Flight of the B-52s

Joint patrols of the Senkakus would send a stronger message.
The Wall Street Journal

A U.S. Air Force B-52 Stratofortess is being refueled by a KC-135 Stratotanker 

Full credit to the Obama Administration for showing solidarity with Japan as it seeks to defend itself against China's aggression over the Senkaku Islands. 

On Tuesday a pair of B-52s flew unannounced—and unchallenged—through an "air defense identification zone" covering the islands that was unilaterally declared by Beijing late last week. 

Maybe President Obama's pivot to Asia means something after all.
The flight of bombers comes after more than a year of Beijing brinksmanship with Tokyo over the uninhabited Japanese islets, which is designed to change the status quo on the sea and in the air around them. In its response to the flight, the Chinese Foreign Ministry backed down somewhat, saying "we will in accordance with different situations take corresponding reactions." 

But the real test of the air defense zone will come in the next few days or weeks when the People's Liberation Army uses it to challenge Japanese forces as they patrol the Senkakus.
The U.S. can help to deter an armed clash by making more concrete its treaty obligation to assist Japan in defending the islands. 

The best ways to do that are joint sea and air patrols with Japanese forces. 

If Beijing challenges those patrols, it would be taking on both countries at once—a security trip-wire similar to the stationing of U.S. forces on the Korean Peninsula.
This could lead to an eruption of Chinese anger, and the U.S. might pay a short-term price in economic and diplomatic retaliation. 

Washington could pre-empt that to some extent by cancelling next week's visit of Vice President Joe Biden to Beijing. 

But allowing China's aggression to succeed means running a high risk of future conflict, accidental or intentional.
It isn't clear why Chinese leaders are acting belligerently. 

One theory is that they feel their rising economic and military power entitles them to restore the tributary system by which their imperial predecessors dominated East Asia. 

Others think their lack of domestic political legitimacy makes them eager to stir up nationalist sentiment. Maybe it's some combination of the two.
In any case they miscalculated this week by assuming their intimidation would succeed. 

As long as Beijing continues its bullying, the aim of U.S. policy should be to make sure that China's provocations are met with further demonstrations of solidarity and resolve.

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China Qualifies Air-Zone Threats After U.S. Challenge

Beijing Qualifies Its Threats Over New Air-Defense Zone After Uncontested Flight of American B-52s
By JEREMY PAGE

BEIJING—The U.S.'s flying of B-52 bombers uncontested through China's new air-defense zone is challenging Chinese efforts to assert its power, prompting Beijing to qualify a threat of action against any planes that didn't comply.

China's Defense Ministry said Wednesday it had monitored and identified the U.S. aircraft inside the zone over the East China Sea during the over-flights Tuesday, and the Foreign Ministry said that enforcement of the zone's rules would vary according to circumstances.

"We will in accordance with different situations take corresponding reactions," said Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang.
The muted response suggested to some analysts that China wouldn't attempt, in the short term, to repel U.S. and Japanese military planes entering the zone without obeying its rules.
It stood in contrast to the announcement Saturday that Beijing had declared the Air Defense Identification Zone over an area that includes islands at the center of a territorial dispute between Beijing and Tokyo.
The Defense Ministry said the armed forces would take unspecified "defensive emergency measures" against aircraft that didn't identify themselves and obey instructions from Chinese authorities.
By sending the B-52s into the zone—even at the farthest edge from China according to the Chinese military—the U.S. sent a clear message that Washington would stand by its ally Japan—including over threats to the disputed islands it controls but which Beijing contests.
"The U.S. military is flying where they've been flying before, flying as usual. There's been no change," Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera told reporters in Tokyo.
"The Chinese action is a unilateral one, and the U.S. shares this view," he said.

The U.S. military countered China's latest move to lay claim to disputed islands with the establishment of an air defense zone in the East China Sea by flying B-52 bombers over the area. Paul Burton, Asia-Pacific director at IHS, tells Deborah Kan why this move has escalated tensions in the region.

Though Beijing didn't interfere with the U.S. sortie, the prospect of Chinese intercepts of U.S. and Japanese air forces is raising the risks for all sides, by increasing the likelihood of a collision or a miscalculation that could quickly escalate into a broader military crisis.
The rising tensions come just ahead of a visit by U.S. Vice President Joe Biden to China, Japan and South Korea next week.
"The vice president will make clear the US has a rock solid commitment to our allies" in his conversation with China's leaders, said a senior administration official.
"The United States also believes the lowering of tension in this region is profoundly and deeply in the American interest."
Mr. Biden is scheduled to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang.
A second official said that Mr. Biden would also try to clarify China's intentions in setting up the air-defense zone and try to make the case that the action isn't in China's interests.
Rather it has become part of "an emerging pattern of behavior that is unsettling" to China's neighbors.
The official said talks among all the parties could help to "cool down tensions."

