No. ÃÂ99 Date 12 August 1987

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SECURITY AND ARMS CONTROL IN THE NORTH PACIFIC

Following is  the te x t of an address by the M in is te r fo r Foreign A ffa irs

and Trade, Mr B i l l  Hayden MP, to the conference on Security and Arms   Control in the North P a c ific  in Canberra on 12 August 1987.

SECURITY AND ARMS CONTROL IN THE NORTH PACIFIC

Thank you, Andrew Mack, the Peace Research Centre and the  Strategic and Defence Studies Centre for your invitation  to open this conference.  .  The security of the North Pacific, and the opportunities for arms control to enhance  that security, are issues of abiding concern to

Australia. This region of historic and continuing  conflict is also one of the most heavily armed in the  world.. Our own immediate neighbourhood has been  comparatively free of Great Power competition in the  military sense for more than a generation. The prospects

of preserving this happy state of affairs are closely  linked to what develops in the strategically more central  North Pacific region. Again, there are nations in the  North Pacific (Japan, for example; China; the Republic of

Korea): with whom we have close connections in terms of  trade, strategic interest and friendship.

I should make it clear that,  hand in hand with this strong  interest, is a full appreciation that the interests of the  region are (first and foremost) the concern of the states  which comprise the region. All of us, for example,

pressed strongly and consistently for an INF agreement  that recognised that Asian security was no less important  than European security. The agreement now in prospect  refleqts this, and at the best possible level of forces —

namely, zero.

So the Peace Research and Strategic and Defence Studies  Centres should be congratulated for assembling such a  distinguished cast of participants in this conference and  such a deep and broad range of expertise on its subject  matter.  It is a timely initiative. And it is one that

will challenge the resourcefulness of the arms control  community - not to mention the decision-makers in the  countries concerned. i  .

The Nbrth Pacific is as rich a tangle of political,  military, economic and geostrategic forces as any student  of international relations could wish for. The interests  of several major powers intersect there - including the

two superpowers, the most populous nation in the world and  the second most productive nation in the world. It has  experienced major conflict since WW II, with enduring

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consequences for political relations in the region: Korea;  Vietnam and its continuing epilogue in Kampuchea; and the  China/Vietnam clash of February/March 1979. The Korean  peninsula remains heavily militarised and relations

between North and South dominated by suspicion and  hostility. A bipolar superpower concern with the central  strategic balance overlaps and interacts with the more  complex regional security scene and the associated  military balances.

In addition the pattern of alliances,  both formal and  defacto, is more complex and asymmetrical than in  Europe. The United States has formal security ties with  Japan and South Korea in the north and the Philippines and  Thailand in the south, continuing ties to Taiwan and has

firmly-based friendly relations with China. The Soviet  Union has no formal allies in the region But it could be  described, through its treaties of friendship and  cooperation, as the cautious guarantor of the security of  North Korea and Vietnam and is striving for a relationship  with China as reassuring as that enjoyed by the United

States.

Finally, the superpower dimension of this tangle is  characterised by a sharp geographic asymmetry. The North  Pacific region reflects graphically the geostrategic  classification of the United States and the Soviet Union

as a seapower and landpower respectively. Both sides  have taken steps to moderate this asymmetry: the U.S. through bases closer to the Eurasian land mass and the  Soviet Union through a belated but determined effort to

acquire a blue-water navy. In the aggregate these  considerations suggest that it would be more apt to speak  of military equations in the region rather than balances.

I suspect that arms controllers step into this arena with  some trepidation. Their tools of trade - for all

practical purposes developed in the context of the  superpower strategic nuclear equation and the NATO/Warsaw  Pact standoff in Europe - appear ill-suited to the North  Pacific arena. How does one give operational substance

and definition to the basic concepts of balance and  stability when there is no front line, a multiplicity of  balances and particularly awkward asymmetries in deployed  military capabilities? It could well be the case that,   rather than seek to force the military equations in  Northeast Asia to conform to established paradigms of arms  control, we may have to settle for more informal and less  structured mechanisms.  .

