Category Archives: China and the Pacific

The Chilling Prospects of Nuclear Devices at Large

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By

Vice Admiral (Retd.) Vijay Shankar

Keywords: US and USSR Nuclear Stockpiles, China, Nuclear Safeguards, Nuclear Proliferation, WMD technology and delivery systems, Nuclear Financial Conduits

This article was first published in the author’s monthly column on the Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies website on 12 May 2014

During the Cold War, the Soviet Union produced over one thousand tons of weapon grade Plutonium and Highly Enriched Uranium. By 1986 its stockpile numbered 45,000 warheads[i]; it was poorly inventoried; spread across the Republics with fissionable material salted away as reserve in shoddily secured warehouses (remembering that it was the nation that was secured). The post break-up Russian governments of Yeltsin and Putin through the nineties and into the new millennium managed to locate and harvest close to 99.9 percent of the stash leaving 0.1 percent unaccounted for, which translates to one thousand kilograms of weapon-grade fissile matter somewhere in limbo[ii]; adequate material to put together over one hundred, 20 kiloton yield explosive devices. It is not entirely clear what magnitude of unaccounted weapon-grade fissile matter is adrift from the US and NATO stockpile for at the height of the Cold War, they too had amassed a stockpile of over 30,000[iii] warheads and an indefinite number of tactical nuclear weapons (TNWs) deployed on the European front; and they are not telling. After all in the sample year of 1957 three US nuclear weapons were lost in the North Atlantic Ocean whilst ferrying them across in transport Aircrafts and remain so to date[iv].

In the meantime, China’s Premier Deng Xiaoping through the 1980s into the 1990s promoted and executed an aggressive policy of direct transfer, of nuclear weapon technology and launch vectors to reprobate States (Pakistan, North Korea, Libya, Algeria, Egypt, Syria, Iran and Saudi Arabia) using North Korea as a clearing house for the deals. The policy has been continued by his successors unrelentingly[v].

The reasons for this profligate orientation are a matter of conjecture and may have originally reflected balance of power logic in the sub continental context; to offset and contain Indian comprehensive superiority. While in North Korea’s case to keep the USA and the Pacific allies embroiled in a snare of insecurities. In the Islamic world the motivations have a far more sinister purpose and perilous fallout.

Radical Islamic terrorists see the possession of a nuclear weapon not just as a symbol of power and an instrument of deterrence but as a means to destroy and dislocate an order that has so willfully kept the faithful under political, economic and spiritual subjugation. In this frame of reference, nations that have been singled out for retribution are the USA, India and Israel. It is here in these countries that the iniquitous probability of a nuclear device being detonated by radical Islamists looms large. Such an event gives to the non-state perpetuators an amorphous form that can neither be destroyed in armed retaliation nor their credo obliterated from the world of beliefs. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq stand in stark testimony to how rooted dogmas have a conviction of their own that deny change through force of arms. Rhetoric such as ‘rogue states’, ‘war on terror’ and ‘failed states’ raise more problems than provide solutions, for any rational interpretation of the terms will invariably indict the very nations that seek to drag out and drub.

Inquiry exposes the real enemy to be states and non-state actors that proliferate nuclear technologies with no other predisposition than to put the status-quo in disarray or driven by avarice. Global double standards and persistent tendentious views that exist on the subject has already brought selective legitimacy of such transactions and taken the world another step closer to a maverick nuclear detonation. Not only do current policies and attitudes to proliferation generate exceptionably high risks of a nuclear attack but there is an inevitability that is emerging if fissionable materials are globally not secured, retrieved and accounted.

Our narrative thus far has suggested that global clashes have moved beyond State to State conflict into a realm where the real threat of apocalypse comes from nuclear weapons in the hands of anarchic groups. These amorphous factions are driven by an ideology that seeks the destruction of what it considers antagonistic to its beliefs. The Nation State, on the other hand, is rationally driven by the will to survive. Perpetuation of the State is a national interest that is held supreme even if it means compromises that may cause profound changes. Radical Islam and its insurgents do not operate under such existential constraints; to them it the constancy of an abstract idea, that of their interpretation of the Koran.

