The Soviets Stir Up the Pacific

ASIA Flexing their new muscles provokes alarm and resolve

The relentless Soviet military buildup of the past two decades has been a worldwide phenomenon. But in the past year or so, in addition to digging in deeper in Afghanistan, the U.S.S.R. seems to have been concentrating on its eastern flank: it has steadily reinforced what were already formidable land, air and sea forces along the rim of the Pacific. A shift in the area's balance of power would be bad news for the West. The U.S. has some important old friends in East Asia, notably Japan, as well as a big if problematic new one, the People's Republic of China. East Asia also contains two perennial trouble spots that could be flash points of superpower confrontation--the Korean peninsula and Indochina. TIME Diplomatic Correspondent Strobe Talbott, who has returned from an extensive East Asian tour, reports:

For more than 30 years, U.S. diplomats, generals and admirals have often been frustrated in their attempts to get America's friends and allies in East Asia to overcome their many differences and join forces in resisting Soviet advancements in the region. The prospects for such cooperation have recently improved, not necessarily because the U.S. is suddenly more persuasive, but because the Soviet Union has been building up its military forces so vigorously and, in the view of many East Asians, provocatively.

Japan is feeling particularly exposed to Soviet military power. In the past two years, the Soviet Union has garrisoned about 10,000 ground troops on four islands north of Japan. The Soviet Union seized the islands at the close of World War II, but Japan still claims them. This newly strengthened Soviet outpost includes Mi-24 assault helicopters, among the most sophisticated antitank gunships in the world and therefore an obvious threat to the Japanese armored units stationed just across the Nemuro Strait on the northernmost Japanese island of Hokkaido.

In the past six months, the U.S.S.R. has also significantly beefed up the firepower it has aimed at Japan from the Soviet mainland. The Kremlin has replaced its MiG-21s with the more advanced MiG-23 combat fighters and has moved a battery of SS-20 mobile missiles with multiple warheads, plus at least ten supersonic Backfire bombers armed with antiship missiles, from Europe to bases near Vladivostok, directly across the Sea of Japan from Hokkaido.

One Soviet motive for these threatening deployments is to give military weight to Moscow's territorial claim over the disputed islands. The Kremlin may have made its point, but it has also aroused Japanese ire and permitted Japanese generals and hawkish politicians to talk more openly about increased defense spending. Japanese public opinion still fears the shadow of the country's militaristic past, and the government is quite sensitive to the lingering resentment among East Asian countries that were occupied by Japan in World War II. But, as one Japanese official puts it, "advocacy of a more active defense policy was virtually taboo a year or two ago. Now it is merely controversial. We have the Russians to thank for the change."

Indeed, another motive for the Soviet buildup around Japan is probably the Soviet Union's desire to guard against a possible Japanese-American-Chinese military alliance some day in the future. The Kremlin's concern over China alone has already led it to amass 46 divisions--nearly a quarter of its total ground forces--along the Sino-Soviet border.

A third Soviet purpose in the present buildup in the Far East entails a more direct and immediate threat to the U.S.: Soviet submarines armed with missiles targeted on the U.S. have tended to take up their stations in the open waters of the North Pacific, between Hawaii and Alaska. Their movements can be monitored relatively easily by U.S. antisubmarine warfare (ASW) forces. But the latest Soviet submarines, fitted with new longer-range missiles, could hit targets in the continental U.S. from farther awayfrom the Sea of Okhotsk north of Hokkaido, which is sheltered by the Soviet mainland, a peninsula and the Kuril Islands. Japanese and American experts believe the Soviet Union is trying to seal off the Sea of Okhotsk from American ASW forces and turn it into a protected launching area for the newest Soviet subs and missiles.

The Korean peninsula too has been receiving close, though more subtle, attention from Soviet military planners. For decades North Korea has performed a delicate balancing act between its giant neighbors, China and the Soviet Union, repeatedly promising each that it would not allow the other to establish a base on North Korean territory. For the past two years, however, North Korea has allowed Soviet merchant ships and tankers to use its year-round port of Najin and from there to transport petroleum and other supplies by rail to Vladivostok when that city's harbor is closed by ice. A top South Korean official notes that this kind of co operation would have been "unthinkable only a few years ago and therefore at least symbolically worrisome." Symbolism aside, it helps the Soviets support their expanded military activities in Siberia. Sources in Seoul also say that Soviet submarines are bolder than in the past about playing cat-and-mouse with South Kore an coastal patrol boats.

These Soviet moves make ominous sense when seen on a map: the Korea Strait, at the southern end of the Sea of Japan, is a key link between the Siberian home ports of the Soviet Pacific fleet at Vladivostok and Petropavlovsk in the north and the naval base at Cam Ranh Bay in Viet Nam to the south. That American-built facility has fulfilled the Soviets' long-held, often frustrated desire for a warm-water naval base halfway between Vladivostok and the politically volatile, economically vital Persian Gulf-Indian Ocean region, where the superpowers are now circling each other warily.