But the challenge is there and it is appropriate that it  be taken up. Military power has played a decisive role  in shaping the region. It remains an acute preoccupation  for all the players. Formidable forces are deployed in  the region and significant escalation has occurred within  the last decade. Moreover, it is widely forecast that

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military competition could sharpen as, the world's economic  centre of gravity shifts from the North Atlantic to the  North Pacific. The North Pacific is clearly recognised  by all concerned to be of central importance to the global  balance. This is an advantage to the extent that

Ã¢ÂÂ   deterrence operates most strongly when it is recognised  that vital interests are at stake and that commensurate  "  military means are likely to be resorted to if these

interests are challenged.

Equally, however,  vital interests and potent,  interacting  nuclear-armed forces remain a volatile mixture. The  probability of a spark may be low but the potential  consequences too awful to contemplate. Moreover,  in  view of the complexity of the region from the strategic

standpoint and the more dynamic and fluid nature of the  military balance, the probability of spark may be higher  than in (say) Europe and therefore higher than we would  wish it to be. Technological advances increase

complexity and reduce the relevance of experience. They  .  blur distinctions between naval and land combat and  between tactical and strategic operations. The result is  an increasingly tenuous and hypothetical relationship

between strategy and actual or presumed military  capabilities. In such circumstances, the risk of war by  accident looms larger than war by design.

Just as conditions in the North Pacific region could be  greatly improved from the standpoint of peace and  stability, it is important to recognise that they could  also be a lot worse. Japan could be a major military

power with a significant nuclear arsenal, South Korea and  Taiwan could also be nuclear weapon states and defence  could have been ranked first instead of last among China's  priorities for modernisation. That these developments  have not occurred are very significant pluses indeed from  the standpoint of global as well as regional security.  Australia, in common with the superpowers, attaches  particular importance to the fact that Japan, South Korea,

and (most recently) North Korea are parties to the Nuclear  Non-Proliferation Treaty. We look forward to North Korea  concluding the necessary safeguards agreement with the  International Atomic Energy Agency. I think it is

appropriate to recognise the importance of American  i  security commitments to the region in creating and  sustaining this state of affairs. Similarly, it is  important to note that the United States has accomplished

this primarily with forward-deployed naval forces.

Turning now to the scope for arms control, it is useful,   first of all, to remind ourselves that arms control is  pursued as a means of enhancing security and to recall the  three basic functions identified by the late Hedley Bull

* to reduce the risk of war

* to reduce the severity of war should it break out

* to reduce the volume of resources absorbed in the  armed forces.

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Reducing the risk of war could be separated into nuclear  and conventional war or war on land and war at sea. Biit,   in a region of central strategic importance to three  nuclear weapon states it would seem prudent to strive for  nothing less than circumstances in which no party is

either tempted or provoked into war of any variety and in  any environment. This observation also applies to the  most obvious way to reduce the severity of any conflict -  that is, to prevent it from going nuclear.

There are any number of arms control objectives that one  could, in theory, seek to have the states concerned set  themselves to address any one or all of these functions.

They could aspire, for example, to put a ceiling on,  reduce or eliminate strategic nuclear weapons from the  region or sub-strategic nuclear weapons. Naval forces  could be limited by numbers or tonnage either in the  aggregate or by selected types of warship. Various naval  disengagement arrangements can be imagined, again in

aggregate or confined to particular types of vessels such  as submarines or aircraft carriers. One variant of  naval disengagement that has endured in the literature and  surfaced periodically in official proposals is the idea of

anti-submarine warfare sanctuaries for strategic ballistic  missile submarines.  The concept of a nuclear free zone  could be looked into. There are a variety of

confidence-building measures such as transparency,  notification of manoeuvres and exercises, and limits on  their scale and/or location. Finally, one could list a  straightforward dialogue on security perceptions and

concerns, either as a step toward an agreed negotiating  objective or simply in the hope of teasing out possible  steps of benefit to all concerned.

Where should we start? A good answer is at the

beginning. We literally have everything to do and I  would expect this conference to make a good start on  identifying problems that might be alleviated through arms  control measures. Can we make the military balances in  the region more crisis stable? Can we reduce any

tendencies towards the competitive expansion of military  capabilities or (in the jargon) reduce arms race  instabilities? Can we reduce the risk of miscalculation  and inadvertent conflict?.

