Sabre rattling in Siberia

Murray Sayle

Tokyo A s the third and greatest of the world As shambles into view, we can more or less make out the programme for Europe. Snow on their tracks, the endless columns of tanks roll out of the sunrise over the Green fields of West Germany, some local commander from Omaha or Oldham tries to stop them with an itty-bitty tactical nuclear weapon, and by supper- time we're all cinders.

Meanwhile, what's cooking out in the mysterious East? For 30 years the people of Japan, with unpleasant memories of the last great war still fresh, have been fervently praying to Buddha that they will be allowed to sit the next one out. The Japanese con- stitution, American-written, forbids Japan to make war, 'or the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes'.

A decade ago, Japanese prime minister Eisaku Sato got the Nobel Prize for pro- claiming his three non-nuclear principles, namely that Japan would not make or possess nuclear weapons or permit them to be introduced into Japan or Japanese ter- ritorial waters. Japan does, of course, have small armed forces, a 13-division army and a navy of 48 destroyers, but these are equip- ped strictly for the purpose of defending the Japanese home islands against a conven- tional, rubber-boats-up-the-beaches inva- sion — a most unlikely event — and other- wise they threaten no one. What, then, do the Japanese, or Japan's neighbours, have to worry about?

This peaceful state of affairs, following half a century of war which in the end brought nothing but disaster, is very much to the liking of the Japanese people. The `Peace' constitution is the foundation of Japan's present social harmony, compell- ing, as it does, the Japanese military to maintain a low profile, and keeps defence sPending under one per cent of GNP.

It is, as well, the basis of Japan's nourishing peace industry, with its founda- tions, grants, museums and advice freely Offered to foreigners to curb their warlike impulses and follow Japan's wholesome ex- ample. The Japanese may be living in a fools' paradise, but then again so may the rest of us, much more expensively. Japan is not a superpower, is never likely to be one. In the nuclear age, when no one really knows what is the best way for a small, overcrowded country to stay out of harm's Way, the Japanese strategy has proved, so far, as effective as any.

And, as a back-up, Japan has a Treaty of Mutual Co-operation and Security with the United States. Alliance is, like its interper- sonal counterpart, marriage, a highly am- bivalent relationship, presuming as it does an identity of interest between the parties which unhappily does not exist in this less than perfect world and, even as alliances go, Japan's with the United States is unusually seamed with ambiguities.

The Mutual Security Treaty, as it is generally known, is in fact rather less than mutual when the text is examined with care. It calls for Japanese action only in the event of 'an armed attack on either party in the territories under the administration of Japan' (so the Japanese cannot invoke it, for instance, over the four small islands they are claiming back from the Soviet Union) and calls on each party `to meet the com- mon danger in accordance with its constitu- tional provisions and processes'. This was clearly written with the Japanese constitu- tion in mind, and even so is curiously word- ed: would a treaty which called for uncon- stitutional action stand up in court? Still, however it is read, it seems clear that this part of the treaty only comes into operation when the bad guys actually get their snowy boots on Japanese soil. Japanese and Americans can then, it seems, deal with them, without violating any of Japan's sacrosanct peace principles.

The treaty is not, however, just a one- sided guarantee for Japan, or 'free ride' as its American authors have recently been complaining. The treaty gives the US the use of bases in Japan (rent paid by the Japanese, and now totalling about $1 billion a year, which is quite a lot of Hon- das) 'for the purpose of contributing to the security of Japan and the maintenance of international peace and security in the Far East'.

At first sight, this makes heartening reading: it is good to know that someone is working for peace and security in our troubled world. When, however, we recall that the MX missile is now known as the 'Peacemaker' we may have second thoughts. When the security treaty was first signed, in its present form, in 1960, it was generally taken that 'the Far East' referred to here was Korea, the Korean war then be- ing fresh in memory. But it could, of course, also include the Soviet Far East, which at one point (the southern tip of Sakhalin Island, once Japanese, now home to a section of the Gulag) is only 17 miles from Japan, across the Soya Strait. Could the US make war on the Soviet Union from bases in Japan? Win or lose, this would cer- tainly be one way to 'peace and security in the Far East,' as well as solving any problems of overpopulation or trade friction in the area.

Such peacemaking efforts should, however, be non-nuclear, in accordance

with Japan's three principles. Will they be respected by the superpowers and, in fact, are they being respected now? This is a mat- ter of some concern in Japan, and light may be thrown on it by the wanderings of the giant American aircraft-carrier Enterprise, 90,000 tons, nuclear-powered and normally nuclear-armed, just home from an eight- month cruise of the north Pacific and ad- joining waters.

Big E, as they call her, seems to have spent last Christmas at sea, which sailors have been doing since the days of Francis Drake, and a reminder that nuclear- powered ships have sea-keeping capabilities unknown since the Nelsonian days of can- vas and salt beef. In February she appeared off South Korea to take a prominent part in `Team Spirit 83', the annual joint exercises of the US and South Korean forces, design- ed to show how quickly the American gar- rison there could be reinforced from, among other places, the 30,000 US marines stationed on the Japanese island of Okinawa.

