ASIA AS A WARFIGHTING ENVIRONMENT

Roy Kamphausen

STRATEGISTS ENDEAVOR to grasp factors that shape potential wartime environments in peacetime to more effectively wage future conflicts. Part of that process involves determining how strategic geography influences warfighting. Additionally, it involves knowing the battlespace to estimate how decisive terrain benefits those who control it, just as analysts study terrain features before wars commence to support military planning.

However, an appreciation of strategic geography alone cannot discover the causes or patterns of war, which does not conform to terrain-based or mechanistic decision models. Nations engage in wars for various reasons and even wage them despite adverse strategic environments. For instance, despite a prevailing view that US strategic interests in Asia are primarily maritime based and related to preserving unfettered freedom of navigation, America conducted four land wars in the region over the past sixty years, including the recent conflicts in Southwest Asia. This suggests that something more than geography influences war and peace. Nonetheless, a process for studying strategic geography can help in understanding a dimension in which military operations are planned and executed.

Certain aspects of Asian strategic geography may be characterized as decisive, which describes physical features that offer strategic advantages by establishing conditions for either the success or inhibition of military protagonists. Decisive terrain is not always the most prominent terrain but rather the terrain that provides the military advantage to the side that controls it. In sum, decisive geography is linked to the success of military operations. For that reason, decisive terrain conveys military advantage through means that include physical presence, diplomatic relations, and security alliances.

This chapter supports some preliminary conclusions about Asian strategic geography and its implications for military operations. Moreover, it looks at how man-made features and technological developments can modify or even transform strategic geography. Finally, it provides a net assessment of the problems and benefits that Asian strategic geography, together with decisive terrain, can bring to bear on US and allied militaries.

Asia constitutes the eastern portion of the Eurasian landmass, extending eastward from a north–south line that starts in the Ural Mountains and runs down to the Caspian Sea. It includes Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan), South Asia (Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka), mainland Southeast Asia (Burma, Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam), insular Southeast Asia (Brunei, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Singapore), and North Asia and Northeast Asia (China, Japan, Mongolia, South Korea, North Korea, and Taiwan). It also encompasses partial entities, such as the eastern orientation of Iran and the Russian Far East.

GEOGRAPHIC IMPLICATIONS

The major geographic features of South Asia are mountains that form a belt around both its southern and central subregions and contain all the peaks in the world higher than twenty-three thousand feet. A mountain's importance in military affairs is relative to the surrounding terrain. For millennia the Himalaya and Karakorum Mountains have served as barriers between South Asia and the rest of the continent.

The unique nature of the land geography in South Asia contributed to modern warfare. For instance, the concept of the air bridge first emerged during World War II when Allied transports flew over the Himalayas from India on a route known as the Hump to resupply China. The mountains of South Asia also acted as natural obstacles to the Japanese in southern China. Moreover, Indo-Pakistani wars since Independence have involved large-scale combat operations, but they did not escalate and draw in other nations. Finally, the Sino-Indian War that broke out in 1962 waned before it could turn into a broader conflict, arguably because of the influence of geographic constraints.

These mountain ranges shape contemporary military operations in two ways. First, channelized terrain and the difficulty of sustaining forces at elevations above sixteen thousand feet impede maneuver warfare. High altitudes and inhospitable terrain in mountainous areas frustrate the rapid advance of armored and mechanized forces in support of conventional military operations. The border war between China and India in 1962 demonstrated the debilitating effects of high elevation on combat operations. Intended by the Chinese as a coercive-punishment campaign to teach India a lesson, the conflict was largely conducted at elevations above sixteen thousand feet and resulted in some six thousand dead or wounded on both sides. Hostilities ended after a month, largely because of the difficulties in sustaining combat operations at those extreme elevations.

Second, the mountain ranges in South Asia also prevent intraregional conflict from becoming broader transregional war even as they can deter such war. The long-standing tensions in Kashmir between India and Pakistan and disputes over Aksai Chin and Arunachal Pradesh between China and India have not resulted in broader conflict, in part because of the limiting effects of the geography. To be sure, the differences are rooted not in the strategic utility of the geography itself but rather in the political borders of the contested areas. The constraints on the escalation of violence that the Himalaya-Karakorum ranges provide notwithstanding, the mountain regions exercise little influence on diminishing tensions.

