Gunboat Diplomacy in the Northeast Pacific

On several occasions during the first nine months of this year a number of states have relied on sea-power as the currency for doing business in the unstable and challenging environment of Northeast Asia. Specifically, Japan, Russia, North Korea, China, and the United States have all used their navies as instruments of statecraft in a series of events, some of which do not make sense.

This backgrounder will endeavor to explain the prevailing situation at sea in Northeast Asia. It will also show that despite claims that seapower is in decline, many Asian states still see advantages in maintaining modern maritime forces in an uncertain security environment.

From recent media coverage, it is easy to believe that the problems facing the region are functions of an unpredictable North Korea and a China that is attempting to define its security boundaries. Unfortunately, the actions of these two states have far wider security implications with the potential to draw in many others. For instance, on the 23rd of June this year, Japanese Maritime Self Defense Forces (JMSDF) spotted two suspected North Korean spy ships in Japanese territorial waters. The vessels, disguised as Japanese fishing trawlers were bristling with antennae. When the JMSDF requested the vessels stop and be boarded they sped off. The Japanese gave chase, their naval forces fired at the vessels, and their aircraft dropped bombs on them, but this did not stop the North Koreans. After two days the Japanese gave up, and the North Koreans went on their way.

The Korean Problem

That incident is merely part of a looming crisis with deep roots. Although we tend to think of the crisis in terms of the incident between the naval forces of North and South Korea in the Yellow Sea in June 1999, the origins go back to the maritime demarcation line set up by the United Nations in 1953. This has been an almost constant source of conflict between the Koreas as each accuses the other of crossing the line and violating sovereignty. Directly to the south of the demarcation line, and lying in South Korean territorial waters, is a rich crab fishing ground that both North and South Korean fishermen depend upon for survival and profit. Both countries claim jurisdiction over the area.

Unfortunately for Korean peninsula security and stability, the crab fishery is a vital source of hard foreign currency for a desperate North Korea. Equally unfortunate is the recent history of clashes at sea between the two Koreas:

• In September 1996, a North Korean submarine ran aground off the coast of South Korea after deploying commandos on an infiltration exercise.
• In June 1997, a North Korea warship opened fire on South Korean vessels in the buffer zone.
• A year later, in June 1998, a North Korean submarine was captured in Southern waters, with nine dead crewmembers found inside the doomed ship's hull.
• Then, in November 1998, a North Korean submarine was chased out of Southern waters by South Korean naval units.
• One month later, in December 1998, a North Korean semi-submersible attempting to deploy infiltrators into South Korea ended its operation unsuccessfully, and at least one infiltrator was shot dead.

Recently, the BBC World Service reported that there are at least 20-30 incursions a year by suspected North Korean vessels into South Korean waters. The June 1999 skirmish in the Yellow Sea between surface forces was much more serious than the past coastal or "brown water" exchanges.

North Korea's navy is large but not of good quality. According to the IISS Military Balance 1997-98, its fleet numbers 22 patrol submarines (SSK), 50 midget subma-rines, three surface combatants, and 422 coastal attack craft. Most of these ships are old and obsolete, having been built on old Soviet designs. However, they can still be used to great effect in "brown water" operations for which they were largely designed, particularly to overwhelm an opponent.

The South Korean Navy is much smaller but qualitatively superior with more modern missile carrying ships, built to American specifications. According to the Military Balance 1997-98, South Korea has a "blue water" capability with six SSKs and 40 major surface combatants at its disposal.

In early June 1999, North Korea started to escort her fishing craft into the southern zone to pursue the lucrative crab fishery. Jane's Intelligence Review reported that North Korea had deployed its aging Chong Jin and SO-1 patrol craft as well as P-6 torpedo boats to enforce its rights at sea. In response, the South Korean Navy deployed its much more robust Sea Dolphin coastal attack craft with their Lynx air to sea missile-armed helicopters to enforce its territorial integrity. On June 5, North Korea began sending patrol vessels with its fishing vessels into the disputed fishing grounds. Each day the groups of opposing vessels got bigger in what appeared to be some sort of "Mexican stand-off". However, as soon as the South showed up in strength, the North turned tail and ran back across the demarcation line.

On June 11, South Korea adopted a more provocative stance by ramming North Korean patrol vessels in an attempt to force them back over the demarcation line. The South Koreans referred to their change in tactics merely as "bump-ing" northern patrol craft. Although the situation was tense, the North Koreans withdrew without an exchange of gun fire. The North then went back to its old cat and mouse game of escorting fishing vessels into the southern zone until South Korean forces arrived in strength when they again withdrew.

Then, on June 15, the North sortied once again and crossed into Southern waters. When the South Korean Sea Dolphin patrol craft attempted to "bump" the North Koreans, they opened fire. The South Koreans then returned fire sinking an 80 ton North Korean P-6 torpedo boat and damaging five other vessels in a 10 minute firefight in which seventeen North Korean crewmen were killed. The South Koreans sustained some damage to five of their craft.

