Real War (29 page)

Sooner than we would wish or might expect, it may be necessary for European nations to be ready and willing to use military force, in cooperation with the United States, in defense of the West's vital and legitimate interests in the Middle East or Persian Gulf. If so challenged, we have no choice but to do what is necessary to prevent our oil lifeline from being severed.

A Western military presence in the Middle East or Persian Gulf area need not and probably should not be a NATO presence, nor should it be under a NATO command. But there will probably be a need in the future to devise ways in which a few cooperating states could increase the readiness of their forces, after alliance consultation, without requiring the cooperation or even the assent of all.

The strategic position of the entire Western alliance hinges today, and will for years to come, on the reliability of access by Western Europe, North America, and Japan to crude oil from the Persian Gulf; on the continued credibility of United States protection and support for the key states in the area; on limiting Soviet influence in the region; and on the avoidance of war if at all possible. But these interests are not self-executing
even though they are, to some extent, self-evident. It is necessary to be prepared, and to be seen to be prepared, to join together to defend them.

The United States should also have the ability to intervene unilaterally in this vital area of the world if the need arises. Strategically located bases to counter the Soviet bases in the area and a rapid deployment force would show the Soviets we are serious about countering a threat by them to our oil lifeline.

The rapid deployment idea is useful for other volatile and sensitive parts of the world as well. Senator John Stennis of the Senate Armed Services Committee has pointed out why in a colorful way. “We have more problems than just strategic threats,” Stennis said, so “we've got to be prepared for more uncertainties” and have forces “that can go into the bayous” of the Third World. Rapid deployment forces, if used intelligently, would provide the United States with the necessary flexibility to respond to the needs of allies around the world.

It should be noted, however, that the capability of a rapid deployment force would depend on bases and prepositioned equipment and supplies on land or at sea. Airlift could not transport the amount of equipment needed. Above all, rapid deployment force would depend on bases and prepositioned we will lose at present levels of the naval budget.

The Japanese are in a position that is strategically quite similar to Europe's. The threats that alarm the Japanese are essentially from the Soviet Union: nuclear coercion, interruption of sea-lanes between Japan and the Persian Gulf, and harassment or attack from the air. In response to these threats the Japanese can choose from three options. They could rearm, both conventionally and with nuclear weapons. They could seek an accommodation with the Soviet Union, offering to trade their technical know-how for nonaggression. Or they could continue to rely on the United States. For a few more years at least they will pursue the last course. At the same time, they can be expected to modestly increase their defense expenditures
and maintain communication with the Soviet Union because our questionable stability as an ally has forced them to keep their options open.

In June 1979 during the seven-nation summit meeting in Tokyo, Japan was shocked by the arrival off Tokyo Bay of the
Minsk,
the U.S.S.R.'s new aircraft carrier scheduled for permanent Pacific stationing. This provocative gesture stole banner headlines throughout Japan from the first international summit held in Tokyo since World War II, an event that symbolized for the Japanese their readmission to the circle of global powers. Yet the presence of the
Minsk
underscored the delicacy of Japan's position. Former Prime Minister Eisaku Sato told me in 1970 that Japan was engaged in “a completely new experiment in world history,” by which he meant his country was bent on taking her place as a major world power without significant military strength.

Japan allocates has allocated less than 1 percent of its GNP for defense as compared with 5 percent for the United States and at least 11 to 13 percent for the U.S.S.R.—a smaller percentage than any major nation on earth except Mexico. This free ride on defense helped spur its meteoric economic rise. Economists have estimated that if Japan had spent 6 percent of its GNP on defense over the past couple of decades, its GNP would be some 30 percent lower than its current $1 trillion—which will soon be the second highest in the world, as Japan overtakes the Soviet Union.

That same free ride has also made Japan very vulnerable militarily. Its 155,000-man army is one-fourth the size of North Korea's, its 44,000-man air force is inadequately protected, and its 42,000-man navy is vulnerable to air attack and incapable of defending the sea-lanes on which Japan depends.

Lee Kwan Yew, Singapore's Prime Minister, put his finger on the Japanese dilemma when he told me in 1965, “The Japanese are a great people. They cannot and should not be satisfied with a world role which limits them to making better transistor radios and sewing machines, and teaching other Asians how to grow rice.”

The Japanese government, however, currently defines its role as forging a wide consensus among key political actors, rather than leading them toward a clear objective. At present
there is general agreement that Japan's security is slipping, but while the Japanese have made encouraging progress in strengthening their military forces, they have not yet made the very difficult but necessary decision to exceed the self-imposed 1 percent limitation on military spending. Unless there is some jolt to the international system—such as a second Korean conflict or a Sino-Soviet war—Japan's force improvements will probably be in limited areas rather than across the board.

Japan needs more defense, and it can afford it. The present constraints on defense spending are political and psychological, not economic. It may be unrealistic to expect a Japanese government in the immediate future to break through the traditional 1 percent of GNP barrier on defense expenditures. But even within that limit expenditures can and should be raised, and Japan's leaders will have to work at preparing their people for a greater military effort. Meanwhile, Japan should compensate for its virtually free ride on defense by shouldering a greater share of the free world's economic burden—in foreign aid, for example.

The cornerstone of Japan's defense, however, will continue to be its alliance with the United States. U.S.–Japanese military cooperation needs to be strengthened; this is in the interests of both countries. A close partnership between the strongest military and economic power in the free world and the strongest economic power in Asia could provide the basis for American political and military flexibility in the region and act as a restraint on Soviet adventuring.

By means of more intimate naval cooperation, the U.S. and Japanese fleets could greatly improve their coverage of the sea lines of communication south of Japan toward the Persian Gulf area. If such cooperation were matched by similar NATO cooperation in the Mediterranean, it would be feasible to deploy a U.S. Fifth Fleet in the Indian Ocean. This could be done without involving the Japanese in international political problems for which they may be unprepared, and without lessening the essential naval presence in East Asia.

