 Global Reporting Network Publications |
Sometime between 1964, when China detonated its first atomic bomb, and 1998, when India and Pakistan tested the most recent versions of their nuclear weapons, Asia entered what Paul Bracken calls the Second Nuclear Age. This new age could also be called the Era of Weapons of Mass Destruction because several Asian nations have acquired chemical and biological weapons alongside or instead of nuclear weapons. And for most, the missile rather than the airplane has become the preferred vehicle for delivery on targets. Bracken, a political scientist and strategic thinker at Yale University in America, has written a truly scary book, Fire in the East: The Rise of Asian Military Power and the Second Nuclear Age (HarperCollins, New York, US$25.) He asserts that many Asian nations, which had relied on peasant infantry armies until recently, have gradually procured modern arms and weapons made with high technology. But many more are surging past that usual stage of military evolution into weapons of mass destruction that are far ahead of defenses among their neighbors or those of the West. Unlike most modern weapons, which are intended to destroy enemy forts, bases, and soldiers with precision-guided munitions, weapons of mass destruction are intended to kill civilian and soldier alike, indiscriminately, and to spread that destruction over wide areas. Those weapons are carried on missiles of varying accuracy rather than aboard airplanes because the missiles are easier and cheaper to make and do not require trained air crews. Defenses against them range from the inadequate to the unknown. "Whether Asia, and the world, can contain the international dynamics unleashed by weapons of mass destruction will be the great challenge of the twenty-first century," Bracken writes. He defines Asia more broadly than most, covering the land mass between the Pacific Ocean on the east and a line drawn through the Red Sea, the eastern shore of the Mediterranean, and the Ural Mountains in the west, and bounded north and south by the Arctic and Antarctic Oceans. Where Bracken paints with a broad brush, other authors have focused on the People's Republic of China (PRC) as the Asian nation with the most formidable arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, also known by the acronym WMD. Major Mark Stokes of the US Air Force, who was an attaché in the US Embassy in Beijing for three years, has written a detailed assessment entitled "China's Strategic Modernization: Implications for the United States." In a monograph published by the U.S. Army's Strategic Studies Institute at Carlisle Barracks in Pennsylvania, Major Stokes asserts that "even modest breakthroughs could advance the PLA's [People's Liberation Army's] ability to achieve its national security objectives, including forceful integration of Taiwan into the PRC, and deny the United States an ability to intervene." Stokes, who reads Chinese fluently, was careful medium and short range missiles and is working on more; most could carry a warhead that was conventional, chemical, biological, or nuclear. An important advance is that the newer missiles are propelled by solid fuels, which means they can be fired on short notice, as opposed to liquid fueled rockets that take time to pump up. China is also well into the acquisition of cruise missiles that are flying torpedoes with stubby wings, jet engines, and advanced navigation systems. American cruise missiles, such as those used effectively in the Gulf War, can fly more than 500 miles from their launch from a submarine, ship, or airplane and hit the specified corner of a building. Still another analysis published by RAND and the Council of Advanced Policy Studies in Taiwan is a collection of papers by scholars and China specialists edited by James Mulvenon of RAND and Richard Yang of the institute in Taiwan. In "The People's Liberation Army in the Information Age," Mulvenon asserts that China's ability to disrupt an adversary's computer, command, and control systems with viruses and the like "could give the PLA a longer-range power projection capability against U.S. forces that its conventional forces cannot hope to match." Even so, he contends, the PLA cannot approach "information dominance" for the foreseeable future. Lastly, there is a mysterious book written by two senior colonels in the PLA, Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui, entitled Unrestricted Warfare: Assumptions on War and Tactics in the Age of Globalization. Just how much they represent the latest thinking within the high command or whether the book reflects only their own views is not clear. In any event, they appear to have drawn on the ancient Chinese strategist, Sun Tzu, and on the modern Communist leader, Mao Zedong, to advocate "using all means, including armed force or non-armed force, military and non-military, and lethal and non-lethal means to compel the enemy to accept one's interests." They call their