Asian Futures, Naval Futures: How Do They Intersect?

Richard Danzig

Asia Pacific Research Center

November, 1997

It is a true honor to share the platform with Bill Perry, but it's a somewhat perilous one. In thinking about it, I was struck by the story about the chauffeur in Russia who drives a rabbi around, as the rabbi gives advice throughout the Russian heartland--this is at the end of the 1800s. One day, the chauffeur turns to the rabbi and says to him, "You know, rabbi, you're a very smart man and you give excellent advice, but I've followed you around for twenty years now and frankly, rabbi, the questions have become a bit repetitive and I think I could do this myself."

To this the rabbi responds, "All right, wise guy, put on the rabbi's robes. We'll go to the next town and I'll pretend to be the chauffeur and we'll see how you do." They drive to the next town, and it's just as the chauffeur predicted. The questions are very familiar, and the chauffeur, disguised as the rabbi, does a wonderful job answering just as the rabbi had answered. Then, suddenly, a new question is asked. The chauffeur realizes he's in serious trouble. And then inspiration hits. Gathering the robes of the rabbi around him, he says, "Well, that question is so easy, even my chauffeur can answer it."

I'm a little bit in that circumstance. So if you have any hard questions to ask, I'm absolutely certain Bill Perry will answer them tonight.

My topic is "Asian Futures and Naval Futures," and how they intersect. The world in which we operate is one that involves, as all of you know, some very revolutionary changes over the course of the last decade. There's the wonderful line at the beginning of A Tale of Two Cities in which Charles Dickens says that we live in the "best of times" and in the "worst of times." Those two cities were not Hong Kong and Beijing. But the observation is very apt. I think every generation tends to think of itself as living in a time of very dramatic and extraordinary change.

The changes that we're experiencing affect both Asia and the U.S. Navy and how they interact. I think of them as falling into three categories. I propose to just touch on two and concentrate on the third. One is the extraordinary change produced by technology. The information age has revolutionized Asia and the Navy. Second, social, economic, and ideological changes have changed the way people think and relate to one another. I plan to spend just a couple of minutes talking about these two changes. The third is the change in the security circumstance that we confront since the breakup of the Soviet Union, and the kinds of security challenges that are associated with the emergence of China as an ever stronger player on the world scene. This is central to the topic of these sessions, and something I want to talk about at greater length.

On the technology point, I don't need to spend any time telling you how Asia has been transformed by the information age; not only in its basic economics of production, but also in the way in which the relationships between Asian countries and the United States are aided by the internationalization that has occurred. If you think about the impact of the invention of the jet engine, or the impact of our modern methods of communications, you see all of that very vividly. I don't need to tell you anything about it.

You may be less aware of the technological transformation that the United States Navy has experienced in recent years. This has always been an extraordinarily technical service. The development of the Polaris submarine--the notion that one can run nuclear ships under the sea and then launch missiles from that circumstance with the kind of accuracy we've achieved--is, in my opinion, one of the great scientific achievements of our age. It is up there with NASA and the creation of the space station. The Navy, for a variety of reasons, has always been a very heavily technological service. But in recent years, the application of modern technologies has been, to my perspective, stunning in its implications for the United States Navy. It has led to precision power and ability to project force from the sea onto the land. It has led to an ability to defend, not only a fleet, but also much of the territory around that fleet; even, ultimately, some of the land areas near it, against all forms of attack including missile attack. The technological precision that the Navy brings to bear renders a fleet that is now some 350 ships as powerful as any that were envisioned when in the 1980s a secretary of the Navy was pursuing a 600-ship navy. We never quite got the 600 ships, but had he done so, the present 350 ships would be more potent than those 600.

In the adaptation of technology in these circumstances, I think all enterprises go through several stages. The Navy is no exception. The first stage is a stage of trying to do old things in old ways with the new technology. In this stage new technologies are used just to do things more efficiently or faster. I'm struck by how when the steam engine was invented by James Watt, the first use to which bright people put it was to power the lifting of water, so that buckets of water could run the machinery that they were attached to. It took a while for people to realize they could cut out that step entirely, and have the engine run the machine and not lift the water to run the machine. That tendency persists. There is then a second stage, which is a realization that you can do old things differently. And then there is a third stage, which is by far the most important--the realization that the new technology permits you to do new things. Wholly different kinds of things than the things you did before.

Let me offer a homely example suggested by Shoshana Zuboff of Harvard Business School. A bar-code system enables you to check out goods from the supermarket. The first impulse is for the market to use it to facilitate the transaction of the cash register--the price of goods can be calculated faster. The second use is from the realization that, ÔGee, we can use this as well to keep inventory.' But the third use is the perception that something wholly different can be done. That you have the capacity through this automated system to build a profile of your customers, to know who's taking out what, to start providing people with coupons for house brands when they're buying other brands, and to suddenly fashion an information world alongside of your everyday world.

