SOUTH CHINA SEA ISSUE

India’s maritime gateway to the Pacific

Being one of the most important seas of the world, geopolitically, economically and strategically, the South China Sea (SCS) attracts considerable attention in the strategic community in India. It continues to be seen as one of the most difficult regional conflicts in the Asia-Pacific and an “arena of escalating contention.” India has vital maritime interests in the SCS. Around 55 per cent of India’s trade in the Asia-Pacific transits through the SCS region. In fact, in recent times, New Delhi has become more active in expressing its interest in the freedom of navigation in the SCS and the peaceful resolution of territorial disputes between Beijing and its maritime neighbours.

Strategic importance

The SCS is an important junction for navigation between the Pacific and Indian Oceans. It connects with the Indian Ocean through the Malacca Strait to the southwest, and commands access to the East China Sea to the northeast. The sea lane running between the Paracel and Spratly Islands is used by oil tankers moving from the Persian Gulf to Japan as well as by warships en route from the Indian Ocean to the Pacific. Security in the SCS is a concern both for regional countries such as China, Vietnam, Philippines, Malaysia, as well as the extra-regional countries, including India, due to their strategic and economic interests in this region. Any conflict in the SCS will pose a threat to regional and international security.

Territorial sovereignty, contention on energy, significance of the geographic location, threat to maritime security and overlapping maritime claims are at the core of the SCS dispute. Some scholars suggest that for the next 20 years, the SCS conflict will probably remain the “worst-case” threat to peace and security in the ASEAN region.

The SCS, an integrated ecosystem, is one of the richest seas in the world in terms of marine flora and fauna, coral reefs, mangroves, seagrass beds, fish and plants. The sea accounts for approximately 10 per cent of the annual global fisheries catchment, making it extremely viable for the fishing industries of nearby countries. Furthermore, value-added production (canning, filleting, fresh, frozen and chilled processing) has translated into valuable foreign exchange earnings and job opportunities for countries in the region. However, China has been imposing fishing rules to operate in the disputed waters, resulting in serious maritime security concerns and objections from other claimant states. Recently, China’s new fishing rules which came into effect on January 1, 2014 raised questions about its efforts to exercise jurisdiction over all fishing activities in the disputed waters.

Furthermore, the region richly laden in both oil and natural gas has led to speculation that the disputed territories could hold potentially significant energy resources. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates, the SCS contains 11 billion barrels of oil and 190 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in proved and probable reserves. EIA has difficulties in making accurate estimates of oil and natural gas in the area because of the lack of exploration and territorial disputes. Hence, reserve estimates in the area vary greatly. According to the Chinese Ministry of Land and Resources, the SCS oil reserves are estimated to be around 23 to 30 billion tonnes and 16 trillion cubic metres of natural gas. There may also be additional hydrocarbon reserves in underexplored areas of the sea. Most notably, the SCS occupies a significant geostrategic position in terms of international shipping as a majority of energy shipments and raw materials have to pass through it.

Undoubtedly, the SCS is a critical corridor between the Pacific and Indian Ocean for commercial and naval shipping. In view of the emerging challenges in the region, India is strengthening its engagement with the ASEAN region steadily. New Delhi recognises the strategic importance of Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean for defence of the Indian peninsula. India’s prosperity is dependent, almost exclusively, on sea trade. Land routes from the Indian subcontinent are few and provide little facility for commerce. Safeguarding the sea lanes is therefore indispensable for India’s development as its future is dependent on the freedom of the vast water surface. A secure and safe sea lane is important for India’s industrial development, commercial growth and a stable political structure.

There are compelling reasons for India to protect the sea lanes in the SCS. First, it considers an unimpeded right of passage essential for peace and prosperity in the Asia-Pacific region. Second, India favours peaceful resolution of the dispute, in accordance with international law, including the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, as opposed to the use of threat in resolving competing claims. Access to resources such as oil, natural gas, food and minerals is now high on the agenda of global issues to be faced in the years ahead. India’s increasing involvement in the SCS region illustrates the relationship between its strategy and the need for resources, and for the routes and logistical systems necessary for their transportation.

