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.