Posted on 10/06/2006 5:52:10 AM PDT by sukhoi-30mki
US, China, India flex muscle over energy-critical sea lanes
The United States, China and India are moving to assert control over the sea lanes through which they receive critical energy supplies amid fears in Beijing of a US blockade of the Malacca Strait in the event of a crisis over Taiwan, experts said here.
The United States at present has vast control over the major so-called "choke points" on the world's sea lanes, said experts at a recent forum in Washington.
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Almost all of China's energy imports are obtained through sea and it is worried the United States could hold its oil supply hostage.
Beijing is also concerned over its gradually weakening position in the Indian Ocean as New Delhi develops new generations of weapons systems with US support.
Moreover, China's naval modernization has focused largely on preparing for possible armed conflict over Taiwan than defending its very long sea lanes, experts said.
While it may be difficult for the US navy to interrupt China's sea lanes, "these appear vulnerable" in the eyes of the Chinese military, said Bernard Cole of the US National War College.
He said China's energy routes were most vulnerable not on the high seas, but at transit points through several narrow straits.
They include Hormuz at the mouth of the Persian Gulf, the 9-Degree Channel in the Northern Indian ocean, Malacca and Luzon straits in Southeast Asia, and the Taiwan Strait, a possible battleground between China and the United States.
"The most likely tactic for the United States to employ would be a blockade of Chinese oil port terminals, or of these choke points," Cole said.
But should the United States attempt to interrupt the sea lanes, "it would almost certainly mean directly attacking China, directly attacking other nations, interfering with the peacetime passage of third-country tankers at sea, or all of the above," he warned.
Chinese strategists have expressed fear in recent reports that in the event of a crisis between Washington and Beijing over Taiwan, the United States could blockade the Malacca Strait and hold 80 percent of Chinese energy imports hostage.
As evidence of such a scenario, they pointed to Washington's so called regional maritime security initiative in the Malacca Strait as a first step by the US military to "garrison the Strait" under the guise of "counter-terrorist measures."
Beijing regards Taiwan as a renegade province awaiting reunification but any attack on the island could see a response from the United States, which is bound by law to help defend Taipei.
"A focus of Chinese concern has been on the security -- or, more properly, the insecurity -- of the sea lines of communication upon which almost all of China's energy imports travel," said Daniel Blumenthal, a former senior Pentagon official eyeing China's growing military might.
China's strategists, he said, were aware Beijing did not exercise naval superiority through the seas linking its ports to the major oil producers in the Middle East.
They also know that China was dependent upon the United States and other major powers on ensuring the safe flow of its energy imports, he said.
"If China truly does not trust the US and its allies to provide for the security of the SLOCs (sea lines of communication) and is too suspicious to join in common efforts over the long term, it must develop the military capabilities to challenge them," Blumenthal said.
Some Western experts believe China is attempting to develop naval capabilities that would allow it to provide security for its oil shipments and project power into the Indian and Pacific oceans.
The Pentagon has identified a so-called Chinese "string of pearls" strategy in which a network of bases along sea lanes is being set up.
While pursuing this, China is suspicious the United States would use India, with its powerful navy, as a potential balancing force against it.
The two democratic allies are already carrying out joint anti-terror patrols along the Malacca Strait, straddling Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore.
"The strategic consequences of India’s growing naval power are clear. Every additional barrel of oil that China imports leaves Beijing more vulnerable to a disruption of the sea lanes," said Christopher Griffin of the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington based think tank.
"If Delhi's naval modernization effort turns the Indian Ocean into India's ocean, the risk for Beijing may grow unacceptable," he said.
http://www.indianexpress.com/res/web/pIe/print.php?content_id=71360
There’s a new game in Asia
India, Indian Ocean and China’s ‘string of pearls’
C. Raja Mohan
As he heads out to Singapore this week to participate in the so-called “Shangri La Dialogue” on Asian security, Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee carries a double burden. On the one hand, Asian expectations from India to contribute to regional security have dramatically increased after the Indian Navy’s performance in the wake of the tsunami disaster. On the other hand, the ingrained tentativeness of Delhi’s defence establishment casts a shadow over India’s political will to play a role in the region. When he surveys the rapidly changing Asian strategic environment and explains India’s own attitude to the development of new security structures in the Indian Ocean, Mukherjee will have an attentive audience. Defence ministers and senior officials from countries in the region as well as the US will be in the audience.