The U.S. moved to try to counter China's bid for influence over increasingly jittery Asian neighbors by sending a pair of B-52 bombers over disputed islands in the East China Sea. There has been a muted response from China, Jeremy Page reports.

Experts said Beijing is unlikely to back down and will scramble its jet fighters more often than in the past to escort U.S. and Japanese planes in the area, without trying to force them to land or leave.
"If the U.S. continues to sends its aircraft without following the rules, we'll send our military planes to escort them, not to repel," said Shen Dingli, an expert on international relations and Chinese foreign and defense policy at Fudan University in Shanghai.
"China does not under any circumstances have the right to expel any aircraft outside its own airspace," he said.
"But we'll escort them to show there is a cost. If the U.S. sends one, we'll send two, and we have 1,000 waiting."
He and other analysts said China had probably not intercepted the B-52s to avoid a direct confrontation with a more powerful military force and to show its willingness to resolve difference over the zone in talks with U.S. officials.
Beijing's announcement of the air-defense zone raised tensions with Japan and also unnerved several Southeast Asian nations locked in territorial disputes with China in the South China Sea.
Beijing's image was already battered by its initially small offer of aid to one of those nations, the typhoon-damaged Philippines.
Compounding the tensions, China on Tuesday sent its sole aircraft carrier to the South China Sea for training exercises under escort of four warships.
"Its deployment does not contribute to collective efforts to strengthen regional stability and instead serves to threaten the status quo," said Raul Hernandez, a spokesman for the Philippines' Department of Foreign Affairs.
In Beijing's contest with Tokyo over the Japanese Senkaku islands, military experts have said China lacks the air power and sufficiently experienced pilots to mount a daily challenge to the better trained, technologically advanced U.S. and Japanese air forces.
Accidents have strained relations before.
A Chinese jet fighter collided with a U.S. Navy EP-3 surveillance plane off Hainan Island in southern China in 2001, and after the U.S. plane made an emergency landing on Hainan, Chinese authorities detained the aircraft and its crew until the U.S. apologized.
Adding to the current risks, both China and Japan regard the airspace immediately surrounding the disputed islands as their national airspace and reserve the right to shoot down any unidentified aircraft that enters.
The standoff over the islands reflects the changing geopolitical dynamics of Asia, as China seeks to displace the U.S. as the dominant military power in the region, and Washington tries to shore up defense ties with allies concerned about China's rise.
The U.S. has taken China's announcement of the air-defense zone as an opportunity to demonstrate its commitment to Asia and still unrivalled military capabilities after U.S. influence in the region has recently appeared to be on the wane.
Japan's Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, has made a point of taking a stand against China's recent assertiveness in the region, and has called repeatedly for broader interpretation of Japan's pacifist constitution that would allow it to help an ally under attack.
Chinese President Xi, meanwhile, has cast himself as a charismatic strongman intent on reclaiming China's prominence in the world.
As part of that, he has taken a more confrontational approach to territorial disputes in the East China Sea and the South China Sea.
The Chinese strategy, analysts said, is to challenge Japan's control of the islands without provoking an actual military conflict and to raise the costs to Washington to get it to push Tokyo to acknowledge the dispute and start negotiations.
China's move to announce the new air-defense zone "is a deliberate calculated act to break the present Sino-Japanese stalemate over the Senkaku Islands," said Carlyle A. Thayer, an expert on Asian maritime security at the Australian Defence Force Academy.
"China's actions are carefully calibrated. They are designed to push the envelope of China's claims while appearing defensive."
On the domestic front, a risk for Mr. Xi is that his rising personal power has raised expectations with a highly nationalistic domestic audience, leaving him vulnerable should China come out worse off in the dispute.
In China's relatively open online forums, some Chinese citizens criticized the military's failure to stand up to the U.S. on the B-52s while others questioned the decision to establish the air-defense zone in the first place.
"The immediate reaction [from U.S.] with both words and action shows the adventurism in China's decision over the air-defense zone, and the passive and embarrassing consequence resulting from that," Pan Jiazhu, a well-known columnist on military issues who goes by the pen name Zhao Chu, wrote on his verified account on the Twitter-like Sina Weibo microblogging service.
Internationally, meanwhile, China needs to show it has sufficient military muscle to enforce the zone while also reassuring neighbors, especially in Southeast Asia, where China is also involved in territorial disputes, that the zone doesn't threaten their interests.
"It will be very important for China to establish [the zone's] credibility," said Wang Dong, a Northeast Asia security specialist at Peking University.
At the same time, "China needs to make a good case why it's defensive and limited and why it should not be seen as aggressive."