The firefight came at a time of high level talks between the two countries. With North Korean threats of a walk-a-out and further military action, the United States dispatched the cruiser Vincennes, which was in waters off Japan, and announced that the carrier Constellation would leave the United States for Korean waters. This deployment of naval forces by the United States had a calming affect on the Koreas, but did not solved the problem.

The situation has been further complicated by North Korea's threats to test its Taepo Dong II Inter Continental Ballistic Missile, which could hit targets as far afield as Hawai or Alaska. On September 1, 1999, North Korea demanded that the United Nations change the maritime demarcation line, but talks collapsed after 50 minutes. On September 2, North Korea unilaterally rejected the demarcation line, and called for a new line 60-70 kilometers further South. Both sides have since said that they would enforce their maritime sovereignty. The September 6 South China Morning Post reported that the North Koreans were reinforcing their naval forces in the Yellow Sea (the 70- ship Eighth Naval Combat Unit) for another showdown with the South. This has yet to happen though.

Chinese Boundaries

China has also demonstrated that it is not afraid of using naval power in the Northeast Pacific. On May 30, 1999, the Manila Times reported that a Philippine naval supply vessel, the Sierre Madre, had run aground in the Spratly Islands and was passed by two Chinese warships which trained their guns on the Philippine vessel. Addition-ally, the May 28, edition of Asiaweek reported that 12 Chinese warships entered Japan's Exclusive Economic Zone near the disputed Senkaku Islands to reassert China's claim to the island chain and the surrounding waters.

Then, on July 10, Taiwan's President Lee Teng-hui announced that China and Taiwan's relations should be conducted on a "state to state" basis. China's reaction was predictably angry, stating that it was tantamount to a call for independence that could lead to war.

China has long regarded Taiwan as "lost territory", and views reunification between the mainland and the "rene-gade province" as a long-held national security objective. Originally Taiwan was part of China, but in 1895 Japan annexed the island, claimed it as Japanese, and governed it (as Formosa) until 1945. It then reverted back to China only to become the last redoubt of Chinese Nationalist forces after they lost their foothold on the mainland in 1949 at the end of civil war. China wants to bring Taiwan back into the fold, and has repeatedly warned that any move towards independence would lead to war.

In the Spring of 1996, during Taiwan's Presidential elections, China conducted large scale military exercises in the straits between Taiwan and the mainland and fired missiles into the seas around the island as a means of intimidating the Taiwanese people. The situation did not settle down until the United States deployed two carrier battle -groups to the region. Even then, China threatened to "rain fire" on Los Angeles if the United States defended Taiwan from China's wrath.

Following President Lee's July 10 statement, the PLA reportedly went on a higher level of readiness. In the days since July 10, according to Agence France-Presse, com-bined exercises called "Iron Cavalier" were conduct by China in its Nanjing military district -- the region across from Taiwan. The Washington Post later reported that China's Foreign Ministry released a statement on July 14 staying "Don't underestimate the courage and force of the Chinese people to oppose separat-ism and Taiwanese independence." China's Defence Minister Chi Haotian was much less delicate in his statements of the same day when he said that the People's liberation Army (PLA) would, "smash any attempts to separate the country."

On July 15, Reuters reported that China had an-nounced that it had the technology to make neutron bombs and had developed its own delivery weapons. This threat was not lost on Taiwan or on the people of its more vulnerable islands (Quemoy and Matsu) lying just off the mainland. Although Taiwan's islands are fortified, the neutron bombs' high radiation would still kill the Taiwanese soldiers in their bunkers and hardened shelters. Essentially, with neutron bombs China's PLA could seize Taiwan without a bloody fight. The PLA's newspaper ran an edito-rial on July 15 that stated "The army will never tolerate separatist conspiracies or sit idly by and watch even an inch of territory being cut off without taking action." The following day, Professor Chung Chien of Taiwan's War College stated that Taiwan was making preparations to wage a high tech war in a neutron environment, but did not elaborate any further on exactly what those preparations were or whether Taiwan was developing nuclear weapons.

In the meantime, China's military exercises across the strait from Taiwan had taken on a new maritime dimension. CNN reported on July 17 that Chinese authorities had pressed 100 civilian vessels into service. Civilians watching the exercise sang "We must liberate Taiwan". According to the July 19 London Sunday Times, these exercises involving military and civilian shipping continued for a couple of days. The message to Taiwan and the outside world was obvious: while China only has limited resources in its navy for amphibi-ous operations it controls one of the largest civilian shipping fleets in the world. The Military Balance 1997-98 lists China as having some 54 ships capable of carrying no more than 400 tanks and 7,000 troops. However, the government-owned China Ocean Shipping Company (COSCO) has ample merchant ships to support PLA power projection operations.