The awkward irony is that the militant Islamist is financed by the same ungoverned trade that has made billionaires out of dubious entrepreneurs. The case of the Glencore Uranium Mining Corporation in Kitwe Zambia is a case in point. The sole owners of Glencore are the Marc Rich family now settled in Zug, Switzerland; the same Mr. Rich who was indicted for illicit Uranium trading with Iran, Israel and, one can only speculate, with which other entities. He also received a full and well funded Presidential pardon on Clinton’s last morning in office.[vi] The upshot is that the transfer of illicit wealth whether it is through the drug trade, uncontrolled resource access, sale of prohibited materials and technologies, illegal arms trade or as a deliberate policy eventually, in part, funnels its way to the nurturing of radical organisations. What we today stand witness to is the convergence of a parallel source of wealth and diffusing technologies together in the quest for weapon grade fissile materials. The means to dislocate and put in disarray the evolving world order is at hand.

We have noted that the trio of the USA, India and Israel have been declared by Radical Islam as primary targets for reprisal and therefore it may be inferred for special nuclear treatment. Counter action must, for this reason alone, be spearheaded by the troika. Four concrete measures are suggested:

  • Fissile Material. All fissile material globally must be retrieved, inventoried and secured. This must be an obligatory international effort despite the current situation in the Ukraine. Scientists and technicians involved in nuclear weapon design and fabrication must be profiled and political control by respective nations exercised over there movements and affiliations.
  • Inspection and Safeguards. The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) of 1970 along with the Additional Protocol, which gave the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) greater proliferation monitoring powers, was the designated instrument for safeguards. However the treaty has over the years been compromised by the inequities it represented, the discrimination that it promoted and the selective biases that it propagated. What it lacks is teeth to impartially enforce punitive measures against proliferators irrespective of nation. What is suggested is a retooling of the Treaty to make the IAEA the nodal proliferation control agency with mandatory surveillance, intelligence provisions and realistic controls on the production of fissionable material and movement of nuclear weapon technologies.
  • Choking the Money Conduits. Intelligence sharing and coordinated action to shut down ungoverned trade and illicit financial transfers is the key to starving radical organisations. Financial institutions must be obliged to collaborate in the matter.
  • China. As noted earlier, China has been the leading proliferator of nuclear weapon technologies and delivery systems. It has over the years transferred nuclear weapons design, provided testing facilities, passed on ballistic missiles along with production facilities and provided material, intellectual, logistic and doctrinal back up to client state nuclear weapon programmes. To some in Beijing the detonation of a nuclear device by Radical Islamists may even be seen as an effective route to upsetting the status-quo and opening the future to its hegemonic designs.

Thus far, as a global community, we have been blind to the dangers of untrammelled nuclear proliferation particularly by China as it supplies ready-to-use WMD technology along with delivery systems to States that are in the tightening grip of Radical Islamists. The manner in which Pakistan received a nuclear weapon design package and material support to build nuclear weapons which was then conveyed to Iran, Libya and others is suggestive of a pattern that seeks to deliberately provoke a  nuclear incident that can only serve China’s interests. The time is nigh when the trio of USA, India and Israel which have been designated as primary targets of Radical Islam to band together to enforce a Nuclear Non Proliferation regime that reigns in China.

——

End Notes

[i] Wikimedia Commons, US and USSR nuclear stockpiles.

[ii] Reed and Stillman. The Nuclear Express, Zenith Press Minneapolis 2009, pg 320

[iii] Wikimedia Commons, US and USSR nuclear stockpiles.

[iv] The Nuclear Express, 349.