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China’s Airspace Claim Inflames Ties to South Korea, Too

   

By CHOE SANG-HUN

South Korea’s foreign minister warned on Wednesday that China’s recent attempt to police the sky over a vast area in the East China Sea was worsening tensions in a region already strained by territorial disputes.
China’s so-called air defense identification zone covered not only a group of Japanese islands but also a submerged rock that both China and South Korea want to control.
The dispute over the submerged rock has never been as fierce as China’s dispute over the islands with Japan, but the new air patrol zone drew strong protests from South Korea, threatening to heighten tensions with Beijing.
Seoul said it would not recognize the Chinese zone and would maintain its jurisdictional right to waters around the Ieodo rock.
“The issue of the air defense identification zone is making the already difficult regional situations even more difficult to deal with,” Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se of South Korea said during a defense forum in Seoul on Wednesday.
“We see competition and conflict in the region deepening,” he said.
“Things can take a dramatic turn for the worse if territorial conflicts and historical issues are merged with nationalism.”
Mr. Yun’s comment came a day after two long-range American B-52 bombers flew through the contested airspace, a move seen as a warning by Washington that it would defy what it considered China’s provocative attempt to expand control over airspace in the region.
In recent years, tensions over territorial disputes have grown in the region, a reflection of how contesting claims were never settled satisfactorily at the end of World War II in 1945.
Recently, such conflicts tended to keep South Korea drifting further away from Japan as Seoul appeared to be cozying up more to Beijing.
Seoul and Tokyo, two close American allies, have locked horns over a separate set of islands and over Japan’s treatment of Korean sex slaves for its army during World War II.
South Korea and China recently together angered Tokyo by agreeing to build a monument in China for a Korean nationalist hero who assassinated a former Japanese prime minister in 1909.
But China’s declaration of the expanded air control zone highlighted a potentially volatile dispute between China and South Korea, since it covered Ieodo, a submerged reef south of Jeju, an island off the south coast of South Korea.
Ieodo, which South Korea says it effectively controls, is believed to be surrounded by natural gas and minerals deposits.
Despite fierce protests from environmentalists, South Korea is building a $970 million naval base in Jeju, a home for 20 warships, including submarines, that the navy says will protect shipping lanes in the East China Sea for South Korea’s oil-dependent, export-driven economy as well as enabling it to respond quickly to any dispute with China over the rock.
Under international maritime law, countries cannot claim a submerged rock as territory but can claim the right to control and use waters and natural resources around it.
Both China and South Korea claim such rights over the reef.
Currently, the Korea Hydrographic and Oceanographic Administration manages a research station built on the rock.
“The issue over Ieodo is not a territorial one but a matter of the exclusive economic zone, as it is not an island but a submerged rock,” Cho Tai-young, a spokesman for the South Korean Foreign Ministry, said on Wednesday.

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China's behavior has been unsettling to neighbors: U.S. officials

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- Recent actions by China concerning air space over the East China Sea have worried its neighbors and U.S. Vice President Joe Biden will raise the issue during a visit to Beijing next week, senior U.S. administration officials said on Wednesday.
Biden is due to visit China, Japan and South Korea during a week-long trip. 

He will seek to de-escalate tensions heightened after China demanded that airplanes flying near contested islands identify themselves to Chinese authorities, officials said.
In a phone call with his Japanese counterpart on Wednesday, U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel reaffirmed that the U.S.-Japanese defense treaty covers the small island group where China established a new airspace defense zone last week.
Hagel "commended the Japanese government for exercising appropriate restraint" following China's announcement and pledged to consult closely with Tokyo to avoid unintended incidents around the islands, a Pentagon spokesman said.
China recently declared identification rules for planes passing through the new airspace defense zone, raising the stakes in a territorial standoff between Beijing and Tokyo over the contested islands.
Defying those orders, two unarmed U.S. B-52 bombers flew over the islands on Tuesday without informing Beijing and flights of Japan's main airline similarly ignored Chinese authorities while flying through that air space.
"The visit to China to create an opportunity for the vice president to discuss directly with policy makers in Beijing this issue to convey our concerns directly and to seek clarity regarding Chinese intentions," a senior administration official told reporters.
"It also allows the vice president to make the broader point that there's an emerging pattern of behavior that is unsettling to China's own neighbors, and raising questions about how China operates in international space and how China deals with areas of disagreement with its neighbors," the official said.
Biden will not be making a demand on a specific issue but rather will raise the topic as part of talks spanning a range of themes, the official added.

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Obama Sends B-52s, and a Message, to China

By James Gibney

The U.S. decision to fly two B-52s through China's claimed "air defense identification zone" around a set of islands disputed between China and Japan was significant in several ways. 

First, it was a blunt reminder that Northeast Asia remains the world's most combustible geopolitical hot spot. Second, it's a strong signal that the Barack Obama administration is going to stand by its Asia-Pacific allies against Chinese aggression.
And third, for students of the region's recent history, it also brings back memories of another tit-for-tat episode: the March 1996 shadow confrontation between the U.S. and China over Taiwan. 

