Volume 13 | Issue 16 | Number 2 | Article ID 4309 | Apr 20, 2015 The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus The Wired Seas of Asia: China, Japan, the US and Australia ア ジアの有線海域 中日米豪の関係 Hamish McDonald Introduction by Richard Tanter and a Borey-class SSBN last year, and four more nuclear boats have been laid down in While most recently mainstream discussion of Archangelsk’s shipyards, some of which will go peace and security in Asia has focussed on the into the modernization of the Pacific fleet. And rise of China and its consequences, a little China’s nuclear attack submarines now pass noticed arms race that has been underway through the Malacca Straits to Indian Ocean since the end of the Cold War involves many patrols. India, meanwhile, in addition to its more countries than China. According to expanding nuclear fleet, has approached Japan Desmond Ball, one of its most constantto buy six of its big, 4,600 tonneSoryu -class analysts, this began with widespreaddiesel-electric submarines with its air modernization of armed forces after the end of 2 independent propulsion system. In the largest the Cold War, but has moved on to continuous of the non-nuclear plans in the region, albeit systematic increases in military capacity in with a policy process not notable for either most countries in the region. Action-reaction strategic rationality or transparency, Australia patterns of competitive armament cycles are is making final decisions on buying or building evident, and most disturbingly, there are few 12 large submarines – most likely Japanese bilateral or regional political institutions to Soryu-class submarines, or smaller European dampen these negative feedback cycles. For submarines.3 Ball, the most important areas where this kind of action-action momentum can be seen, are Consequently, anti-submarine warfare planners major naval capabilities; long-range ballistic are busier still, particularly those in China, and and cruise missiles, and missile defence in America’s East and Southeast Asian allied systems; electronic warfare systems; and countries. Like Soviet submarines before them, information warfare (IW) and cyber-warfare Chinese submarines attempting to reach the capabilities.1 protection of the deep waters of the mid-Pacific Those naval capabilities include submarines, must run the gauntlet of the American- and their counterpart, the electronicdominated choke points between the island technologies of anti-submarine warfare.chains that reach from the Kurils through Japan Submarine builders are busy in Asia at the and the Ryukyus and the Philippines and moment. India is building six new nuclear Indonesia. In a complex set of regional attack submarines, and China is sellingmaritime environments for the perennial Pakistan eight diesel/electric submarines. contest between submarines and their surface, South Korea has established a consolidated air and undersea hunters, the current clear US submarine command to manage itsHarpoon - and allied naval dominance, including in anti- equipped missile diesel-electric fleet of nine submarine warfare, will be increasingly tested German-designed Type 209 submarines, and in coming decades, with consequent will have five more by 2019. Russian builders implications for long-term submarine-building handed over a Yasen-class nuclear attack sub plans.4 1 13 | 16 | 2 APJ | JF The critical wider context for these armaments attractive…The subsequent involvement of the dynamics is of course the complex relationship United States could lead to Asia’s first serious between the United States and China, and the war involving nuclear-armed states. And we fateful question of its future possible directions, have no precedent to suggest how dangerous in the short term, and especially in the longer that would become. term. Despite American power transition narratives of inevitable military conflictWhile it looks like China has the US and between established and revisionist powers, Japan on the defensive in pushing its there are choices to be made, with alternative maritime claims and expanding its possible futures. But at present, one of the maritime power, a closer look suggests the most dismaying aspects of much US v. China two powers have the Chinese cornered. thinking in Washington and its regional allied capitals is talk, often in a blasé or insouciant It’s about “humanitarian civil aid”, Australia’s way, of the near-term possibility of warDefence Department would have us believe between the US and China, with a matching about Exercise Balikatan which began in and around the Philippines on April 20. And indeed chorus in China itself. about 70 army engineers were duly sent to The veteran Australian journalist Hamish work on projects in Filipino villages on Luzon Macdonald here examines the strategicand Palawan when Australia joined the consequences of one aspect of these naval arms militaries of the United States and the races in Japan’s development, together with the Philippines for 10 days of exercises. United States, of a remarkably extensive and Practising