TARGET CHINA: Military wars— South China Sea and Obama’s ‘China Pivot’

Chapter Five:

Washington targets Missile Defense on China

On August 24, 2012 the New York Wall Street Journal reported that the Obama Administration as part of its newly-announced policy of an ‘Asia Pivot,’ will expand its missile-defense shield in the Asia-Pacific region. ^[1]

The official reason given by the Pentagon was to protect Japan, South Korea and other US allied countries in the region against a North Korean missile attack. This argument did not stand close scrutiny. In reality, according to numerous reports, Washington has decided to invest in a major Ballistic Missile Defense network using Japan, South Korea and Australia. The real target of the Asia Pivot shift and the BMD system is not North Korea but rather the Peoples’ Republic of China, the only power in the region possessing even a potential nuclear threat with serious long-range delivery capabilities. It is part of the new Pentagon strategy of imposing full control over the future development of China. Washington’s Asia Pivot in reality is a China Pivot.

According to US press accounts, the most important feature of the new Japanese BMD project would be installation of a new, powerful early-warning radar, ‘X-band’, made by Raytheon Co. It is “a large, phased-array fire control sensor, featuring precision discrimination and interceptor support,” designed to counter threats from ‘rogue states.’ It will be installed on an unnamed southern Japanese island.^[4]

The US move to prioritize its BMD installation in Asia not only involves Japan. Washington  has also announced it is helping India improve its new missile defense system. The Indians want to build a multi-layer missile defense network with US help. Publicly India’s government cites Pakistan as the reason. Privately, it is China. India test-fired its Agni-V intermediate range ballistic missile earlier this year and the Indian press openly cited the system’s ability to strike anywhere in China as the most important feature.^[7]

According to Steven Hildreth, a missile-defense expert with the Washington Congressional Research Service, the USA is "laying the foundations" for a region-wide missile defense system that would be constituted by US ballistic missile defenses and those of regional powers, particularly Japan, South Korea and Australia. Although supposedly aimed at containing threats from North Korea, Hildreth also stated, "the reality is that we're also looking longer term at the elephant in the room, which is China." The Wall Street Journal claimed the X-band arc would allow the US to ‘peer deeper’ into China, as well as North Korea. ^[8]

There are reports from unnamed US Defense Department officials that a third X-Band radar would be positioned in the Philippines, allowing the Pentagon to accurately track ballistic missiles launched from North Korea and parts of China.^[9]

With even a primitive missile defense shield, the US could attack Russian or Chinese missile silos and submarine fleets with less fear of effective retaliation; the few remaining Russian nuclear missiles would be unable to launch a response sufficiently destructive.

During the Cold War, the ability of both sides—the Warsaw Pact and NATO—to mutually annihilate one another, had led to a nuclear stalemate dubbed by military strategists, MAD—Mutually Assured Destruction. It was scary but, in a bizarre sense, more stable than what would come later with a unilateral US pursuit of nuclear primacy. MAD was based on the prospect of mutual nuclear annihilation with no decisive advantage for either side; it led to a world in which nuclear war had been ‘unthinkable.’

Evidence of uninterrupted global ambitions on the part of the US military could be found in a “future study” commissioned in 1995-96, by the US Air Force Chief of Staff. The report, Air Force 2025, was a massive 4-volume elaboration of hundreds of technologically advanced, super-sophisticated space-based weapons systems intended to provide the United State with global combat support capabilities in space. These were considered the systems necessary for the US “to remain the dominant air and space force in the future,” an integral part of the Pentagon’s Full Spectrum Dominance strategy.

One weapon, for example, was a “laser cannon” in space, described chillingly, as follows:

[It would] successfully attack ground or airborne targets by melting or cracking cockpit canopies, burning through control cables, exploding fuel tanks, melting or burning sensor assemblies and antenna arrays, exploding or melting munitions pods, destroying ground communications and power grids, and melting or burning a large variety of strategic targets Washington’s Nuclear Obsession (e.g., dams, industrial and defense facilities and munitions factories) — all in a fraction of a second.

