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On 12th February 2013 North Korea tested its third nuclear bomb since 2006 and then threatened to nuke the US. Further, it has abrogated the armistice with South Korea. This brinkmanship under the young and tentative Kim Jong-un is unprecedented even by North Korean standards. This article seeks to decipher the country’s international behavior in the overall strategic and geopolitical context of Asia Pacific region.
North Korea is not unpredictable; rather it has fine-tuned a pattern of diplomacy wherein it draws international attention by provocative maneuvers, then opts for negotiations, is persuaded thereafter to come to an agreement of sorts to which it may later renege. This cycle of diplomacy serves its strategic patron, China. It is the people of North Korea who have paid the price by way of unmitigated impoverishment and international isolation.
The US too has responded by ratcheting its military posturing to new belligerent levels. A fresh military pact has been signed between the US and South Korea on 22 March 2013. Significantly, in departure from US engagement in event of ‘full-scale conflict’, the pact assures joint military response even in face of low-level military provocation by North Korea. In the ongoing military exercises, nuclear submarines are deployed in Korean waters and nuclear bombing exercises (Exercise Foal Eagle) have been carried out by the USAF B-52 bombers. Reflecting the heightened strategic concern of the Obama administration, the US Deputy Defence Secretary Ashton Carter said the build-up “will occur despite the budgetary pressures in the United States. The Asia-Pacific rebalance is a priority... our commitment to the United States-ROK Alliance will remain firm.” The US has reconfigured its military commands recently and now its Pacific Command includes India and the Indian Ocean as well. Accordingly, and in deference to its evolving threat perception, the US is planning to deploy 60 per cent of its fleet in the Asia Pacific Region. This is in consonance with Obama’s characterisation of Asia Pacific as ‘top priority’. During his visit to Australia in November 2011, President Obama had announced his decision to station 2,500 troops in that country to reinforce the American ‘leadership role’ in the region.
Immediate US Concern
The immediate and pressing American concern is with regard to China’s posturing on South China Sea which is critical not only for the US but global economy as such. 33 per cent of the world’s trade and 50 per cent of world’s traffic in oil and gas passes through this water body. The volume of oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG) transported through the South China Sea is three times more as compared to Suez Canal and 15 times in case of Panama Canal. While the South China Sea can be termed as vital for global economy, for China, Japan, Taiwan and South Korea it determines their very economic viability. In absence of other potent geopolitical leverages against the US and its allies, it is the enormity and stakes associated with South China Sea that has impelled China to claim the entire water body.
South China Sea: China’s Leverage
The vestiges of Cold War are most formidable, obdurate and inflammatory in the Asia Pacific region which explains China’s posturing in South China Sea. The presence of 47,000 US troops in Japan and 28,000 troops in South Korea, The planned military presence in Australia, the undeclared but close strategic partnership with Taiwan, Philippines and Singapore and the emerging strategic partnership with Vietnam is a security nightmare for China. The nerve-centre of China’s economic activity, i.e. the Eastern Coast, in Chinese perception, is therefore acutely vulnerable. Accentuating this vulnerability is the apprehension with regard to the security of its maritime trade routes and energy supplies. China’s trade is likely to double in a decade and its energy requirements may increase by 150 per cent.
Ever since China became a net importer of oil in 1993, its anxiety over the security of oil imports to sustain its economy is only increasing as 80 per cent of its oil imports pass through the Malacca Straits. It is primarily for this reason that China is leveraging South China Sea in its perceived strategic inferiority to the US. The other and only leverage in the Asia Pacific region is its rogue ally or proxy, North Korea. China’s vice like grip over that country has essentially fed on the paranoia of the ruling dynasty. It is the acute sense of insecurity because of the geopolitical dynamics of Asia Pacific Region that has impelled China to adopt a hawkish posture with regard to South China Sea and the littoral states in the strategic embrace of the US.
North Korea: China’s Rouge Leverage
China’s vote in the UN in favour of stringent sanctions against Pyongyang on 07 March this year and the stance of its Ambassador to UN Li Baodong who stressed on ‘full implementation’ on the new resolution is being drummed by certain quarters. This however has been watered down by his insistence on resumption of the stalled six-party aid-for-disarmament talks between the players in the region, i.e. North Korea and South Korea, US, China, Russia and Japan. This is mere international posturing. But for China, North Korea cannot survive as a separate entity even for a day. The collapse of North Korea, China apprehends, will trigger the exodus of millions of refugees to its territory. The unification of nuclear North Korea with South Korea which has US military presence is a strategic nightmare for China. The rogue status of North Korea allows China to neutralise the ‘West dominated international order’ by the deniability factor it accords. It has also enabled China to indulge in nuclear and missile proliferation to influence geopolitics. The North Korean brinkmanship in effect is a stern strategic message by the new Xi Jinping regime in China to both Japan and South Korea, which also have new regimes. It may be mentioned that a new government under Shinzō Abe, known for his aggressive posture towards North Korea and China, took office in December 2012. Similarly, a new conservative and hardline dispensation under Park-Geun-Hye, the first woman President has taken office in South Korea.
