China | DMZ Hawai'i/Aloha 'Aina

China warns against missile defence systems

Post Date August 14, 2009

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Author Laurel Mei-Singh

Category Uncategorized

China warns against missile defence systems

AFP

Wed Aug 12, 7:34 am ET

GENEVA (AFP) – China’s foreign minister warned on Wednesday that there was a “looming danger” of an arms race in outer space, as he urged countries not to deploy missile defence systems that could undermine global security.

“The practice of seeking absolute strategic advantage should be abandoned,” Yang Jiechi told the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva.

“Countries should neither develop missile defence systems that undermine global strategic security nor deploy weapons in outer space,” he added.

US President Barack Obama has been reviewing a planned missile defence shield championed by his predecessor, which remains a major source of tension with Russia.

The Obama administration has not backed down from the shield, which would partly be based in Poland and the Czech Republic, but insists that is not directed against Russia.

Russia’s air force commander said on Monday that Moscow was developing new missiles to counter space-based systems that could soon be deployed by the United States.

“Outer space is now facing the looming danger of weaponisation,” said Yang.

“Credible and effective multilateral measures must be taken to forestall the weaponisation and arms race in outer space,” he added, calling such steps of “high strategic significance.”

Both Russia and China have proposed a new treaty banning the use of weapons in space, but the idea has been rejected by the United States.

Nonetheless, the issue is one of those up for international discussion under the Conference on Disarmament’s recent landmark decision to revive talks after more than a decade of deadlock.

In a speech reaffirming China’s commitment to international nuclear weapons safeguards and disarmament, Yang backed attempts to strengthen the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency and to stop the spread of nuclear weapons.

“The international security situation is undergoing the most profound change since the end of the Cold War,” Yang acknowledged. “Unprecedented opportunities now exist in international disarmament.”

Yang reiterated China’s insistance on a peaceful resolution of the nuclear standoffs with North Korea and Iran, and called on the IAEA to play a greater role in promoting the peaceful use of nuclear energy.

That should include “the possibility of establishing a multilateral nuclear fuel supply mechanism,” he added. Western countries have been sceptical of the idea proposed by Russia.

The Chinese foreign minister stopped short of signalling Beijing’s swifter ratification of a ban on nuclear tests.

“The Chinese government is dedicated to promoting early ratification of the treaty and will continue to make active efforts toward this end,” Yang said, pledging to work with the international community for “early entry into force.”

Although China was amongst the first to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, it is one of nine nations that are preventing its entry into force because they have either not ratified or signed it.

The only other traditional nuclear power not to have ratified is the United States.

However, Obama announced in April that he wanted to press ahead with US ratification, reversing the stance of George W. Bush’s administration.

The other outstanding ratifications are Egypt, Indonesia, Iran and Israel.

India, Pakistan, and North Korea have not signed the test ban treaty, which is regarded as a cornerstone of efforts to stop the spread of nuclear weapons and promote disarmament.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090812/wl_asia_afp/chinanuclearweaponsdisarmdefence

China-US Naval Confrontation in the South China Sea

Post Date March 11, 2009

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Author Laurel Mei-Singh

Category International politics & law

CNSNews.com

Naval Confrontation: China Pushing U.S. Further Away From Its Territory

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

By Patrick Goodenough, International Editor

(CNSNews.com) – Disputes between the United States and China over naval movements in the South China Sea are not likely to end anytime soon, analysts say, as the two sides are divided over what activities are allowed. International law on the matter is vague.

Beijing said Tuesday that a U.S. naval ship confronted by Chinese ships earlier this month had been carrying out “illegal surveying in China’s special economic zone,” in contravention of Chinese and international laws.

The Pentagon said the USNS Impeccable, an unarmed ocean surveillance vessel, was harassed for several days by five Chinese ships, including a navy ship, in international waters about 75 miles south of China’s southern Hainan Island.

In the most serious incident, Chinese vessels “shadowed and aggressively maneuvered in dangerously close proximity” to the U.S. ship on Sunday, coming as close as 25 feet away, the Pentagon said. The U.S. has formally protested to the Chinese government, and says its ships “will continue to operate in international waters in accordance with customary international law.”

China’s reference to its economic zone arises from the 1982 U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which recognizes exclusive economic zones (EEZ) stretching 200 nautical miles (about 230 miles) from a country’s coastline. The U.S. has not ratified UNCLOS.

