Hot Spots

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Hot Spots

08/05/2010

The Pacific...Hizbullah

The other week, Defense News interviewed Admiral Robert Willard, who heads up the U.S. Pacific Command and oversees 330,000 service members – soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines – in a region that covers “about half the world.” Following is part of the Q&A.

Willard: The sinking of the [South Korea] ship Cheonan by the North Koreans is an immediate security concern for our alliance in South Korea. We have been working very closely with the South Koreans with regard to shoring up their own security, given the tension created on the peninsula. We continue to plan the ways and means to effectively deter the North Koreans. They are a relatively unstable regime that over many, many decades now have generated provocations, although Cheonan was particularly heinous.

There are issues with regard to China’s assertiveness in the South China Sea and East China Sea. We are monitoring the situation.

We are dealing with several transnational threats, terrorist groups in the southern Philippines, attempting to help the Indonesians, [and] the terror group that attacked Mumbai, and we developed an operation to contain them in the areas around India. [Ed. I think this is significant. Haven’t seen anything in mainstream press on it.]

Q: What’s your feeling about the Cheonan attack? What was North Korea trying to do? Was it a rogue commander or someone acting on orders from the top?

Willard: There is a history of provocations both for this regime and for the previous regime [under] Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Il’s father, that have been more or less egregious, so this is nothing new. We believe little occurs in North Korea without the knowledge of and approval of the regime. This is very much about Kim Jong Il and his hold on the regime. Kim Jong Il is not in good health, he has suffered a stroke. He has named his 27-year-old son, Kim Jong Un, as his successor. It’s in the history of North Korea that succession tends to bring provocations with it as they attempt to shore up, in this case, his son’s reputation and authority over the military and the North Korean regime.

Q: You’ve said previously that China’s military modernization effort is worrisome. What are the problems you see?

Willard: I am very interested in China’s military expansion writ large, as is every nation in the region, I can assure you. The Chinese military expansion has been dramatic, especially over the past decade.

My charter is to enhance the military relationship between the United States and the People’s Republic of China. We are having limited success in military engagements. We are in a suspension as a consequence of the arms sales to Taiwan. It has become evident to us that the Chinese, the PRC, does not place the same value on ‘mil-to-mil’ engagement that we do. We are continuing to dialogue with the Chinese to try and improve that.

Some of the concerns we have is the level of assertiveness of maritime forces with the [Chinese Navy] in and around the South China Sea and East China Sea, especially in and around contested island groups: the Paracels and the Spratlys in the South China Sea and the Senkaku islands in the East China Sea contested with Japan. There have been confrontations between PRC forces and Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Philippines and Japan over these contested areas.

Q: As the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan sort of end, is PACOM where the next war could be?

Willard: The extremist threat isn’t going to go away. Broadly, there’s an increasing recognition regarding the importance of the Asia-Pacific region economically and from the standpoint of global security. Economic hiccups in one location in the world impact everywhere else, and Asia is no exception.

As the focus of the world regarding the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq eventually lessens, and we nonetheless maintain and sustain our efforts against extremism, I think you’re going to see the world naturally migrate to the Asia-Pacific.

Q: The military has been shifting forces to the Pacific region, and the Marines plan to shift to Guam from Japan, the relocation of Marine Corps Air Station Futenma. How critical is it to restructure the force?

Willard: There has been a shift of focus to the Pacific: Six aircraft carriers now, a submarine force that’s shifted 60-40 toward the Pacific. These are important issues because of the time-distance factors in the Pacific and the very broad area that the Pacific Command covers. There is a rebalancing occurring.

These alliances, where we actually reside in these countries, are high maintenance. There are a lot of moving parts to have our forces in Korea or anywhere else in the world.

The Defense Posture Review Initiative, DPRI, signed four years ago between our two countries was the culmination of an effort by the United States and Japan to readjust our force laydown throughout Japan to improve the management by both nations. It was alleviating some of the burden-sharing pressures and consolidating some force structure where necessary. Since 1993, we have been discussing moving Futenma airfield northward because it’s located in a very urban location on Okinawa.

We were a little taken aback, frankly, when the previous prime minister and his administration began to dive into that one more time after 17 years of discussion. We thought we had it about right. Frankly, Japan had 51% of the vote with where we were going with the airfield. Lo and behold, in the course of those discussions, it was finally concluded that we had it about right.

[Ed note: I’m going to be in Guam in October and hope to glean a lot of information on the movement of our forces there.]

On a separate issue, Hizbullah, awhile back Barbara Opall-Rome had a piece in Defense News on how Israel would fight Hizbullah should war break out again. As tensions are mounting in recent weeks, it’s appropriate to take a look at the potential Israeli response.

“The last time war broke out along the Lebanese border, Israel acted clumsily and lost its aura of invincibility. If there is a next time, Israel’s military brass vows, things will be different….

“(A new fight) would see an all-out assault on the party’s arsenals, command centers, commercial assets and strongholds throughout the country.

“But it also would include attacks on national infrastructure; a total maritime blockade; and interdiction strikes on bridges, highways and other smuggling routes along the Syrian border with Syria. Meanwhile, land forces would execute a ferocious land grab well beyond the Litani River that Israeli brigades belatedly hobbled toward yet failed to reach in the (2006) war.

“Finally, Israel would consider the kind of targeted killings that it now executes only in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.

“ ‘Today, we’re looking at people. In parallel to everything else, we’re talking about leaders, political and military. This, too, will earn us added deterrence,’ a senior Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) officer said.

“That’s a path that would put Israel on a collision course with the Lebanese Army, the country’s economy and other U.S.-and internationally-supported institutions and symbols of Lebanese sovereignty. Israeli troops would be likely to clash with U.S.-trained and –equipped units of the Lebanese Armed Forces. They would undermine, if not obliterate, a government whose prime minister received renewed commitments of U.S. support in a May 24 White House visit.

“Yet Israeli officials, in public statements and interviews over several months, indicated that unless the Lebanese government or the international community disarms Hizbullah, they believe such a war may become inevitable.”

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak is on record as saying, “The main responsibility lies with the Lebanese government. And the government of Lebanon will be held accountable if [the situation] deteriorates.”

*I need to take off the rest of the month regarding this column in order to carve out some time for pressing business issues.

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