Another section of Air Force 2025 described small metal projectiles fired at the earth from space. The "flechettes" could penetrate the earth to a depth of a half mile, destroying targets like underground bunkers. Despite caveats and disclaimers that the Report did not represent the views of the United State or its Department of Defense, or even the Air Force, it had been authorized at the highest ranks of the Pentagon. And that was seventeen years before the decision to deploy BMD against Russia and now, against China.

Dr. Robert Bowman, a retired Lieutenant Colonel of the US Air Force who directed the US Government’s early anti-missile defense effort when it was still top secret, noted:

[They] mirror the results of studies we performed in the 1970s and early 80s. The difference is that then we considered the results sufficient reason to continue our national policy of keeping weapons out of space, while now they entice the hawks into discarding treaty constraints and pursuing a still more total form of absolute military superiority. Bush's first budget quadrupled the spending on laser battle stations. In his new budget, he gives the space warriors an essentially blank check. Now he has once again renamed and reorganized the Pentagon office doing ‘Star Wars.’

In addition to Japan, Washington has invited South Korea and Australia to join the Asian BMD program. The Philippines are also being considered. As the official Chinese English language daily, Global Times, pointed out, “Among the nuclear powers, China has the smallest number of nuclear weapons. It is also the only country to make a 'no first use' commitment. Installing a missile defense system in Asia disrespects China's nuclear policy.”

The Beijing policy statement in the article continued, “If Japan, South Korea and Australia join the system, a vicious arms race in Asia may follow. It is not what China wants to see, but it will have to deal with it if the arms race happens. The US is creating waves in Asia. The region may see more conflicts intensify in the future. China should make utmost efforts to prevent it, but prepare for the worst.” ^[12]

In early September 2012, the Japanese Government announced, provocatively, that it had decided to buy several islands in a disputed uninhabited island chain called in China the Diaoyu Islands. Thereby, Japan asserted its claim to all subsea rights surrounding the island group. Going back to China’s Ming Dynasty, the Diaoyu Islands were regarded as a marine defense zone and governed by the Ming Chinese government.^[13]

According to Zhang Haiwen, associate director of China Institute for Marine Affairs under State Oceanic Administration of China, “Japan may further ask for an exclusive economic zone of 200 nautical miles and may take the Diaoyu Islands as the base to divide the continental shelf of the East China Sea and further ask for the relevant oil and gas resources.” ^[14]

Zhang pointed out that geopolitically, the Diaoyu Islands have a huge strategic and military value. The islands are at the first island chain in the West Pacific, and are a springboard for entering China from the outside sea. ”If Japan controls the waters, it means Japan has clutched the throat of the channel in which China goes to the open sea of the Pacific,” said Zhang.^[15]

On September 10, 2012 the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a formal protest over the provocative Japanese “buying” of the islands:

10 September 2012

The Diaoyu Island and its affiliated islands have been China’s sacred territory since ancient times. This is supported by historical facts and jurisprudential evidence. The Diaoyu Islands were first discovered, named and exploited by the Chinese people. Chinese fishermen had long been engaged in production activities on these islands and in their adjacent waters. The Diaoyu Islands have been put under the jurisdiction of China’s naval defense as affiliated islands of Taiwan, China since the Ming Dynasty. The Diaoyu Islands have never been “terra nullius”. China is the indisputable owner of the Diaoyu Islands.

In 1895, as the Qing government’s defeat in the First Sino-Japanese War was all but certain, Japan illegally occupied the Diaoyu Island and its affiliated islands. After that, Japan forced the Qing government to sign the unequal Treaty of Shimonoseki and cede to Japan “the island of Formosa (Taiwan), together with all islands appertaining or belonging to the said island of Formosa”. After the end of the Second World War, China recovered the territories invaded and occupied by Japan such as Taiwan and the Penghu Islands in accordance with the Cairo Declaration and the Potsdam Proclamation. According to international law, the Diaoyu Island and its affiliated islands have already been returned to China. Facts are facts, and history is not to be reversed. Japan’s position on the issue of the Diaoyu Island is an outright denial of the outcomes of the victory of the World Anti-Fascist War and constitutes a grave challenge to the post-war international order.

