Gee, Why Waste Money in Space?

FT

China’s rapidly expanding satellite programme could alter power dynamics in Asia and reduce the US military’s scope for operations in the region, according to new research.

Chinese reconnaissance satellites can now monitor targets for up to six hours a day, the World Security Institute, a Washington think-tank, has concluded in a new report. The People’s Liberation Army, which could only manage three hours of daily coverage just 18 months ago, is now nearly on a par with the US military in its ability to monitor fixed targets, according to the findings.

“Starting from almost no live surveillance capability 10 years ago, today the PLA has likely equalled the US’s ability to observe targets from space for some real-time operations,” two of the institute’s China researchers, Eric Hagt and Matthew Durnin, write in the Journal of Strategic Studies.

China’s rapidly growing military might has unnerved its neighbours, many of whom are US allies, while a series of disputes this year with Vietnam and the Philippines have added to the concerns.

China’s military build-up has accelerated in recent years, as it has developed an anti-ship ballistic missile, tested a stealth fighter and is poised to launch its first aircraft carrier. The fast-growing network of reconnaissance satellites provides China with the vision to harness this hardware.

Admiral Mike Mullen, America’s top military official, said at the weekend in Beijing that it was clear that the PLA is focused on “access denial” – a term that describes a strategy of pushing the US out of the western Pacific.

“The US is not going away,” Adm Mullen, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, said. “Our enduring presence in this region has been important to our allies for decades and will continue to be so.”

China warned the US last month not to become involved in its dispute with Vietnam over the South China Sea. “[China’s] strategic priority is to keep the US out of its backyard,” Mr Durnin told the Financial Times, adding that the satellite technology needed for achieving that goal is now in place.

When China tested missiles near Taiwan in 1996, the US deployed two aircraft carriers to nearby waters. The PLA’s inability to locate the ships was a source of great embarrassment that helped spur China’s satellite programme.

“The United States has always felt that if there was a crisis in Taiwan, we could get our naval forces there before China could act and before they would know we were there. This basically takes that off the table,” said Joan Johnson-Freese, a professor at the US Naval War College in Rhode Island.
China cut-off military relations with the US early last year, after Washington announced an arms sale to Taiwan. The two militaries have been working to repair ties this year, with PLA Chief of the General Staff Chen Bingde visiting Washington in May and Adm Mullen in China until July 13.

Japanese Defense Reviews on China

Background:

Japan defence review warns of China's military might

17 December 2010 BBC

The major strategic review will shape Japan's defence policy for the next 10 years

Japan has unveiled sweeping changes to its national defence polices, boosting its southern forces in response to neighbouring China's military rise.

It said Beijing's military build-up was of global concern. Japan shares a maritime border with China.

It will also strengthen its missile defences against the threat from a nuclear-armed North Korea.

China has responded saying it is a force for peace and development in Asia and threatens no-one.

China's Foreign Ministry said no country had the right to make irresponsible comments on China's development.

Flashpoints
The National Defence Programme Guideline has been approved by the cabinet and will shape Japan's defence policy for the next 10 years.

Japan is changing its defence policy in response to the shifting balance of power in Asia, analysts say.


Reorganised Defences

• Troops moved from north to south, near maritime border with China
• More Patriot missiles to counter possible North Korean attack
• Defence budget of 23.49tn yen (£180bn; $280bn) for next five years, down 3%
• More submarines (up from 16 to 22); fewer tanks (down from 600 to 400)
• Review labels China military build-up "matter of concern"; US-Japan alliance "indispensable"
• Defences will be scaled down in the north, where they have been deployed since the Cold War to counter potential threats from the former Soviet Union.

The military focus will now be in the south of Japan, closer to China and remote flashpoint islands near Taiwan.

The guidelines say Japan is concerned by China's growing military spending, modernisation of its armed forces, and increased naval assertiveness in the East China and South China seas.

"These movements, coupled with the lack of transparency on China's military and security issues, the trend is a concern for the region and the international community," the new guidelines say.

Relations between Japan and China deteriorated sharply in September, after collisions between a Chinese trawler and Japanese patrol boats near a chain of disputed islands in the East China Sea.