[v] In 1982 Deng’s government began the deliberate direct/proxy proliferation of nuclear and ballistic missile technologies into the Islamic and Marxist worlds. China signed a covert nuclear reactor deal with Algeria; provided to North Korea comprehensive material and technological support to their nuclear weapons programme; sold CSS-2 missiles to Saudi Arabia and gave logistic, material, technological, intellectual assistance and doctrinal sustenance to the Pakistan nuclear weapons programme to ‘redress’ the nuclear imbalance on the sub-continent. See Proliferation: Threat and Response, Office of the US Secretary for Defence January 2001.

[vi] Reed and Stillman, The Nuclear Express, Zenith Press Minneapolis 2009, 310-311.

MH 370: Of Things We Know Naught

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(Dampening the Credibility of China’s ‘Anti-Access Area Denial’ Strategy)

By

Vice Admiral (retd.) Vijay Shankar

This article was first published in the author’s monthly column The Strategist on the Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies website

The mystery of the missing Malaysian Airlines MH 370, code sharing with China Southern Airlines CZ 748, bound from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, continues to confound and baffle in the fundamentals of the episode. Was it a sudden and nameless catastrophic end to an ill fated flight or was it a failure of surveillance that led to a controlled and purposeful disappearance of a marked commercial carrier?

Look at the facts; the last reported position of the aircraft was on 08 March 2014 at 01:19 hours (local time Malaysia) in the Gulf of Thailand at its first navigational way point IGARI, about 500 kilometres (kms) north east of Kuala Lumpur at an altitude of 35,000 feet cruising at 872 km/h well on its predetermined route to Beijing. This account was immediately followed by loss of all communications and a possible disabling of the secondary radar (transponder). MH 370 was now less than 200 kilometres from the Vietnamese coast with orders to call up Ho Chi Min city Air Traffic Control (ATC). Normal procedures demand a positive overlap when control passes from one ATC to another; this would appear not to have occurred which in itself ought to have rung some alarm bells particularly in a dense airspace which accounts for nearly 16% of global traffic (see Map 1; authors research suggests that there were at least 25 aircrafts on international transit within 500 kms of MH 370 at that instant).

MALAYSIA PLANE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Map 1:  Intended Flight Path of MH370 (CZ748) and last known position.                   Source: http://www.cemag.us  

Leaving aside the initial bungling by Malaysian aviation authorities; conspiracy theories abound, from a terrorist attack to a suicidal cockpit to a US sponsored clandestine seizure and strike to prevent high security cargo from falling into Chinese hands. However, more significant to our narrative is the response of China’s most recent Flight Information Region (FIR) Centre at Sanya and its integration into that nation’s Air Defence network. The Sanya FIR (in Hainan) is responsible for managing traffic and maintaining continuous surveillance over the South China Sea. Its formal area of responsibility is a sea space of 280,000 square kilometres which approximates a square of 530 kms sides or a circle of diameter 600 kms extending into the South China Sea. While China’s claim to sovereignty over the entire South China Sea does not include the Gulf of Thailand; the last reported position of MH 370 was within 500 kms of its claimed territorial sea and about 1200 kms from Hainan. Also, had the flight stuck to its planned route, it would have over flown Vietnam and entered Chinese “airspace” in the Sanya FIR by 0215 hrs; it did not and therefore the question arises why was Sanya Air Control Centre at such a run down state of alert and the Chinese Air Defense organisation wanting in alacrity or in a heightened state of readiness? Given the current imbroglio in the South China Sea, the state of air surveillance it may be assumed, would have demanded early tracking and far more credible situational awareness. And a consideration that cannot be lost sight of is the fact that Hainan is home to the Chinese South Sea Naval Fleet at Beihai and houses its strategic ballistic missile submarine force at Yulin; which must play some part in assuring domain wakefulness.