Her point made, Enterprise then steamed (or perhaps 'reacted') over the narrow Sea of Japan to Sasebo, the port from which the old Imperial Japanese navy sortied in 1905 to destroy the fleet of Czar Nicholas II in one of the most stunning naval victories of all time. Enterprise was in port for five days, 21-25 March, to allow her crew liberty ashore and permit admiring lines of townspeople to visit the ship. Last time Enterprise was in Sasebo, in 1968, there were riots against US imperialism. This time, after an assurance by Japanese government spokesmen that she carried no nuclear weapons, Enterprise berthed with only a few ragged shouts from local trade unionists, and a baffling display of anti- nuclear slogans in Japanese on small har- bour craft. Her 5,400 crew roamed the streets in civilian clothes, chatted up the girls and shelled out for seuvenirs. Local bartenders complained that American navy men can't drink the Way they used to. And a good and generally peaceful time was had by all.

On 25 March, heavily freighted with cameras and hi-fi sets, Big E sailed, as everyone in Sasebo thought, for home. In fact she headed for Pearl Harbour of fragrant memory, and then turned north to rendezvous off the Aleutian Islands with two more American carriers, the enormous sisters Midway, normally home-ported in Tokyo Bay, and Coral Sea from California, 54,000 tons each. The trio were accom- panied by cruisers, destroyers (four of them Canadian), an unknown number of American submarines, B52 bombers from Guam (now capable of carrying Cruise missiles), Awacs early-warning aircraft from Okinawa, and anti-submarine aircraft flying from the Japanese home island.

This armada, of 40 ships and 300 air- craft, was the biggest assembly of naval power seen in the Pacific since 1945 or, in terms of firepower, the biggest ever. Ar- rayed in battle formation, they then pro- ceeded to sail down the coast of Siberia `some hundreds of miles' offshore, accor- ding to the Reuter report, or say half an hour's flying time, passing by the Soviet base at Petropavlovsk where the Russians keep their fleet of 130-odd attack and ballistic submarines, many of them also nuclear-powered and nuclear-armed.

The aim of these manoeuvres was not, of course, to practise close-formation steam- ing, which could just as readily be done off Seattle. In classical naval theory, a demonstration of this kind shows your pro- spective opponent that he is outclassed off his own coastline, and had better stick close to home if he knows what is good for him. Patrolling Soviet TU-95 'Bear' naval recon- naissance aircraft seem to have got the message, and no other planes or ships of the smaller but still formidable Soviet Far Eastern Fleet, headed by the 42,000-ton air- craft carrier Minsk, appeared to emulate Sir Francis Drake — which is probably just as well, or the paper on which you read this might well be charred around the edges. As the three carrier battlegroups represent a good quarter of the sea strength of the United States, the American taxpayers may be sure they were carrying their full war armament, including nuclear missiles, mines, depth charges and torpedoes.

Her Valkyrie-like Siberian cruise, code- named Tleetex 83-1' safely completed, Big E then turned for sunny California, arriving in San Francisco last week and, just to re- mind us that military matters are in the hands of fallible human beings, ran aground two miles from her home berth and kept her impatient crew from their lov- ed ones for five hours while navy tugs work- ed her off a sandbank. The demonstration off the Soviet coast, while far from routine, is the sort of thing we have come to expect these days, and fits into the fashionable classification of 'deterrence'. The idea is to show your opponent you are ready to make war on him, and the stuff you propose to do it with, and then he changes his mind about making war on you.

This may or may not be the 'threat .. of force as a means of settling international disputes' forbidden by the Japanese con- 'He's a member of the wide-bodied jet set'. stitution, but then again, the Japanese had no part in this particular manoeuvre. Or did they? Two of the carriers came, after all, from Japan, and so did some of the air- craft. Soviet foreign minister Andrei Gromyko has charged that 'Japan and the waters around Japan are stuffed with nuclear weapons' and, while he did not say so, he may well have had the American war- ships in mind. But Big E, we know, had no nuclear weapons aboard when she visited Sasebo, because Japanese officials said so. Not all Japanese are, however, convinced.

'It is the ABC of military common sense that American warships cannot possibly remove nuclear weapons each time they make port calls in Japan', observed the Asahl Shimbun, as Big E appeared over the horizon. Indeed, between heartening the Koreans and putting the fear of Reagan up the Russians, where did she pause to park her hardware? And, when Japanese foreign minister Shintaro Abe assured his countrymen that Enterprise was nuclear- free, how did he know? Did he ask the Americans? No-o-o, not in so many words, but :American Ambassador Mike Mans- field had assured him that the United States will abide by the Japan-US security treaty in regard to the port call of the Enterprise at Sasebo'.