In 1951, the Treaty of Peace with Japan (commonly known as the Treaty of San Francisco, a treaty partial in nature) was signed between Japan, the United States and other countries, placing the Ryukyu Islands (known as Okinawa today) under the trusteeship of the United States. In 1953, the United States Civil Administration of the Ryukyu Islands arbitrarily expanded its jurisdiction to include the Diaoyu Island and its affiliated islands, which are in fact Chinese territories. In 1971, Japan and the United States signed the Okinawa Reversion Agreement, which arbitrarily included the Diaoyu Islands in the territories and territorial waters to be reversed to Japan. The Chinese government has, from the very beginning, firmly opposed and never acknowledged such backroom deals between Japan and the United States concerning Chinese territories. The claims of the Japanese government that the Diaoyu Island is Japan’s inherent territory and that there is no outstanding territorial dispute between Japan and China showed total disregard of historical facts and jurisprudential evidence and are absolutely untenable.

During the negotiations on the normalization of China-Japan relations in 1972 and on the signing of the Sino-Japanese Treaty of Peace and Friendship in 1978, the then leaders of the two countries, acting in the larger interest of China-Japan relations, reached important understanding and common ground on “leaving the issue of the Diaoyu Island to be resolved later”. This opened the door to normalization of China-Japan relations and was followed by tremendous progress in China-Japan relations and stability and tranquility in East Asia in the following 40 years. Now, if the Japanese authorities should deny and negate the previous common understanding reached between the two countries, then how could the situation of the Diaoyu Island remain stable? How could China-Japan relations continue to grow smoothly? And how could Japan ever win trust from its neighbors and people of the world?

Pentagon ‘String of Pearls’ Strategy

On the basis of simple dollar outlays for military spending, the US Pentagon combined budget, leaving aside the huge budgets for such national security and defense-related agencies of US Government as the Department of Energy and US Treasury and other agencies, the US Department of Defense spent some $739 billion in 2011 on its military requirements. Were all other spending that is tied to US defense and national security included, the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies estimates an annual military spending of over $1 trillion by the United States. That is an amount greater than the total defense-related spending of the next 42 nations combined, and more than the Gross Domestic Product of most nations.

China officially spent barely 10% of the US on its defense, some $90 billion, or if certain defense-related arms import and other costs are included, perhaps $111 billion a year. Even if the Chinese authorities do not publish complete data on such sensitive areas, it is clear China spends a mere fraction of the USA and is starting from a military-technology base far behind the USA.

If we include the spending by Russia, China’s strongest ally within the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, their combined total annual defense spending is barely $142 billions. The world top ten defense spending nations in addition to the USA as largest and China as second largest, include the UK, France, Japan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Germany, India and Brazil. In 2011 the military spending of the United States totaled a staggering 46% of total spending by the world's 171 governments and territories, almost half the entire world. ^[18]

Clearly, for all its rhetoric about peace-keeping missions and “democracy” promotion, the Pentagon is pursuing what its planners refer to as “Full Spectrum Dominance,” the total control of all global air, land, ocean, space, outer-space and now cyberspace.^[19] It is clearly determined to use its military might to secure global domination or hegemony. No other interpretation is possible.

China today, because of its dynamic economic growth and its determination to pursue sovereign Chinese national interests, merely because China exists, is becoming the Pentagon new “enemy image,” now replacing the false “enemy image” of Islam used after September 2001 by the Bush-Cheney Administration to justify the Pentagon’s global power pursuit. The new US military posture against China has nothing to do with any aggressive threat from the side of China. The Pentagon has decided to escalate its aggressive military posture to China merely because China has become a strong vibrant independent pole in world economics and geopolitics.

The following sections from Obama’s speech in Australia are worth citing in detail:

The United States is a Pacific power, and we are here to stay. Indeed, we are already modernizing America’s defense posture across the Asia Pacific.  It will be more broadly distributed -- maintaining our strong presence in Japan and the Korean Peninsula, while enhancing our presence in Southeast Asia.  Our posture will be more flexible -- with new capabilities to ensure that our forces can operate freely.  And our posture will be more sustainable, by helping allies and partners build their capacity, with more training and exercises. We see our new posture here in Australia…I believe we can address shared challenges, such as proliferation and maritime security, including cooperation in the South China Sea.^[21]

The centerpiece of Obama's visit was the announcement that at least 2,500 elite US Marines will be stationed in Darwin in Australia’s Northern Territory. In addition, in a series of significant parallel agreements, discussions with Washington were underway to fly long-range American surveillance drones from the remote Cocos Islands — an Australian territory in the Indian Ocean. Also the US will gain greater use of Australian Air Force bases for American aircraft and increased ship and submarine visits to the Indian Ocean through a naval base outside Perth, on the country’s west coast.