Image

Map 2: Track of MH 370 from take off to 1h 34m into flight                                                     Source: www.malaysiaairline.comMH370 and http://en.wikipedia.org/wikifile:MH370

At 0215 hrs comes a positive pick up of MH 370 by Malaysian military radar fixing the aircraft 320 kms North West of Penang at 12000 feet altitude on a westerly heading; having deviated 500 kilometres west of its intended track (see Map 2). This information had to have been passed to Sanya FIR since the aircraft was bound for Beijing. Two possibilities emerge; both the entire air space management organisation and air defence network in China were in deep slumber or our own appreciation of China’s Air Defence Surveillance is flawed. They just do not seem to have the essential surveillance capability, after all an overdue aircraft whether overdue at destination or any of its waypoints is no trifling matter from both the safety and security perspective.

China today is transiting through the three accepted strategic phases of great power status; from volume trade through resource grabbing economic expansion to a security dominated and status-quo challenging entity. Admittedly, this principle is simplistic in form and motivation. Yet it captures the essence of how nations in their quest to make possible enhanced economic development through means that have a unidimensional focus have generated anxieties in the environment. This air of disquiet amongst states in turn morphs into fear and suspicion. Contemporary China fits well into this mould.

To the astute military analyst the 370 incident places the edifice of China’s Anti Access Area Denial (A2AD) Strategy, upon which is predicated the emergence of the People’s Liberation Army as a major player in the Asia Pacific region, as some what less than persuasive. The strategy is based on the marriage of the Dong-Feng 21D anti surface ballistic missile as the “aircraft carrier killer” with matching surveillance capability that could detect and target hostile aircraft carriers at ranges in excess of 2000 kilometres. Critically the kill chain begins with detection of the Carrier’s flight operations. The entire episode must also have come as a dampener to the heady mixture of Chinese nationalism, its new found wealth and its urge to upset the status-quo that animates what may be called the ‘China Arrival’.

If China touts the A2AD strategy as its existential future, it is clear that the credibility of such a scheme has taken a hammering. In defence, China’s planners may argue that they had not brought to bear the full weight of their military surveillance capability for security reasons; but this contention does not hold very much water for two reasons; firstly by 09 March Chinese remote sensing satellites had been deployed with considerable operational alacrity (if not precision) to join the search effort and secondly the A2AD strategy is, to all intents and purpose, a deterrent strategy and under the circumstance conditions were ideal to demonstrate its surveillance competence. In the event its satellite reported possible debris of the ill-fated aircraft within 90 kms south of Vietnam’s Tho Chu Island about 150 kms north of the last known position reported at 0130 hrs on 08 March. The search centre moved to this new position; however the deployed scouts drew a blank. The fresh datum for the search served to  dilute international exertions which only regrouped after an analysis of satellite communications doppler shift  to concentrate efforts 9 days later in the south Indian Ocean about 6000 kms. southwest of the of the first report.

The search for the remains of the hapless MH370 continues. Meanwhile China’s quest for an existential strategy as a prelude to confronting the status-quo is convincing nobody.

China’s Air Defence Identification Zone: At Variance with the Principle of Adherence

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This article was first published on the Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies website in December 2013.

By

Vice Admiral (Retd.) Shankar

Keywords: Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ), East China Sea, Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ), Rise of Chinese Hegemony, “Line of Actual Control”

An Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) is space over land or water within which identification, location, and routing of aircrafts are controlled. It is enforced by a state in the interest of security and safety. While ADIZs usually extend into what is universally acknowledged to be international airspace, even by the countries that maintain them, they in no way confer sovereignty. Its extent is determined by the reaction time to respond to foreign and possibly hostile aircrafts. The authority to establish an ADIZ is not given by any international treaty nor prohibited by international law and is not regulated by any international body. The first ADIZ was established by the United States soon after World War II. As surveillance technologies improved, the scramble for security reached a frenzied peak during the early stages of the Cold War when the fear of a sneak nuclear airborne first strike was a strategic fixation amongst protagonists. The extent of paranoia is exemplified by the American ADIZ off Southern California that stretches more than 400 nautical miles out to sea. Air defence zones should not be confused with information structures which are used to manage air traffic worldwide.

