Beyond the West Pacific:
Japan’s Geostrategic Situation in
the 21st Century
“The shape of which each islands, the Kuril Islands in the north, the
Main Island, Honshu, in the centre and the Ryukyu Islands in the south, are
protruding to the Pacific Ocean like a bow makes all of the Japan Islands
tighten much better. We can feel something of strong powers from this shape.”
“The shape of the Japanese Islands is not
ordinary one. We can imagine the shape of going forward to the Pacific Ocean
bravely standing in front of the Asian continent. The Japanese Islands are also
considered as playing role of defending the continent from the Pacific Ocean.
In this way, we feel that the Gods truly created our country, Japan, which is
blessed with the matchless territory in its location and its shapes.”
Excerpt from the first chapter of Shotouka
Chiri (Geography for Primary School), 1938
Geostrategic concepts are primarily derived from geopolitics –a
discipline based in the study of the influence of geography on the political
character of states, their history, institutions and especially relations with
other states. Geopolitics evolved in Germany (although a Swede, Kjellen, coined
the phrase itself) with the German Ratzel trying to study political geography
scientifically. Following Ratzel, his compatriot Karl Haushofer identified the
main theme of geopolitics as the notion of space occupied by political groups.
When geopolitics fell out of favour after its adoption by the Nazis, there was
an attempt to couch it in the notion of geostrategic concepts, but in reality
geostrategy is the post-nuclear development of geopolitics.
One of the leading modern geopoliticians is Professor Koizumi Junichiro,
director of the
East Asian Institute of Strategic Studies in Tokyo. In his book Nippon
Chiseigaku (Japanese Geopolitics), he subscribes to the view that, slowly, but surely, economic, political and, to an
increasing extent, military power is shifting in, and to, Asia. He talks about
an "Asian Renaissance", a century where an East Asia unified in a commercial bloc (EACPS)
(Japan, Indonesia, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam, Sri Lanka and maybe in the near
future China) will have the world's largest economy by 2030, dominating the
global trading system based on market economies and knowledge based industries.
Not unexpectedly, current security concerns menace this dream. Professor
Koizumi has identified this menaces in a geopolitical context, and has divided
the Japanese geopolitical concerns in five main theatres: the northern (or
Siberian) theatre; the Korean theatre; the Chinese theatre; the South East
Asian theatre; the Indian Ocean theatre; and the Central Pacific theatre.
Of medium importance in the dynamics of military security considerations
but with maximum political consequences is the Northern Sakhalin/Karafuto dispute between the Soviet Union
and Japan. Due to this dispute, bilateral relations have hardly improved over
sixty years, and the dispute has generated an impasse that has blocked
negotiation of a peace treaty and limited Japanese willingness to sponsor
economic development of the Soviet Far East.
The chaos that followed the Soviet Civil War has changed the island's
strategic significance, and the Japanese government have situated two IJNI and two IJA divisions in a state of readiness in
northern Karafuto, in case the shaky control of Moscow over the Far East
disappears. However, domestic and international opposition to send more troops
to the Soviet Far East could result in a power vacuum in a region whose
northernmost territories (the Komendorskije islands and the Chukchi peninsula)
are very close to Alaska: Professor Koizumi fears such vacuum could provoke
U.S. intervention in Siberia if the Japanese government fails to send the IJAF to secure this territories.
The Korean peninsula remains under the paranoid and aggressive
government of Kim Jong Il, and the Tsushima and Saishu straits are the most heavily armed and
patrolled maritime borders in the world. Korea and Japan also have yet to
discuss in any meaningful way their dispute over the Saishu, Matsushima and
Takeshima islands near Korea. The "active inshore defence strategy"
adopted by the Korean People’s Republic (KPR) in the late 1990s is seen by
Japan to include not only the continental shelf and the 200-kilometer exclusive
economic area but also areas belonging to the Japanese Empire, Manzhouguo,
China and the Soviet Union. This creates an overlap with Japan's declared air
and sea surveillance extending from Karafuto to Kyushu. At the same time this
KPR strategy is depicted as threatening Japanese development of the continental
shelf off its west coast.
These potential direct threats to Japanese security are seen to
accompany the indirect threat of a possible reciprocal Sino-Korean military
build-up. Either armed confrontation or a security partnership between Xian and
Seoul is seen to pose a major problem for Tokyo. Professor Koizumi’s analysis
rules out these dire alternatives as likely during this decade but posits them
as possibilities in the next decade, whether the peninsula remains under its
communist rule or not. In the absence of genuinely alarming words or actions
from Xian in regard of Korea, other sources of threat prompt concern in Tokyo,
foremost the alarm aroused by Korea's nuclear weapons program.