Roadblocks

There are some apprehensions in New Delhi about Beijing’s ambitions in the SCS. Chinese assertiveness and her tendency to unilaterally seek to change the status quo has the potential to impinge upon India’s commercial and strategic interests in the SCS. Though military conflict over freedom of navigation and access to maritime resources is neither necessary nor inevitable, it is natural for India to address China’s “threat perception” and to promote its national interest.

India has a legitimate interest in safeguarding the sea lanes and access to maritime resources. With a considerable expansion of India’s engagement with the SCS’ littoral states, India appears to be emerging, genuinely so, as an indispensable element in the strategic discourse of this region. India could be a valuable security partner for several nations in the Asia-Pacific region, provided it sustains a high economic growth rate and nurtures the framework of partnership that it has enunciated in the region.

Rising tensions in the Pacific

A Chinese military expert is explaining to a conference in Shanghai what he sees as the benign inevitability of Beijing’s rising power in the Pacific. “You should trust China,” he says cheerily. “In 10 years, we will be much stronger, and you will feel safer.”

This Chinese prediction did not appear to reassure most of the several dozen European and American experts gathered for discussions last weekend. Instead, there was a consensus, even among most of the Chinese participants, that Beijing’s growing military power has worried its neighbours and led to friction with Japan, the Philippines and Vietnam over disputed islands and maritime rights.

“You think we are a bully,” conceded the Chinese military expert. “We think we are a victim.” But nobody in the room disagreed about the reality that tensions in the Pacific are rising — and that China and its neighbours cannot seem to find a way out. Which leaves the United States awkwardly in between, trying to support traditional allies such as Japan, without encouraging them to take reckless moves.

It is a sign of the times that delegates talked openly about the danger of war in the Pacific. That’s a big change from the tone of similar gatherings just a few years ago, when Chinese officials often tried to reassure foreign experts that a rising China wasn’t on a collision course with the U.S. or regional powers. Now, in the East and South China seas, the collision seems all too possible.

Just two weeks ago, U.S. Navy Captain James Fanell warned at a conference in San Diego that China had been training for a “short, sharp war” to assert primacy over islands claimed by Japan as the Senkaku and by China as the Diaoyu. “I do not know how Chinese intentions could be more transparent,” he said, noting that Beijing’s talk of “protection of maritime rights” was actually “a Chinese euphemism for the coerced seizure of coastal rights of China’s neighbours.”

This is the Asian real-world backdrop for U.S. debates over military spending. Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel said in Washington Monday that the Pentagon “will continue to shift its operational focus and forces to the Asia-Pacific.” But will allies such as Japan and the Philippines be bolstered by such talk at a time when the U.S. is sharply cutting troops and warplanes — and will potential adversaries such as China be deterred?

The changing political-military map in Asia formed the context for last weekend’s meeting of the Stockholm China Forum, an annual event sponsored by the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies and the German Marshall Fund of the United States (of which I’m a trustee). The not-for-attribution discussions were surprisingly frank, on all sides. But they dispelled, at least for me, the hope that China will continue deferring to a powerful U.S. Instead, we’re clearly entering a period of greater Chinese assertiveness, especially in maritime issues.

The Shanghai discussions also highlighted what’s ahead for the United States in what strategists see as its role as “offshore balancer” of Chinese power. America is committed by treaty to defend Japanese administrative control in the Senkaku Islands; the U.S. military has plans to defeat any Chinese “short, sharp war” there. But the U.S. doesn’t want to get dragged into war over a few crags of rock, either, so Washington is also urging caution to Tokyo.

The Senkaku situation is tense because Chinese coast guard vessels and planes shadow the islands every day. This harassment has settled into a pattern whose very predictability is one of the few stable elements in the dispute. But given that no diplomatic resolution is in sight, Beijing and Tokyo need channels for crisis communication — lest Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s analogy last month to the run-up to World War I prove true.

