What will be the impact of the Chinese ASBM on the US-Japan alliance?

Reports are emerging that in the process of enhancing its short- and medium-range ballistic missile forces, China is also developing the world's first anti-ship ballistic missile, similar to the DF-21, a ballistic missile with a range of 1800 kilometers. (Whether the new version will have a similar range remains to be seen — it may in fact have a longer range.)

This could pose a major threat to US naval forces in East Asia in the event of a crisis.

As Richard Fisher, Jr. writes at the International Assessment and Strategy Center (Hat tip: NOSI):

China's new ASBMs pose a strategic as well as a tactical challenge to U.S. forces in Asia. At present the U.S. does not have anti-missile capabilities to defend large U.S. ships against this threat, so vulnerable targets, most importantly aircraft carriers, will have to remain out of missile range in order to survive. This factor will further limit the effectiveness of their already range-challenged F/A-18E/F fighter bombers. U.S. Aegis cruisers and destroyers now being outfitted with new SM-3 interceptors with upgraded radar and processing capabilities may in the future be configured to deal with this threat, but if so, they may not be available for other missions, like protecting people. The fact is that no anti-missile system is going to come close to providing reliable defense. For China, ASBMs provide a means for saturating U.S. ships with missiles. While ASBMs are bearing down from above, their attack can be coordinated with waves of submarine, air and ship-launched anti-ship cruise missiles.

Sam Roggeveen at The Interpreter recently noted that the US is waking up to the threat posed by a Chinese ASBM. Roggeveen notes that for the moment one saving grace is that it is difficult to find an aircraft carrier at sea. He also notes that the US is shifting its priorities to reflect the new threat.

But what Roggeveen doesn't address is the threat posed by the new ASBM to US naval assets berthed in Japanese ports, most notably US fleet activities Yokosuka, the future home of the USS George Washington and the headquarters of the US Seventh Fleet. It may be difficult to find an aircraft carrier and its escorts at sea, but it is considerably easier to find them in their home port, as the accompanying image from Google Maps shows. (That's the USS Kitty Hawk to the right side of the map.)


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Google Maps also tells me that Yokosuka is less than 1400 kilometers from Tonghua in China's Jilin province, home to some Chinese DF-21 launchers.

The question I have is whether the Chinese ASBM will render US naval forward deployments in Japan obsolete, in that homeporting an aircraft carrier in Yokosuka may leave it vulnerable to a crippling first strike before even leaving port. Are anti-ballistic missile deployments in Japan — both by the US military and the Japanese Self-Defense Forces — reliable enough to protect US forces while in Japanese ports?

If not, hadn't the US and Japan be having a serious discussion about the impact of China's ASBMs on the future of US forward deployments in Japan, and with them, the future of the US-Japan alliance? Should the US consider relocating more assets from Japan to Guam to put them out of the range of ASBMs?

This is all speculative given that next to nothing is known about the specifications of the new missile, but its impact is potentially drastic. It's certainly something to watch.

Yokosuka is different

I have held off from commenting on the murder of Takahashi Masaaki, a taxi driver in Yokosuka by Olatunbosun Ugbogu, a deserter from the US Navy because the details were murky.

But now that Ugbogu is in Japanese custody and US Navy and State Department officials have made their initial apologies, including a visit by Rear Admiral James Kelly, commander, US Naval Forces Japan, to the taxi company that employed Takahashi, where he apologized directly to the company president.

Navy officials have issued a curfew for personnel attached to Yokosuka Naval Base, as well as restrictions on the purchase of alcohol. The Navy has also initiated a period of "training and reflection" for personnel.

Stars & Stripes reports that the situation in Yokosuka is calm: no protests, little hysteria among the local population, and complaints from business owners who fear that business will be hurt by the new restrictions.

This goes to show that it is a mistake to view the US forward presence in Japan uniformly. Okinawa is not Iwakuni is not Yokosuka is not Sasebo: each area has its own dynamics depending on the population size and service origin of service personnel, the size and density of the host community, the scale of the US bases, the presence of JSDF personnel, and the host community's history as a military base.