On July 20, President Jiang Zemin of China told Presi-dent Clinton "We are not committed to abandoning the use of force on the issue." Then on July 25, China announced that it would conduct another series of naval exercises off Taiwan, and the semi-official Chinese news service showed pictures of warships of the North Sea Fleet launching rockets. Additionally, the Xinhua News Agency printed comments made by Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan, who is reported to have bluntly warned that China would not "sit back and do nothing" if foreign forces aided Taiwan in independence. To highlight their point to Taiwan and the United States, China announced on July 26 that it could fire ballistics missles from its submarines. China's Xia- class SSBN is one of a kind, and its JL-1 submarine- launched ballistic missiles (SLBM) only have a 1,700 kilometre range and are not capable of hitting the United States unless deployed well acrossed the Pacific. The possibility that the Xia was deployed or could be de-ployed off the coast of the United States was a factor that would have to be considered by the United States before interveneing in a Taiwan-China conflict--a likelihood, albeit unlikely, that could not be taken lightly due to the nature and characteristics of nuclear submarines.

The South China Morning Post of July 30 reported that Hong Kong newspapers were claiming that Taiwan possessed nuclear weapons and medium range missiles capable of delivering a deadly strike on Hong Kong. The Hong Kong papers also claimed that Taiwan would use these nuclear weapons to deter an attack against Taiwan.

On August 2, the United States agreed to sell $550 million worth of modern weapons to Taiwan. Not to be intimidated, on August 2 China tested its new solid fuel, mobile DF-31 ICBM with a range of 8,000 kilometres that analysts believe was developed to threaten the United States. China also announced that the new longer range DF-4 was in development with an estimated range of 12,000 kilo-metres. The Washington Post on August 3, reported that China's SU-27 fighters had flown hundreds of sorties across the middle line of the Taiwan Strait in the last three weeks, a dramatic change of pace for the PLA air force that rarely crosses the Straits. Chinese warships also seized a Taiwan-ese cargo ship carrying supplies to the Taiwanese garrison on Matsu. China was essentially warning both Taiwan and the United States not so subtlely that it could reach out and touch its opponents. The DF-31 test was also a stark reminder to the Taiwanese of the M-9 and M-11 test firings conducted by the PLA around Taiwan in the Spring of 1996. The Taiwanese stock market, after weeks of jitters, plunged sharply but largely recovered through government intervention. On August 3, 1999, China warned that Taiwan faced a calamity, and on August 4 China warned the US Congress that China was willing to "pay any price", to prevent Taiwanese independence. The Xinhua News Agency quoted Chinese officials as saying "We will defend the state sovereignty and territorial integrity of our mother-land at any price." Reports that Chinese and Taiwanese aircraft and ships were crossing the usually respected middle line in the Strait were further grounds for concern, and continued to heighten tensions.

Taiwan went ahead with a major air show on August 5 demonstrating Taiwanese air power, but claimed that it had nothing to do with the crisis and attempted to calm China by toning down its "state-to-state" rhetoric. Further-more, the United States deployed two aircraft carrier battlegroups, the Kitty Hawk and Constel-lation into the South China Sea in an attempt to deter China from any military action and to defuse the growing crisis. Paul Beaver, editor of Jane's Defence Weekly, stated that it was, "a rerun of 1996."

According to the August 13 Washington Post, Chinese Embassy Officials and Army Officers were not impressed and told contacts in the United States that they were going to take some military action. One suggestion is that they would seize one of Taiwan's outlying isolated islands either close to the Chinese coast or in the disputed Spratly Island chain where China has shown a willingness to use force in the past. James Mulvenon, a China expert stated that, "they walk in with the same message:'We're going to do something. We can't tell you what, but we're going to do something." The Washington Post also stated that Hong Kong newspapers were reporting that China had deployed submarines into attack positions in the one-hundred mile wide Taiwan Strait.

On August 16, the Chinese government held a major military parade in Beijing and announced that the elite PLA marines were engaged in amphibious exercises in the South China Sea. The August 17 China Daily stated that "The Marine Corps is improving its landing skills in the South China Sea. The air forces and artillery troops arežstriving to sharpen their combat skills." Again the Chinese were mirroring their activities in the Spring of 1996. With this in mind, President Lee of Taiwan said on August 18 that his country should build a ballistic missile shield to defend it against the 100 ballistic missiles targeted on Taiwan from across the Strait. On a more spine-chilling note, the August 20 edition of the Global Times, an off-shoot of the Chinese Communist Party's People's Daily, reported that neutron bombs were, "more than enough to handle aircraft carriers." The South China Morning Post reported on August 25 that the Chinese Politburo and President were receiving daily briefings on Taiwan. It was also reported that China and Russia were negotiating the transfer of Russian fighters and submarines and the deal was to be concluded during the upcoming Central Asian summit.