The Soviets claim cnly to have "access" to bases in Viet Nam. The installations there, they insist, are still very much in Vietnamese hands. Not so, say U.S. experts. Aerial photography has discovered that the Soviets are building and operating a support pier to tend the nuclear-powered submarines that frequently call at Cam Ranh Bay. In the past few months, communications intercepts have picked up voices speaking native Russian from the control tower at Danang's military airfield, also U.S.-built. Says Vice Admiral Sylvester Foley, a deputy chief of naval operations in Washington: "In Viet Nam, the Soviets now have what for all in tents and purposes is a forward staging base." That base makes it far easier for Soviet warships to take up stations in the South China Sea near the U.S. naval base at Subic Bay in the Philippines. One of their missions is to scrutinize Subic and the nearby U.S. Air Force base at Clark Field. The bases in Viet Nam give the Soviet navy what military experts call a "surge capability" its ships can steam into the Indian Ocean in one or two days, compared with the seven or more days' voyage required from Vladivostok.

The gateway between the Pacific and the Indian Ocean--and the choke point through which passes virtually all of the Middle Eastern oil on which Japan's economy depends--is the Strait of Malacca, a channel 30 miles wide at its narrowest point, between the Malay Peninsula and the Indonesian island of Sumatra. Here too Soviet naval activity has been on the rise, in both obvious and not-so-obvious ways. Soviet destroyers, cruisers and diesel-powered, torpedo-firing Foxtrot submarines have been passing through the strait at the rate of about six a month, while nuclear-powered Echo-class subs, armed with antiship cruise missiles, prowl the South China Sea. Malacca is so shallow that subs must go through with at least their conning towers awash and therefore tend to make the passage at night. But the Indonesian navy believes fully submerged Soviet subs have been testing the deeper waters of the Sunda Strait off the southern tip of Sumatra and the Lombok Strait off Bali as alternative, less conspicuous ways of slipping into the Indian Ocean. The neutralist Indonesians are so concerned about Soviet penetration of their archipelago that they are considering asking the U.S. for submarine-detection equipment with which to monitor the underwater traffic through Sunda and Lombok.

Last year, to show its disapproval of the invasion of Afghanistan, the vociferously anti-Soviet government of Singapore closed its superbly equipped and strategically located port and drydock facilities to the Soviet navy. Yet Singapore still does booming business servicing the Soviet fishing, merchant and oceanographic research fleets, all of which have naval auxiliary functions. In fact, Soviet fishing vessels, particularly mother ships, often carry out electronic eavesdropping on other navies. Soviet merchant tankers are frequently diverted to refuel warships. The Soviet Oceanographic Research Fleet--the largest in the world--charts the ocean floor for the navigators aboard Soviet submarines and sometimes lays down remote-control sensors in order to help the Soviets keep track of American submarines. Says Admiral Foley, tersely: "The Russians' entire maritime capability is linked together." The U.S. Navy has the benefit of no such cooperation with commercial and civilian vessels in peacetime.

While the Soviets have been accelerating their naval buildup, the U.S. in recent years has fallen behind slightly in both new warships and naval aircraft. The Soviet Pacific fleet is now the largest anywhere in the world, totaling 319 armed warships, compared with 171 in the U.S. Seventh Fleet. The Soviet Union has increased its naval tonnage in the Pacific by 18% in just the past three years. Despite the Soviet numerical advantage, American vessels by and large are technically more sophisticated, carry more firepower and have more experienced crews. Because the Seventh Fleet must do double duty, however, patrolling the troubled waters of the Indian Ocean as well as the Pacific, U.S. ships and crews are spending 15% more time at sea than they did even during the height of the Viet Nam War. That statistic means that both men and machines are being overworked.

The Reagan Administration is acutely aware of the problem. "We've let our maritime forces shrink to a size where we can't meet all the political commitments we have," says Navy Secretary John Lehman. The Administration's long-term goal, which so far has generated considerable support in Congress, is to reverse the current adverse trend in the rivalry at sea. Explains Lehman: "Parity is an unacceptable concept in naval terms. We're a maritime power, while the Soviet Union is a land power. We can live with stable parity in strategic terms [i.e., intercontinental nuclear forces] and even with disparity in the other side's favor in land forces. But we must have clear superiority in naval forces. By definition, we would lose a standoff with the Soviet navy." The mission of the U.S. Navy is to keep sea lanes open, while that of the Soviet navy might be to interdict those lanes in a conflict. The American mission is more difficult and requires more force.

Lehman and others acknowledge that the goal of clear-cut superiority is distant and difficult, but they hope to make a big step in that direction by adding three battle groups to the twelve now in service round the world. A battle group consists of about seven warships, including an aircraft carrier. As a quick fix, the Reagan Administration early this month asked Congress for funds to recommission two World War II battleships now in mothballs. They would be refitted for firing cruise missiles and used as the centerpieces of new battle groups until additional aircraft carriers were available.