for “natural disasters” has become powerful system of underwater electronic something of a cover story, it seems, for what is surveillance capacities based on Desmond going on in the tightening network of American Ball’s and my study The Tools of Owatatsumi: alliances in the Western Pacific since Barack Japan’s Ocean Surveillance and Defence. Obama announced the annual rotation of a US Together with Robert Ayson, Ball subsequently Marine Corps task force through Darwin in closely examined the question ‘Can a Sino- November 2011 as a part of a strategic “pivot” Japanese war be controlled?’, reviewing the or “rebalancing” to Asia. widespread, indeed barely questioned, assumption that such a conflict, for example over the East China Sea territorial disputes, can be contained to a ‘limited war’.5 Examining in detail both technical and political aspects of such a confrontation, including the vulnerability to attack of Japan’s potent undersea surveillance capacities that we documented, Ball and Ayson concluded that in the relationship between Japan and China: Photo 1. AP-3C Orion there seems to be minimal political understanding of, or commitment to, avoiding But if it were just about cleaning up after escalation…These political obstacles increase cyclones, it is unlikely Canberra would be the pressure created by military considerations sending along one of the Royal Australian Air that encourage swift escalation, to the point at Force’s AP-3C Orions to Exercise Balikatan as which even nuclear options seemwell as the engineers. Bristling with electronic, 2 13 | 16 | 2 APJ | JF infra-red and magnetic sensors, acoustic buoys Meanwhile Chinese ships and aircraft continue to drop, and on-board computing power, the regular incursions around the Japanese- aircraft is one of the world’s most advanced controlled Senkaku islands to the north of aerial platforms for detecting hostile ships and Taiwan, to assert claims of historical submarines and vacuuming up localownership. As recently as last year, Chinese communications. fighter jets have jostled American patrol planes in the area. In fact, the sea and air elements of Balikatan play out close to where Chinese dredgers have With all this Chinese aggression, or been frantically pumping sand onto coral reefs “assertiveness” as it’s often more in the Spratley Islands, also claimed by the diplomatically put, you might be forgiven for Philippines and other Southeast Asian states. thinking that the naval and air wings of the The Filipinos themselves say the exercise will People’s Liberation Army have the Americans “increase our capability to defend our country and Japanese on the back foot, unwilling to risk from external aggression”. a clash that the Chinese seem all too ready to The exercise comes just after the Centre for escalate. Strategic and International Studies, a Washington institution close to the thinking in But a new study by two Australian experts the Pentagon, published before and after suggests it is the Chinese who are cornered. satellite pictures of the Chinese reclamation Desmond Ball, the Australian National work in the Spratly Islands, and the visiting University nuclear strategist and analyst of chief of the US Navy’s Pacific fleet, Admiral electronic spy craft, and Richard Tanter, an Harry Harris, told a Canberra audience about expert on Northeast Asian security and nuclear the “Great Wall of Sand” China was building in issues at Melbourne University and the the disputed islands far out from its coast, Nautilus Institute, suggest Japan and the US studded with ports and airstrips to intensify have China’s forces surrounded by trip wires. control over the South China Sea. Their book The Tools of Owatatsumi (the name refers to the sea god protecting Japan in ancient legend), details the networks of undersea hydrophones and magnetic anomaly detectors which, combined with data collected by ground stations, patrol aircraft and low-orbit satellites, make it virtually impossible for Chinese ships and submarines to break out into the wider ocean undetected. The tripwire around the Chinese navy extends across the Tsushima Strait between Japan and Korea, and from Japan’s southern main island of Kyushu down past Taiwan to the Philippines. When first revealed, in a little-noticed article by Taiwan military intelligence official Liao Wen- Photo 2 Chinese reclamation in Spratly chung in 2005, it was described as a “Fish Islands Hook Undersea Defence Line”. 3 13 | 16 | 2 APJ | JF Southeast Asian sections of the line consist of fixed acoustic surveillance arrays in the manner of the long northern sections from Tsushima down past the Philippines. “I would expect the more southern segments to have been fully surveyed and prepared for expeditious deployment of other elements of the integrated undersea surveillance system in contingent circumstances,” he says. These include towed-arrays trailing behind surface ships and small acoustic sensors that can be scattered across the seabed unobtrusively at short notice in a program called the Advanced Deployable System.