The Ship Model Forum

Pacific Armadas
Growing Far East Navies Mean New Challenges For U.S.
By Arthur Herman
New York Post
September 9, 2007

SOMETHING new and menacing has entered the blue waters of the Pacific Ocean, and it's not the great white shark.

On Aug. 23, Japan launched its first aircraft carrier since World War Two. The Hyuga only displaces 13,500 tons, compared to the 100,000 tons of an American Nimitz-class behemoth, and it will only carry 11 or so SH-60 anti-submarine helicopters instead of the 90 aircraft and choppers on the USS Nimitz or Eisenhower - at least for now. But as Richard Dorn, naval analyst at the U.S.-based AMI International, notes, "it cannot be denied that the launch of Hyuga is targeted at carrying Harriers [vertical-take-off fighters] or F-35's in the future" - and Japan is planning to build another three just like it.

In fact, the Hyuga marks a growing trend among Asia's navies - a trend that Americans need to monitor closely.

* India plans to have no less than four operational aircraft carriers by 2017.

* Thailand already has one, the Chakri Naruebet.

* Singapore's navy has four amphibious transport docks that can be converted into homes for anti-sub helicopters or vertical-take-off aircraft like the Harrier.

* Australia has no plans for a new carrier (its last one was decommissioned in 1982). But this month Royal Australian Air Force instructors will start learning to land their F/A-18s on American carrier decks - a major step toward making the RAAF a power at sea as well as on land.

Many analysts see all this taking to the air as countermeasures to the alarming growth of China's navy over the last decade, especially its submarine fleet (which is now nearly equal in number, if not in quality, to our own). They note that the navies of four Asian powers - Japan, Singapore, India and Australia - have joined the Americans in anti-submarine exercises off India's Malabar coast this week to send a clear signal to Asia's fast-growing naval power.

But this is by no means the full story. Two years ago, naval experts agreed that the Chinese were concentrating on building subs and had no interest in aircraft carriers. But now China has announced it will build two carriers by 2015 in cooperation with the Russians - who in turn announced in June that in 2010 they'll start building a new nuclear-powered carrier of 50,000 tons to join their existing carrier, the Admiral Kuznetzov.

WHAT we are seeing are Asian navies taking to heart the lessons of seapower - and of the aircraft carrier, even a diminutive one, as the power projector par excellence. Fed by a resurgent nationalism that had been suppressed during the Cold War, the struggle for the mastery of the Pacific is underway.

Like continental Europe after the Napoleonic Wars, Asia's economies are growing, many (like China and India) at 8 percent a year or more. And their middle classes are growing - producing and using an ever-larger share of the world's GDP. These nations not only have money to spend on projecting national power through their navies (seven of the world's 12 biggest navies face onto the Pacific), but they have vital interests to protect.

As in 19th century Europe, these trends will summon up huge creative energies but also the potential for great destruction - and America will have to help to make sure the first doesn't set the stage for the other.

CHINA now has the world's second- larg est navy - but it also has big interests to protect. By 2020, it will need more than 900 million tons of rice a year to feed its billion-plus population, yet even the most optimistic forecasts see its domestic production as rising to no more than 615 million tons. There is also China's growing thirst for natural gas and oil, which gives it a huge stake in protecting the vital sea lanes through which Asia gets its fossil fuels.

The same is true of India and Japan. With Japan's economy now second only to the United States' in size, its navy has increasingly had to drop the fiction that it is merely a Maritime Self-Defense Force (the official name), in favor of creating a "blue water" capacity - that is, an ability to operate trans-oceanically in cooperation with the United States or even (as the Hyuga indicates) on its own.

INDIA'S naval buildup - pushed by its ultra-na tional Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party - has been based on the lessons it learned about seapower from its original teacher, Britain's Royal Navy. The Indian Navy's motto even has distinct echoes of the age of Drake and Nelson: "He who controls the sea is all-powerful." Since 97 percent of India's foreign trade is seaborne, it is no surprise that by 2020 its navy will have grown to 185 ships, including at least four aircraft carriers.

RUSSIA, too, faces the same push for national self-assertion combined with the need to protect its interests in the Pacific. Next year, nearly a quarter of of its $192 billion defense budget will go for new ships. Its naval commander-in-chief, Adm. Vladimir Masorin, confidently predicts Russia will have the world's second-largest fleet in 20 years' time - just as it did in the Cold War.

Will the new national energies in Asia help to build a new world order, or will they trigger a ruthless competition for resources and empire, much as those of 19th century Europe triggered World War One?

To a large extent, the answer is up to the U.S. Navy, which is still the largest but also the most flexible and versatile in the world.

THIS is why Adm. Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs and former Chief of Naval Operations, has been a steady champion of the concept of a "1,000-ship navy" - that is, a U.S. fleet effectively enlarged by close cooperation with allied navies like Japan and India and Australia, and even potential rivals like China.

The goal is not only a force multiplier for our own navy in a time of shrinking naval budgets. The 1,000-ship navy will also have to become the glue that holds the global economic system together - both by protecting the world's sea lanes (over which 95 percent of the weight of international trade still travels) and by preventing the clash of interests (including our own) in places like the Pacific from triggering a world crisis involving nuclear-armed powers like Russia, China, and India.

Americans may not like being globocops. As we see in Iraq, the costs can be severe. But the alternatives are even riskier. And as the struggle for mastery of the Pacific heats up, we will need a strong, flexible Navy more than ever.

Arthur Herman's most recent book is "To Rule the Waves: How the British Navy Shaped the Modern World."

We are all one big happy fleet.

We can still afford to be global bouncers!

Well, the foolish thing to me about the "1,000 ship navy" is that you are teaching your doctrine and methods to potential enemies.

History is rich with examples of how our allies can be "fair-weather friends". I only need to remember the dunning of the US Embassy in London when British registry tankers were damaged during the mining of Haiphong. History teaches that The USA and Australia, but not Britain were on the correct side in that engagement. You have only to go to Los Angeles and meet a Vietnamese "boat person" to learn about the hideous, odious regime which was boosted by our "European Allies".

I guess their lovelorn socialism was truly blind.

Personally, beyond Oz, I don't know who else with whom I would share my most intimate defense secrets. Perhaps Canada, but that's about the limit.

_________________
If an unfriendly power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.

-- "A Nation at Risk" (1983)

Well, two LHDs, while not rating as pure carriers, are worth taking into account, me thinks.

_________________
I will miss you Werner. Fair winds and following seas.