Aimed at China?

Anastasia Kapetas 22-Aug-2007

Over the next few years Guam will metamorphose from a sleepy sun-soaked supply base to a pumped up forward operating zone of American power projection. But many in the US military are reluctant to characterise this as an arms build-up.

“Arms build-up? I wouldn’t use that language, ” said Air Force Maj. David Griesmer from Pacific command in Aviation Week.

Richard Halloran, former New York Times correspondent and now adjunct professor at Asia Pacific Center for Security Studies in Hawaii, agrees that if there is any nation building up it is China.

“The Chinese are really building up in two areas. They are focused primarily on submarines … and long range fighters over long range bombers. They are building a thick defence that will go out from the Chinese shore about 1,800 miles. Which if you draw a line down the map runs you right smack through the middle of Guam.

“A senior air force officer in Japan told me recently that ‘[the US] has got to pay more attention to what the Chinese are doing – they are building all kinds of systems, not just the nuclear missiles, but all kinds of short range missiles, cruise missiles, air to air missiles, surface to air missiles. ’”

But Halloran says that while the Chinese military is alarming Washington, strategic policy in the Pacific as a whole has still yet to capture the sustained attention of a Middle East obsessed Administration. Even senior US military officials working on the most important alliance issues in Japan often can’t get Washington’s ear.

There doesn’t seem to be a comprehensive strategic vision for the Asia Pacific or what America should be doing there as a whole, according to Halloran. Washington’s attention is defined by managing China’s rise – beneath that there is either confusion or disinterest.

For Chalmers Johnson, author of Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic and professor emeritus of the University of California, Guam has received its capital injection because the US is running out of basing options in the region.

Johnson says “The High Command everywhere, but also in the Pacific, has begun to realise that the most widespread political sentiment today is loathing of the US. That’s bad news for the American base structure – the 737 American military bases in other people’s countries. They now understand that they could get thrown out of a lot of places. ” Take the downsizing of US military bases on Okinawa. Both Halloran and Johnson agree that relieving the friction between Marines and locals is very much part of the story.

The fact that Japan is picking up 60 per cent of the relocation bill speaks for itself, according to Johnson, “This is one of the most amazing achievements of American imperialism is to have gotten the Japanese government to move American troops and their families to Guam and to build houses for them. It is an imperialist coup of breathtaking proportions.

“Both sides detest each other – you could never use any other word. The Okinawans’ hatred is particularly fuelled by the ongoing scandal of sexually violent crimes against Okinawan women –two charges per month lead to court martial. This is significant in a culture like Japan where women would not normally come forward, ” says Johnson.

“Recasting the US military presence in Japan involved the US using every bit of leverage they had to get the Japanese to pay for the relocation to Guam … prima facie evidence that the Japanese would do almost anything to get rid of them. “It is still very controversial in Japan – the public doesn’t like paying for it, and the change in parties may reverberate through this.

“In fact the sort of thing that has just happened in Japan is the sort of thing that is scaring them to death: the loss of the recent upper house election by [Prime Minister] Shinzo Abe, and the replacement of the LDP with a Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) majority. And Ichiro Ozawa, the leader of the DPJ, stated that he does not support war in Afghanistan, that he will not renew the joint agreement in which Japan supplies fuel and ammunition for ships patrolling in the Indian Ocean, that this is a private war started by George W. Bush and none of Japan’s business, is quite alarming to the American world view.

“If I was the Americans, I would not start counting my money just yet. ”

As a corollary, argues Johnson, Guam is the Pentagon’s answer to lessen their dependency on the vicissitudes of Japanese politics.

And in any case, the Guam project represents the end of an era.

“Gone are the days when America is going to build a big base in somebody else’s country, run up an American flag over it - that ain’t gonna happen, ” says Halloran.

He argues that informal basing rights, like the US has with Singapore, are the way of the future. “There’s no defence treaty with Singapore, there’s various memoranda, that sort of thing, but one of the things that the Navy found out when we lost Subic Bay was that you could take an aircraft carrier into Singapore and get the mechanics to fix it in a technically first rate fashion, but also probably cheaper. If you take all the costs of maintaining a base and all of the costs of its infrastructure with it - the Americans don’t do that anymore. They would rather buy services and maintain a very low profile.

Johnson agrees that the trend is to cut down on the multi billion dollar mega-bases that make up America’s global garrison. Such as Kadena Air Base in Okinawa, Ramstein Airbase in Germany, Aviano Air Base in Italy. But he is sceptical of the so-called outsourced “lily pad” theory. All candidates for lily pad bases are either ambivalent about the US or lack the capacity, even Australia. Meanwhile the American footprint remains the same.

“It turns out that any Pentagon plans for Australia get vetoed by the National Security Agency and the CIA because what they want out of Australia more than military bases is to continue with espionage sig int [signal intelligence] that our global communications network just depends on. ”

While Guam may offer flexibility and a minimum of political blowback, the other issue is that Guam seems to present a wonderfully low collateral target to a potential aggressor, something that the Chamoru nation on Guam are understandably concerned about.

“I would assume that within the Chinese general staff, thinking of long range contingencies you are going to have some plotting and missile sighting on Guam, just as you do on Okinawa, ” says Johnson.

“That is probably a sound judgement on the part of the Chamoru people, ” agrees Halloran. Guam is well in range of Chinese intermediate ballistic missiles.

“We in Hawaii pay very careful attention to who has missiles in Asia. I live 18 miles from Pearl Harbour - everyone here is very aware of the idea of surprise attack.

“And Guam is the same. The obvious next question is can you do anything to protect those people? In a physical sense, no, probably not. In a military sense yes, and that’s where deterrence comes in. ”

Deterrence is not just a matter of comparing hardware – it has a diplomatic component too.

“What many US military commanders do is go to China, out of the public eye [and without] beating their chests, to warn the Chinese not to test us. I know from first hand that this is very high up on the list of worries from senior military people - that the Chinese are going to miscalculate. ”

Halloran says there have been some hopeful developments in US-China military diplomacy. A PACOM/PLAN hotline is due to go into operation some time this year. One of the most senior officials to pass through China recently was Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Marine General. Pace announced that the US had conducted training with some Chinese teams and that there also may be more joint operations in September.

For Guam this is good news, as the classic tools of deterrence are its only real defence.