Global Beat: U.S.-China Confidence-Building More Important Than Detargeting

Global Reporting Network Publications U.S.-China Confidence-Building More Important Than Detargeting By Charles A. Meconis Global Beat Issue Brief No. 39, July 14, 1998 Copyright 1998, Center for War, Peace and the News Media The nuclear missile "detargeting' agreement jointly announced by Chinese President Jiang Zemin and U.S. President Bill Clinton during the latter's recent visit to China was purely symbolic. The missiles can be quickly 'retargeted'. Also lost in the hoopla was the fact that U.S. missiles have not been 'targeted' on China since May of 1994. That's when the U.S. and Russia 'detargeted' their missiles--and the technology involved meant that U.S. missiles were completely detargeted at that time. However, in the course of their routine daily briefings on July 7, the U.S. State Department and the Pentagon announced some truly significant and substantive developments in the U.S.-China security relationship. First, the State Department announced that the U.S. and the PRC will hold in July the first annual meeting under the "Military Maritime Consultative Agreement" to promote safety in naval and air operations. Second, the Pentagon declared that "What was new and a breakthrough on the President's trip to China was an agreement to have reciprocal observer missions watching joint [military] exercises in the two countries." These announcements received scant attention in the media. They sound about as exciting as tapioca. But they were years in the making and in terms of actually preventing war between the two nations, these are important practical, not symbolic, developments. The U.S.-PRC Military Maritime Consultative Agreement, the first ever between the U.S. and Chinese militaries, was signed by U.S. Secretary of Defense Cohen and his Chinese counterpart on January 19 in Beijing. It builds on the tradition of the U.S.-Soviet May 1972 agreement on the Prevention of Incidents on the High Seas and in the airspace above them (commonly known as the INCSEA agreement). In the Cold War decade of the 1960s, as the Soviet Union finally developed an open-ocean- going-navy, a series of dangerous incidents between U.S. and Soviet ships and aircraft occurred at sea. The severity of the situation peaked on 25 May 1968 when a Soviet maritime patrol bomber made a low pass over the carrier U.S.S Essex in the North Sea and then, while turning to make another run, flew too low and crashed into the ocean, killing all the crew. The U.S. managed to convince the Soviets it had been an accident, but both sides were shaken enough to eventually begin negotiations on an agreement to prevent, or at least ameliorate, future incidents. Crafted by naval professionals on both sides, INCSEA was signed four years to the day after the Essex incident--despite the fact that the final negotiations were interrupted by the U.S. mining of Vietnam's Haiphong harbor, which marooned several Soviet merchant ships then in port. Humdrum on its face, INCSEA included provisions for preventing incidents, opening up channels of communication between the two navies, and conducting an annual review meeting allowing for continuing mutual contact between the two nations' naval professionals. But at INCSEA's heart lay the realization that incidents involving Navies are uniquely dangerous because under international law, a nation's warships are considered to be part of its sovereign territory--much like embassies. Thus a perceived attack on a warship is loaded with emotional intensity that can cause a crisis to escalate. Remember the Maine? Remember the Gulf of Tonkin Incident? In both instances perceived attacks on U.S. warships in the context of an ongoing crisis led to serious escalation. Press coverage of the sinking of the U.S. battleship Maine in Havana harbor in 1898 helped to foment the Spanish-American war. Turns out it was probably an accident onboard that blew up the ship. In August 1964, President Lyndon Johnson solemnly announced that an unprovoked attack on U.S. warships in international waters called for an expansion of the war in Vietnam, and Congress quickly acquiesced. Turns out that the attacks were certainly not "unprovoked"--and there is considerable doubt about their substance. The point remains: naval incidents are especially dangerous. Twice during severe Cold War crises INCSEA worked very well, if not perfectly, to prevent disaster. During both the October 1973 Yom Kippur War and the 1983 KAL 007 shootdown crisis, U.S. and Soviet naval forces were in close proximity to each other but avoided major incidents. In October 1973, nearly 150 U.S. and Soviet warships were crowded into the waters of the eastern Mediterranean in a highly charged atmosphere, but no major incidents occurred and the regional crisis