In the South China Sea, China’s ambitions involve what it calls the “nine-dash line,” which vaguely asserts Chinese maritime claims almost to the coasts of Vietnam, Malaysia and the Philippines. This line has no legal foundation, in America’s view, and even the Chinese don’t define just what the line represents. The Philippine government has filed an international arbitration claim challenging the nine-dash demarcation, so perhaps legal limits will be placed on China’s maritime expansion.

When Chinese officials meet at international conferences such as the one in Shanghai, they often talk about “win-win cooperation.” It’s a soothing concept, and it has become the elevator music of international meetings. But looking at the Pacific region, it’s hard to see any such spirit of compromise at work.

China’s ballistic missile system for targeting aircraft carriers

China has established a novel system for using land-based ballistic missiles to deter America's powerful nuclear-powered aircraft carriers from coming anywhere near its coast, says a team of Indian analysts.

A constellation of satellites and at least one over-the-horizon radar give its Anti-Ship Ballistic Missile (ASBM) system the capability to work out the position of U.S. aircraft carriers at sea, according to assessments published by researchers at the National Institute of Advanced Studies in Bangalore.

Land-based ballistic missiles, carrying manoeuvrable warheads with conventional munitions, could then, if needed, target the aircraft carriers at a distance of about 2,000 km.

The ASBM had “shaken the traditional view of the U.S. Navy’s unassailable superiority in the Pacific,” according to a report prepared by a group of experts with the Institute's International Strategic and Security Studies Programme.

The system “will serve as a credible deterrent against American intervention in China's maritime disputes, of which it has several with its Asian neighbours,” it noted.

“No one thought it was possible to target moving aircraft carriers with long-range ballistic missiles,” remarked S. Chandrashekar who participated in the assessment. The Chinese had come up with “a very innovative system” based on well-understood components.

China's constellation of Yaogan military satellites includes those for electronic intelligence (ELINT) gathering that detect radio signals and other electronic emissions from an aircraft carrier and its associated warships. China currently has three clusters of ELINT satellites that provide global surveillance.

In each cluster, there are three satellites that maintain a triangular formation in orbit and can locate ships producing radio signals with an accuracy of 25 km to 100 km, according to him.

The Yaogan constellation also includes radar satellites as well as satellites with optical sensors that can establish the position of the aircraft carriers with much greater accuracy.

In the course of a single day, the current Yaogan constellation can provide about 16 targeting opportunities for ballistic missile launches when the uncertainity in an aircraft carrier's position will be less than 10 km.

“These preliminary results suggest that China has in place a space-based surveillance system that can identify, locate and track an aircraft carrier in the Pacific Ocean,” according to a recent report prepared by the analysts.

Although the land-based ballistic missiles can target aircraft carriers using just the Yaogon constellation, the number of targeting opportunities become fewer if cloud cover obscures the view of satellites with optical sensors, observed Prof. Chandrashekar.

By incorporating an over-the-horizon radar that can continually track aircraft carriers up to a distance of about 3,000 km, the Chinese gain the flexibility to launch the ballistic missiles whenever they choose, he pointed out.

He and his colleagues also found that China could modify its proven DF-21 ballistic missile to carry a manoeuverable warhead. With an onboard radar, the warhead could, as it is descended through the atmosphere, precisely locate the moving aircraft carrier and then adjust its trajectory to strike the ship with conventional munitions.

Their analysis of openly accessible images of the DF-21D indicated that this missile variant met the dimensional requirements for such a mission. It could hit ships that were about 2,000 km from the Chinese mainland.

The F-18 Super Hornet, the U.S. Navy's main carrier-borne attack aircraft, has a mission radius of about 750 km. China would therefore want to prevent America's formidable Carrier Strike Groups from venturing within 1,000 km of its coast, their report observed.

The Chinese military is known to have successfully tested the ASBM against a land-based simulation of an aircraft carrier, according to him.

“The open literature does not provide any information about whether the system has also been tested with a ship at sea,” he told this correspondent.