Well, in the U.S. Navy there is a growing perception that through substantial technology investments, and particularly in software, we have the ability now to capture an information picture of the environment around us for hundreds of miles. And that information picture can be developed with the precision that permits powerful entry into those areas, in ways that have never really existed before. This means that a navy is not simply a fighting force at sea, but is a fighting force highly relevant to what happens on land. And that transformation will, I think, become more visible to the world in the years ahead. And I'll come back in a moment to its implications for Asia.

I mentioned the economic and social and ideological kinds of revolution that are going on. You see it throughout Asia. You see it at the western edges of Asia in Islamic fundamentalism. You see it in the change in aspirations and attitudes in China and so many other countries. You see it in the tensions associated with nationalism in Indonesia and elsewhere. The pull of these forces within Asia is a very strong and its outcome difficult to predict.

Within the United States Navy, there are also very fundamental social, psychological, and economic changes. Two that I would mention are, first, the introduction of women, about which those of you in the United States may have seen press. The introduction of women has occurred over several decades, but it's been heightened and intensified in recent times. That intensification is, in my view, a consequence of a larger societal change, which is the increasing power of women, the distribution of professional and political and other kinds of attributes in American society to women. This leads almost inevitably, in a democracy, in my view, to a change in the nature of our military. We are not immune to these kinds of changes. Similarly, as we get the changes associated with the commercial development of technologies in society as a whole, as our ways of doing business change in society at large, so the Navy's way of doing business also changes.

So, the United States Navy is dramatically transforming itself while Asia is changing. But all this, in terms of the nature of the equation, is as nothing for Asian futures as compared with the change in the security circumstance. Here, it seems to me, the first fundamental fact was obviously the disappearance of the Soviet Union. It provoked for the U.S. Navy a fundamental rethinking, as it did for so many Asian countries, of the security implications of this change in the world at large. There is a comment by Friedrich Nietzche that the commonest form of stupidity is forgetting what you're trying to do. A nice thing about a major change like the disappearance of the Soviet Union as a political and military force, and its replacement by Russia and other republics, is that it forces the institutions that are in this environment to grapple with the question of what is it they're trying to do.

The United States Navy, in a series of papers, beginning with From The Sea, written in the 1992Ð95 period, came to the conclusion that most fundamentally we needed to be an institution that focused not simply or predominantly on the blue-water battlefield. We are no longer dealing primarily with the Soviet Navy out at sea with our focus being on keeping, for example, Soviet submarines bottled up within Soviet ports in the event of a world war. Instead, in the modern post-Soviet age, the basic requirement is to be able to operate in the littoral. The littoral meaning essentially those land areas adjacent to the sea. And the observation was made that the great majority of the world's population and its power centers and its economic resources are within 200 miles of the sea, and that nations that can operate in those arenas can bring considerable influence to bear and achieve substantial advantages in terms of stability. So we made a commitment to developing our organization in ways that enabled it to operate most effectively in the littoral.

A second observation was that naval presence in the world at large could be a highly stabilizing influence and could shape the environments in which events occurred. So that, for example, in circumstances like we saw between China and Taiwan in 1996, the presence of U.S. military ships could have a calming influence. And in a more enduring way, to take another Asian example, the presence of those ships could diminish the inclination of other nations to build extremely aggressive and strong navies, because they could feel that their naval futures were in a variety of ways protected by our navy.

That dual orientation towards being able to operate with respect to the littoral, and towards limiting instability through presence, really adds up in my mind to one very similar unifying proposition: the United States Navy has the opportunity, in a variety of areas of the world, to limit the use of force by other nations. We can do this by conveying very strongly a sense that their capability to use force is less than ours. By this means, we will be able to assure stability and minimize the apparent rewards for any nation from using that kind of force.

I mentioned a second component to the change in the region besides the breakup of the Soviet Union, and that is the emergence of China. The emergence of China, it seems to me, poses an issue of fundamental importance for the world as a whole. It is, whether from the Chinese perspective or from the perspective of others, probably best described as finding for China its appropriate place in the international order. Finding a circumstance in which China fits comfortably into the family of nations, has a stake in the preservation of order, and a sense of its own worth and responsibility.

The Navy, I think, contributes to that in several ways. U.S. policy is desirably one of engagement with China, of encouraging its introduction into the international organization and international order that we deal with. As a navy, we evolved our policy as a part of that larger picture: it is focused on engagement. Out of the recent visit, for example, of Chi Haotian, the Chinese defense minister, to see Bill Perry in the United States emerged five propositions that were particularly Navy-centered, and that we continue to execute over the course of 1997 and hopefully the years ahead. One of those propositions you see being played out right now; it is ship exchanges. We think there is value to letting the Chinese see our navy and giving their navy exposure to an understanding of what is involved, not only with the U.S. Navy, but in the U.S. as a nation as a whole. So that there's some appreciation both for our power and for the benefits of our system. Two Chinese destroyers, plus an oiler, just this last weekend have been in Hawaii, and this next weekend they will be in San Diego. This is the first visit to the U.S. mainland in modern times of Chinese ships, and represents, I think, a substantial accomplishment for the People's Republic of China, and for us--and I might say for Bill Perry, individually. Beyond that, we have U.S. ships visiting China periodically. We think that's a healthy interaction.