That incident and its aftermath suggest that, for both sides, a show of force produced mixed results.
If you want the long version of what happened in 1995-1996, read this piece by Robert S. Ross from International Security.
My barstool version, though, goes something like this: The U.S. gives Taiwan's President Lee Teng-hui a visa to visit the U.S., upsetting the Chinese, who keep an eagle eye on any possible deviations from the U.S. agreement to no longer grant Taiwan any kind of official recognition. 

And they're extra angry, because the U.S. had recently sold Taiwan 150 F-16s and seemed to be gradually upgrading its Taiwan policy. 

Lee, meanwhile, is doing what he can to stick his thumb in the PRC's eye. 

And the Bill Clinton administration is caught between a Taiwan-loving Congress and the strategic and economic imperative of forging a stable relationship with China while not seeming weak to its allies in Northeast Asia. 

All this culminates in a very nasty set of live-fire military exercises by China, including bracketing Taiwan with surface-to-surface missiles. 

Cue the dispatch of a U.S. carrier group to waters east of Taiwan, with another one in reserve in case trouble broke out.
All sides didn't exactly kiss and make up after this, but they did bring things back to a dull roar. 

In one sense, the Chinese show of force backfired because it didn't weaken Lee politically, and instead merely made ordinary Taiwanese more resistant to unification. 

It also didn't do much for China's regional image.

It did, however, prompt a distancing of U.S. policy toward Taiwan. 

The Clinton administration defended the credibility of its commitment to its alliance partners, and to stability and security in Northeast Asia -- even if the U.S. enabling of Lee's behavior helped to provoke the crisis in the first place.
The current situation is only somewhat analogous. 

Yet the U.S. still has to make clear it will stand by its allies, defend freedom of navigation, and support the security and stability that underpin regional prosperity. 

As old as they are, those B-52s in Guam can come in handy at such moments.

Like it or not, Japan and China may lack the historical maturity to resolve this crisis on their own. 

Now there's something that would be worthy of a Nobel Peace Prize, Mr. President.

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Japanese Airlines Defy China Demand for Data in Air Zone

By Chris Cooper and Kiyotaka Matsuda 

A Japan Airlines Co. (JAL) aircraft takes off from Haneda Airport while the Tokyo Sky Tree, right, stands in Tokyo.

ANA Holdings Inc. and Japan Airlines Co., the country’s two biggest carriers, said they would stop reporting flight plans for planes traveling through a new Chinese air-defense zone that Japan rejects.
Japan’s government told airlines to stop providing that information, citing China’s “false” impositions, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said yesterday in Tokyo. 

Hours later, ANA and JAL said they wouldn’t comply with China’s demands, reversing their decision to supply that data.
China’s creation of the zone has been denounced by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and marks one of the most serious escalations in tensions since September 2012, when Japan bought three disputed islands in the East China Sea. 

The islands lie within the defense zone and China has threatened “defensive emergency measures” against unidentified planes there.
“Presumably the Chinese are not going to be trigger happy,” said Ralph Cossa, president of the Hawaii-based Pacific Forum CSIS, a foreign-policy research institute. 

“It certainly raises the concern about regularly scheduled flights.”
ANA and JAL said they would halt the sharing of the flight-plan data starting today, spokesmen said by phone. 

The carriers shifted their stance on instructions from Japan’s airline trade group, which acted as an intermediary between the airlines and Japan’s Civil Aviation Bureau, Maho Ito, an ANA spokeswoman, said by telephone.
China’s action may escalate the situation and lead to unforeseen events, Abe told a parliamentary committee, saying that he was very concerned. 

“We urge China to revoke this measure, which is in no way binding on Japan.”

U.S. Military
The U.S. won’t change its military flight operations to comply with the new air-defense zone, a Pentagon spokesman, Army Colonel Steve Warren, told journalists in Washington. 

The U.S. and Japan may deploy unmanned drone aircraft to the area to respond to the Chinese move, the Nikkei newspaper reported without citing anyone.
Even if commercial flights through the defense zone comply with the Chinese demands, the establishment of the security perimeter raises the threat of incidents, such as the shoot-down of a Korean Air Lines Co. jumbo jet in 1983 when it strayed into the airspace of the former Soviet Union, Cossa said.

Incident Risk
The Japanese Senkaku islands lie inside the new air defense zone. 

China claims sovereignty over the area, whose waters are rich in oil, natural gas and fish. 

The dispute comes as China and Japan seek a greater role in the region, courting nations in Southeast Asia.
“While our central scenario remains for the situation to stay on the rhetorical level, the risk of actual incidents is on the rise,” Dariusz Kowalczyk, a Hong Kong-based strategist at Credit Agricole CIB, wrote in a research report.
The information that ANA had been supplying to China was the same shared with other countries, according to Ryosei Nomura, a spokesman for the Tokyo-based carrier. 

