the long run, "what
Washington does in the region might very well count for more than what Moscow wants
A quotation from a speech of Deng Xiaoping on December 13, 1984 would be
quite appropriate to conclude this paper:
"War is closely linked with hegemonism.
We should unite with all peace-loving countries and people in the world in the
struggle against hegemonism.
hope of success."
The struggle for peace is arduous, but it promises
-18The viewpoints" presented herein above do not necessarily reflect China's
official thoughts, nor opinions of the Institute the author serves in.
author, as a private citizen, speaks exclusively for himself.
The