AC Strategic Mobility Advantage – PACOM Module

1AC Strategic Mobility Advantage – PACOM Module

Advocacy of programs critical to USPACOM. USPACOM remains a theater of opportunities and challenges requiring the United States to maintain a credible warfighting capability. The trend toward new regional powers and presence of unpredictable actors necessitates that USPACOM maintain preeminence in military capability and understand the emerging threats to deter or defeat any aggression. To this end we must continue to advance our capabilities to better gauge intentions, enhance our ability to operate in an advanced electronic warfare environment, and continue to develop a ballistic missile defense system capability that will protect our high value assets and our territories. As a theater dominated by the maritime environment we must maintain maritime superiority in a time of conflict. Undersea warfare capabilities of regional players in our theater are continuing to improve, and we must retain the competitive edge we now enjoy. The vast 25 distances encountered in USPACOM have the potential to stress critical air and sealift capabilities; we continue to look for ways to improve our ability to operate throughout the USPACOM AOR.

***All text is from Timoth y J. Keating

The instrument of foreign policy that works best in that part of the world is the U.S. Navy. The junior officers at the command coined a phrase, “virtual presence equals actual absence.” That is the one point I would emphasize to you when you talk about climate and energy. There is no substitute, in both my personal and my professional opinion, for American forces being present. And as the Navy works through the challenges, and the Air Force works through the challenges, and, to a lesser extent, our Army and Marine Corps, because those forces that are generally in garrison are of less utility to the commander of USPACOM, unless we have the lift capability to move those forces out of garrison and be present for exercises and training in the countries of the AOR.

If we do not have a Navy of sufficient numbers and an Air Force of sufficient numbers and lift capability, we are not present. We are absent. You can do all of the video teleconferencing you want. You can have as many meetings as you want. But you have to be out there and train with, and develop the trust and confidence of, and build relationships with, the younger men and women in the armed forces of the AOR so that they can grow up knowing that we are not going to leave them high and dry.

A great way of manifesting that faith, trust, and confidence that they should have in us is through humanitarian assistance and disaster relief operations like those after Katrina. I cannot recount for you the number of times that a hurricane, a typhoon, a cyclone, or an earthquake has hit, or a cold snap has affected hundreds of thousands of people in the USPACOM AOR, and because we are there, because we are present, or we have sufficient reach and lift, we can provide assistance immediately. Such operations have dramatic impact.

Several years ago, a devastating tsunami hit the western tip of Indonesia. Although the first forces to get on scene came by air, the second forces and the most sustainable forces came by sea. When Myanmar was hit by a tropical cyclone, I flew out there to offer the use of some of our medium- and heavy-lift helicopters and C-130s. We and our allies had deployed four ships off the coast. But the Myanmar government said, “No thanks, we don’t need the help.” Thousands of lives were lost as a result; it was one of the significant regrets I have in my tour there.

When an earthquake and a bout of extremely cold weather occurred in China, the first American expression of support came in the form of two C-17s loaded with relief supplies. We had to get permission to let them land, but that is the authority that we enjoyed at USPACOM. So it is presence. It is readiness. It is partnership. These three essential elements of USPACOM strategy, I am convinced, provide the basis for success in the region.

There is an ineluctable geostrategic contest at work in the South China Sea, and that contest can be boiled down to this question: Will the United States maintain a credible sea control capacity of the South China SLOCs or will China’s anti-access and area-denial capabilities fundamentally neutralize that threat and thereby alter the strategic assumptions throughout the Indo-Pacific region?

Whereas the other countries of the region maintain specific territorial claims based on their coastlines, China claims the vast middle of the Sea itself. In the not-too-distant future, China’s reemergence and its concomitant ability not only to press these claims but back them with military capabilities may call into question the credibility of American military might and decades of U.S. regional predominance: predominance that has kept regional disputes from escalating into warfare.

In this way, the South China Sea represents the wider global commons in microcosm – not only in its maritime and air dimensions but also in the crucial domains of cyberspace and outer space. In the South China Sea, all of these domains are potentially threatened by China’s attempt, through military purchases and deployments, to deny American naval access. This is one reason why 16 of 18 countries at the East Asia Summit in November 2011 underscored the importance of maritime security, with most backing the need for multilateral mechanisms for resolving differing claims in the South China Sea. 8

Although it may seem oxymoronic, cooperation from a position of strength is a way to foster regional diplomatic and economic integration while collectively preserving the balance of power as China rises. This approach is not contrary to China’s interests: In fact, no Asian country has benefitted from this U.S.-led system as much as China. However, because the status quo is not sustainable indefinitely, the aim of cooperative primacy is to build a wider multilateral framework for stable change that preserves the rules of the road for good order at sea. The economic and military rise of China threatens to unleash a storm of change in the South China Sea region. It is therefore crucial to maintain the key elements of the status quo: free trade, safe and secure SLOCs, and full-bodied independence – free of intimidation – for all the littoral countries within a rules-based international order.