The data included planes’ route, and cruising altitude and flight time, Nomura said.
Other countries’ carriers are awaiting government guidance.
“There has been no change to our operations,” said Lee Hyo Min, a spokeswoman for Seoul-based Asiana Airlines Inc.

“We have not yet provided any flight plans to China on services that pass through the zone because there has been no guideline from the government. We will make change if and when the government revises this guidelines.”

‘Extra Steps’
Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd., the Hong Kong-based carrier, said its flight operations are normal. 

The creation of the zone hasn’t affected operations of commercial flights so far, the International Air Transport Association said in an e-mailed response to Bloomberg News.
“Some airlines have had to take some extra steps at the moment, such as filing flight plans manually,” IATA said. 

“We are trying to get more details from the Chinese authorities to clarify ongoing operational requirements.”
The announcement of the zone follows a decision by Communist Party leaders this month, after a meeting led by President Xi Jinping, to form a state committee to coordinate security issues as China broadens its military reach.
China’s first aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, departed on an exercise in the South China Sea yesterday, the official Xinhua News Agency reported. 

China has a longstanding territorial dispute with the Philippines in the area over the Scarborough Shoal.
China is “resolute in its will and resolve” to defend its sovereignty over the islands, Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said in Beijing on Nov. 25. 

Japan’s Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Katsunobu Kato said Nov. 25 that the zone infringes on the principles of international law. 

He said that planes entering Japan’s own air defense identification zone are required to identify themselves.

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China Nuclear Missile Submarine Threat is Not Credible

Admiral: U.S. nuclear-armed missile submarines remain a powerful deterrent

By Bill Gertz


China's state-run Global Times published China's plans to kill 5 million to 12 million Americans using submarine-launched nuclear missiles against the U.S. west coast
SIMI VALLEY, Calif. — China’s recent threat to use submarine-launched nuclear missiles to attack U.S. cities lacks credibility, the Navy’s top admiral said on Saturday.
“For a submarine-launched ballistic missile to be effective it has to be accurate, and you have to be stealthy, and survivable and I’ll leave it at that,” Adm. Jonathan Greenert, chief of naval operations, said when asked about publication in China’s state-run press last month of plans for killing between 5 million and 12 million Americans in a nuclear strikes.
Greenert said U.S. nuclear-armed missile submarines remain a powerful deterrent despite an aging U.S. nuclear arsenal and the urgent need to upgrade those forces in the face of sharp defense spending cuts.
“Our systems are tested frequently, and they meet all the specifications that we’ve established years and years ago,” Greenert said.
The four-star admiral said building a new class of U.S. ballistic missile submarines to replace older Ohio-class strategic submarines remains a priority.
“As we look ahead, our sea-based strategic deterrent, the new SSBN-X the Ohio-replacement, the D-5 missile, its upgrade and the command and control are a very high, high priority in our budget in any scenario,” Greenert said.
Greenert made the comments during the first annual Reagan National Defense Forum at the presidential library at a panel discussing the U.S. rebalance of forces to the Pacific.
China’s Global Times newspaper, an official Communist Party organ, on Oct. 28 published a detailed report on China’s submarine-launched nuclear missile capabilities. 

The article included maps and photographs, including damage circles caused by nuclear missile strikes on downtown Los Angeles and a nuclear debris plume spreading from the Pacific Northwest to Chicago. 

The report said China’s plans for attacks on U.S. cities could kill between 5 million and 12 million Americans.
“In general, after a nuclear missile strikes a city, the radioactive dust produced by 20 warheads will be spread by the wind, forming a contaminated area for thousands of kilometers,” the Global Times report said.
“The survival probability for people outdoors in a 12,000 to 14,000 kilometer radius is basically zero. 

Based on the actual level of China’s one million tons TNT equivalent small nuclear warhead technology, the 12 JL-2 nuclear missiles carried by one Type 094 nuclear submarine could cause the destruction of five million to 12 million people, forming a very clear deterrent effect.”
The report said main targets would be west coast cities, including Seattle, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and San Diego.

US officials has claimed that Chinese Type 094 Jin Class Nuclear-Powered Ballistic Missile Submarines (SSBN) will become fully operational next year with their JL-2 submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) and start regular combat patrols.

Greenert’s comments on the threat were the first by a senior Obama administration official. 