The annual Shangri La Dialogue in Singapore, sponsored by the International Institute of Strategic Studies in London, has emerged as one of the important vehicles for an international discussion of the evolving Asian security dynamics. This year there is a special focus on India’s role in regional security, besides discussion on changing American military strategy towards the region, the role of Asian armed forces in counter-terrorism, and enhancing regional maritime security. Underlying this discussion will be the broader theme of the rapid rise of China as a military power and its implications for stability in Asia-Pacific and the Indian Ocean.
Following the tsunami, India surprised the region and the world with its rapid naval and diplomatic response. It is not often that India scores over China on the diplomatic front. But that exactly is what India did in the wake of the Boxing Day disaster in southern Asia.
India quickly formed a four-nation relief coalition with the US, Japan and Australia and sent its ships and troops to assist the Maldives, Sri Lanka and Indonesia. The Chinese Navy stayed home. The slow response of the Chinese must not be seen as a precedent. India may have scored over China in tsunami diplomacy, but it is China that is making waves in the Indian Ocean.
While the Indian defence establishment remains obsessed with individual weapons systems and political controversies over weapons procurement, China has unveiled an impressive strategy of military modernisation. Beijing has placed special emphasis on expanding naval power, even as India’s defence vision remains land-locked. China’s naval presence is increasingly assertive in the South and East China seas and the Indian Ocean.
The rapid growth of China’s interests abroad, particularly energy needs, has broadened Beijing’s military’s missions. China’s navy and air force have begun to project power in the South China Sea, where several islands are under dispute and vital oil supplies pass through, and in the East China Sea, where China and Japan are locked in a fight over sea-bed mineral rights and several contested islands. With China-Taiwan tensions on the rise, preventing Taipei from declaring independence has become a national objective and Chinese naval power in the region has acquired a new edge.
As part of its effort to secure its energy interests, China is elevating its military profile from the Persian Gulf to the South China seas. Chinese assistance to the construction of a high profile port in Gwadar on Pakistan’s Makran coast, overlooking the world’s energy supplies from the Persian Gulf, has become emblematic of the new Chinese maritime strategy. According to a report prepared for the Pentagon by Booz Allen Hamilton, the consulting firm, China has developed a “string of pearls” strategy, seeking military-related agreements with Bangladesh, Cambodia and Thailand in addition to those with Burma and Pakistan. Reports in the South Asian media also point to growing Chinese naval interests in Sri Lanka and the Maldives.
At the same time, Beijing has stepped up political and diplomatic efforts to convince its neighbours that China’s rise is not threatening to the region. It has unveiled a focused military diplomacy to reach out to neighbours and major powers. Last September, China invited military officers from 16 neighbouring countries to observe an army exercise “Iron Fist 2004”. In 2004 alone, there were a hundred high-level defence exchanges, besides naval exercises with Britain, France and Australia, a counter-terrorism exercise with Pakistan and a mountaineering exercise with India. Last year Beijing conducted 19 rounds of strategic dialogue with 13 countries including the US, Russia, France, Britain, Germany and Canada. It sends hundreds of military officers to foreign institutions and trains nearly a 1000 foreign offers in its own.
As a new Chinese naval diplomacy unfolds in the region, India has not been sitting on its hands. Much like Beijing, New Delhi has increased its military engagement in the region. India now conducts naval and military exercises with great powers, including the US, Japan, and China, as well as neighbours in Asia. It has signed a defence agreement with Singapore and has cooperative arrangements with many nations stretching from Seychelles to Vietnam. It has participated in mechanisms to protect maritime traffic passing through the strategic Malacca Straits. More recently, India has signed agreements with Indonesia and Thailand to jointly patrol the Andaman seas to prevent piracy, arms trafficking and counter maritime terrorism.
While India has certainly woken up to greater naval and military activism in the region, its effort lacks coherence. Even after signing a defence agreement, India continues to reject the many opportunities for increased cooperation with Singapore. The parochial politics of Tamil Nadu have prevented the implementation of India’s defence agreement with Sri Lanka.
The great powers as well as the regional actors recognise India’s potential contribution to a stable balance of power in Asia. No one is pressing India to choose between the US and China.
Pranab Mukherjee’s interlocutors in Singapore would want to know whether India has any big ideas about peace and stability in Asia amid unprecedented geopolitical fluidity. They want to be persuaded by Mukherjee that India has really shed its old isolationist impulses and is ready for a multilateral security framework in the Indian Ocean region.