Throughout 1993 Seoul's refusal to allow completely free and repeated
inspection by the Nuclear Inspection Committee (NIC) of all
nuclear-related facilities preoccupied Tokyo to the point of order the
destruction of the main Korean nuclear installations in 1996.
moreover, the test firing of a l,000-kilometer missile raised further concern
in Japan over Korea's potential nuclear threat. Japanese defence sources
claimed the missile's range would be increased to 1,300 kilometres, bringing
most Japanese cities, including Tokyo, within its reach.
One common denominator links military security analysis in the extensive
arc of Northeast to Southeast Asia: China. Either by its direct involvement in
territorial disputes or by the indirect impact on major shipping lanes
transiting these waters, the Republic of China is seen as posing a potential
threat to virtually all of its neighbours.
Japan itself retains serious concerns about growing Chinese militarism
and was not unhappy about a Soviet constraining role over Xian. But the
instability of Moscow’s rule over Siberia and its diminishing support to
Manzhouguo and Mongolia has fed Chinese hawks’ dreams of a Greater China
expanding from Siberia to the Spratley islands, including, of course, Taiwan.
Xian refuses to consider Taiwan as anything more than one of its provinces and
has used, most recently, economic diplomacy to reinforce its position.
Xian’s official defence budget had reached successive double-digit
increases: 14.9 percent in FY01 and 2002 saw another 22 percent increase. This
has been supplemented by traditional and newly developed civilian production,
military sales abroad, and covert budgetary allotments. Even allowing for
inflation, the cumulative defence expenditures are estimated to be at least
double those contained in the official public budget. China's purchasing power
is further enhanced by the use of Chinese commodity exports in exchange for
German weapons and technology. The weapons and technology transfer’s net result
cannot be confidently estimated, but the Japanese estimate is DM 2 billion.
Reportedly Berlin also privately promised Tokyo no "power projection"
weapon systems would be provided under any circumstances.
Whatever the facts of the Sino-German cooperation, the perception of
potential Chinese power projection capability causes added concern in Japan and
elsewhere. This concern is expressed in Tokyo along three dimensions. One
addresses the territorial dispute with Xian over their respective ownership of
and mineral rights to the entire East China Sea continental shelf. The second
dimension addresses the security of transport routes through the South China
Sea upon which Japan depends for Indonesian and Middle East oil and where China
claims ownership of the Spratley Islands in dispute with Indonesia, the
Philippines, Malaysia, Britain, and Taiwan. This in turn leads to the third
dimension, the impact of the real and anticipated growth in China’s air and
naval power projection over Southeast Asia.
Xian has publicly refuted any basis for depicting its military
modernization as a threat: Chinese president Qian Peng has described the
Chinese military build-up as "augmentation of border and coast
defences" and "defence of land, air and sea sovereignty and maritime
interests." However, the increased budgetary demands of high-technology
research, development, and procurement of electronic warfare and C3I (command,
control, communications, intelligence) equipment generate fears of a China
asserting claims in the East China and South China seas with sharply improved
air and naval capabilities.
The European colonialism has run its course and the last vestiges are
the British protectorate over Brunei and its naval bastion in Singapore, while
the Portuguese flag still remains in its East Timor colony. But unlike the
Portuguese, the British presence in the area and its growing relation with U.S.
based security alliances, which in large part are directed against Japan and
its allies, are turning Singapore and Brunei as a "balancer" as the
Japanese commitment in the region had growth.
Several factors had difficultated the Japanese position in the area, in
special the “arms race” between the region’s nations:
·
The Spratley Islands are a matter
of heated contention where six differing parties –China, Taiwan, Malaysia, the
Philippines, Vietnam and Britain (Brunei)– have either full or partial claims
to the islands and their potential underwater economic resources.
·
India remains fully armed and tries
to exert more influence in the area through Myanmar, which has become the
principal market of Indian weapons.
·
Vietnam's history is almost wholly
one of forcibly resisting or giving in to Chinese domination, and the war against Thailand has positioned Vietnam
in the Chinese camp. Hanoi has already received four Chinese frigates, with
another two due soon, plus more that 200 Chinese tanks of German design. In
addition Chinese technicians are training Vietnamese naval engineers and
mechanics in shipbuilding because, as a Vietnamese official said, "Having
a shipbuilding capacity is a prerequisite for a strong naval force."
·
Manila seeks multi-role jet fighter
interceptors and radar systems to protect marine resources and defend the
airspace over the presumably oil-rich island of Palawan. This help can only
come from the U.S., which is improving its military facilities in that country.