strategy "no-limit" warfare as it includes terror, urban guerrilla warfare, financial terrorism, and media warfare, plus biochemical, chemical, and atomic warfare. They seem to say the moral or legal restraints and arms control agreements that the West has sought to impose since the days of Saint Augustine are to be ignored. Beyond China are Israel, India, and Pakistan as the known Asian nuclear powers, while North Korea probably has several nuclear weapons despite an agreement to stop its nuclear program; officials with access to intelligence say they are almost certain North Korea has continued secret research into atomic weapons. South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan, among others, have the technical know-how to build nuclear weapons. Russia and the United States are, in effect, Asian nuclear powers. Indeed, among the declared nuclear powers, only Britain and France are not in Asia. In chemical and biological weapons, known as "the poor man's atomic bombs" because they are cheaper to make, North Korea is known to have a mature chemical weapons program and has been working on biological weapons. Iran and Iran are in the same league, as is Syria. Almost any other nation in Asia with a chemical industry has the ability to produce chemical weapons. While all of these studies, and more not mentioned here, should give pause to the reader in Taiwan, Japan, South Asia, Europe, and America, it is Bracken's "Fire in the East" that should cause defense ministers around the world to sit up. "The world is in a second nuclear age," Bracken writes, "an Asian nuclear age. It is a second age because it has nothing to do with the central fact of the first nuclear age, the cold war. For China, Israel, India, and Pakistan, the cold war is an antiquated irrelevance. It was only in the notoriously provincial West that the collapse of international communism was seen as the great dividing line of history." Among the main reasons Asian nations seek WMD, Bracken lists nationalism at the top. "The most important issue of the twenty-first century is understanding how nationalism combines with the newly destructive technologies appearing in Asia." He contends that Asian nations are acquiring WMD not only or even primarily for their supposed military value, but as symbols of a modern, industrialized nation. Witness the dancing in the streets in India after the atomic test detonations in 1998. More than one Indian leader justified the blasts as evidence that post-colonial India was no longer subservient to Britain, America, or the West. Added to that are what Bracken calls "disruptive technologies," which have changed the nature of the game. "The ballistic missiles and atomic, chemical, and biological weapons coming to Asia are all disruptive technologies. They nullify Western advantages in conventional weapons. They restrict Western access to Asia." Paradoxically, another reason is that Western governments, companies, and arms dealers have been more than willing to sell weapons and technology in the lucrative Asian market, an element on which Bracken barely touches. Arms sales slowed a bit following the onset of the Asian financial crisis in 1997 but seem likely to pick up now that recovery is under way in most nations. The West has never been able to reconcile the intrinsic contradiction between a desire for arms control and the demand for profit. Biological weapons, such as anthrax, are the most insidious of all. A small vial can be smuggled into a country to wreak havoc in the water supply. These weapons are not used to attack the front but "the shaft, the long, vulnerable part of the Western spear, comprising trucks, parts inventories, repair shops, and air and sea transportation," Bracken says. "In Clausewitz' s terms, biological weapons move the center of gravity of the battle from the front, where the United States has the advantage, to the rear, where it does not." In its most stark terms, he says, "germ weapons target American lives, not planes and tanks." Terrorists can also employ them to strike civilian populations, as witness the Aum Shinri-kyo assault on Tokyo's subways with sarin gas. Even so, nuclear weapons atop missiles are still the most destructive weapons. "Atomic bombs, because they offset the vast superiority of US conventional forces, are the premier disruptive technology at work in the world today," Bracken contends. That may be especially so when they are in the hands of leaders who are pressed for action in religious and ethnic disputes. He argues that "national leaders could then be backed into a rhetorical corner--a dangerous place for people who have atom bombs at their disposal." "Civilian leaders, not military generals, are behind the move to weapons of mass destruction," Bracken writes. "These weapons offer a way to redirect the bloated and politicized military establishments that have grown up in Asia. The generals oppose them as a diversion of money away from the traditional army. But