Even assuming that Japanese air-defense, sea-lane protection, and early-warning needs are met, there remains the nuclear threat from Russia. Nearly half of Russia's new SS-20 missiles are based in the Soviet Far East and cover Japan; the
operational radius of the Backfire bombers based east of the Urals easily includes Japan. Although the problem in Northeast Asia is fundamentally the same as in Western Europe—a rapidly rising Soviet nuclear force buildup targeted on U.S. allies—the solution for Japan cannot be the same as for NATO, because Japan cannot yet accept the basing of theater nuclear forces on its soil. The United States could provide longer-range theater coverage of Northeast Asia by submarine-based and land-based cruise missiles deployed from bases on our own soil. One of the major deficiencies of SALT II is that the protocol would limit the range of such missiles to 600 kilometers. The United States will have to deploy long-range land-based and sea-based missiles in the Western Pacific as part of a modernized theater nuclear force.

The defense of Korea is also indispensable to the security of Japan. I vividly recall a conversation I had with Whittaker Chambers when North Korea invaded South Korea. He strongly supported the U.S.–U.N. action. He said, “What we must realize is that for the communists the war is not about Korea but about Japan.” A Korea overrun by the communists would be like a dagger pointed at the heart of Japan. In view of present world developments the United States should strengthen rather than weaken its own forces in South Korea. It also should avoid the mistake we made in Iran of undermining a friendly government because it does not make progress toward American-style democracy as fast as we would like.

Finally, for East Asia as for Western Europe, it is absolutely essential that the United States clarify its strategic nuclear doctrine in ways that bolster the nuclear umbrella rather than collapse it. This strategic initiative would serve our own direct national interest, as well as the interest of our friends and allies—and at absolutely no cost to us.

If we fail to renovate and strengthen our alliance with the Japanese, we will force them either to go it alone or to seek an accommodation with the Soviets. The Japanese do not want to turn to the Soviet Union. Japan is part of the free world. The United States is an enormously larger customer for her products than is the Soviet Union. And while the United States returned Okinawa to Japan in 1970, the Soviet Union adamantly refuses even to discuss the return of Japan's northern islands, which it seized after World War II, and is even defiantly increasing
its military presence on them. But above all, Japan does not want to be on the losing side again. If the Japanese lose confidence in the credibility of the American deterrent, they will be sorely tempted to make the best deal they can with the Soviets. The geopolitical impact of such a development would be catastrophic for the West.

The outcome is a question of our policy, not of Soviet policy. We possess the ability to consolidate the West's position in Asia. We must use that ability to the hilt to protect both our own interests and the interests of our friends and allies in Asia.

The event that dramatically symbolized the fact that the United States had become a world power was President Theodore Roosevelt's action seventy-five years ago in sending the “Great White Fleet” around the world. It is ironic that the decline of the United States as a world power may be marked by another naval milestone: by our losing our unquestioned superiority over the Soviet Union in naval power.

The United States is an “island” country and therefore a sea power; the Soviet Union, situated in the center of the Eurasian heartland, is basically a land power. As a land power, the U.S.S.R. can reasonably be expected to maintain superior ground forces along its long borders with potential adversaries. As an island sea power, dependent on oceangoing commerce and on sea lines of communication with our allies, the United States must insist on decisive superiority on the waterways of the world.

While we have not sought to challenge the Soviet's “natural” advantages on the land, they have not reciprocated by conceding our title to the seas. Instead they have vigorously pursued a naval program designed to cripple our advantage on the oceans in case of conflict—a program that gives them mobility while it seeks to deny us that very quality. Historically, the Soviet Navy has been unimportant. Now that has changed.

Just as the Soviet strategic buildup was paralleled by a U.S. strategic demobilization, the same pattern has been followed with the two sides' navies: the Soviets built, we mothballed.

From an unimportant coastal naval power at the end of World War II, the Soviet Union has grown to a major global naval power today. The Soviets now have the world's largest and most modern surface navy, its largest fleet of attack submarines, and its largest fleet of ballistic missile-carrying submarines. Recently the Soviets have doubled the size of their largest cruisers and started production of their first nuclear attack carriers, a major new step in their program of naval expansion.

Soviet warships already operate regularly, not only in the Atlantic and the Pacific, but also in the Indian Ocean, in the Mediterranean, and in the Caribbean. Not only does the Soviet Navy threaten our own naval superiority and the security of our sea-lanes; it also is becoming a central element in the U.S.S.R.'s rapidly growing capacity to project its military power, quickly and flexibly, into the most distant and remote areas of the globe. Perhaps the most telling sign of Soviet intentions is the vast expansion of their shipyards. Only half of their shipyard capacity is now being utilized, which leaves room for huge increases in shipbuilding in the future.

•  •  •

Even as the Soviets were building and deploying a powerful counterforce to our navy, the United States was saving them much of the trouble. In the last decade we cut the number of our ships by more than half, from 976 in 1968 to 453 in 1978. Admiral James L. Holloway, then chief of naval operations, reported in 1978 that in a sea war “which involved Soviet combatants in both the Atlantic and Pacific our prospects for success for sea control would be marginal.”

The commander-in-chief of the Soviet Navy, Admiral Sergei Gorshkov, boasts, “The flag of the Soviet navy flies over the oceans of the world. Sooner or later the United States will have to understand that it no longer has mastery of the seas.”

Gorshkov may overrate his own accomplishments and underrate our superiority in carriers. But the fact remains that the Soviet Navy has soared to a position of second best in the world, and is moving rapidly toward becoming number one. This would be a disaster for the United States, and there is no time to lose if we are to avert it.