The best definition of RMA was the one provided by Marshall himself: “A Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) is a major change in the nature of warfare brought about by the innovative application of new technologies which, combined with dramatic changes in military doctrine and operational and organizational concepts, fundamentally alters the character and conduct of military operations.” ^[28]

Marshall, a RAND Corporation nuclear expert, was brought by Henry Kissinger onto the President’s National Security Council that Kissinger headed. Marshall was then appointed by President Nixon in 1973, on Kissinger’s and Defense Secretary James R. Schlesinger’s recommendation, to direct the Office of Net Assessment, a highly secretive internal Pentagon think tank. Marshall was reappointed by every president thereafter, a feat surpassed only by the late FBI Director, J. Edgar Hoover. Andrew Marshall was the only official in the Rumsfeld Pentagon who had participated in strategic war planning throughout virtually the entire Cold War, beginning in 1949 as a nuclear strategist for RAND Corporation, then moving to the Pentagon in 1973.^[29]

It was also Andrew Marshall who convinced US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his successor Robert Gates to deploy the Ballistic Missile “defense” Shield in Poland, the Czech Republic, Turkey and Japan as a strategy to minimize any potential nuclear threat from Russia and, in the case of Japan’s BMD, any potential nuclear threat from China.

China’s methodical and accelerating military modernization presents a growing threat to U.S security interests in the Pacific. While Taiwan remains a key potential flashpoint, China’s aggressive pursuit of territorial claims in the East and South China Seas points to ambitions that go beyond a Taiwan scenario and poses a growing threat to neighbors, including U.S. alliance partners, on China’s periphery. Recent and planned military acquisitions by Beijing—mobile ballistic missiles, improved air and naval forces capable of extended range operations—provide China with the capability to conduct offensive strikes and military operations throughout the region…

China’s aggressive pursuit of territorial claims arising from disputes with Japan in the East China Sea and multiple countries in the South China Sea and its forays into the Bay of Bengal give rise to growing regional security concerns in Japan, India, and Southeast Asia. China’s military threat against Taiwan is implicitly a threat to the United States as a result of both explicit and tacit assurances that have been expressed to Taiwan by every U.S. Administration since 1949. Taiwan has successfully converted from authoritarian rule to a functioning democracy, making it an even more significant symbol of American interest in the region and increasing the likelihood that a Chinese conflict with Taiwan will also involve U.S. forces. ^[30]

The 2005 China report to the US Congress went on to describe what they saw as Chinese military strategy to defend her access to vital oil from the Persian Gulf and elsewhere:

In addition, a growing dependence on imported energy resources needed to sustain its economic development exposes China to new vulnerabilities and heightens its need to secure new energy sources and the sea lines of communications (SLOCs) from East Asia to the Persian Gulf and Africa needed to move energy supplies to China. With Myanmar’s consent, China operates a maritime reconnaissance and electronic intelligence station on Great Coco Island and is building a base on Small Coco Island in the Bay of Bengal.17 According to an Asian defense analyst, China is helping Myanmar modernize several naval bases as a means of extending its power into the region. Moreover, Indian authorities claim that China has helped build radar, refit, and refuel facilities there to support further Chinese naval operations in the region in the future.^[31]

In January that same year, 2005, Andrew Marshall, head of the Office of Net Assessments, issued a classified internal report to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld titled “Energy Futures in Asia.” It was the same Marshall behind the Pentagon secret ‘Air-Sea Strategy against China.  The Marshall report, which was leaked in full to a Washington newspaper, invented the term “string of pearls” strategy to describe what it called the growing Chinese military threat to “US strategic interests” in the Asian space.^[32]

The internal Pentagon report claimed that “China is building strategic relationships along the sea lanes from the Middle East to the South China Sea in ways that suggest defensive and offensive positioning to protect China’s energy interests, but also to serve broad security objectives.”