Earlier, State Department and Pentagon spokesmen declined to comment on the unprecedented threat to conduct nuclear attacks against American civilians.
Under current strategic defense guidelines, U.S. forces structure in the Asia Pacific are being shifted to Asia, Greenert said.
The current 50 ships now based in the region will be increased to 60 by the end of the decade and the Navy also is building up anti-submarine warfare capabilities, electronic attack, and cyber warfare capabilities, Greenert said.
Navy forces also are being moved throughout the region in what Greenert called “homeporting” so that 60 percent of the Navy’s forces will be in the Pacific, and 40 percent in the Middle East and elsewhere.
Alliances also are being bolstered with closer ties to Japan, South Korea, and Australia as well as among the nations of Southeast Asia.
Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James Amos, also spoke at the conference and said the Marine Corps is firmly committed to its forces in the Pacific.
“We actually never left the Pacific,” Amos said. 

“We’re familiar with it. We’ve got skin in this game. … We’re all in in the Pacific.”
The force of 13,500 Marines deployed in the Asia Pacific “west of the international dateline” has been increased to about 21,000 and will reach 22,500 by the end of the decade, Amos said.
Still, Amos said the Marines have been limited by defense cuts caused by sequestration but are doing the best they can with the resources available.
Duncan Hunter, former chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said the U.S. rebalance to the Pacific is “anemic” and he urged much greater resources for military forces, including missile defenses, are needed.
Shifting an additional 10 ships to the region will not be enough considering China’s large-scale military buildup, Hunter said, urging the government to engage in a large-scale buildup of forces there.
“Clearly, unless this nation changes it course, both programmatically what we’re doing with the weapons systems that we have and the resources that we’re putting behind them, China will be the dominant force in the western Pacific in 2025,” Hunter said.
Hunter said a major threat remains from China’s new DF-21D anti-ship ballistic missile that can target U.S. aircraft carriers 800 miles from China’s coast with a precision guided high-speed warhead traveling at five kilometers per second.
Greenert said the Navy has been dealing with cruise missile threats to carriers since the Cold War, when the Soviet Union deployed submarines with cruise missiles capable sinking carriers.
“We’re working on it,” he said of the counter-DF-21D efforts. 

The Navy has dealt with similar challenges in the past and while the DF-21D is not the same, Greenert said he is confident the missile can be countered.
Robert Work, a Navy undersecretary from 2009 to 2013 who helped develop the military’s Navy-Air Force Air Sea Battle Concept, said the Navy also has to develop a new “counter-torpedo torpedo” to deal with advances in torpedo warfare.
China announced last week that it tested a new high-speed maneuvering torpedo designed to defeat U.S. electronic and acoustic decoys.
Work said that to signal to China, U.S. forces need to “demonstrate” military capabilities in Asia, not simply deploy them in the region.
“Right now we’re focused on regional forward presence, but I believe we need to demonstrate our capabilities to maintain access, to maintain freedom of action,” Work said. 

“And by demonstrating those capabilities and experiments and periodic exercises that is a true deterrent factor.”
The Chinese will understand U.S. deterrence as “based upon the assumption of demonstrated capabilities,” he said.
Amos said a recent joint military exercise with Japanese forces off the California coast represents a new level of cooperation with Tokyo’s military.
However, defense officials said the exercises were moved from Asia to the U.S. west coast to avoid upsetting China.

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How A2/AD Can Defeat China

The RAND Corporation proposes the creation of a regional anti-access/area-denial alliance, relying principally on anti-ship missiles, to impose a “far blockade” on China. 

By J. Michael Cole

Most of the debate that has surrounded the emergence of China as a major military player in the Asia-Pacific has focused on the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) development of an anti-access/area-denial (A2AD) strategy and its potential impact on a U.S.-led regional security architecture that remains anchored to old concepts.
As China expands its military capabilities and, alongside those, its claims to various territories within the region, the PLA has developed and fielded a variety of platforms that are intended to deter and delay external intervention by U.S. forces in, say, an armed conflict in the Taiwan Strait. 

The much-discussed Dong Feng 21D (DF-21D) anti-ship ballistic missile (ASBM), which could theoretically threaten a U.S. carrier battle group on its way to the region, is at the core of such a strategy.
Far less discussed, however, is the fact that China’s A2/AD strategy, or the likelihood that it will directly affect the course of a conflict, is contingent on a U.S. or allied response along conventional lines. 

In other words, China’s deterrence/denial efforts assume two things: first, that outside forces would seek to deploy closer to China in order to conduct operations; and second, that such deployments would involve traditional warships, aircraft carriers, fighter aircraft and bombers — in other words, everything that the ill-defined Air-Sea Battle strategy promises to include.
This “asymmetrical” approach provides China with a relatively inexpensive way to counter an opponent’s superior platforms: the PLA can afford to build and deploy several DF-21D launchers, while the U.S. would be loath to risk losing modern surface combatants, let alone a multi-billion-dollar aircraft carrier.
Now a new report by the RAND Corporation proposes turning the tables on China by creating a regional A2/AD alliance, relying principally on anti-ship missiles (ASM), to impose a “far blockade” on China should the latter threaten regional security. 