Taiwan: Key to Asia Pacific Security
It is not unprecedented for China to carry out military maneuvers or activate its proxy North Korea to influence voters in target countries in the immediate neighborhood in run-up to elections, as also post-elections to intimidate new regimes, to influence the geopolitics in the region. The recent military standoff between China and Japan over the Senkaku Islands should be seen in this backdrop. In 1995-96, significantly in the post (1978)-US recognition phase, China fired missiles in waters surrounding Taiwan to dissuade the electorate from voting Lee Teng Hu to power as he had questioned the ‘One-China-Policy’. The US, in the biggest display of its naval might in the region since Vietnam deployed two aircraft carriers USS Nimitz and USS Independence. Basically the geopolitics of the Asia Pacific Region is rooted in the war of ‘ism’, a fallout of Cold War. Those were the days when the erstwhile Soviet Union and PRC were welded together in the pursuit of expansion of international communism. There are reports to suggest that though the US accorded recognition to Chiang Kai-Shek’s government as ‘sole and legitimate’, it had nevertheless decided not to interfere in case of PRC attack. The Korean War however completely changed the US stance, and Taiwan emerged as the bulwark against communist expansion.
It is not without precedence that the region is reckoned as a nuclear flashpoint. The First Taiwan Strait Crisis in 1954-55, engendered by China’s forcible seizure of Yijiangshan Island and Tachen Islands had led the US Joint Chiefs of Staff to recommend use of nuclear weapons. It was this threat that made Mao back down. The expansion of international communism is a dead agenda. China remains only communist in name. Notwithstanding the ‘one country, two systems’ enunciated by Deng Xiaoping, China with its totalitarian or near totalitarian political system has no takers in Taiwan. China on the other hand fears that any dilution in the ‘one party rule’ may lead to the implosion of the state. The resolution of this dilemma by China probably holds the key to the security of the Asia Pacific Region.
Chinese Polity and Strategic Balance
In the internal context of China, its present ‘one party political system’ may have served well for its impressive economic and military growth, but in the regional context the same political system sustained by ultra-nationalism and alleged ‘expansionism’ has created more enemies than allies. In the overall geopolitical context, it is the US strategic partnership with Japan, Taiwan and South Korea, which evokes the anxiety of China. There are constituencies in both Japan and South Korea, which do not place much faith in the nuclear umbrella provided by the US. Both these countries are believed to be ‘one turn of his screw’ from military-nuclear capability. The US presence is therefore the stabilising factor in the region that is considered as a nuclear flashpoint.
The deployment of two aircraft carriers during the third Taiwan crisis in 1995-96, was a sort of wakeup call for China. It was the decisive moment for the Chinese authorities to embark on an ambitious maritime development, acquisition, and power projection project. China since then has inducted a reconstructed Russian aircraft carrier and named it ‘Liaoning’ and developed a formidable nuclear submarine base on southern tip of Hainan Island. Its ballistic missile carrying submarines, (SSBN) at least two of which carry JL-2 missiles have a range up to 8400 km.
The defence budget of Japan and South Korea at approximately USD 60 billion and USD 39 billion respectively is also substantial when compared to China’s USD 114.3 billion. Together, these countries have 41 submarines, 76 major naval vessels and about 750 combat capable aircraft, most of it qualitatively superior to China. Add to this Taiwan’s defence budget of approximately USD 10 billion, four submarines, 26 major naval vessels and about 470 combat capable aircraft — the military challenge for China in the Asia Pacific, even after discounting the other five Southeast Asian Countries and the US support is daunting. It is this anxiety that has forced China to create leverages like North Korea and the issue of South China Sea.
Conclusion
Both US and China and in fact the larger Asia Pacific community has begun to treat the Indian Ocean and the Asia Pacific Region as not only contiguous but integrated maritime domains. Accordingly, these countries are calibrating and hedging their maritime imperatives. The pitfalls of overwhelming dependence on South China Sea has compelled China to construct oil and gas pipeline from Sittwe Port in Myanmar in Bay of Bengal to the Yunan Province and secure presence in Hambantota port in Sri Lanka and Gwadar port in Pakistan. 55 per cent of India’s trade with the Asia Pacific transits through the South China Sea. The Chinese belligerence towards India’s maritime presence in the region played itself out when it objected to ONGC – Videsh (OVL) venture for offshore oil exploration (Block 127 and 128) in Vietnamese waters (not recognised by China). This is even as China continues building strategic projects in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir. In dealing with China strategically, India can no longer afford to continue to be Tibet centric but must lay greater emphasis on the maritime imperatives in the now integrated Indian Ocean and Asia Pacific Region.
By Special Arrangement with The Centre For Land Warfare Studies (CLAWS) (http://www.claws.in)