Has China Awoken a Sleeping Giant in Japan?

In his dispatch from Tokyo, the Naval Diplomat reports that Japan has given up debating the nature of China’s rise.

So the Naval Diplomat found a seam in the teaching schedule and promptly winged off to Tokyo, there to lend supersecret counsel to the Japan Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Self-Defense Forces. Be afraid, China; be very, very afraid.

While here I have consorted with greatness. A journey down Tokyo Bay to visit the U.S.-Japanese fleet base at Yokosuka included a side trip aboard the battleship Mikasa, Togo’s flagship at Port Arthur, the Battle of the Yellow Sea, and Tsushima Strait. Strikingly, the museum ship’s organizers portray Togo as a peer not just of Lord Nelson, the usual comparison, but also of John Paul Jones of blessed memory, who proclaimed that he had not yet begun to fight during one single-ship engagement in the American Revolution. Generous, and diplomatic, of them to make room for Jones in such company. Also on the agenda was a trip to the JMSDF Staff College for meetings with the College faculty. There a bust of Akiyama Saneyuki presides over the educational enterprise. Excellent!

My flash takeaway from this East Asia swing is a visceral one. The famously circumspect Japanese have taken to speaking bluntly about the prospects for victory and defeat, submission and survival in the strategic competition with China. Across the Pacific, American policymakers and pundits still quarrel over the nature of the China challenge, arguing about how to reinforce the U.S. strategic position in Asia without offending Beijing’s delicate sensibilities. Japanese can argue about methods for coping China’s effort to rewrite the rules of the Asian order. Situated just across the East and Yellow seas from China, though, they no longer enjoy the luxury of remaining aloof or debating how many angels fit on the head of a pin. Competition with Big Brother is everyday reality for them.

And the stakes are high in this struggle. Here’s how I opened my remarks over at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Thursday (this was before the supersecret part):

A very old debate has been renewed in recent years: is the sea a commons open to the free use of all seafaring states, or is it territory subject to the sovereignty of coastal states? Is it to be freedom of the seas, as Dutch jurist Hugo Grotius insisted? Or is it to be closed seas where strong coastal states make the rules, as Grotius’ English archnemesis John Selden proposed?

Customary and treaty law of the sea sides with Grotius, whereas China has in effect become a partisan of Selden. Just as England claimed dominion over the approaches to the British Isles, China wants to make the rules governing the China seas. Whose view prevails will determine not just who controls waters, islands, and atolls, but also the nature of the system of maritime trade and commerce. What happens in Asia could set a precedent that ripples out across the globe. The outcome of this debate is a big deal.

Clausewitz depicts war as a trial of moral and physical forces waged through the medium of physical force. The struggle in the East China Sea is a contest waged through the medium of perceptions of political steadfastness and the balance of physical forces. Whoever key constituencies think would win in wartime stands the best chance of prevailing in peacetime controversies. For Japan and the U.S.-Japan alliance, then, the problem is not just preserving adequate material strength but telegraphing their resolve to use that strength should things turn truly grim, and drawing up strategies that convince observers of the alliance’s tactical and operational dexterity. This is about persuading as much as it is about constructing ships and aircraft.

The outcome of this competition is far from a foregone conclusion, in large part because of China’s diplomatic and military indiscipline. It has provoked. Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, the architect of Imperial Japan’s strike on Pearl Harbor, supposedly lamented awakening a “sleeping giant” while filling him with “a terrible resolve.” Three-quarters of a century hence, China may come to rue the day it woke a giant slumbering across the East China Sea — and, hopefully, that giant’s big friend across the Pacific Ocean.http://thediplomat.com/

Russia Loves Its Small Wars

Ukraine is on the brink of war. On Feb. 22, pro-European protesters toppled the government of Pres. Viktor Yanukovych, forcing the pro-Russian Yanukovych to flee to Rostov-on-Don. Parliament announced it would hold fresh elections in May, but Ukraine’s ethnic Russians and their allies could have other ideas.

Gunmen seized airports in the Crimea region, which is heavily Russian and where Moscow leases a naval base. Russian Pres. Vladimir Putin called for a return to “normalcy”—whatever that means—and the Kremlin proceeded with a major military exercise on Russia’s border with Ukraine.

Crimea is now more or less under military occupation, and it’s unclear what happens next. But Russia’s warlike history along its vast periphery is not in doubt. Since the Soviet Union’s break-up in the early 1990s, Moscow has fought a chain of short, nasty, little wars in border areas that many Russians view as their own, even if some do happen to lie outside Russia’s boundary.