However, the ways geography might limit the horizontal escalation of a conflict increase the potential for catastrophic vertical escalation, which may take two forms. First, long-range missile strikes may become de rigueur for all protagonists. This action-reaction cycle is occurring with deployments by India of BrahMos missiles in Arunachal Pradesh, by China of short-range ballistic missiles in Tibet, and by Pakistan of short- and intermediate-range missiles. Second, and arguably of greater concern, is that horizontally constrained warfare might lower the bar for using nuclear weapons, especially when major territorial gains might be won at low cost.

NATURAL RESOURCES

Their striking height aside, the decisive terrain of the Himalaya-Karakorum Mountains includes eight great rivers: the Indus, which drains the Himalayas; the Ganges and Brahmaputra, which course through India into Bangladesh; the Ayeyarwady (Irrawaddy), which runs into the Andaman Sea; and the Salween, Mekong, Yangtze, and Yellow, which flow from the Tibetan plateau. These rivers supply drinking water and power for two billion people. Disputes over water rights among upstream-downstream or other nations with shared boundaries have routinely led to violations of agreements. However, conflict has been prevented by negotiated agreements, such as the India-Pakistan treaty on the Indus and India-Bangladesh negotiations on the Ganges-Brahmaputra river basins or multilateral forums such as the Mekong River Commission, although the commission has been criticized for failing to counter Chinese plans to dam the upper Mekong for hydropower projects.

Controlling rivers has limited military utility. On the tactical level, rivers present obstacles to ground forces, but once forces are across a river, the obstacle becomes much less significant, because a river rarely has an intrinsic value. At a high operational to strategic level, rivers might serve as means of transport and resupply, but this military value is contingent on river depth, currents, riverine obstacles, and so forth. Thus, conflict over rivers for the military value they might represent is a highly dubious concept.

Additionally, modern history offers no examples of wars breaking out between nations over water usage rights. It remains to be seen whether avoiding wars over water resources will continue in the future. Diminished water tables, salinization of freshwater sources from rising sea levels, explosive population increases in areas affected by water shortages, demand by the agricultural sector for more irrigation, and growing need for power generation together might put freshwater supplies in the same position in the twenty-first century that oil enjoyed in the last century. In that case, the circum-Himalaya rivers and the glaciers that feed them could well become decisive terrain in the context of a future Asian war.

The major geographic features of northern and western Asia are its deserts and plateaus. The almost contiguous Taklimakan and Gobi Deserts are the world's third-largest desert expanse. The adjacent Tibetan plateau is the largest and the highest in the world. Together they create a huge sand box conducive to large-scale military operations. If the mountains of South Asia are distinctive for the constraints they impose on warfighting, the deserts and plateaus of northern and western Asia present opposite conditions. Historically, deserts have served as sites of legendary battles, but they do not create inherent military advantages for those who control them. Indeed, their strategic value is best understood as providing the venue for armored warfare that involves closing with and then destroying enemy formations.

For much of the era of Sino-Soviet strategic rivalry, the Gobi Desert posed risks for China. The Maoist strategy of luring in deep enemy forces that might advance from the eastern coast was unsuited to the Chinese border with the Soviet Union, which offered high-speed approaches for armored forces. As a result, the People's Liberation Army was deployed in large defensive formations in the northern (Shenyang and Beijing) and western (Lanzhou) military regions and oriented on the Russo-Mongolian frontier. Beijing shifted attention eastward only after the collapse of the Soviet Union and introduction of border confidence-building measures with Moscow through the Shanghai Cooperation Organization accords. With the Chinese economic center of gravity in thriving cities on the coast, China's strategic orientation shifted to focus on likely challenges to maritime approaches. But just as control of the Himalayas and Tibetan plateau is vital because of rivers, the Gobi Desert could become the focus of strategic interest for minerals that make mining central to the economic development of Mongolia.

