Manhood-Measuring FONOP in South China Sea Comes Up Short

When the US destroyer USS Lassen finally executed its Freedom of Navigation sailthrough a.k.a. “The FONOP” within 12 miles of Subi Reef on October 27, the China hawks were ecstatic.

John Garnaut exulted that the United States had bested the PRC in a “seminal test of wills”.  On his Twitter feed plugging his piece he speculated that revealing the PLA Navy as a paper porpoise might encourage a rethink on Taiwan:  

I wonder about the big prize, Taiwan, now the U.S. has finally called China's bluff over its fake islands 

John Garnaut added, China's great wall of sand is theatrical bluster http://www.theage.com.au/comment/chinas-great-wall-of-sand-is-theatrical-bluster-20151028-gkksbt.html … by @jgarnaut

The thinking here, presumably, is that the FONOP revealed the PRC would back down in any confrontation with resolutely brandished US military force, so the DPP could and should explore those Taiwan-independence scenarios without excessive concern that the PRC is really going to try to fight its way past the US 7^th Fleet.

Unfortunately, the assumption that the United States had successfully defied the PRC’s red line in the SCS is a misconception born of some magical combination of goalpost shifting, misunderstanding, and wishful thinking.

Because there was no red line.

The PRC repeatedly declared it would frown upon, indeed not “condone” a US Navy sailthrough that disregarded the (extremely murky) Chinese position on the inviolability of nearshore waters of its faux islands project.

However, it never said it wouldn’t allow it.

The PRC current position is that the US, as befits the world’s only hyperpower, gets to sail where it wants whether the PRC likes it or not.  And as long as the keystone of the PLAN’s power projection is a converted casino with balky engines masquerading as an aircraft carrier, that’s how it’s going to be.

In any case, the defiant posture of China hawks was deflated by the revelation that the Lassen sailthrough fell under the heading of “innocent passage” i.e. an internationally-accepted hustling of a military vessel from Point A to Point B through some other country’s seas for purposes of transit only (though “hustling” is something of a misnomer here; the Lassen apparently engaged in a “lingering” passage of several hours).

Indeed, the US action appeared to recapitulate a Chinese naval flotilla’s “innocent passage” sailthrough of US waters in the Aleutians in September.

In order for the Lassen operation to openly repudiate any PRC claims to territorial water rights, it would have had to engage in military operations deemed unacceptable in other countries’ territorial waters: turn on attack its attack radars, perhaps, or launch a drone or a helicopter, maybe drop some sensors.

But that didn’t happen, to the chagrin of proponents of the “FONOP”.  Via twitter, from the feed of an analyst who watches the issue closely:

Pentagon/WH needs to set record straight ASAP on unattributed statements Lassen engaged in innocent passage near Subi. Huge blunder if true.

 

Capt. Anthony Cowden on suggesting Lassen conducted innocent passage: "Not, I think, a msg the Navy wants to send" http://news.usni.org/2015/11/04/opinion-uss-lassens-transit-of-subi-reef-was-not-so-innocent …

.@MiraRappHooper & Klein: No certainty about FONOP yet, but innocent passage "worse than having done nothing at all" https://www.lawfareblog.com/what-did-navy-do-south-china-sea …

But it was true!  Either through leaks of disgruntled hawks or background briefings by the White House to the Financial Times the story came out.

The revelations shrank the mighty FONOP to the puny dimensions of an “innocent passage” sailthrough.

According to five people familiar with the operation, the USS Lassen conducted what is known under international law as innocent passage when it sailed within 12 nautical miles of Subi Reef, which could leave the legal significance of the US manoeuvre open to different interpretations.

But that decision angered many Pentagon and Navy officials who think the US should adopt a more forceful stance.

“It makes the [Obama] administration look weak externally and internally divided,” said Euan Graham, director of the international security programme at the Lowy Institute in Australia.

 …

Some critics suggested that the US operation was no different from when several Chinese warships recently made an innocent passage through waters surrounding the Aleutian Islands off the Alaska coast.

Mr Graham said that while most countries in the region were relieved when the US conducted the Subi operation, a “sense of anticlimax”…

Insert sad trombone sound here.

As befits the underpopulated insignificance of these small atolls in a rather large sea, it is very difficult to figure out what is actually going on there.  And it would not be beyond the cupidity of various participants to make stuff up.

The administration could just as easily have leaked disinfo that the Lassen had defiantly dropped some sonobuoys and recorded the cries of polyps groaning under the oppression of the Red landfill, and thereby mollified the China hawk quadrant.  Instead, the shortcomings of the FONOP were gracelessly and callously revealed.

If the info came courtesy of FONOP fans in order to embarrass the White House, it's another indication of the borderline insubordination of the Pentagon hawks on the SCS issue and their inclination to try to drive policy execution their way through leaks to the press.

There is another possibility: that the Obama administration was willing to advertise its FONOP dysfunction through backgrounders by not one, not two, but five insiders.

In terms of the White House, there are, I think, a few things at work.

One, obviously, is that President Obama is not too interested in rocking the boat with China right now, what with climate change, cyber, & whatnot on the agenda.