EEZs aim to balance the desire of coastal states to control and exploit offshore resources beyond their 12 nautical mile territorial limit against other maritime powers’ interests in maintaining freedom of navigation. Experts say ambiguities in UNCLOS language, which is open to differing interpretations by different countries, have given rise to numerous disputes.

Beijing has long sought to prevent other countries from carrying out surveillance or surveying operations within its EEZ, and in 2002 enacted a law outlawing such activities without authorization. (At the same time, however, China frequently sends survey vessels into areas that Japan considers to be within its EEZ; the two countries have clashed for decades over surveying activities in waters both claim.)

Ron Huisken of the Strategic and Defense Studies Center at the Australian National University said Wednesday that “both sides have dug in” and he did not expect that appealing to the “law” would help to resolve the issue.

He said he expected that China, “within the substantial gray areas in international law,” would want to reach informal understandings with the U.S. Navy that “err on the side of China’s interests in pushing the U.S. further away from its territory.”

“Traditionally, however, the U.S. has been fiercely protective of the freedom of the high seas,” he added. “A betting man would anticipate a steady diet of such incidents.”

Is intelligence-gathering a peaceful or threatening activity?

UNCLOS provides for “freedom of navigation and overflight” in EEZs. It says military activities inside a country’s EEZ must be “peaceful” and may not adversely affect the environment or economic resources of the coastal state.

Whether surveillance or surveying activities constitute “peaceful” acts is a matter of dispute, however.
In 2002, officials and scholars from the U.S. and several Asian countries, including China, met on the Indonesian island of Bali for a dialogue on “military and intelligence-gathering activities in EEZs,” co-sponsored by the East West Center in Hawaii and an Indonesian institute.

According to a East West Center report summarizing the dialogue, participants grappled with issues such as at what point a coastal country can reasonably regard intelligence-gathering to be a threatening activity.

One area of consensus was the determination that “no specific rules exist governing military activity in the EEZ except that they be peaceful, that is, non-hostile, non-aggressive, that they refrain from use of force or threat thereof, and that they do not adversely affect economic resources or the environment.”

But the many disagreements included different views of the meaning of terms like “peaceful” and “threat of force.”

China’s view on the matter was spelled out in a paper written in 2005 by two Chinese scholars, one of them a senior colonel in the armed forces, which stated unambiguously that “military and reconnaissance activities in the EEZ … encroach or infringe on the national security interests of the coastal State, and can be considered a use of force or a threat to use force against that State.”

Submarine detection

The USN Impeccable is a twin-hulled ocean surveillance ship designed to detect quiet foreign diesel and nuclear-powered submarines and to map the seabed for future antisubmarine warfare purposes, according to U.S. Navy data.

Towed behind and below the vessel are two sonar systems – an active one that emits a low frequency pulse and a passive one that listens for returning echoes. The system is known as SURTASS (surveillance towed-array sensor system).

“The SURTASS mission is to gather ocean acoustical data for antisubmarine warfare and rapidly transmit the information to the Navy for prompt analysis,” the Military Sealift Command said in a statement when the Impeccable was christened in 2000.

“China certainly would realize what this ship is up to, and would view its presence in those waters as threatening,” Jon Van Dyke, professor of law at the University of Hawaii School of Law – and an expert in maritime disputes and military activities in EEZs – said Wednesday.

“The U.S. anti-submarine low frequency active sonar is deemed vital by the United States in the event of a Chinese attack on Taiwan, because we would then need to be able to find and destroy China’s subs, which are increasing in numbers,” he said.

During Sunday’s confrontation in the South China Sea, the Impeccable’s towed sonar systems appeared to be a particular target.

One of three photographs released by the U.S. Navy of the incident shows a crewmember on one of the Chinese vessels using a grapple hook in what the Navy said was “an apparent attempt to snag the towed acoustic array” of the Impeccable.

Hainan Island is home to a strategic Chinese Navy base that reportedly houses ballistic missile submarines.

Last May, the Jane’s group of defense publications released new commercially available satellite images which it said confirmed reports about the existence of an underground submarine base near Sanya, on the island’s southern tip.