North Korea concerns

The review paper outlines a shift in resources from the army to the air force and navy.

Japan's submarine fleet will be expanded from 16 to 22 and fighter jets upgraded, while the number of tanks will be cut by a third to 400.

Japan's military is constitutionally banned from taking offensive action
North Korea's missile and nuclear programmes were also described as a "pressing and serious destabilising factor".

Pyongyang has fired missiles over Japan and staged nuclear tests in recent years.

Last month it unveiled a new uranium enrichment plant to US experts, and launched an artillery attack on a South Korean island, killing four people.

In response, Japan says more Patriot interceptor batteries will be deployed across the country, and the number of warships which can shoot down missiles will be increased from four to six.

It also plans to cut the number of soldiers by 1,000 to an official headcount of 154,000.

The US has an almost 50,000-strong troop presence in Japan. The paper called the Japan-US alliance "indispensable".

The review paper added that it was necessary to reduce the burden on communities hosting US bases, including Okinawa.

Japan said it would "promote confidence and co-operation with China and Russia" while also developing ties with the EU and Nato.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev sparked a diplomatic row with Japan earlier this year by visiting the Southern Kurils, which Japan calls the Northern Territories.

The islands, off the north coast of Japan's Hokkaido island, were seized by Soviet troops at the end of World War II, but Japan still regards them as part of its territory.

Japan has a pacifist constitution. Article Nine of the constitution, which was written under US post-war occupation in 1947, renounces the use of force by Japan in settling international disputes.

The BBC's Roland Buerk, in Tokyo, says the new strategic stance will be closely watched in Asia, where Japan's World War II aggression has been neither forgotten nor forgiven.

Finally the US is worried about Chinese military expansion.

It doesn't take much of a military genius to recognize that China is building a worldwide economic system of markets and sources of raw material.

A great worldwide economic power requires the guns and muscle to keep its status, position and property.

China is well on the way to being a major super power. Recall the voices from the not too distant past that poo-pooed the idea of China achieving parity with the US.

Of course that was before we pissed away a few trillion in bad trade deals and military adventures in the FME (formerly known as the ME but more richly deserving of the F bomb appellation).

Well here we are urging the Chinese not to surprise us and please keep us informed. Our urgency will surely impress them.

Don't look for help from anywhere else. It looks like the Indians are throwing in the towel.

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US urges China military dialogue BBC

US Defence Secretary Robert Gates has called for a lasting dialogue with China's military after meeting a top Chinese general at the Pentagon.

A Pentagon spokesman said Mr Gates told China's Gen Xu Caihou the two sides should "break the on-again, off-again cycle" in their military relationship.

The talks marked the highest bilateral military contact since 2006.

Last year, Beijing halted military dialogue with Washington to protest against US arms sales to Taiwan.
China has also criticised US surveillance of waters off Chinese coast.

'Obstacles'

"There is a need to break the on-again-off-again cycle of our military-to-military relationship," said Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell, briefing reporters on Mr Gates' talks with Gen Xu, vice-chairman of the People's Liberation Army Central Military Commission.

China has been rapidly expanding its armed forces

In the past, there had been progress "and then there will be a hiccup that will cause there to be a suspension" in military co-operation, Mr Morell said.

The spokesman described the talks as "productive", adding that Mr Gates accepted Gen Xu's invitation to visit China.

Meanwhile, US officials - who were speaking on the condition of anonymity - said Gen Xu was open to boosting military co-operation, but reiterated "obstacles" to deepening ties, such as the presence of US surveillance ships off China's coast.

Speaking earlier this week, Gen Xu said that China did not want "hegemony" or an arms race.
Washington has repeatedly urged China to be more open about its rapidly rising military spending.

Russian military threat may be blown out of proportion.

Is Managing the Chinese Giant Wishful Thinking?

As China becomes richer, it is becoming more nationalistic. A blunt glimpse of that was apparent over the recent Olympic Torch protests. The Chinese public was genuinely angry over world reaction. There is no significant sign that this trend will not continue.