"While it may be difficult for the US navy to interrupt China's sea lanes"
Excuse me? I suspect Chinese maritime activity would cease abruptly, as would their blue water naval activity. A handful of subs will see to this. Their "Aegis" boats will make wonderful ARM targets. They will control nothing more than coastal waters and airspace after a few days. And we can take that away too.
I don't suppose it should come as any surprise that both the US and China have been vigorously preparing for a naval war since the late 1970s. For further information, I suggest the world's premier naval magazine, 'Proceedings of the US Naval Institute'. Which has been featuring this buildup in almost every issue for the last ten years.
But only because of George W. Bush has an entirely new aspect of this future conflict come to light: India.
Having opened India far more than Nixon did China, not only has the Indian navy entered the situation as a potential player--their own buildup forced by the Chinese buildup--but now the possibility of a land battle might even enter into the scenario.
This possibility is based on the odd circumstance that both China and India have population growth far beyond their ability to support, and not just general growth, but imbalanced population growth. Because in both nations males are preferred to females, already as many as 30 Million males are "in excess".
Not only are there no jobs available for these millions of men, but no prospect of marriage. They represent an almost inherently destructive force. Their very existence may force what could be called a "demographic war", whose real purpose is to kill off these "extra males."
Picture World War I-style trench warfare, consisting almost entirely of small arms and artillery, in some desolate no-man's land between the two nations. Their professional armies kept in reserve, to prevent any breakthroughs, with conscripts battling over inches of desert.
It is difficult to imagine such slaughter, and hard to call it anything other than a "culling" of peasants, but it has become a real possibility and concern for the US, because it could happen *before* our naval war over Taiwan, or concurrent with it.
Err,India doesn't have conscription & China has a limited form of conscription,primarily into it's reserve forces.Unless both countries triple their defense outlays,a draft would be meaningless.Your scenario makes sense only in an arcade game.They fought a major war in 1962 over India's eastern borders & have come close to war on atleast 2 other occassions in 1971 & 1987.
Both nations are trying to balance out their sex-ratios but it will take over a generation to do that.Abortion of girl children before birth in India is a criminal act.The type of conscription you are talking of will never happen in India which is a democracy or China,where it can throw the country into chaos.
Could you imagine if we sunk one of chinas tankers? We would be sued to kingdom come from the greenies for polluting the ocean.
FYI
"Picture World War I-style trench warfare, consisting almost entirely of small arms and artillery, in some desolate no-man's land between the two nations. Their professional armies kept in reserve, to prevent any breakthroughs, with conscripts battling over inches of desert."
There's a scale model of such a site in the photo at the link below. It's on the disputed China/India border. There was an entire thread about it here on FR but I can't remember what to search for in the title to find it.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1700236/posts?page=13#13
Unlike India, China is about 10-15 years from developing a credible blue-water Navy, and it's due to a lack of sea-going experience in their fleet. We've watched their surface operations - they can barely navigate the China Sea, and their submarines are even worse.
A hardware build-up is one thing. Developing and training a new generation of sailors, NCOs and officers who are proficient at seamanship as well as weaponry takes a long time.
It is vitally important that the U.S. maintain good relations and develop healthy, ongoing trade and cultural exchange with both China and India.
It is of GREATER IMPORTANCE that the U.S. maintain its economic, political, and military power advantage.
"Beijing is...concerned over its...weakening position in the Indian Ocean as New Delhi develops new generations of weapons systems with US support."And with good reason. India will surpass China in population within the near future. India is strategically located, from the Chinese point of view, to interfere with important resources, notably oil, and both India and the U.S. could certainly, if unwillingly, interfere with China's ascendancy. Furthermore, India and the U.S. are multiethnic republics with much in common, both natural representatives of the multiethnic, non-Chinese people of the world.
To raise an unpleasant subject, the people of both India and the U.S. have good reason to be wary of Chinese racial and cultural homogeneity and of Chinese racism.
Two possible, if uncomfortable, allies of China against an Indo-American alliance could be Islam and Europe.
No matter what you might say about Islam, it's not racist, and, though it's culturally homogeneous and quite different from Chinese culture, stranger accomodations have been made.
Europe, of course, is racially and culturally quite different from China, and Russia especially has much to fear from Chinese expansion.
However, considering Russia's declining population and cultural confusion, a power imbalance in China's favor seems inevitable, and Russians could find themselves as a Chinese protectorate, much reduced geographically in size--and thankful for what they have left.