Looking up the treaty, we find that it says nothing about nuclear weapons, but letters exchanged the day it was signed pro: vide for 'prior consultation with Japan should there be 'major changes of equip- ment' of the American forces stationed here. No prior consultations, the Japanese say, therefore no nuclear weapons. But in May 1981 the former American ambassador to Japan, Professor Edwin Reischauer (s00 of a missionary, if this goes to his truthfulness), said the Japanese govern- ment had 'verbally' agreed in 1960 that American ships could call at Japanese ports or transit Japanese territorial waters with nuclear weapons aboard. This dis- closure, famous in Japan as the 'Reischauer Shokku', has never been denied.

No one, in short, actually asks the Americans the 64-megaton question. 'It is not the policy of the United States govern- ment to confirm or deny the presence or absence of nuclear weapons,' is the stock reply. Harried by newsmen, a veteran American official in Tokyo (the terms of the background briefing) once went so far as to say that, if the Japanese asked about nuclear weapons, 'of course we would tell them'. 'Okay, tell us,' said a bold scribbler. 'It is not the policy of the United States government,' said the veteran official in 3 sing-song voice, `to confirm or deny the presence or .... ' This grim little comedy, it will be observ- ed, has the form of the old logical puzzle, `All Cretans are liars, said Epimenides the Cretan. Was he telling the truth?' We can guess that the Russians, with their 10138 winter evenings, have long since worked out the answer, and adjusted their target list accordingly. Japan has not, however, been altogether passive, in this new outbreak of deterrence in the Far East. Last week the Japanese Defence Agency announced that the Japanese destroyer Aokumo, 2,000 tons, was being sent to the same Soya Strait be- tween Sakhalin Island (Russian) and Hok- kaido (Japanese) 'to monitor Soviet war- ship movements around the clock'.

`The purpose of this patrol,' said the Japanese Defence Agency, 'is to collect basic data needed for a possible blockade of the straits around Japan, to confine Soviet ships in the Sea of Japan in case of emergency.' The announcement neither defined the 'emergency' nor said who was going to do the blockading, which is as it hap- pens an act of war, entitling the blockaded Party to reply with any means he thinks ap- propriate. Presumably the good ship Aokumo, which mounts two torpedo tubes and a three-inch gun, is not going single- handed to bottle up the carrier Minsk, despite the undoubted gallantry of her 200-man crew and her status as one of the biggest ships in the Japanese maritime self- defence force.

So, as it stands, the Aokumo is on a kamikaze mission, in the best Japanese tradi- tion of suicidal bravery. Japan, alone, has no prospect of fighting the Soviet Union, and making warlike threats without the means to back them up is a classical recipe for disaster. Why not, then, say that the Japanese destroyer is standing guard ('collecting data' is, presumably, what any sentry or picket does, although it's an odd way to put it) so that the US navy can block the straits? And why not define the 'emerg- ency' as the outbreak of war in northern Asia or the waters adjoining, involving the Soviet Union (otherwise, why single them out?) And Japan's ally, the United States? And, come to that, why make the an- nouncement at all?

Here, of course, we are sailing into a minefield, of the legalistic and diplomatic variety. The Japanese government is pursu- ing two different defence policies, not for the first time in Japanese history. Plan A, for home consumption, sees Japan as a special case among the nations, a country Which has renounced war from the highest of 'natives, has been accorded a unilateral American guarantee as a result, and other- wise exercises a kind of benevolent, helpful neutrality in other people's quarrels. It was on this thinking that the Japanese built and sold to the Russians, as recently as 1977, the floating dock which makes possible the operations of the carrier Minsk. This is the deal the Japanese people think they have.

Plan B sees Japan as an active partner of the United States in defending the liberal- caPitalist, open, more-or-less free market sYstem to which both belong. As keen traders with a democratic system, Japanese style, this is certainly the company the Japanese people want to keep. But they also like the low taxes and sound sleep (and business opportunities in the communist world) which they believe go with Plan A.

Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone, who

is known in the political world as 'The Weathervane', seems to think that he can deliver both, and incidentally earn golden opinions from the Americans, and some relief from pressure on trade issues at the same time. All his public utterances, in- cluding the famous description of Japan as an 'unsinkable aircraft carrier' (later amended to 'big aircraft carrier') could fit into either interpretation, and so could the elliptical description given by his Defence Agency of the mission of the lonely Japanese destroyer in the Soya Strait.

However, the despatch of this maritime mouse to confront the Soviet colossus seems to give Japan's defence posture an unreal air. Anyone really planning to fight the Soviet Union, or threatening to alone or in company, should surely have air raid shelters, evacuation plans, stocks of food, hardened bunkers for the government, and a modest nuclear deterrent of their own (the Chinese, for instance, have all these accessories).

Nuclear deterrents carried in American ships may be in accord with the Japanese constitution, generously interpreted, and let us hope that they work when the time comes. But they are, in the nature of things, mobile. Like Lieutenant Benjamin F. Pinkerton, USN, the Midway and the Enterprise might just sail away, one fine day, leaving Madam Butterfly's country- men in a rather nasty predicament.