DECISIVE GEOGRAPHY

The Himalaya-Karakoram mountain ranges between China and South and Central Asia are the world's tallest mountains, the Yellow and Yangtze Rivers are two of the world's longest rivers, the Gobi Desert is the third-largest desert, and the Tibetan plateau is the largest and the highest (called the rim of the world). However, this chapter argues that the most decisive feature of Asian strategic geography is the island chain on its eastern seaboard and straits that dissect the chain, because they shape the economy and security of the mainland.

Maritime Asia contains islands belonging to continental nations that include the Kuriles, which are occupied by Russia; areas of western Borneo, which form part of Malaysia; and Indonesia, Japan, and the Philippines, which together claim more than twenty-seven thousand islands. The islands run from Kamchatka to the Kuriles; through Japan, the Ryukyus, Taiwan, and then the Philippines; and on to Borneo and Indonesia. They extend northwest along the approach to the Malacca Strait near the Nicobar and Andaman Islands. The chain tracks close to the Asian mainland across the ninety-mile Taiwan Strait and as far as a thousand miles away at its northern-most and western points. Moreover, these islands enclose the Andaman, East China, South China, and Yellow Seas, the Seas of Japan and Okhotsk, and the Gulf of Thailand.

Access from the Pacific Ocean to enclosed or marginal seas and the continental landmass is gained through straits and channels. These straits are of two kinds. The first run perpendicular to the Asian landmass and essentially create paths between islands from the continent to the open sea. One example is the Tsugaru Strait, between Honshu and Hokkaido, which became the international corridor used in 2008 by a Chinese People's Liberation Army Navy task force led by a Sovremenny-class destroyer. Another is the narrower Ishigaki Strait, between Ishigaki and Miyako Islands in the Ryukyus, which a submerged Han-class nuclear submarine traversed in 2004. A second type of strait, such as the Malacca and Taiwan Straits, runs parallel to the continent and offers access from one marginal sea to another.

The straits that pass through and between islands are decisive because they afford military and commercial advantages. The former provide limited offshore control of the mainland, albeit from international waters, and unfettered lines of communication in transporting personnel and supplies. Moreover, straits crisscrossing the first island chain are significant for maritime trade. A large percentage of global trade passes through the South China Sea, which is accessed by the Malacca Strait and the Lombok and Sunda Straits. Eleven million barrels of oil go through the 1.5-mile-wide Malacca Strait every day. China and Japan receive 40 percent of the oil, which accounts for 80 percent of Chinese oil imports.

No strait, not even the Malacca Strait, represents decisive terrain by itself, because substitute transit routes always exist, and lines of communication are not immutable. Rather, the decisive terrain in the region is the aggregate of the island chain facing the eastern edge of the Asian landmass and straits that provide access to the Western Pacific and that extend laterally between the marginal seas. Asia's decisive terrain comprises its maritime features.

CONTROLLING GEOGRAPHY

Decisive terrain can be controlled through direct and indirect means. The former requires forces to dominate such terrain, weapons systems to preclude adversarial use of geography, and patrols and unilateral or multilateral exercises to enhance access. The latter demands relationships with nations that physically control decisive geography through formal alliances and enhanced security partnerships or more flexible political agreements. In the search for control of decisive maritime geography in the Asia-Pacific region, both of these means are evident.

Every maritime nation in Asia is engaged in military modernization. While these programs vary among nations in scope and intensity depending on resources and priorities, they all include decreasing land forces, procuring state-of-the-art combat aircraft, and building up naval capabilities, all of which are facilitated by greater outlays on defense, arms imports, and innovative network-centric information technologies to enhance regional military power.

This pace of regional military modernization notwithstanding, only two nations possess the overall capabilities to control Asia's decisive maritime geography: the nonresident but potent United States and the resident and resurgent China. Although Japan has the military capabilities to control maritime geography, it is restricted by its constitution and by a lack of political will. China and the United States have markedly different approaches to controlling decisive geography.

The United States controls Asia's decisive geography through its alliance relationships, forward bases, and ongoing military presence. In addition to alliances with Australia, Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, and Thailand, the United States also regards Singapore as a major regional security partner. Moreover, though the United States does not have diplomatic relations with Taiwan, it accords that nation the status of a major non-NATO ally.