The report stated that China was adopting a “string of pearls” strategy of bases and diplomatic ties stretching from the Middle East to southern China that includes a new naval base under construction at the Pakistani port of Gwadar. It claimed that “Beijing already has set up electronic eavesdropping posts at Gwadar in the country’s southwest corner, the part nearest the Persian Gulf. The post is monitoring ship traffic through the Strait of Hormuz and the Arabian Sea.” ^[33]

The Marshall internal report went on to write of other “pearls” in the sea-lane strategy of China:

Breaking the String of Pearls

The first was the so-called Saffron Revolution, a US State Department and CIA-backed destabilization in 2007 aimed at putting the international spotlight on the Burma military dictatorship’s human rights practices. The aim was to further isolate Burma internationally from economic relations aside from China, especially threatening  the China-Myanmar oil and gas pipelines.

​​​​​Forcing Burma’s military leaders into tighter dependency on China was one of the factors triggering the decision of the military to open up economically to the West. They declared that the tightening of US economic sanctions had done the country great harm and President Thein Sein made his major liberalization opening as well as allowing US-backed dissident, Aung San Suu Kyi, to be free and to run for elective office with her party in return for promises from US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton of US investment in the country. ^[35]

The US corporations approaching Burma are hand-picked by Washington to introduce the most destructive “free market” reforms that will open Burma to instability. The United States will not allow investment in entities owned by Myanmar’s armed forces or its Ministry of Defense. It also is able to place sanctions on “those who undermine the reform process, engage in human rights abuses, contribute to ethnic conflict or participate in military trade with North Korea.” The United States will block businesses or individuals from making transactions with any “specially designated nationals” or businesses that they control — allowing Washington, for example, to stop money from flowing to groups “disrupting the reform process.” It’s the classic “carrot and stick” approach, dangling the carrot of untold riches if Burma opens its economy to US corporations and punishing those who try to resist the takeover of the country’s prize assets. Oil and gas, vital to China, will be a special target of US intervention.   American companies and people will be allowed to invest in the state-owned Myanma Oil and Gas Enterprise.^[36]

President Obama also created a new power for the government to impose “blocking sanctions” on any individual threatening peace in Myanmar. Businesses with more than $500,000 in investment in the country will need to file an annual report with the State Department, with details on workers’ rights, land acquisitions and any payments of more than $10,000 to government entities, including Myanmar’s state-owned enterprises.

American companies and people will be allowed to invest in the state-owned Myanma Oil and Gas Enterprise, but any investors will need to notify the State Department within 60 days.

As well, US “human rights” NGOs, many closely associated with or believed to be associated with US State Department geopolitical designs, including Freedom House, Human Rights Watch, Institute for Asian Democracy, Open Society Foundations, Physicians for Human Rights, U.S. Campaign for Burma, United to End Genocide— will now be allowed to operate inside Burma according to a decision by State Secretary Clinton in April 2012.^[37]

Thailand, another key in China’s defensive String of Pearl Strategy has also been subject of intense destabilization over the past several years. Now with the sister of the corrupt former Prime Minister in office, US-Thai relations have significantly improved.

After months of bloody clashes, the US-backed billionaire, Former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra , managed to buy the way to put his sister, Yingluck Shinawatra in as Prime Minister, with him pulling the policy strings from abroad. Thaksin himself  was enjoying comfortable status in the US as of this writing, in summer 2012.

The Pentagon was also working to secure more rights to US Navy visits to Thai ports and joint surveillance flights to monitor trade routes and military movements. The US Navy will soon base four of its newest warships — Littoral Combat Ships — in Singapore and would rotate them periodically to Thailand and other southeast Asian countries. The Navy was pursuing options to conduct joint airborne surveillance missions from Thailand.^[38]

In addition, Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton Carter went to Thailand in July 2012 and the Thai government has invited Defense Secretary Leon Panetta who met with the Thai minister of defense at a conference in Singapore in June.^[39]

In 2014, the US Navy was scheduled to begin deploying new P-8A Poseidon reconnaissance and anti-submarine aircraft to the Pacific, replacing the P-3C Orion surveillance planes. The Navy was also preparing to deploy new high-altitude surveillance drones to the Asia-Pacific region around the same time. ^[40]