Second, a major issue that is, I think, being successfully peacefully negotiated is the continuation of U.S. ship visits to Hong Kong as a regular and frequent matter. An earlier panel discussed the normalcy of Hong Kong and China's desire to preserve it. I view the maintenance of those U.S. ship visits, which are for leave and recreational purposes for sailors, as one manifestation of China's interest in the normalcy of operations in Hong Kong after reversion. I think, through negotiation, we will see the continuation of ship visits, and I think that will be a healthy mode of interaction. We're also encouraging exchanges of people, and as a third point, high-level visits matter a lot to us as a manifestation of the navy-to-navy cooperation. It's very useful and desirable, in my opinion, that, for example, Admiral Hepeng Fei, who came to the United States in December with Chi Haotian, has come back with these ships, was in Hawaii, and now will be in San Diego. He is, I think, a very positive force for encouraging exchange between these navies. We have talked about, and are trying to schedule, a chief of naval operations visit back to China in 1997.

Fourth, exchanges at lower levels are invaluable. The two naval war colleges, the Chinese equivalent and our Naval War College in Rhode Island, are negotiating exchange arrangements that we hope will again illuminate to each of the two defense establishments something of the reality of the circumstances of these two different navies, and enhance understanding and engagement in these regards. That will, I think, lead to a greater understanding.

Fifth, and finally, we are trying to negotiate an understanding with the Chinese that would deal with what in the context of the Cold War was called "incidents at sea." The notion of trying to find a cooperative engagement agreement that we and the Chinese can focus on, that will enable us to do modest levels of training with one another, and avoid misunderstandings in situations where ships come near to one another, or one another's territory, can be a very healthy and constructive thing.

So we have, on the fingers of one hand, if you will, five propositions associated with engagement. These are very real. They are operating now in ways as tangible as these ship visits that I've mentioned. Together they comprise an agenda for 1997.

All of this is, I think, significant, but none of it will in the end wind up driving the relationships between the U.S. Navy and the Chinese Navy, or the United States and China, if there's not underlying all of this a basic substantial coincidence of interest. But it seems to me that there is a very substantial likelihood that coincidence of interest will be found to exist, and that the United States Navy will, in fact, play a substantial role in helping to establish it. It arises, as so many of you have heard so many times in other circumstances, from the economic coincidence that occurs as a result of China's maturation as an economic power.

The role that the U.S. Navy plays in this regard may be evidenced by just taking one example, and it will be my concluding one. And that is the energy dependence that an economy that grows as rapidly as China's will experience in ever increasing amounts. The Chinese, as many of you are aware, depend in substantial measure on coal resources, and very substantial coal resources, that can be tapped for development in the time ahead. But those coal resources are not likely to do the whole job. They're in the wrong places; the infrastructure is not developed to get them from the north to southeastern coastal regions. They are not the optimal kinds of coal. Oil dependence will increase as dependence on fuel-driven vehicles and a variety of kinds of industry increases.

Oil will come, in substantial measure, from the Middle East. A recent Japanese estimate suggests that in the year 2000, the equivalent of three hundred 100,000-ton tankers each year will be traveling to and from China. That kind of reliance on sea-based import of oil, like the reliance on sea-based export of goods, means that China has an enormous stake in stability, not only of the Persian Gulf, but also of the sea lanes throughout Asia. And in large measure, the maintenance of the stability of those sea lanes is something that is central to the United States, and central to the operation of our fleet.

Moreover, to the degree that we can, by our presence in Asia, diminish the intensity of the desire of major nations like China and Japan that depend on these sea lanes of transportation to think they need to generate their own strong naval power, we will reduce the tendency for these countries to invest their resources in military arenas, to compete with one another, and in the end to become major military powers that increase the unease of the world. In my opinion, this is a very valuable kind of contribution that the U.S. Navy is making, and needs to continue to make, as a part of the United States Defense Department, and as a part of U.S. policy as a whole, towards this region of the world.

There is a lot of discussion about the United States economic interest in Asia, and how that justifies so many of our security investments. I think that discussion is reasonably well-founded. One can point to three million U.S. jobs dependent on Asian trade. One can point to the steady growth of that trade, and the shift in balance of U.S. resources from Europe to Asia. It's a source of amazement to me, for example, that the United States does more trade with Malaysia than it does with France. But it isn't the economic argument that in the end motivates me most strongly. It is the security argument. Our security is wrapped up with the security of Asia. We have, over the last half century, three times fought in Asian wars. None of those wars were predicated on economic interests. We have a commitment in Asia that derives, in my view, from the fact that the more peaceful Asia is, the more peaceful the United States can be. In the end, the security of the United States is enormously assisted by the absence of a highly intense militarist kind of orientation in Asia.

To the degree that the United States Navy can contribute to that, through the operations of the Seventh Fleet and in other kinds of ways, I think we're doing a good thing. In conclusion, then, my answer to the question that was put to me--The United States naval futures and Asian futures, how do they intersect?--is that they intersect powerfully, and in my opinion, the greater the degree of intersection, the greater the good for both parties.