Yokosuka, a city of more than 400,000 is host to a population of US Navy personnel and dependents of approximately five percent of the city's total population. By comparison, Ginowan, home to MCAS Futenma, has a population of 88,000 hosting more than 4,000 Marines between Futenma, Camp Foster, . Yokosuka is approximately 100 square kilometers; Ginowan is approximately twenty. Add in the presence of Marine aircraft at Futenma and the problem is immediately apparent. (Apologizes for imprecise numbers: it's hard to pin down exact totals of US service personnel and their dependents by facility.)

Yokosuka is also home to a major MSDF base — its facilities intermingled among US facilities — and the relationship between the US Navy and the MSDF is closer than between any other branch of the services. Yokosuka also has a long history as a naval base. Visitors to Yokosuka can see a succession of dry docks built since the Meiji Restoration, with the increasing scale of the dry docks indicative of the growing sophistication of the Imperial Navy and naval warfare in general. Yokosuka is a navy town, and I can attest to the fact that US personnel in Yokosuka are sensitive to their place in the community.

All of which goes to show that if the US presence was limited to the 7th Fleet and a carrier strike group divided mostly between Yokosuka, Sasebo (in Kyushu), and Iwakuni for carrier aircraft, the US position in Japan would be considerably more secure. The danger is of events elsewhere prompting a national movement against the US presence in toto. Having a carrier strike group in Japan is the main reason why the US is the Asia's premier naval power, and is worth preserving, even as other elements of the US forward presence are drawn down. (Yokosuka's importance to the US Navy will only increase, with the USS George Washington, a nuclear-powered supercarrier, scheduled to replace the USS Kitty Hawk in August. The George Washington will set sail Monday.)

The relatively calm response to this latest, terrible crime illustrates the sustainability of the US presence in Yokosuka. It is now the responsibility of both governments to keep that way by finding the appropriate composition and distribution of US forces in Japan.

The US forward presence must change

In the span of a weekend, two events have cast doubts on the durability of US deployments in Japan.

The first, obviously, is the alleged rape of a middle-school student by a thirty-eight-year-old Marine committed in Okinawa. The incident has prompted protests to the US consul-general and Marine commander in Okinawa, and promises on the part of US authorities to cooperate with local officials on the investigation and to work to ensure that this won't happen again. The Foreign Ministry has also made demands to Joseph Donovan, US deputy chief of mission, to strengthen safeguards in Okinawa. Kishida Fumio, the minister responsible for Okinawa affairs, responded angrily, and called for stricter countermeasures.

The second was Iwakuni's mayoral election. On the face of it, the election was good news for the US-Japan alliance and the Fukuda government, perhaps giving new life to the troubled 2006 realignment agreement that called for the relocation of US aircraft carrier aircraft from Atsugi in Kanagawa to Iwakuni. Fukuda Yoshihiko, the government-backed, pro-agreement candidate, defeated Ihara Katsusuke, the anti-base candidate, prompting government officials to celebrate Mr. Fukuda's victory as a victory for the alliance. Ishiba Shigeru, defense minister, told reporters that he hopes to talk with the new mayor as soon as possible. "The US realignment," he said, "must by all means be realized to maintain deterrent power and relieve the burden on communities." Yomiuri, in its editorial on the election, echoed both lines of this argument, paying particular attention to the dangers of basing US aircraft at Atsugi in the Kanto plain.

The victory in Iwakuni, however, may be more illusory than the government's celebratory response would suggest. Mr. Fukuda's — or Messrs. Fukuda's — victory was not quite a reversal of the 2006 referendum on realignment in which the citizens of Iwakuni rejected the plan to move the carrier aircraft (triggering the showdown with Tokyo over subsidies). In a Mainichi/TV Yamaguchi exit poll, a plurality (41%) said that they oppose the plan, and another 20% said that they oppose the plan, but believe that "it can't be helped." Only 2% approved the plan unconditionally, while 33% approve with conditions attached.