One of the central judgements that have to be made is  where to strike a balance between the ideal and the  realistic. What can we set out to do on arms control

that would make a positive contribution to regional  security but which is not so far-reaching as to cause one  or more of the necessary parties to back away because of

perceived risks to their security interests? We should  also bear in mind that some of the ideas I have just

listed have a global relevance and it might be argued that  it would not be appropriate to tackle them on a regional  basis or that some of the problems in the region are more  strictly local and should be addressed accordingly.

There are, however,  potentially valuable measures to be  considered that have as their primary objectives  minimising the risk of war and dampening the "arms race"  instability of the military equations in the North  Pacific. I believe deterrence to be strong in the North  Pacific:  reckless behaviour on the part of the major powers is highly unlikely. But there is justified  consensus that escalatory involvement in or from a minor  conflict is perhaps the most likely catalyst for war  between the major powers. In this context there is a  volatile border between the two Koreas,  tension on the

Sino-Vietnam border,  a territorial dispute between Japan  the Soviet Union and (not so long ago) tension on the  Sino-Soviet border.  Beyond this,  Northeast Asia is a  relatively compact region in which the naval and air

forces of the two superpowers plus China and Japan come  into frequent and close contact with the attendant risk of  misadventure. A comparable situation prevails in the  South China Sea, albeit on a smaller scale and with less

at stake in global terms.

All this leads me to the belief that one eminently

sensible opening step is a superpower dialogue on security  perceptions and concerns in the North Pacific. There are  good reasons to believe that the Soviet Union is now  prepared for the sort of exchange that just might generate  more light than heat. The Soviet Union has perhaps been

its own worst enemy in this regard in the past saying  little or nothing about its perceptions and - Concerns,   building and deploying forces without a word of

explanation and leaving it to others to divine its purpose.

Let me give an example of the sort of issue an open and

frank dialogue might help to clarify. There is a view  that,  in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Soviet Union  gave priority to developing submarine-launched ballistic  missiles of full intercontinental range, allowing these

assets to stay close to home and to be protected by

submarines, surface-ships and land-based aircraft while  retaining the capability to target the United States.  This view goes on that,  as the ballistic missile submarine  force grew, so did the general-purpose naval forces with  the primary mission of creating bastions or sanctuaries

for these submarines. And with 40 percent of its

sea-based strategic deterrent now deployed in the Soviet  Union's Far East, this linkage produced formidable Soviet  general purpose naval forces in the region. But to  others in the neighbourhood this general purpose naval

force has appeared highly threatening, in particular the  submarine component which is seen as a major threat to sea  lines of communication. A comparable situation prevails  in the North Atlantic where NATO's capability to sustain a

conventional defence effort is critically dependent on  timely reinforcements and supplies from North America.

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American naval strategists,  not surprisingly, have sought  to take advantage of this Soviet solution to its problems  - limited access to the open ocean and relatively noisy  submarines - to alleviate their own concern about the

security of the sea-lines of communication.

Specifically, if the priority task of the Soviet Navy is  to protect strategic submarines targetting the West, it  serves Western interests and enhances deterrence to make  clear that, in the event of war,  the Soviet Navy would  have to be preoccupied with the defence of these

submarines and be not available to interdict the sea-lines  of communication.

This conference will recognise this reasoning as part of  that invoked in support of what is now called the United  States Maritime Strategy. Some expositions of this  strategy go further to suggest that it might be a good

idea actually to go ahead and try to destroy these

submarines even if the conflict (to that point) has  remained non-nuclear. Advocates suggest that it might  just be possible to shift the nuclear balance sufficiently  to discourage escalation to nuclear war. I see this as a  piece of unworldly armchair strategic reasoning and would  hope that it stays there. For the U.S. the Maritime Strategy is part of its deterrence posture aimed at the

avoidance of war,  but the Soviet Union may see it in a  very different light.

The basic point is that - even if it appears justified in  Soviet eyes for the purpose of strategic submarine  protection - the growing non-strategic naval force that  the USSR has assembled in the North Pacific provokes the  US to expand its naval capabilities in the region to  maintain the credibility of its security commitments.