·
The informal alliance between
Indonesia and Thailand against Malaysia has lead Indonesia to modernize its air
force, while Bangkok's major modernization plans focus more on the navy
because, according to Navy Commander-in-Chief Admiral Prachet Sindet, "Our
mission is to maintain power bargaining vis-à-vis our neighbours. Such power is
essential in any political bargaining."
Most of these various military acquisitions are in their early stages,
either initial deliveries or still in the planning process. Nevertheless they
provoke a reaction of alarm in Tokyo.
Despite the now common anti-Japanese rhetoric of New Delhi, the
situation in Sri Lanka is stable, and the naval
clashes, so common in previous years, are now quite rare. But the situation in
Myanmar is disturbing, to say the least. Myanmar's dependence on India for
conventional weapons expanded to contracting for a naval base on the Irrawaddy
Delta between the Andaman Sea and the Bay of Bengal. Tokyo claims that New
Delhi will gain access or perhaps acquire a naval facility on this base. This
would increase Indian naval capability in the Bay of Bengala and in the Malacca
Strait. In addition India is reportedly building a radar facility on the Great
Coco Island that could monitor Japanese and Indonesian naval assets, especially
at Port Blair, ballistic missile tests at Balascore, and the satellite
launching station at Sri Hari Kota. In reaction, Japan conducted with Indonesia
joint naval exercises in the Indian Ocean near the British colonies of Andaman
and Nicobar Islands. The two countries share anti-Indian sentiments, albeit for
different reasons. Jakarta's interest lay in the proximity of the Coco islands
to western Sumatra, while Japan has a security treaty with Sri Lanka, who
provides naval facilities to Japan in its port of Trincomalee.
On one point almost all East Asian states agree: the United States
presence doesn’t helps stability and this debilitates regional security. The
minimum basis of this agreement is the perception that a U.S. “total
commitment” in the region would prompt a violent Japanese reaction. Taiwanese
and Indonesian support for the East Asia Security Treaty now includes the
socialists, long opposed on principle, who now feel that it is better to accept
the Japanese shield than to provide an excuse for an U.S. military intervention.
This anxiety over an eventual increase in the U.S. presence remains, due
to the U.S. East Asian Strategic Initiative (EASI) emphasis on continued
military presence manifest in three tiers of concentration: (l) negotiations
leading to the stationing of forward forces in Australia and Malaysia plus
maritime units continuously in the West Pacific, (2) forward forces deployed
rotationally, as with Marines to Brunei and Air Force units to Singapore, and
(3) forces temporarily deployed from forward bases in Hawaii, Alaska, Guam and
other U.S. territories as well as from the continental United States. This
total assemblage is impressive in firepower, technology, and mobility. Finally,
the United States remains formally committed to defence of the Philippines, and
maintain a strong military presence in the archipelago.
Lately, the already bad Japanese-U.S. relations have been plagued by
incidents of firing on Japanese ships, particularly around Berau (Palau). Those
involving fishing boats numbered nine in 2001, eleven in 2002, and seventeen in
January-August 2003. Another 41 cases arose where no shots occurred. The
majority of these incidents involved unidentified attackers. However, Japanese
officials reportedly believed they were from U.S.-backed Filipino attackers;
and in four cases Tokyo was able to seize or to photograph evidence implicating
the U.S. Coast Guard. Formal protests resulted in apology in some instances,
with explanations of U.S. anti-smuggling efforts causing mistakes.
Nevertheless, some of the attacks hit cargo ships ranging from 2,000 to 10,000
tons, lessening credibility for this explanation in Tokyo. Moreover the gradual
spread of the incidents toward Nan-yo Gunto raised questions about
Washington's motivation.
Ritualistic rhetoric in U.S. and U.S. allies’ media ranks Tokyo's
defence budget as "third in the world." However, this inflates the
monetary image by converting high yen to low dollars. It also omits the fact
that a good share of Japan's defence budget goes for salaries and rations and
an additional 10 percent to support the Taiwanese and Indonesian militaries.
Finally, they fail to point that the U.S. defence budget is the first in
the world. Thus, contrary to perception and propaganda, in reality Japan
remains restrained in its military expenditures and weapons acquisitions.
* * *
Despite this dire situation, Professor Koizumi thinks there is no an
imminent risk of open conflict in the region. The dynamics of military security
in East Asia offer ample opportunity for a wide range of discussions and
actions, driven by the regional states and facilitated by conjunct actions by
Tokyo and Xian. Seen in this perspective, the May 2003 pan-Asian summit meeting
in Kyoto may prove to be the historic benchmark that the Kampaku claimed it was. In any event, it
is a beginning at least of consultation, if not of a genuine Concert of Asia.