Under the plan explored in Employing Land-Based Anti-Ship Missiles in the Western Pacific, U.S. forces and partner countries would respond to Chinese aggression by deploying land-based anti-ship cruise missiles with operational ranges of between 100 km and 200 km at various chokepoints — among them the Strait of Malacca, the Straits of Sunda and Lombok and the Java Sea Routes, waters between Japan, Taiwan and the Philippines, as well as sea areas between Japan and South Korea — to keep the PLA Navy (PLAN) vessels (and presumably merchant ships) bottled inside the first island chain.
The presence of such missiles, the report argues, would undermine the ability of PLAN warships, transport vessels, and amphibious craft to safely carry out sea operations in those areas while denying them access into the West Pacific.
In addition, the size of the aggregate territory involved in the proposed alliance (optimally Indonesia, Malaysia, Japan, Taiwan, Philippines, South Korea, Thailand and perhaps Australia) as well as the number of islets on which ASM launchers could be dispersed, would severely challenge the PLA’s ability to locate such systems and render them inoperable using ballistic missiles, air strikes or sabotage.
By resorting to such a plan, small regional powers would be in a position to wage their own A2/AD strategy against China and to threaten, at a relative low cost, more formidable and far more expensive Chinese naval platforms such as warships, landing helicopter docks, and carriers.
However, creating a multinational ASM strategy would not be without its challenges, nor can its formation be taken for granted.
Although a number of ASM systems are currently available and their acquisition within the financial means of even the weakest of the partners involved, their effectiveness would depend on the ability of member states to also receive cueing and targeting data from U.S. sensors, which creates challenges (by no means insurmountable) in terms of ensuring that all the platforms involved can communicate.
Moreover, to avoid fostering the impression in Beijing that the U.S. and regional countries are seeking to keep it bottled in, ASM units probably could not be deployed permanently, and instead should be pre-positioned (presumably on U.S. territory) for rapid deployment amid rising tensions resulting from Chinese aggression or threat thereof.
Access to heavy lift capabilities and operational airfields in partner countries would therefore be crucial elements for the success of this strategy.
For obvious reasons, proposing such an alliance would be controversial.
Nor can it be assumed, as the report notes, that countries in China’s periphery would be willing to risk Beijing’s ire by joining the effort, unless conditions in the region deteriorate dramatically and the PLA’s posture becomes more aggressive than it is currently.
Moreover, an ASM component alone would be insufficient to ensure the ability of a member country to counter a Chinese attack.
While “far blockade” would make the operations of the PLAN more difficult by denying its surface combatants the ability to expand beyond the first island chain or to approach enemy waters, it would have little value against other branches of the Chinese military, such as its air force and the Second Artillery Corps.
That said, as an instrument of deterrence, a flexible multinational ASM partnership could achieve much more, and at a much lower cost, than the longstanding approach of sales by the U.S. of highly expensive (and oftentimes vulnerable) conventional platforms like fighter aircraft and warships to regional allies.

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U.S. looks to Asian nations to build militaries as bulwark to China

AP

Military muscle: A Ground Self-Defense Force member launches a hand-held anti-tank rocket during an annual live-fire exercises at the Higashi Fuji range in Gotemba, Shizuoka Prefecture, in August
WASHINGTON – U.S. lawmakers voiced bipartisan support Tuesday for the Obama administration’s strategic pivot to Asia but stressed the need for partner nations to strengthen their military capabilities and contribute more to their own defense.
Members of the House Armed Services Committee plan to step up scrutiny of U.S. military policy in the fast-growing region, where despite budget pressure, Washington wants to increase its presence as it draws down forces in Afghanistan.
Lawmakers said they plan a wide-ranging examination of U.S. force deployments and how to optimize security relationships. 

They plan a series of five hearings between now and early 2014, mostly focused on the growing military power of China. 

Topics will include its capabilities in space, the modernization of its navy and air force, and maritime disputes.
Congress does not set U.S. policy but it can influence it and controls the purse strings. 

The lawmakers said part of the committee’s intent is to explain to the rest of Congress and the American public about the strategic importance of the U.S. remaining engaged in the Asia-Pacific, where it has been the dominant force since World War II. 

Some in Asia, however, are voicing doubts about Washington’s staying power in the region as it grapples with political divisions at home and crises in the Mideast.
“The biggest thing for us is presence. If we have presence there it’s the greatest stability you can have in that region,” said Republican Rep. Randy Forbes, one of six lawmakers briefing reporters on the upcoming hearings.
Democratic Rep. Adam Smith said the committee would look at how the U.S. can guarantee its alliance commitments with nations like South Korea and Japan, while building on its many other relationships in the region.
“One of the keys to making this work is partner capacity,” he said, citing as an example U.S. counterinsurgency support for Philippine forces fighting Islamic rebels. 

