GailForce: Pacific Rising

One of my pet peeves is when I run into a friend or acquaintance and they say: “Gail, where ya’ been. Haven’t seen you in quite a while”. The implication being if they don’t see me I don’t exist; which brings me to the topic of today’s blog. During the last 20 years or so, media attention on national security has focused on our military forces involved in the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan and other issues in the region such as Iran’s nuclear program. With the exception of articles on China and North Korea, national security events involving U.S. military forces in the Pacific region have been under reported. Just because we’ve not heard much about them doesn’t mean they don’t exist or that the U.S. has been doing major down sizing of forces in the region. Recent trips to the area by President Obama, Secretary of State Clinton, and Secretary of Defense Panetta have bought the region back to the forefront in the news in recent days. To further emphasize the importance of the region while in Australia, President Obama stated that in spite of anticipated defense budget reductions he and his team would make our presence in the region a top priority.

Before I go on I’d like to give some background on the region. The following is taken from United States Pacific Command’s (USPACOM) web site:

“The United States Pacific Command (USPACOM) Area of Responsibility (AOR) encompasses about half the earth’s surface, stretching from the waters off the west coast of the U.S. to the western border of India, and from Antarctica to the North Pole. There are few regions as culturally, socially, economically, and geo-politically diverse as the Asia-Pacific. The 36 nations that comprise the Asia-Pacific region are home to more than 50% of the world’s population, three thousand different languages, several of the world’s largest militaries, and five nations allied with the U.S. through mutual defense treaties. Two of the three largest economies are located in the Asia-Pacific along with ten of the fourteen smallest. The AOR includes the most populous nation in the world, the largest democracy, and the largest Muslim-majority nation. More than one third of Asia-Pacific nations are smaller, island nations that include the smallest republic in the world and the smallest nation in Asia.”

The region’s economic value is huge. Pacific navigation sea lanes account for $5.3 trillion in bilateral trade of which $1.2 trillion is U.S. It is also worth noting that with the exception of moving U.S. forces out of the Philippines at the request of their government in the 1990’s, there has not been much change in the forward deployed locations of U.S. military forces in the region since the end of the Cold War. If you look at the broad perspective, the announcement this week of plans to deploy 2,500 Marines to Australia, is more of a symbolic strategic move than a major increase in the already sizable forces in the region. In spite of the conflicts in the Middle East the U.S. currently maintains about one fifth of its military forces in the region. Here are the latest numbers of U.S. forces in the region according to the USPACOM web site:

“U.S. Pacific Fleet includes six aircraft carrier strike groups, approximately 180 ships, 1,500 aircraft and 100,000 personnel. Marine Corps Forces, Pacific possesses about two-thirds of U.S. Marine Corps combat strength, includes two Marine Expeditionary Forces and about 85,000 personnel assigned. U.S. Pacific Air Forces is comprised of approximately 40,000 airmen and more than 300 aircraft, with about 100 additional aircraft deployed to Guam. U.S. Army Pacific has more than 60,000 personnel assigned, including five Stryker brigades. Of note, component command personnel numbers include more than 1,200 Special Operations personnel. Department of Defense Civilians and Contractors in the Pacific Command AOR number about 40,000. Additionally, the U.S. Coast Guard, which frequently supports U.S. military forces in the region, has approximately 27,000 personnel in its Pacific Area.”

This week I participated in a Department of Defense Bloggers Roundtable With Major General Michael Keltz (USAF), Director, J-5, Strategic Planning and Policy Subject: The 14th Annual Chiefs of Defense Conference (CHOD). In laymen’s terms, General Keltz and his staff work on developing national security strategies and policy proposals for the region. The conference theme was “multilateral approaches to maritime security in the Asia-Pacific” and was hosted by the U.S. in Hawaii. 27 countries attended. Of note, as in the preceding years China was invited but chose not to attend. Although the topic of the round table was the conference, the discussion during the round table was pretty far ranging.

As to the issue of what forces are in the region, the General stated:

“And I just want to reiterate for the entire blog, as we talk about forces being moved around and this impression that for some odd reason people thought that we’ve been leaving the Pacific, we have not been focusing on the Pacific, I can tell you categorically that’s absolutely false… And I can tell you that in the last 10 years, if you look at the capability which the United States had and allies and partners had in the last 10 years, even though you can say that we’ve numerically taken some things away, we’ve been quietly but very effectively increasing the capabilities that we have in the Pacific, increasing our technological edge and also increasing the integration that we have with our both partner nations and alliance nations.
A case in point: This is the first time, of the six F-22 squadrons in the world, three of them are stationed in the Pacific. There are only two C-17 squadrons that have been deployed outside of the United States, and they’re both in the Pacific, in Alaska and Hawaii. The very first Global Hawk deployments were out of Guam. The very first ones that are stationed outside of the United States came to Guam. The upgrades that we’ve been doing now to ballistic missile defense; the Aegis capabilities that we have; the Kitty Hawk was replaced by a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier.
When you look at those instances and you look at those modifications and the increases of capability we have done over the last 10 years, I could argue and everybody can argue very easily that we are a lot more capable as a United States…The training that we’ve been able to do and the increases in technology that our partners
have been able to do for interoperability and exercise and training, we as a whole in the Pacific are a lot more capable now in so many different ways — command and control; humanitarian assistance; disaster relief; building partnership capability and capacity for counterterrorism; human trafficking; piracy, the illicit trafficking that’s going on in both arms sales, drugs and people.
Those kind of things, we have really made a lot of progress in the Pacific theater while we’ve been still focusing on Iraq and Afghanistan.”

When asked about China and was it a threat, General Keltz stated:

“I don’t look at them as a friend. I don’t look at them as a foe. I deal with China as China. Ten years ago I wrote a paper with Dr. David M. Lai, who was a former foreign service officer, he and his wife both in Chicago. And while I was at Air War College, I got to spend a year with him. And it was interesting. We wrote a paper, and the premise of the paper was — is do not treat them either/or, or don’t label them. Follow the old George Washington rule when it comes to there because if you label somebody a friend, you label somebody an enemy, you are held captive to that label.”

When asked to elaborate on the Chinese Navy improvements and whether these moves represented a threat or an evolutionary move towards developing a blue water Navy, General Keltz replied:

“…it is something that we’re wrestling with right now. And it’s just not us. It’s the Japanese asking the same question; the Filipinos asking the same question; the Malaysians and Indonesians, Singaporeans are asking the same question. Because if you look at their PRC defense white paper, they originally omitted having anything to do with aircraft carriers. Now they’ve reversed themselves and kind of flip-flopped twice now on that. And that just — again, it clouds the transparency issue and their intent issue, and there’s a lot of concern about that.
So consequently, when you take that — and we’ve been piecing together their foreign policy, their strategic policy, their near-seas defense policy. And as you sit there and look at that strategy, they definitely look like they want to push everybody out of the region, of going — start from the Bohai Gulf, the Yellow Sea up in the north by Korea, coming down through Taiwan, coming into the South China Sea, their 9-Dash line — quite frankly, it doesn’t conform to international law.
It doesn’t conform to any kind of rule of law that we know. And it sure as heck doesn’t conform to any of the U.N. Convention Law of the Sea’s. So there’s a concern there, and that is something that is prudent for us to be prepared for.
So when we look at threat, we — people have a tendency to throw the world “threat” around very quickly, and I agree with you. This is more a pragmatic approach of taking a look at what their strategies are. And it appears their intent right now is starting to push people out of things that would be, normally, internationally-recognized waters. And
the international response to that right now has been alarm. And the international response to the Chinese is, hey, get yourself back into international norms; you’re concerning us here, especially as it deals with the global commons and impeding commerce and trade in the area.”

I asked the General what issues kept him up at night? He replied:

“Two things that keep me up at night: quite frankly, miscalculation, to a certain degree, but really cultural competence.
It — one of the things that we have done — and I’ll go to cultural competence first — in the last 10 years, if you look at the American military and how they have interacted in Central Asia, how they’ve interacted in Iraq and Afghanistan — my son — my youngest son is a Marine; my oldest son is in the Army — one of the things that they’re teaching us is cultural competence is just almost as important and sometimes would obviate the need for kinetics by — able to understand, one, the environment that you’re in and the cultural requirements that are around us. So it’s a more of a complete understanding of how do I train soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marine, Coast Guardsmen and my civilians to be culturally competent through a very multilateral, multicultural environment such as the Pacific.
There is a difference of knowing how to speak properly in addressing folks in Korea. I mean, there’s a difference between “banma” (ph), which is like the colloquialism, and the difference between “unyonghaseyu” (ph) and “unyonghashimnika” (ph). And you see that also in Mandarin, in Chinese. You see that in the Muslim cultures. How do you interact better with those individuals?
And as we start to engage folks, one of the things that keeps me up at night is that I’m helping our United States forces interact better with our allies and partners. And oh, by the way, leveraging our allies and partners’ capabilities and coming back to Australia — they have an incredible amount of experience down in Timor-Leste, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Indonesia and Malaysia, using the Singaporeans to help us understand Chinese better, understand the Malaysians better, to understand the Indonesians better. That’s one the things that kind of keeps me up, which is ironic because usually when people say, what keeps you up, you think a threat. And I’m really thinking of increasing the capabilities of the individual, a very soft-power, smart-power type of environment.

Think I’ll end here. As always my views are my own.