Senkakus Incident — Day 5
Meanwhile, Chinese forces continue to hammer Japanese surface vessels near the Senkakus. In less than 24 hours, one-fifth of the Japanese navy is knocked out of action and hundreds are dead. To drive home its point, China also initiates attacks on the Japanese economy, knocking out the vulnerable power grid and blasting a crucial jet-fuel refinery.
Facing massive disruption at home and the destruction of its navy, Japan again pleads for help. Tokyo makes three concrete requests: It wants the American aircraft-carrier group that it has hosted for so many years sent into the fight to help protect Japanese ships; it wants more attacks on Chinese ships; and it seeks targeted strikes on the sites used for anti-ship missiles on the Chinese mainland.
For Washington, there are only bad options on the table. “Those treaty obligations looked more important a few days ago,” Keith says.
Our gut reaction is to stop the spiral before the carnage — and the risks — expand. The first option is to tell the Japanese that the United States is not ready to stage attacks on the Chinese homeland or join Tokyo in offensive operations. Sending in the aircraft carrier, which could be hit or sunk by Chinese missiles, is also ruled out. We offer Tokyo to send U.S. submarines and aircraft into the battle zone to cover the withdrawal of its naval forces. That way, the United States can avoid an all-out war with China and stop the fighting before Japan’s naval forces are utterly decimated or its economy strangled.
That decision is “operationally sensible,” Shlapak says, but China emerges as the tactical victor. Beijing took on both the United States and Japan and won. China is now in possession of the Senkakus. Longer term, though, China may have won itself a Pyrrhic victory: Japan and other nations in Asia will likely redouble spending on defense and bandwagon against China both militarily and economically.
In any scenario, Shlapak says, “nobody comes out of it better off.”
What would have happened if we had acceded to Japanese requests? Here’s how that played out:
The United States sends humanitarian aid and disaster-response teams to Japan to bolster its homeland defense and dispatches the carrier at a safe distance in flight range of the Senkakus. It also launches targeted, precision strikes on a handful of Chinese missile sites on the coast, clearly explaining to Chinese leadership the limited nature of the measures.
Long story short, plunging deeper into the fight did not make matters easier for any of the three countries.
U.S. missiles rain down on the Chinese homeland; Japanese commercial freighters explode on the high seas; China’s shiny new navy is quickly shrinking under relentless undersea attacks. In reprisal, Chinese forces obliterate Kadena Air Base on Okinawa and take a potshot with a carrier-killer missile at the George Washington, damaging it and forcing it out of the area. The casualty toll is appalling on all sides, with thousands dead.
“You probably see where this is going,” Shlapak tells us.
The U.S. military could keep punching, hitting key Chinese naval bases, targeting China’s sole aircraft carrier, or even implementing a blockade in the South China Sea to try to strangle the Chinese economy. Nothing, though, preserves Japan’s navy or helps defend its islands. The Chinese can inflict unlimited damage on Japan.
Years of gaming such scenarios have convinced Shlapak of the importance of understanding the inherent risks in wars between great powers, rather than in the one-sided affairs that have dominated U.S. military adventures in recent decades.
“It’s like an avalanche. All you know is that it will end eventually, but you don’t know how, or why, or what the cost will be,” he says, pounding the table for emphasis. Wading into a Sino-Japanese dispute over the Senkakus is particularly fraught for the United States and doesn’t allow for any attractive outcomes.
“To get into this fight is a strategic failure of the first magnitude,” Shlapak says.
Our takeaways:
Chastened at the results, we came away with several conclusions after our quick-and-dirty foray into the East China Sea.
First, alliances can be dangerous things, as the ancient Athenians learned more than 2,000 years ago when their allies in Corcyra sucked them into the Peloponnesian War.
Second, it’s hard to put a lot of defense into the mutual defense treaty with Japan. Its ships, aircraft, and home islands are all vulnerable, even if any attacking force would suffer huge casualties. Missile defense, in particular, is exceptionally difficult — if not impossible — given China’s vast and lethal missile arsenal.
Third, China’s military advances have totally changed the game for all sides. A decade ago, Japan could have fended off any challenge in the Senkakus all by itself. Now, China has a modern navy, a vast array of ballistic and cruise missiles, an effective air force, and increasingly sophisticated drones.
Fourth, America’s super aircraft carriers are a bit of an albatross. They are vulnerable as never before to long-range strikes, especially from Chinese anti-ship missiles. But the steps needed to safely bring carriers into the fight either escalate matters (striking at Chinese missile sites) or reduce the ships’ effectiveness (by having to operate at a safe distance.) Conversely, American stealthy attack submarines are very useful operationally — but perhaps lead to more trouble at the strategic level. Ordering a submarine strike is a tempting option, perhaps too tempting; as we saw, a submarine’s risk-free ability to inflict punishment drew us into a state of war with China.
And finally, for all three countries in our scenario, nationalism is hugely powerful and potentially deadly. It sparked the initial spat, fueled each successive escalatory step, and severely constrained each nation’s available responses as the crisis escalated.
That’s why Shlapak suggested that the best way to manage a crisis in a place like the Senkakus, which can’t support any inhabitants anyway, may be to simply ignore it.