The campaign came down to economics — a plurality (31%) said that restoration of the city's finances was the most important issue. A factor in the city's finances, of course, is the government's withholding funds to Iwakuni in response to its opposition to the relocation plan (the "stick" side of the government's "carrot and stick" strategy).

Both events illustrate the corrosive impact the US presence has had on Japanese politics — and ultimately suggest that the alliance rests on a fragile political foundation. In order to see the agreement to its conclusion, Tokyo has subverted the will of local communities, a successful strategy thanks to fiscal centralization. The communities, not without reason, fear the consequences of hosting US forces, whether due to crimes committed by US personnel, the risk of plane crashes, and constant noise pollution. Is it appropriate for Tokyo to browbeat those communities into submission?

The Marine presence in Okinawa is particularly disruptive, given the greater impact of ground forces in local communities compared to naval and air enclaves.

The US and Japan need to rethink the feasibility of the basing arrangement. What manner of US presence is sustainable? What composition of forces in Japan will best enable the US to perform its East Asian missions?

As Richard Halloran argues in Air Force Magazine, the US will increasingly reorient its Pacific military assets to Guam, Hawaii, the West Coast of the US, with smaller facilities in Japan, Singapore, and elsewhere. Halloran quotes Admiral Timothy Keating, commander of US Pacific Command, as saying that the US will have fewer boots on the ground in the region by 2017. That makes the US naval base at Yokosuka, soon to be home to the nuclear-powered USS George Washington, the most important US military facility in Japan.

Every rape or assault by a Marine in Okinawa potentially undermines the US presence elsewhere in Japan — and the US should therefore consider unilaterally hastening the process whereby USMC personnel will be relocated to Guam. (This would entail an acceleration of the building process on Guam that has barely begun — but is that an impossible task?) As for the housing of US Navy carrier aircraft, if the planes are to be relocated to Iwakuni, the US Navy has to sell the move itself, much as the homeporting of the USS George Washington was sold to the people of Yokosuka. The US Navy must be a good neighbor, and must be receptive to local concerns, even if Tokyo isn't.

Ultimately, though, the US footprint in Japan must and will shrink for the good of the alliance. Although Japanese hawks argue that US power depends on bases in Japan, US deterrent strength in the Western Pacific will be more durable once it's located back on US territory, immune to the vicissitudes of Japanese public opinion.

Deflating the China threat

The Danger Room's Noah Shactman points to a report by the Federation of American Scientists that notes that China's submarine fleet — a favorite bugbear of China hawks (see this report, for example) — was little more active in 2007 than it was in previous years.

Without dismissing China's military modernization, reports like this are important reminders that the China threat argument is based mostly on speculation about what China might be able to do in the indefinite future and the idea that the US has a right to unchallenged military primacy in the Asia-Pacific region.

Even in the Taiwan Straits, US deterrence of China still works. Regardless of Beijing's bluster and saber-rattling, China still believes that the threat of US intervention is credible enough and threatening enough and has still not acted to overturn the status quo, despite importance that the "recovery" of Taiwan has for many mainland Chinese. No matter how distracted the US is by Iraq, the US Navy is still the region's most powerful navy, a position that the US will not relinquish anytime soon.

So what does the US have to lose in persisting in efforts to keep lines of communication open between the PLA and the US Military? As the great Asian arms race continues, the US will have to become accustomed to sharing the maritime environment with other navies. The US should therefore persist in developing its ties with the PLA as much as China will permit and regardless of setbacks.

Ozawa to China

Despite the extension of the Diet session, Ozawa Ichiro, DPJ president, will still be going to China with nearly fifty DPJ members of the Diet from 6 to 8 December. Mr. Ozawa will meet with Hu Jintao and mark the thirty-fifth anniversary of the normalization of Sino-Japanese relations.