Second, and perhaps less obviously, I suspect President Obama is not too interested in creating additional headaches for himself as he winds down his second term.  The “innocent passage” FONOP threw a bone to the China hawks at home and abroad, but leaves it up to the next president, presumably Hillary Clinton, the creatrix of the pivot, to decide on the frequency and intensity of these operations over the long term.

Third, and my personal favorite, is perhaps President Obama also shares my opinion that the whole “confront the PRC in the SCS” strategy is stupid.

The obvious PRC riposte to enhanced US and ally presence in the SCS is not to resist prematurely; it is to massively muscle up the PRC military presence, not on the exposed islands, but in the Paracels, Hainan, and on the adjacent mainland. 

And that’s what’s happening. 

The PRC just deployed J11 fighters to Woody Island in the Paracels, recently completed its aircraft carrier dock at Sanya on Hainan Island (700 meters; big enough for 2 carriers!), and is certainly looking at studding the coast with ship-killing missiles.

Considering the PRC’s geographic and marginal cost advantages in militarizing its backyard vs. the sizable expense of power projection enhancement into the SCS from outside, I leave it to interested strategists to decide whether sustained military superiority by the U.S., Japan, and their allies in the SCS via the pivot is something really worth betting on…

…even if the US is able to return to Subic Bay in the Philippines and/or Cam Ranh Bay in Vietnam, prospects that certainly make the Navy’s heart go pitty-pat.

It seems inevitable that eventually the South China Sea will look as inhospitable as the Taiwan Strait, and a confrontation with the PRC over the SCS will require attacks to neutralize PLA capabilities inside PRC sovereign territory, a replay of the AirSeaBattle total war scenario that undoubtedly has fans among the Apocalypse Now! crowd but gives other people the heebie-jeebies.

The FONOP program didn’t start this process; but it’s safe to say that it will accelerate the PRC’s militarization of the SCS and move up the day when the PRC finally decides it really is able to circumscribe the activities of the US Navy.

For what it’s worth, I think the South China Sea is not a flashpoint for World War III; instead I see it as the golden trough where PRC, US, Philippine, and Vietnamese militaries expect to glut themselves for a generation.

Here’s hoping I’m right!

And if the PRC does finally issue an ultimatum to the United States on the activities of the US Navy in the seas surrounding China, here’s hoping we won’t be around to see it.  Because the PRC will only issue that ultimatum when it’s confident of prevailing, not against the cautious US civilian leadership, but against the China hawks in the US milsec quadrant.  

I suggest a useful if not exclusive metric is the carrier race in the West Pacific.  The US is shifting the focus of its carrier operations at San Diego westward to support the activities of the Japan-based Seventh Fleet; the PRC is pushing ahead with construction of its first domestically-born carrier with more undoubtedly to come; and Japan is pushing out two ships that masquerade as helicopter carriers but can quickly be converted into conventional aircraft carriers.

If and when the PRC has more aircraft carriers and overall lethal tonnage in the regional seas than the aggregate of the US, Japan, and any other local ally that wants to pitch in, that’s when we can expect a hard PRC challenge to the potency of the US Navy.

Anxious Hours in Pivotland: Where's My Sailthrough?!!

This was an anxious week in Pivotland© , the Beltway district in which milsec types congregate to formulate, promote, and profit from the forward strategy toward the PRC.

President Obama has been laggard in executing a cherished pivot initiative, the defiant US Navy sailthrough within 12 miles of the PRC’s faux-island holdings in the South China Sea.

Bonnie Glaser, the Princess of the Pivot at CSIS, all-capped her frustration in a tweet on October 16:

US-China confrontation looms in troubled waters of South China Sea. Stop talking and DO THE FONOP ALREADY!

“FONOP” as in “Freedom of Navigation Op.”  I might point out that a naval sailthrough within a country’s claimed 12-mile territorial limit is not automatically a piece of sovereignty-repudiating outrance.  Naval vessels are free to sail within other countries’ 12 mile limit in innocent passage from Point A to Point B.  

In fact, the PLA Navy just did that, sending flotilla through US territorial seas in the Aleutian Islands, pointedly, in September just prior to Xi Jinping’s visit to the United States.  And the US Navy was good with that:

“The five PLAN ships transited expeditiously and continuously through the Aleutian Island chain in a manner consistent with international law.”

 The Chinese stunt appeared to me to be a successful piece of inoculation by the PRC, one that neutralized the “presumptuous Chinese humbled by superior U.S. power in the place they wish was their back yard” narrative that I think the China hawks hope to advance by executing a South China Sea sailthrough.

And it emphasized the unwelcome point that any South China Sea sailthrough under international law is meaningless in terms of the territorial, island-building, and sovereignty assertions the U.S. is purporting to challenge.

So, sailthrough upside rather limited.

What about the downside?

Perhaps President Obama is mindful that a sailthrough, in addition to serving as a polarizing piece of anti-PRC theater for the military pivot, will provide the PRC with a further pretext for overtly and irrevocably militarizing the islands.

Which is already happening.