It said 11 tunnel openings were visible at the base, as was one of China’s advanced new Type 094 nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs), known by NATO as the Jin-class and reportedly boasting 12 missile silos.

The U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence in 2006 said China would probably aim to build and deploy five Jin-class submarines in order to have “a near-continuous at-sea SSBN presence.”

Resolving differences

Van Dyke, who played a key role in the EEZ dialogue in Bali in 2002, said Wednesday that in the course of those meetings it emerged that the Chinese Navy was behaving towards Japan and other neighbors in the same way as the U.S. Navy behaves towards China, “with regard to coastal surveillance etc.”

In trying to find a way to resolve its differences with China over permitted activities in EEZs, Van Dyke said, “the U.S. will probably try to convince China that it is in China’s interest – as an emerging naval power – to support the [U.S.-held] view that international law permits naval activities in the EEZs of other countries.”

Another factor that could “reduce the urgency of this confrontation” would be improving relations between China and Taiwan, he said.

Hainan island was also the location of an earlier, serious military-related incident involving the U.S. and China, which also raised questions in international law about legitimate activities in EEZs.

In April 2001, a U.S. Navy EP-3 spy plane on a “routine surveillance mission” was involved in a mid-air collision with one of two Chinese F-8 fighter jets which had been deployed to intercept the slow-moving aircraft. The Chinese pilot was killed.

Following the collision, the EP-3 issued a mayday warning and made an emergency landing at a military airfield on Hainan. The 24-person crew was held there for 11 days before being permitted to leave, and China only allowed the plane to be dismantled and airlifted home months later.

Director of National Intelligence Adm. Dennis Blair told the Senate Armed Services Committee Tuesday that the harassment of the Impeccable was the “most serious” military dispute between the U.S. and China since the 2001 mid-air collision.

Source: http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=44839

U.S. Ramps Up Missile Tests in the Pacific

Post Date June 03, 2007

Comments 0 Comments

Author Laurel Mei-Singh

Category DMZ-Hawai'i / Aloha 'Aina In the News, The Military in Hawai'i (All Islands)

June 3, 2007

U.S. Ramps Up Missile Tests in the Pacific

by John Lasker

Earlier this year, when China blasted one of its satellites into thousands of little floating pieces, it was condemned by Washington as a provocative act.

But some arms-control experts believe Beijing was baring its teeth to send the White House a different message. They say that China, which has consistently opposed the weaponization of space, is hoping to negotiate an arms treaty that would rein in both nations’ growing arsenal of so-called “space weapons.”

Just days later, on Jan. 27, Beijing seemingly had its answer. On the western shore of Hawaii’s Kauai Island, the U.S.’s ground-based Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, shot down a dummy ballistic missile over the southern Pacific as it skirted the edge of space roughly 110 kilometers high.

Analysts say the George W. Bush administration is turning its back on any new space weapons treaty because it would ground many parts of the U.S.’s emerging missile defense shield. One such treaty is PAROS, the Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space – a treaty China initiated at the United Nations in 1985 and has pressed for ever since.

The existing international regime, known as the Outer Space Treaty, entered into force in 1967 and critics – who include experts like Hans Blix, the former chief U.N. weapons inspector – say it is hopelessly outdated.

However, Washington has made it clear that the U.S. has no intention of endorsing new restrictions.

“Arms control is not a viable solution for space,” a U.S. State Department official told Space News on Jan. 19. “For example, there is no agreement on how to define a space weapon. Without a definition you are left with loopholes and meaningless limitations that endanger national security.”

Pentagon officials insist the U.S. is not seeking to put weapons in Earth’s orbit. Its space research, which is funneling billions to aerospace contractors such as Lockheed Martin, is strictly for defense, they say.

But arms control experts suggest that this rhetoric has failed to assuage China’s anxieties.

“So many defensive capabilities have inherent offensive applications as well,” said Theresa Hitchens, a space weapons expert at the Center for Defense Information, a left-leaning think tank based in Washington.

China’s ASAT, or anti-satellite test, may have also been a response to the US’s new National Space Policy doctrine released in late 2006, wrote Hitchens in a recent issue of the Air Force’s High Frontier Journal.

The new “NSP” states: “The U.S. considers space capabilities vital to its national interests. The U.S. will preserve its freedom of action in space [and will] dissuade or deter others from either impeding those rights, and take those actions necessary to protect its space capabilities.”