Mr. Ozawa's visit comes just as turbulence in Sino-US relations continues following China's denying port visits to US Navy vessels. The Chinese government has evidently explained its reasoning for its decisions, suggesting that US arms sales to Taiwan led China to turn the warships away.

Foreign Minister Yang's purported explanation that the denial was the result of a "misunderstanding" has been dismissed, but I wonder whether Foreign Minister Yang was being sincere, in that the decision without the Foreign Ministry's input, leaving the foreign minister to try to explain it in Washington. In other words, the decision to welcome the Kitty Hawk, then the decision to turn it away, then the last-minute decision to permit its entry could reflect not Chinese inscrutability but infighting within the government and between the CCP and the PLA fueled by Chinese insecurity. Now, granted, it is reasonable to question whether Beijing's sense of insecurity is justified, but I still think it would be a mistake for the US (and Japan) to overreact to China's actions.

And so will Mr. Ozawa address this affair, which has drawn in Japan, when he meets with President Hu? Will Mr. Ozawa use the occasion to present a positive vision for Japanese Asia policy that aims to coax China to play a more responsible security role in the region? Perhaps Mr. Ozawa and Mr. Fukuda could work together on an Asia initiative, seeing as both see the value of reorienting Japan's foreign policy away from the US to some extent. In doing so, will he be able to strike the proper balance, approaching Mr. Hu not as a supplicant but as a fellow great power interested in the maintenance of order and stability in the region?

Hold steady on China

Following the ASAT test conducted in January of this year, the behavior of the PLA is once again providing China hawks in the US with reason to bang the war drums (or perhaps just the containment cymbals, not that those are any less distressing). The latest incident, of course, involves China's last-minute rejection of a planned visit by the USS Kitty Hawk to Hong Kong, where the crew would meet with family members for Thanksgiving. This followed on the heels China's denial of safe harbor to US Navy minesweepers that were seeking shelter from a storm, contravening centuries of maritime custom.

The Pentagon, reports the BBC, has protested to the Chinese government, which responded by claiming that the Kitty Hawk incident was the result of a "misunderstanding." The FT suggests that the two incidents could jeopardize ties between the two navies, which have matured in recent years. Remember earlier this year when Admiral Timothy Keating, the new commander of US Pacific Command, suggested that the US might help China develop aircraft carriers?

There are two separate but not mutually exclusive theories floating around to explain these incidents. Some suggest that Beijing is retaliating for the Dalai Lama's receiving the Congressional Gold Medal. Others talk darkly of the PLA's being beyond the control of the Communist Party (an argument I considered here).

If it's the former, there's nothing to worry about — the issue will have passed, and Sino-US relations will continue to be as positive as the People's Daily says in an article about a meeting between President Bush and Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi. Meanwhile, even if this incident is part of a pattern along with the ASAT test and reports of Chinese cyber raids on the Pentagon, that still should not preclude a deepening of defense ties between the US and China.

The US has no choice but to deal with China. A PLA unaccountable to any authority, while worrisome, does not change this fact. Indeed, the greater the independence enjoyed by the PLA, the greater the need for regularized interaction between the military officers and government officials not just from the US and China, but from the other countries in the region. Scaling back or cutting security ties with China and its military will simply make the PLA more hostile and less cooperative, reaffirming the impression surely common in certain circles within the PLA that the US and its allies seek to encircle China.

Yes, China's behavior is maddening and hard to understand. But the US, as the maintainer of stability and order in the region, has the duty to ignore the slight and focus on the task of coaxing China into acting as a pillar of order, not an unpredictable actor and potential menace. Clearly, the signals from China are mixed — interesting that this incident has unfolded just as a PLAN destroyer arrives in Japan for a historic visit. Decisions made by the US and its allies still have the ability to affect the direction of China's emergence for better or worse.

Here's hoping that cooler heads within the US Navy and the defense establishment prevail, despite those inside and outside the government who look for incidents like this to confirm their worst fears about China (like, say, Lou Dobbs, as mentioned by Tom Barnett).

Perhaps it's time for that Organization for Security and Cooperation in Asia.