Several countries currently maintain ADIZs including Norway, Britain, USA, Canada, Japan, Pakistan, India, South Korea, Taiwan and China. Three conventional criteria preside over such zones, these are: the Zone cover undisputed territory, Zones do not apply to foreign aircraft not intending to enter territorial airspace, Zones do not overlap. Since states have the right to regulate air traffic only over their land, countries are not legally obliged to comply with another States ADIZ requirements in international airspace, but commercial traffic tend to do so because of the promise of security and safety.

So, on 23 November 2013, why did China establish its East China Sea ADIZ? Despite the knowledge that the central three criteria were breached, it covered the disputed Islands of Senkaku/Diaoyu; the Zone solicited information even if the foreign aircraft had no intentions of entering China’s territorial air space; and intriguingly, the new Zone intruded and overlapped the Japanese and Korean ADIZs. It also, cannot be coincidental that the inexact vesica piscis formed by the intersection of the Japan and China ADIZ along with the intersection of their disputed  Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ) are centred on the Chunxiao gas fields (originally disputed but since 2008 overseen by a shaky joint development programme).

This discourse considers the three reasons that China’s establishment have fielded in vindication of their East China Sea ADIZ. First, the Surprise Attack Anxiety.  Surprise may be an essential feature of the “Principles of War”, and theoretical savvy suggest that the danger of a surprise attack is highest when one party to a conflict considers war inevitable and thinks that getting in the first blow would deliver a decisive military advantage; but, the reality is entirely in variance. For State initiated offensive military acts and follow up actions cannot today be masked, primarily because contemporary surveillance systems are designed to effectively discriminate hostile preparations and intrusions. Such technical measures are well known to China and appropriate devices are in place. ADIZs on the other hand are founded on the assumption of adherence and therefore in a state of war or military hostilities, it is inconceivable that one of the antagonists is going to adhere to the niceties of safety obligations. Tensions are undoubtedly high in the East China Sea region at the moment, but this is not Cold War. No country wants to target the heart of the global economy. The surprise attack formulation as articulated by China’s defence ministry is therefore on thin ice and has left China’s ADIZ more a question mark as to what their strategic intent is.

Second, the rationale that it is illicit trafficking of man, material and narcotics that is the object of the Zone is ludicrous since the region is neither a significant drug route nor is it a cognizable unlawful human trafficking corridor. Also the presence of multiple and overlapping maritime disputes and claims in area contributes to a surfeit of  zealous policing agencies which makes the trafficking theory implausible.

Third, the suggestion that the Zone was motivated by a desire to reduce the risk of midair collisions is hardly tenable since the most acute peril that airmen face is when there is duality of control without clear and unambiguous responsibility and power to regulate traffic. The underlying problem is not commercial air traffic, which is already under efficient regulation in the East China Sea, but the movement of military flights which have no obligation to abdicate control to the Zonal controller whilst in international airspace. Proclaiming the ADIZ and declaring the right to “emergency defensive measures”, it has put pressure on China to intercept foreign military flights increasing the risk of accidents. The move up an escalatory ladder jumped a few rungs when military aircraft from the US, Japan and South Korea challenged the ADIZ.

It is evident that China’s ADIZ neither qualifies the 3- conventional criteria test nor does their logic have any prospect of acceptance. It has, however roused a dangerous dilemma for there now exists a real possibility that a commercial plane in the area could receive conflicting instructions and face hazardous consequences. The Zone has also lowered the threshold for armed incidents. Which brings us back to our original question of why the Zone? History has repeatedly shown that the rise of a new hegemon is marked by resistance to the status-quo. China’s ADIZ in the East China Sea must be seen as a manifestation of its growing assertiveness. From the Indian perspective, planners must be prepared to confront similar proclamations over the Line of Actual Control particularly in the Arunachal sector. The riposte lies in defying any such unilateral decree.