Hitchens says there is a more “aggressive tone inherent in this policy” and that it “rejects any limits on U.S. actions in space.” She adds, “This strategy, this policy, more aggressively articulates a space war fighting strategy.”

Meanwhile, the Pentagon continues to intensify its focus on the Pacific Rim, where it has dispatched a very strange-looking, very high-tech ship.

The vessel is actually a revamped oil-drilling platform, and centered on its top, roughly 20 stories above the ocean, is its most striking feature — a white globe so immense it could engulf the middle of a soccer field.

Hidden inside the inflated white ball is the clue to this ship’s ultimate mission: A radar dish so powerful it can decipher a real ballistic missile from a dummy missile, claims the U.S. military.

The vessel is actually a new and important piece in the growing arsenal that is the US’s missile defense program, which is now run by the MDA, or Missile Defense Agency. Some have dubbed the agency the “Son of Star Wars,” a 1980s-era program to deploy missiles in space, and the strange ship is the MDA’s billion-dollar Sea Based X-Band Radar.

Last year, the Sea Based X-Band Radar was witnessed off the coasts of Hawaii. It was taking part in an unknown number of missile defense tests, said the MDA. Space weapons experts suggest it could also decipher space debris from a “killer” micro-satellite.

Indeed, all sorts of missile defense tests are on the rise around the Islands, say Hawaiian peace activists, who believe they are intended to intimidate Asian “Tigers” such as China and North Korea.

“The increasing missile defense tests are a destabilizing factor,” said Kyle Kajihiro, director of the Honolulu-based DMZ Hawaii. “The tests are provoking an arms race in the region between nuclear powers.”

Since being recently relocated from a New Mexico desert, the MDA’s ground-based THAAD has a perfect “hit to kill” ratio.

But it is the ship-based “Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System” that is creating more tension for China. Since 2004, the MDA and the U.S. Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor have launched missile-like “interceptors” to obliterate at least eight dummy ballistic missiles in space or in the atmosphere.

What is so unnerving for Beijing is that Japan has spent millions to arm several of its own battleships with this missile defense.

Ships with the “Aegis” technology have tremendous reach, say experts, thus exposing more satellites to a shoot-down. In Greek mythology, “Aegis” is the name of the shield used by Zeus.

The U.S. Air Force is also researching ground-based lasers. On a summit of Mount Haleakala on the Hawaiian island of Maui, the Air Force helps run the Maui Space Surveillance Site. The military contends the site is for astronomical research, and has powerful telescopes that can detect rogue asteroids.

“I’m not buying any of it,” said Kajihiro. Lasers that can “paint” satellites – so to guide interceptors to their target – are being tested there as well, he told IPS.

However, Greg Kulacki, an expert on the Chinese military at the Union of Concerned Scientists, says the theory that China’s ASAT test was a call for a space-weapons arms treaty “is just not true.”

Kulacki has spoken to Chinese scientists who work for the military’s defense labs. They told him the ASAT test was a “20-year-old end-result to an ASAT program that began in the mid-80s.”

Even though China is spending more and more on its military, says Kulacki, Beijing no longer subscribes to the theory the U.S. may someday contain China’s growing thirst for oil by “choking off its sea lanes.”

Nevertheless, many still believe U.S. forces positioned around China could deny its people resources in the event of war. And as missile defense tests are ramped-up in the Pacific, one expert says such tests makes many Chinese even more worried about the eagle’s shadow.

“The Chinese don’t like America’s offensive posture in the Pacific; they don’t like it one bit,” says University of Hawaii professor Oliver M. Lee, who was born in Shanghai, and studies Sino-American relations.

He says most Chinese believe “the U.S. Navy controls the Pacific Ocean.” They also feel that China’s military build-up is for defense. only, he says.

For the last several years, Lee, Kajihiro of DMZ Hawaii and many others have been fighting a plan by the Pentagon to bring 300 U.S. Army Strykers to the Islands.

The Stryker uproar reflects Hawaii’s internal debate over its militarization, says Kajihiro.

Why would the islands need hundreds of armored vehicles that are loaded with exotic weapons and also easily transported by plane?

“That’s the forty-thousand-dollar question,” says Kajihiro. “We’ve asked that over and over again, and no good explanation was ever given.”

(Inter Press Service)