On August 29, Taiwan's ruling party adopted President Lee's controversial "state-to-state" relations call, following an announcement that Taiwan would test the Patriot missile designed for ballistic missile defence. The Central Asian summit, held in late-August, saw China and Russia announce a strategic partnership. Russia, China and the Central Asian states also announced their intention to deal with internal dissent. Cash-strapped Russia announced on August 29, that it had concluded a deal with China for the sale of 60 modern SU-30MKK fighter planes (roughly equivalent in capability to a US F-15 fighter). The SU-30 fighter would be very useful in dealing with Taiwanese air power, a capability that China has lagged behind its rival. On September 1, as Taiwan held another air power demonstration, Chinese President Jiang Zemin again stated his intention to use force to prevent Taiwanese independence.

But China would not be outdone by Taiwan, and on September 1 the Hong Kong Standard reported that China had concluded a deal for two Russian Typhoon-class SSBN each with 20 SS-N-20 SLBMs having a range of 8,300 kilometres. If reports of China's purchase of the Typhoons are accurate and the Typhoons are operational, they would greatly enhance China's strategic deterrence capability, particularly in a showdown with the United States because China could then hit targets in the continental USA from home waters. The purchase of the Typhoons would certainly be a major leap forward for the PLA (N) and a good interim measure for a nation that was supposed to deploy its own new missile boat with similar ranged missiles in 2010.

Some analysts question why China is moving forward with such a major purchase when its own Type 094 SSBN is projected to be a little over a decade from being opera-tional. The question has also been raised on whether the Type 094 is a failure or if China needs to speed up its timeta-ble to deal with burning issues such as Taiwan and ballistic missile defence.

The last few days have been cause for further concern over the Taiwan issue. On September 4 and 6, The Hong Kong Standard reported that the PLA had re-routed civilian airlines in the region opposite Taiwan and moved civilians back from the coast prior to more military drills. China's main newspaper the People's Daily stated on September 8 "No matter how grim the situation is, no matter how tortuous the road is, the Chinese government and the Chinese people will surmount all difficulties and ultimately complete the great cause of re-unifying the motherland." Only time will tell what China's real intentions are with regard to Taiwan and when the million man swim will begin, if ever. Henry Kissenger, a long-time observer of Chinese affairs, wrote in a 7 September Washington Post editorial that, "Chinese warnings of a possible military response have taken on a severity reminis-cent of the Chinese intervention in the Korean War in 1950."

Russia

Last, but not least, the Russians have also engaged in gunboat diplomacy in the Pacific this year when the Pacific Fleet was deployed to protest NATO's air campaign in Kosovo. Russia sortied its Northern, Black Sea, and Pacific Fleets as a demonstration of Russian military power and a signal to NATO that it must tread carefully with regards to Russia's old ally Serbia in late March and early April. Naval exercises began on 29 March, 1999, according to the June 1999, Jane's Intelligence Review and included "battle ships" and nuclear and diesel powered submarines for a total of 11 ships, 75 aircraft and supporting ground forces. This Pacific exercise, when coupled with Russia's Northern Fleet exercises which included a ballistic missile launch from a Typhoon-class SSBN, ground exercises, and a threat to re-target Strategic Rocket Forces assets on NATO countries must be viewed as the most extensive use of naval forces by Russia since the end of the Cold War. So extraordinary were these operations that the United Kingdom is reported to have put a second SSBN to sea for deterrence purposes.

Closing Thoughts

As this brief survey of recent naval history and the on-going situation in the Northeast Pacific illustrate, maritime forces have demonstrated their "diplomatic" value in a number of situations recently.

Japan has used its maritime forces to defend its territorial integrity from North Korean intrusions. North Korean naval forces have been used for spying on Japan and for fisheries escort in the Yellow Sea with dire consequences. South Korea has also used its navy for fisheries enforcement and to safeguard its maritime sover-eignty against North Korea.

China has used its 1 Xia SSBN for the purpose of deterring the United States and threatening Taiwan. China has also threatened to use its SSNs, and SSKs to blockade Taiwan. It has also been shown that China can use its merchant fleet to help stage amphibious operations across the Taiwan Strait, and has used its naval forces to seize Taiwanese ships to support diplomatic initiatives aimed at preventing Taiwanese independence.

The United States has continued to use its naval forces for crisis intervention between the Koreas, and between China and Taiwan in what amounts to maritime peace enforcement operations.

Who said gunboat diplomacy was dead? From the series of naval events in the Northeast Pacific it would seem that the naval diplomacy is very much alive and well!

Joe Varner is an Ottawa-based defence analyst who has written widely on Asia-Pacific security issues. He is also a contributing editor to Mari-time Affairs.