That is to say, a strategic nuclear mission leads to an  interactive escalation in non-strategic naval forces.

I am not suggesting that a dedicated dialogue would solve  everything or even that it would completely resolve  anything. I do not doubt that the Soviet Union aspires  to limit the U.S. presence and influence in the region -  militarily in the first instance - in order to reap the

security, political and economic benefits that its own  proximity and military preponderance might then be  expected to bring.  The United States, in contrast, has  to go to great economic and political expense to extend a

countervailing security umbrella over the region -  forward-deployment and power projection have strong  pejorative connotations.

But there are common as well as competitive interests. It seems to me that it would not be in the Soviet Union's  interests to see the US leave in a manner that would  incline Japan to become as strong militarily as it is  economically, for example; or if this draws Japan and  China into an enduring strategic alliance.  It seems to

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me that the US has a keen interest in a Soviet Union that  is confident in the security of its strategic deterrent,  not one that is driven to adopt a more precarious

strategic nuclear posture at sea or on land or both.  Neither side wishes to see renewed conflict between the  Koreas or accidents or miscalculations involving their  naval forces.

A dialogue of the kind advocated here is clearly a basic  form of confidence building measure.  By increasing  understanding of how each party views its security  reguirements an how these interact,  it can help defuse  tension and dampen arms race incentives, particularly if

it points the way to disentangling strategic and  non-strategic elements of the military eguation.  There  are other dimensions of the array of possible

confidence-building measures that flow quite naturally  from such a dialogue. Transparency is one: the release of reliable and authoritative information on force levels  and force characteristics and on the strategy these forces  are intended to support. The confidence-building nature  of such information is greatly enhanced if it is

volunteered rather than extracted in a negotiated  contract. Another is prior notification of naval  exercises and manoeuvres.

These would be helpful, concrete and practical measures  that would maximise the scope for prudent, reassuring  restraint. Over time, they could provide a foundation  for more far-reaching measures such as limits on the size  of exercises or constraints on where they can be conducted  or on the nature of the scenarios being acted out.

In his speech in Vladivostok in March 1986, General  Secretary Gorbachev asserted the obvious:  the Soviet Union was a key player in the Pacific and would remain  so. He declared that the Soviet Union was committed to

consolidating the peace and stability of the region and  wished to be a full participant in its economic and social  development. And he outlined a number of arms control  proposals for the Asia/Pacific region and suggested a

parallel with the Helsinki process in Europe.  In his  more recent interview with the Indonesian newspaper  Merdeka,  Mr Gorbachev stepped back from the parallel with  Helsinki - a view that we share - and offered rather more

specific suggestions on arms control and

confidence-building measures for the Asia-Pacific region.

Some of these proposals are clearly self-serving - a  US-Soviet freeze on nuclear capable aircraft in the  Northeast Asia being a case in point. I was also

surprised by his suggestion that the Northern Pacific  would be a suitable area in which to test these proposals  before extending them to more distant and, by implication,  more difficult areas. It is quite plain, in my view,

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that the reverse is true.  It is worth recalling that the  only negotiations between the superpowers in recent years  on naval limitations concerned the Indian Ocean, a region  remote to both of them and at the time - 1977/78 - low on

their lists of strategic priorities.

Nevertheless, it is clear that the Soviet Union wants to  address security concerns in the Asian/Pacific region. It is also clear that most of the security problems in the  region cannot be constructively addressed without the  positive involvement of the Soviet Union. It is in the

interests of all of us to provide the room for these  sentiments to be translated into concrete actions in a  measured step-by-step fashion. The first steps in my  view ought to be dialogue and transparency. The present

arrangements in the North Pacific are relatively  favourable to Western Security interests. These  circumstances have been created and maintained at great  cost and should not be lightly put at risk.

The papers to be delivered at this conference will address  the many roots of regional tension as well as possible  ways of reducing and eliminating them. This includes  some of the modest measures that I have mentioned. For  this reason, the Government welcomes the conference as an

initiative with most significant potential in which it  takes the keenest interest. I hope and expect that it  will fulfill our expectations and yours.