All this is regarded as welcome, if overdue, by the pro-Western governments in East Asia, as well as most of the neutral ones. Says Hisahiko Okazaki, a top strategist of Japan's Defense Agency: "As we see it, the Americans are coming back. There seems to have been a psychological change in American public opinion, largely in the wake of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan."

South Korean Diplomat Hahm Pyong Choon, a former Ambassador to the U.S. and national security adviser to the late President Park Chung Hee, says, "The U.S. is sending the right signals for a change." Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew and his Deputy Prime Minister Sinnathamby Rajaratnam are nothing short of ecstatic about the Reagan Administration. "For the first time since the Viet Nam War," says Rajaratnam, "the Americans are taking up the challenge."

Chinese officials in Peking are somewhat less enthusiastic. They worry that the Reagan Administration's military plans for the Pacific may include the sale of modern warplanes to Taiwan, which the People's Republic regards as a violation of the terms by which diplomatic relations were established two years ago. Also while officials in Peking applaud the hard-line anti-Soviet rhetoric now coming out of Washington, they say that they are still awaiting "concrete actions." In any case, they caution that the Soviet military challenge is too big for any imaginable American response to handle on its own.

"No one country-Japan, China or the U.S. alone-can check Soviet expansionism," says Tan Wenrui, deputy editor in chief of the Chinese party newspaper, the People's Daily. The Chinese want to see the emergence of a multilateral defense arrangement. Singapore's Rajaratnam agrees: "Since the U.S. cannot meet the threat on its own, what is needed in Asia is a collective defense system including the U.S., the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines), Australia, New Zealand and Canada, with South Korea and China as components. The Japanese, too, must contribute their share to the security of this area. They have got to get away from their old policy of saying, 'We'll make the Toyotas; you provide the defense umbrella.' " Rajaratnam is quick to add, however, "The U.S. must play the leading role. No one country out here can do that itself. America must definitely not delegate regional defense to Japan and China."

That caveat is echoed with some passion in Seoul and Jakarta. The South Koreans and most Southeast Asians are glad to see the Japanese openly debating the expansion of forces to defend their home islands and territorial waters, but no one in East Asia, including the Japanese, wants the U.S. to prod Japan into taking responsibility for other countries as well. On this subject, Ambassador Hahm of South Korea clenches his fist, purses his lips and raises his voice: "There is a suspicion throughout the area that the U.S. may be tempted to strengthen Japan as a surrogate. That plays on the 'ugly Japanese' syndrome. It conjures up the nightmare--an image out of hell--of the swaggering Japanese. Many countries here have already had to deal with a militarily humiliated Japan dominating us by its economic power. On top of that, are we now to have a militarily powerful Japan? Don't try to impose Japan on us. We have our historical hang-ups too."

Indonesia's hang-ups include not only wartime occupation by Japan but the more recent memory of the bloody and abortive Communist coup of 1965, which many Indonesians blame on Peking. Also, like other Southeast Asian nations, Indonesia has an economically prosperous minority of ethnic Chinese that is widely resented and mistrusted by the rest of the population. As a result, anti-Chinese sentiment is always just beneath the surface of Indonesian politics. Explains Vice President Adam Malik: "We've always seen a danger from both the Soviet Union and China. For a long time we were not sure which was the most threatening. However, since the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, we realize the immediate threat is from the Soviet Union."

Malik is a onetime president of the United Nations General Assembly and Indonesia's best-known statesman. As a civilian, however, he does not fully represent the military-dominated government. President Suharto, a former general, has recently told visiting U.S. Congressmen and Western diplomats that he still regards China as a bigger long-term threat to Indonesia than the U.S.S.R.

The Reagan Administration intends to use quiet diplomacy, not to get Japan to play the role of deputy regional superpower, but instead to increase its own antisubmarine warfare activity in the Sea of Okhotsk, upgrade its air and coastal defenses and pay a larger share of the cost of U.S. military bases in Japan. The Administration's new China policy is still not completely formed, but policymakers are inclined to stress the need to help China modernize its economy and industrial base, rather than sell it offensive weaponry.

Whether these and other policies eventually foster a multination anti-Soviet defense grouping in the Far East, spearheaded by the U.S., will depend mainly on two factors: first, whether Soviet activity in the region continues to frighten the countries there in the direction of such a grouping; and second, whether those countries are sufficiently impressed by the promised U.S. buildup to follow the American lead.

Conclude's South Korea's Hahm: "It's going to take the fine hand of the U.S. to give this motley grouping a coherence. Regional security for the entire Pacific basin is a U.S. responsibility. If the U.S. does not accept that responsibility, the Soviets will fill the vacuum. Then the fence sitting will begin, with everyone waiting to see which will blow--a Chinese wind or a Soviet wind." Right now, and for the foreseeable future, the wind everyone is worried about is blowing down on East Asia from Siberia.

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