“What other options are out there to build capacity in forces so it doesn’t all fall on us?”
Republican committee Chairman Howard “Buck” McKeon supported a more active role for Japan’s military in response to assertive behavior by China.

Japan has the region’s second strongest military after China but it remains constrained by its pacifist Constitution.
“It’s incumbent upon us to do all we can to build up and strengthen our partners so they can bring more to the table when they are needed,” McKeon said.

Democratic Rep. Colleen Hanabusa said the U.S. needs to be more mindful of historical conflicts between its allies like South Korea and Japan, and recognize that Washington won’t be able to solve them.
“They have got to, on their own, decide that this is either a conflict they can park on the side for a little or resolve. We are not going to be able to resolve history,” she said.

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Worries Over China's Ambitions Mark Southeast Asian Meeting

Japan, the U.S. and the Philippines urged their Asian allies to push for the rule of law in resolving territorial disputes with China at a regional summit in Brunei.
By TOKO SEKIGUCHI And ABHRAJIT GANGOPADHYAY

Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, left, chatted with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on the way to an Asean dinner Wednesday in Bandar Seri Begawan.

BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN, Brunei—Japan, the U.S. and the Philippines urged their Asian allies to push for the rule of law in resolving territorial disputes with China at a regional summit here Wednesday, underscoring the extent to which security issues can still overshadow broader economic and trade relations in the region.
Security quickly came to the fore at the gathering of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations annual summit and meetings with Asia-Pacific powers, following a separate international gathering on economic and trade issues in Indonesia earlier this week involving many of the same countries. 

China's growing commercial and naval power in recent years has unnerved many smaller countries in Asia, and has also prompted the U.S. on several occasions over the past few years to urge all nations in the region to ensure the free navigation of shipping through the South China Sea, one of the world's busiest shipping lanes.
Worries over China's longer-term ambitions were again on the minds of many of the delegates at the two-day Asean and East Asia Summit meetings, which will also include leaders and officials from Russia and Australia, and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry. 

Mr. Kerry is attempting to ease concerns sparked by the partial government shutdown in Washington that caused President Barack Obama to scrap his plans to attend the summits.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe encouraged Southeast Asian leaders to present a united front in negotiating territorial rights in the South China Sea, which are claimed in whole or in part by China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei, and where relations between Beijing and the Philippines in particular have grown increasingly testy in recent months.
"We're very concerned about changes in the status quo brought on by force in the South China Sea," Mr. Abe said, reiterating what he had separately told Vietnamese and Indonesian leaders earlier in the week when they met on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting.
Vietnam previously has complained about Chinese fishing vessels interfering with oil exploration in its waters, while the Philippines is angered by a growing Chinese presence at Scarborough Shoal off the coast of its main island Luzon, and which Manila claims is within part of its territory. 

Its president, Benigno Aquino III, also pressed the idea of establishing firm guidelines on how to resolve the competing claims over the South China Sea, known as the Code of Conduct, and the Philippines earlier this year filed a case with the United Nations challenging the legality of China's claims.
Describing the expanse of water as "this sea known by many names"—a nod to the sometimes rancorous arguments on what to call it—Mr. Aquino said that "our development as a region cannot be realized in an international environment where the rule of law does not exist."
The U.S.'s Mr. Kerry, meanwhile, speaking in a meeting with Asean, agreed. 

"A finalized Code of Conduct, in which all parties abide by a common set of rules and standards, is something that will benefit the entire Asia-Pacific community of nations—and beyond," he said.
China's Premier Li Keqiang said during Asean-China talks that the two sides shouldn't let the South China Sea issue get in the way of the broader relationship between Beijing and the Southeast Asian trade bloc, but it also subtly reminded other countries that in its view, the dispute is a matter for the contestants alone.
Security analysts such as Ian Storey at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore, though, have suggested that the tensions between Japan and China could prove a potentially more destabilizing flashpoint than the South China Sea.
Political ties between Asia's two largest economies have been strained for over a year since Japan nationalized the Senkaku Islands and maintains they have always been Japanese territory. 

The Chinese contest their ownership and continue to send patrol boats to area waters despite Japan's repeated protests. 

The Japanese government acquired the islands from private Japanese owners during the country's previous administration.
During his nine months in office, Mr. Abe has yet to sit down with his Chinese counterpart, while in China, consumer boycotts have occasionally been launched against Japanese products.
In addition, Mr. Abe, while characterizing the relationship as "one of the most important" for Japan—China is Japan's biggest trading partner—and insisting he's open to dialogue, hasn't toned down his criticism against China's growing military might.

"We have an immediate neighbor whose military expenditure is at least twice as large as Japan's and second only to the U.S. defense budget. The country has increased its military expenditure, hardly transparently, by more than 10% a year" over the past two decades, Mr. Abe said in thinly veiled reference to China during a speech at the Hudson Institute in New York last month.

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