As used here, primacy does not have to mean dominance: It means that the United States retains its role as a regional power in order to shepherd its allies and partners into doing more on their own behalf. In this way, the balance of power can be maintained, even as the burden on the United States decreases. The important thing, as President Obama stressed during a visit to the region in November 2011, is that all countries play by the same set of rules.

The impact is multiple nuclear conflicts

Straits Times 2k (Ching Cheong, Straits times, July 25 2000, lexis nexis)

The high-intensity scenario postulates a cross-strait war escalating into a full-scale war between the US and China. If Washington were to conclude that splitting China would better serve its national interests, then a full-scale war becomes unavoidable. Conflict on such a scale would embroil other countries far and near and -horror of horrors -raise the possibility of a nuclear war. Beijing has already told the US and Japan privately that it considers any country providing bases and logistics support to any US forces attacking China as belligerent parties open to its retaliation. In the region, this means South Korea, Japan, the Philippines and, to a lesser extent, Singapore. If China were to retaliate, east Asia will be set on fire. And the conflagration may not end there as opportunistic powers elsewhere may try to overturn the existing world order. With the US distracted, Russia may seek to redefine Europe's political landscape. The balance of power in the Middle East may be similarly upset by the likes of Iraq. In south Asia, hostilities between India and Pakistan, each armed with its own nuclear arsenal, could enter a new and dangerous phase. Will a full-scale Sino-US war lead to a nuclear war? According to General Matthew Ridgeway, commander of the US Eighth Army which fought against the Chinese in the Korean War, the US had at the time thought of using nuclear weapons against China to save the US from military defeat. In his book The Korean War, a personal account of the military and political aspects of the conflict and its implications on future US foreign policy, Gen Ridgeway said that US was confronted with two choices in Korea -truce or a broadened war, which could have led to the use of nuclear weapons. If the US had to resort to nuclear weaponry to defeat China long before the latter acquired a similar capability, there is little hope of winning a war against China 50 years later, short of using nuclear weapons. The US estimates that China possesses about 20 nuclear warheads that can destroy major American cities. Beijing also seems prepared to go for the nuclear option. A Chinese military officer disclosed recently that Beijing was considering a review of its "non first use" principle regarding nuclear weapons. Major-General Pan Zhangqiang, president of the military-funded Institute for Strategic Studies, told a gathering at the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars in Washington that although the government still abided by that principle, there were strong pressures from the military to drop it. He said military leaders considered the use of nuclear weapons mandatory if the country risked dismemberment as a result of foreign intervention. Gen Ridgeway said that should that come to pass, we would see the destruction of civilisation.

The United States and China share responsibility for resolving the issue of North Korea's proliferation activities, U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta said. On a trip to Asia, Panetta singled out North Korea as a continuing threat, along with the terrorism, not only in Pakistan but in Yemen and Somalia and North Africa. "We continue to face the instability of North Korea and the potential for some kind of conflict with that country. We face the same thing with Iran," he said during a visit to the Institute for Defense Studies and Analyses in New Delhi, India, according to a transcript released Thursday by his department. He expressed concern about proliferation by North Korea, which has conducted two nuclear tests and possesses a host of missiles. “We also face the threat of, frankly, nuclear proliferation from an unstable North Korea -- that's something that is as much a threat to China as it is to others in this region -- and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction," he said. The secretary was apparently pressing Beijing to join efforts to deal with various challenges from North Korea and others, including terrorism, piracy, humanitarian and disaster needs as well as the ability to use sea lanes and protect maritime rights. The two superpowers, dubbed G-2, have been often engaged in subtle diplomatic stand-offs over ways to deal with North Korea, China's key communist ally. "They're threats to all of the countries in this region," Panetta stressed. "And it's for that reason that we all have to work together in developing a cooperative relationship and developing the capabilities of these countries so that we can all confront these issues." He reiterated the importance of having capabilities to handle more than one enemy at a time. "For example, if we have a war in Korea and we face a threat in the Straits of Hormuz, we have to have the ability to address both of those and to win. And we think we have projected a sufficient force to do that," he said.