Asia-Pacific facing change

Asia-Pacific facing change

By Juwono Sudarsono

The following article is based on a paper presented at the
first annual conference of the Asia Pacific Center for Security
Studies, U.S. Pacific Command, Hawaii, Sept. 4 to 6, 1995.

HONOLOLU, Hawaii, U.S.A.: What are the linkages between
economic growth and military security? In what ways can the ASEAN
Regional Forum (ARF) complement and advance the APEC process?
What impacts do innovations in military technology have on the
two processes?

Twenty years ago the cold war defined the issues in relatively
clear-cut terms. Analysts and policy makers talked about the
American, Soviet and Chinese strategic triangle. Japan was the
junior partner in the alliance with the United States, the anchor
that developed and sustained what later became known as the East
Asia miracle.

The Asia Pacific region today contains the world's only
superpower (the United States), a state that if it so choose
could readily become one (Japan), and one that by 2010 at the
latest should achieve similar status (China). If things go well
politically and economically, Russia will complete the strategic
quadrangle by 2015.

For the moment, the United States remains the preeminent
Pacific power, the only global and regional balancer. America's
role is pivotal for the future course of economic growth in this
region for the simple reason that it alone possesses the four
dimensions of military power: strategic nuclear, conventional,
low intensity and information warfare capabilities.

The 1991 Gulf war was salutary in that for the first time
advanced sophisticated information warfare was employed to enable
rapid, widespread and devastating attacks on military and
civilian infrastructure. The uses of computer micro-processors,
logic bombs, high speed communications and sophisticated sensors
in conjunction with the long-prepared air-land battle strategy
designed for the inner NATO theater lifted the concept of total
warfare to a higher plane.

The military lessons of the Gulf War have since been
intensely studied in Asia and the Pacific, particularly in China.
As economic growth in the region advances and the need to secure
energy resources become more acute, tension levels will increase
the possibility that combined strategic, conventional, low-
intensity and info-war strategies will be employed in conjunction
with diplomatic claims and disputes over trade, investment and
financing rules.

Nations which must sustain growth rates of 8 to 10 percent for
the next decade must calibrate their energy needs and link that
strategy with appropriate use of military technology commensurate
with the region's specific characteristics.

The South China and East China Seas lines of communication
will be crucial for Japan's economic viability. That in turn
impinges the U.S. and Japan alliance structure, which affects the
military balance in the Korean peninsula.

The fragility and sensitivity of the North Korea nuclear
weapon build-down through the October 1994 framework agreement
attests to the delicate nature of combining nuclear,
conventional, low intensity and info-war strategies. The Spratly
islands dispute is both too delicate and too intricate a subject
to be resolved purely through diplomatic means. Every percentage
growth rate that an Asia Pacific nation must sustain must
ultimately affect the security and energy needs of its immediate
and far flung neighbors. Depending on the situation, forward
based strategies through pre-positioning and selective theater
forces will have to be combined with a viable economic deterrence
capability.

In the decades ahead, that deterrence must include the uses of
electromagnetic pulses, microbe and computer viruses, logic bombs
and advanced electronic-based psychological operations capable of
dismantling radar, surveillance, phone and communications
systems. These technologies may be employed in tandem with
economic warfare in disrupting banking and financial systems.
Air, sea and rail traffic and logistical systems can also be
effectively compromised.

That is why there is urgent need for the ARF and APEC tracks
to converge and develop a framework of geopolitical and geo-
economic confluence which matches economic and business
commitments with military and technological imperatives. Despite
advances in sophisticated technology, there are limits to what
technology can achieve in controlling human subjective will as
opposed to destroying infrastructure.

For the nations involved in the APEC and ARF processes, the
real challenge of meshing economic and military technological
change is that localism, nationalism, regionalism and globalism
are advancing simultaneously across all nations and economies in
the region.

Dr. Juwono Sudarsono is Vice Governor of the National
Resilience Institute, Jakarta.