A Georgian sniper during Georgian-Ossetian fighting. Wikipedia photo

South Ossetia, 1991

Georgia split from Russia following the Soviet collapse—and the new country’s Ossetian ethnic minority wasn’t exactly thrilled. Long allied with the Russians, the Ossetians wanted to govern themselves separately from the Georgians. But the new regime in Tbilisi refused. Both sides armed themselves.

Fighting between Georgian and Ossetian militias was the worst in the disputed city of Tskhinvali, but both armies also ethnically cleansed surrounding villages. Around a thousand people died in fighting that peaked in the spring of 1991 and ended with a Russian-brokered peace deal in June 1992.

The Georgians accused the Russians of secretly sending troops to aid the Ossetians. Regardless, Moscow clearly favored the Ossetians and, in the aftermath of the conflict, deployed “peacekeepers” to South Ossetia to help enforce the armistice.

Pro-Russian Transnistrian motorized infantry in 2005. Wikipedia photo

Transnistria, 1992

Ethnic Russians and Ukrainians in the Transnistria region of Moldova opposed Moldovan rule and sought their own independence from the newly independent former Soviet state. It was the early 1990s and the former Soviet Union was becoming a confusing and dangerous place.

Starting in March 1992 Transnistrian troops—trained by the Russian army and reportedly reinforced by individual Russian soldiers—battled Moldovan forces backed by Romania. The fighting lasted until July and claimed more than 600 lives. As in South Ossetia, Russia brokered a ceasefire that allowed it to deploy peacekeeping troops. Today the peacekeepers function as a sort of de facto occupation force.

An Abkhazian air force helicopter. Wikipedia photo

Abkhazia, 1992

A territory along Georgia’s western border, Abkhazia broke away from Georgia in August 1992. The ensuing conflict lasted more than a year. The U.N. estimates 23,000 people died, many of them ethnic Georgians killed during cleansing campaigns by Abkhazia secessionists.

Russia was neutral at first and sold arms to both sides. As the war continued, Russian popular opinion moved toward the separatists. Moscow ultimately backed Abkhazia and, at the battle of Sukhumi, Russian MiG-29s dropped thermobaric bombs on Georgian civilians. The bombings took place after Moscow negotiated a ceasefire that Abkhazia broke.

Georgia lost control of Abkhazia and today the territory claims to be an independent state—although most of the world does not recognize it. In 1998, Georgia fomented an insurgency in the region that lasted just six days. Per custom, Russia keeps 3,500 soldiers in the region.

Chechen boy in 1995. Wikimedia photo

Chechnya, 1994 & 1999

Chechnya is to the north of Georgia in the North Caucasus region, just along Russia’s southern border. Russians have fought Chechens since the late 18th century. When the Soviet Union collapsed, Chechnya declared its independence. Russia attempted to retake the region in 1994, sparking the first Chechen war.

Thousands of Russians and Chechens died, including as many as 100,000 Chechen civilians. The Russian army used overwhelming air and land force, but the Chechens countered with effective guerrilla and terror tactics. Russian public opinion turned against the war and Moscow negotiated peace in 1996. Chechnya remains independent.

Russia returned in 1999, justifying its actions as a response to terrorist attacks on Russian soil by Chechen militants. The war lasted less than a year and leveled Grozny, Chechnya’s capital. In 2000, Russia installed a puppet government.

The war turned into a protracted insurgency, which officially ended in 2009. But the insurgency has also metastasized throughout the region, and the North Caucasus is still a very dangerous place.

Georgian troops attack South Ossetian positions in 2008. Wikimedia photo

Georgia, 2008

In the summer of 2008 the conflict between Georgia and Russia over the disputed regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia led to another war. During the evening of Aug. 7, Georgia attempted to retake portions of South Ossetia that it had lost in 1991. Some of the peacekeepers Russia left behind to guard the region died in the Georgian military campaign—and Russia came down hard in retaliation.

The war lasted five days. The Russian military swept through South Ossetia into Georgian-controlled territory, slicing the country in two and seizing the city of Gori, which cut off Georgia’s capital of Tbilisi from the coast. On Aug. 9, Russia opened a second front in Abkhazia and pushed the Georgians out of the region.

On Aug. 14, the international community negotiated peace between the two countries. But Georgia lost territory and the Russians were slow to withdraw from the buffer regions and captured zones outside of South Ossetia. Today, the South Ossetia-Georgia border is a no-man’s land.

Russia loves its small wars and is very, very good at them. With the Ukraine in turmoil, Moscow has a chance to seize Crimea, an area populated with pro-Moscow ethnic Russians and the historic home of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. It is an area in which Russia is heavily invested.War is Boring