rulers can use them to reshape their armed forces for the post-colonial era, when giant land armies are more of a burden than a benefit." Bracken slips into what could become a racial minefield when he wonders whether Asian leaders would be quicker on the nuclear, chemical, or biological trigger than their Western counterparts. "There is a cultural divide here," he says, "not just a technical one." Unfortunately, the author does not seem to distinguish among Asian leaders nor among stages of economic, political, and military development. Generalizing here may be especially dangerous. The question, however, is reasonable, given the long experience American and Russian leaders have had in nuclear war games, computer simulations, and other exercises in nuclear theology. After some close calls in the first nuclear age, they came to understand that no one would win a nuclear war. In the words of former Secretary of Defense Harold Brown, after a nuclear exchange, the living would envy the dead. Asian leaders, even the Chinese who have had nuclear weapons for 35 years, lack experience in those war games and thus have almost no way of knowing the consequences in casualties should they loose their weapons of mass destruction. "Badly designed command and control systems will find 'threats' where none exist," Bracken says. "At the same time, they will not discern threats that do exist." He argues: "The shaky control of Asian nuclear forces increases the danger of accidental or unintended war." In addition, he contends, the level of mistrust between civilian and military leaders in Asia "is extreme to the point of pathology in North Korea and Iraq, but it also characterizes civil-military relations in India, Pakistan, and Iran." (Bracken wrote before the military coup in Pakistan last fall, but his point was underscored by recent events.) Add what Bracken calls the "primitive animosities," "an irrational politics of rage," and "hot nationalist passions" of Asia instead of the cool, informed discipline of Russia and America, which have gone to great lengths to prevent a mad major from beginning a nuclear war, and the outlook is unnerving. "The prospect that erratic organizations like the Revolutionary Guards in Iran," Bracken writes, "will get their hands on modern weapons is, or should be, frightening." For all its persuasive writing, Bracken has at least three shortcomings, none of them fatal: He is weak on Asian history, his book is repetitious even though it is relatively short (170 pages of text), and some assertions are left hanging, without proof. Bracken writes, for instance, that "for the first time in history, Asian states can attack one another's homelands." That overlooks the sweeping cavalry forces of Genghis Khan who rampaged across Asia from Pusan to the Danube. It ignores the repeated forays of Chinese armies into Korea or the thousand-year occupation of Vietnam. It omits the conquest of much of Asia, all the way to the gates of India, by the Japanese between 1931 and 1945. In another case, the author says "nineteen Marine divisions carried the brunt of the fight against Japan." Six of those divisions were Marine, the rest Army. That also overlooks the role of land and carrier-based air power, not to mention the submarines that cut Japan's lifelines at sea. Repetitions are repetitions and need not be repeated here. As for unproved contentions, Bracken writes, for example, that US "war plans during the cold war always called for much earlier nuclear weapon use in Asia than in Europe." There is no quotation or citation, however, to back that up. Moreover, it is dubious because nuclear war plans cover mostly which targets would be hit with what weapons. The time of execution of any war plan is stored in the President's brain as only he is authorized to give the order to fire. Even so, if the author meant to write a frightening book, he succeeded, at least with this reader. The far more important issue, however, is whether readers in defense ministries, military headquarters, and national legislatures will take it to heart and begin to devise defenses against weapons of mass destruction. Bracken has given proponents of missile defenses, whether regional or national, a solid set of arguments to support their cases. But the bureaucratic inertia that drains the life out of most defense establishments is discouraging. It would be much easier to design and build more advanced tank and warships and airplanes than to turn a strategist's mind to the terrifying prospects of WMD. Military leaders, too, would rather have better models of the weapons with which they are familiar than to strike off into unknown technological territory. Not for nothing is it said that, all too often, the generals are preparing for the last war. Richard Halloran, formerly with The New York Times as a foreign correspondent in Asia and military correspondent in Washington, writes about Asian security from Honolulu. Return to Global Beat Home Page
|