As China gets richer, it also becomes more dependent on foreign sources of materials and energy. It will need an ever expanding military to protect the unimpeded access to those sources. The world has seen this lethal combination many times in the past. Secretary Gates has noticed:

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Gates Warns China Not to Bully Region on Energy

By ERIC SCHMITT New York Times
Published: May 31, 2008

SINGAPORE — Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates issued a set of thinly veiled warnings to China on Saturday, cautioning that it could risk its share of further gains in Asia’s economic prosperity if it bullied its neighbors over natural resources in contested areas like the South China Sea.

Three years ago at the same lectern here, Mr. Gates’s predecessor, Donald H. Rumsfeld, bluntly criticized China’s swift military buildup. Last year Mr. Gates struck a more conciliatory tone, saying Beijing and Washington had a chance to “build trust over time.”

Mr. Gates seemed to take a third approach in his remarks to a major regional Asia security conference here, seeking to lay down clear markers of continued American commitments to the region while also obliquely criticizing China.

He said that in his four trips to Asia since becoming defense secretary 18 months ago, several countries had expressed concern about “the security implications of rising demand for resources” (translation: China’s voracious quest for new sources of energy) and about “coercive diplomacy” (translation: China’s contested claims of resource-rich territorial waters).

Mr. Gates said there were rewards for playing by an international set of rules in a transparent way. “We should not forget that globalization has permitted our shared rise in wealth over recent decades,” he said. “This achievement rests above all on openness: openness of trade, openness of ideas, and openness of what I would call the ‘common areas’ — whether in the maritime, space, or cyber domains.”

The secretary specifically praised Beijing twice, noting that he had recently set up a telephone hot line with his Chinese defense counterpart and that the American-backed, six-party negotiations intended to temper North Korea’s nuclear ambitions “would not be possible without China’s valued cooperation.”

Otherwise, Mr. Gates spoke in a diplomatic code that his senior aides said would be clearly understood not only in Beijing but also in other Asian capitals and by the hundreds of security experts attending the annual regional conference sponsored by the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

Mr. Gates and his aides had debated just how blunt he ought to be in his address, which opened the Saturday session. In the end, aides said, he accepted the argument that taking a more direct approach would play to Beijing’s advantage and that a subtler, more indirect tack would win more support among Asian allies.

In the speech he recalled disputes in the mid-1990s between China and its neighbors over competing boundary and resource claims in the South China Sea, tensions that have resurfaced among China, Vietnam, Indonesia and Malaysia.

“We urged then, as we do today, the maintenance of a calm and nonassertive environment in which contending claims may be discussed and, if possible, resolved,” he said.

Mr. Gates, as he did last year at the conference, said that the United States “seeks more openness in military modernization in Asia. Transparency enhances confidence and reduces competitive spending.”

He also delivered a scolding reference to China’s unannounced destruction of a satellite in January 2007 when he described how the Pentagon handled a similar situation much differently in February, alerting others before shooting down a failing satellite over the Pacific just before it tumbled uncontrollably to Earth carrying toxic fuel.

Lt. Gen. Ma Xiaotian, deputy chief of the general staff of China’s People’s Liberation Army, pushed back during his speech, saying that China was not engaged in an arms race and that its military spending, compared with other sectors of its economy, was “limited and proportional.” In a clear reference to America’s plan to build missile defense systems, General Ma said deploying such defenses “was not helpful” to regional stability.

Mr. Gates made clear that central to the Bush administration’s Asia policy is maintaining American military might and economic sway in the region.

Indeed, Mr. Gates’s first stop on his weeklong visit to Asia was to Guam, where he took a helicopter tour on Friday to review Pentagon plans to spend $15 billion over the next six years to upgrade and expand World War II-era installations to accommodate thousands of additional American troops, and to broaden training missions with regional partners like Japan.

He said Saturday that Washington’s policy also focused on empowering regional allies to defend themselves by strengthening their armed forces and by building more robust economies and open political systems.

This policy is almost sure to endure no matter which party wins the White House in the November election, he said.

He showed an unusual flash on anger in response to a question after his speech about American efforts to deliver relief to cyclone victims in Myanmar, saying the United States has tried 15 times to get the Burmese leadership to allow more foreign assistance, but to no avail.

“We have reached out, they have kept their hands in their pockets,” he said.