did not escalate into a superpower naval conflict. In September of 1983 U.S. and Soviet naval vessels came as close as 30 feet in the Sea of Japan during efforts to find KAL 007's "black box", but INCSEA comunications procedures helped to prevent an outbreak of armed conflict. As relations between the U.S. and U.S.SR thawed under Gorbachev other agreements, such as one to Prevent Dangerous Military Activities, were reached. But INCSEA had set the tone. Until the mid 1990s there was, from the U.S. standpoint, little need for a similar agreement with China, because China's coastal defense-oriented navy rarely ventured far from shore. That began to change in 1994, as China's navy modernized. Beginning on October 27, 1994, the aircraft carrier U.S.S Kitty Hawk was involved in a rare three-day encounter with a Chinese Han class nuclear attack submarine in the Yellow Sea, some 100 nautical miles west of Kyushu, Japan and--according to the U.S.--in international waters. U.S. anti-submarine aircraft spotted the Chinese sub about 450 nautical miles northwest of the Kitty Hawk, and continued to track it. The Chinese dispatched jet fighters which intercepted the U.S. planes. No shots were fired--but there was no communication between the two forces. The cat-and-mouse game continued as the sub came to within 21 miles of the carrier, then ended when the Chinese submarine returned to base. The incident did not become public until Art Pine and Jim Mann broke the story in the December 13 issue of the Los Angeles Times. Interestingly, the incident had apparently been considered "routine" by both navies, and largely ignored by both governments--until the story went public. Within two days the Chinese Foreign Ministry registered its "concern" over the incident, and reiterated that concern a week later, claiming that U.S. planes had violated Chinese airspace. The flap coincided with the Chinese cancellation of a planned visit by then U.S. Energy Secretary Federico Pena because of his meeting with Taiwanese President Lee Tung-Hui. A serious deterioration in U.S.-Chinese relations ensued. In February 1995 the same Los Angeles Times reporters who broke the original story revealed that the U.S. planned to open discussions with the Chinese about an INCSEA-like agreement. It would take nearly three years and a much more serious crisis in the Taiwan Straits in March of 1996 before the U.S.-PRC Agreement on Establishing a Consultation Mechanism to Strengthen Military Maritime Safety was signed in Beijing in January of this year. Designed to raise "measures to promote safe maritime practices and establish mutual trust [such] as search and rescue, communications procedures when ships encounter each other, interpretation of the Rules of the Nautical Road and avoidance of accidents-at-sea," the agreement reportedly established annual meetings, working groups of naval professionals to study and discuss specific topics, and provided for "special meetings" should the need arise. The Agreement is, in the view of both nations' national security professionals, a "good thing." So too with the Chinese agreement to have reciprocal observers of military exercises. Previously, the PRC had declined all such invitations, possibly out of fear of revealing weaknesses, not strengths. Thanks to the "breakthrough" agreement achieved during Clinton's visit, PRC observers will take part in this summer's huge U.S.-sponsored international Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) joint exercise around Hawaii and the later Cooperative COPE THUNDER air exercise in Alaska. Eventually U.S. observers will be invited to Chinese military exercises. This is another good thing. It is good for two reasons: 1) the mutual observing of military exercises reduces misperceptions about both sides' capabilities and intentions, thus reinforcing both deterrence and reassurance; 2) military professionals get to know each other personally in the field, which can be critical later on at a moment of crisis fraught with the possibility of inadvertent escalation. The moral of this story is twofold: 1) real (as opposed to cosmetic) peacemaking is often not dramatic; 2) the way such developments are covered by the media matters--a lot. Charles A. Meconis, director of the Institute for Global Security Studies in Seattle, is the co-author of U.S.-Russian Naval Cooperation (Praeger, 1996) and The Armed Forces of the U.S.A in the Asia-Pacific Region (Allen and Unwin, forthcoming 1999). For more information contact: Phone: 206-634-2828, Fax: 206-632-0361, Email: 75410.45@compuserve.com Return to Global Beat Home Page Nuclear Watch | East Asian Security | Economic & Monetary Union | NATO Expansion | Nuclear Weapons and Proliferation | U.S. Defense Policy | Publications | Events | Experts Directory | Links Directory | About the GRN |