As for the rest of Europe, its decadence and devotion to Marxism make it ripe for Chinese plucking, especially as Russia falls to the Chinese and Europe falls to Islam.
Europe is in the death throes of decadence, and if anybody understands the eternal cycles of ascendancy and decadence it's the Chinese. That's what this is all about, f'cryin' out loud!
What you suggest would be for both China and India to expand their professional armies. I am not suggesting this.
Instead, both nations would return to the WWII-and-before method of rounding up men, putting a cheap uniform on them, arming them with a rifle or nothing at all, and sending them to the front.
If you survive long enough, you get a rifle from a dead comrade or an enemy. If you last a few days, you get issued a pound of dry rice to cook and eat anyway you can. If you prove to be a survivor and a killer, the best you can hope for is to be selected to belong to the regular army, where you no longer have to fight.
The artillery are responsible for 90% of the casualties, and they are just primitive tubes firing massive barrages.
The only medical support is that given by yourself or your comrades.
This is horror itself.
The professional armies of both nations are still well-trained, well-fed, and are kept as unused reserves. They stay in the rear area, unless a battlefield imbalance occurs, and they need to drive back a Corps of enemy who have advanced too far. With their superior weaponry, they can do this in short order, with little risk to themselves.
The object of the war is not to win or lose.
The object of the war is for both sides to *attrit* excess males. The "winner", if there is one, gains no territory; they just lose the most men.
It is culling.
Well the scenario you describe would not happen at all.
The border region between India and China is not suitable for 'people's war' concept from Mao. The difficulties of fighting in the Himalayas would make sure that only a well equipped professional army can sustain a battle for more than a few days..
At least in India people would not be happy to send their sons to die in a meaningless stalemate..
After the WWII the world has changed a lot..You are not taking that into account..
There is too much interdependency in China and the US at present that the stakeholders of status quo would not let the war materialize....China holds more than 800 billion dollars in US debt...US needs China to keep buying the debt otherwise there would be economic collapse in US..They are interlocked in a marriage of convinience.
All these 'war pundits' especially from Indian news papers have no idea how the real world works...They write these hypothetical assessments and go nuts over it...The whole socio-economic aspect of the conflict is completely unaccounted for....
Sorry to sound rude,but all I have to say is,DREAM ON.....First of all you make no point to say,who makes such a decision??? Youcould write a mediocre wargame based on this.Read up on how political decisions are made in a country like India or even in China,where the state cannot stretch the people's backs beyond a point.
The last time this sort of "culling" took place was in Iran when Khomenei sent in his human waves in the 80s against Iraq.If they were more unsuccessful than they actually were,Khomenei would have been strung up & we wouldn't be looking at Iran the way it is today.
A Zodiac could do it. Like the one that attacked the Cole. Keeping the sea routes open is the challenge, not closing them.
You neglect a simple problem. If either side vies for a mass attack, say on the order of 20 Million men, how can you stop it?
Do you give an order to some Captain to kill 100,000 men, as his quota? Theoretically, China alone could eventually field an army of 300 Million. Ill equipped and poorly fed, but able to cause severe hurt through just sheer numbers.
Short of nuclear weapons, how can you fight that, other than fielding an immense army yourself? And nuclear weapons work both ways. Would you have your major cities and all their civilians annihilated, or pay the horrific price of a conventional war?
Originally, this arose as a thought problem for the US army, if it was compelled to fight in a land war against China.
In the Korean War, the US was already so hopelessly outnumbered that the Chinese could have easily pushed them off the peninsula. The only thing that "saved" the US army was that the Chinese were more-than-decimated by an outbreak of hemorrhagic smallpox.
So a demographic war between China and India is far from speculation. As I said, it is a horrific scenario, but one that in the last few years has evolved into being a real possibility.
...good post, sukhoi-30mki! It's very generous and wise for India to watch China's diplomatic and military movements regarding ocean routes there. Many independent, friendly nations depend on those routes being free of the risks posed by communist/fascist desires for expansionism.
This isn't the 1950s, though. With the weapons and tactics we have today, light intensity methods can be used to eliminate many of hundreds of thousands of enemy troops and scatter them very quickly.
BTW, India now has the ability to put problems far worse than a smallpox epidemic on China within one day. Indian military forces could knock out essentially all Chinese operational support (civilian and military infrastructure and supplies). For now, we fight very small battles (mostly metaphorical--legal, informational and the like) with very few casualties. Things would change very quickly in our (or India's) favor in a more physical conflict with more direct objectives.
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