[O]fficials with China’s foreign ministry are claiming military facilities on a series of artificial islands are “for defense purposes only” in reaction to “high-profile display[s] of military strength and frequent and large-scale military drills by certain countries and their allies in the South China Sea …”

Referring to the U.S. and its several multi-national maritime security exercises in the region, Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Hua Chunying statement came a day after a joint U.S. and Australian statement issued on Tuesday in which Secretary of Defense Ash Carter and Australian Minister of Defense Marise Payne urged caution on militarizing the South China Sea region.

He is also, I imagine, mindful that sailthrough enthusiasm among our allies is not strong or even universal, despite a flurry of statements and articles that appear to be attempting to logroll the White House by pre-emptively declaring that U.S. credibility is at stake if the much-bruited, never officially announced, and tactically and strategically dubious sailthrough doesn’t happen.

I would guess that allies’ enthusiasm for sending naval vessels to participate in the sailthrough, thereby exposing themselves to the PRC’s economic and diplomatic retaliation, is not high.

On October 15, this unpromising report came out of Australia (bear in mind it's from the Trade minister.  Logrolling cuts both ways; let's see which way Australia actually jumps after the Ministry of Defence has had its say):

Australia wouldn't take part in any U.S. naval patrols aimed at testing China's territorial claims in the South China Sea and isn't taking sides in disputes over one of the world's busiest shipping lanes, Trade Minister Andrew Robb said.

Robb's remarks came after foreign Minister Julie Bishop met U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter and Secretary of State John Kerry this week and said Australia is "on the same page" with the U.S. on the sea, a $5 trillion-a-year shipping route that the American navy has patrolled largely unchallenged since World War II.

And for some allies, even providing lip service to U.S. efforts to uphold the international order against Chinese encroachments seems to be a challenge.

ROK President Park’s recent visit to Washington apparently did not yield all that the US desired in terms of pivot-related enthusiasm.

Park has worked to warm up ties with China and raised some eyebrows in Washington when she attended Beijing's military parade to mark the end of World War Two last month. 

Obama said the United States wanted to see a strong South Korean relationship with China, just as it wanted such a relationship itself, but Washington wanted to see Seoul speak out when Beijing did things that weakened international rules. 

Obama was apparently referring to China's behavior in pursuit of maritime claims in the South China Sea and the East China Sea, which has alarmed Asian neighbors.

President Park took a decidedly different tack:

Ms. Park said several times during the press conference that China’s cooperation is needed with the U.S. on issues such as nuclear talks with North Korea to economic development. She said her government wants to “fully utilize” China’s influence in regional issues.

The conventional narrative is that the ROK’s current tilt toward the PRC results from a combination of fear and greed.  

But a third reason is that the United States is locked into a deep-tongued, slobbery embrace with Shinzo Abe’s Japan as America’s indispensable pivot partner.

South Korean hostility toward Japan is, of course, partly related toward Prime Minister Abe’s ostentatious nostalgia for a powerful Japan of the kind that killed Korea’s men, raped its women, and sought to obliterate its culture during the 1930s and 40s.

But it has more to do with the fact that the ROK and Japan are locked in a zero-sum economic battle   and Abe is doing his best to eat South Korea’s dosirak:

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is continuing with "Abenomics," an economic policy based on massive quantitative easing and weakening of the yen, which Japan claims will save it from its "lost" two decades.

While Japan has partly succeeded in boosting its economy, that seems to be based on the sacrifice of other countries, of which Korea has been hit the hardest.

Korea is concerned that it will be the biggest victim of Japan's "beggar thy neighbor" policy.

…

"Countries like Korea and Germany, where exports take a huge part and the domestic market is relatively small, are damaged most. Korea is especially so, as its export items overlap with those of Japan," Lee said.

Korea has been suffering from the massive quantitative easing by Japan as the won/yen rate has fallen to the lowest level in more than seven years. The Hyundai Research Institute warns that Korea may see its exports, the only sustaining pillar of an economy that has lost steam, decrease by 8.8 percent due to the weak yen. 

And:

[T]he international community seems to be tolerating Japan's manipulation as it has been in such a long slump.

For “international community,” read “United States” in my opinion.   The Obama administration is completely in the tank for Abe since keeping Abe happy is essential if he is going to push unpopular  pivot-friendly initiatives like constitutional reinterpretation and Futenma relocation down the throats of the Japanese electorate.

In self-defense, the ROK has little choice but to tilt to the PRC, thereby seriously complicating the US pursuit of regional leadership status not only on the South China Sea issue, but on North Korea as well.

So far the pivot, in addition to delivering tensions with the PRC, has done a good job of revealing divisions and uncertainty among America’s allies.

And it will be rather difficult for the sailthrough to deliver the galvanizing “freedom (+ Vietnam) vs. PRC despotism” confrontation that papers over the rifts, something that I imagine weighs on President Obama’s mind as he considers his options.

If the sailthrough happens—and even if it doesn’t—the United States will continue to wrestle with fundamental and intractable contradictions within the alliance.

And undoubtedly, the Beltway consensus will be that the only way out is more, better, and more resolute escalation.

Or, as the busy pivoteers at the Pentagon and think tanks put it: Ka-ching!