(Bath Iron Works’s fourth FLIGHT IIA Arleigh Burke Class AEGIS Destroyer USS McCamble proudly bears the name of Captain David S. McCampbell, the Navy’s all-time leading ace with 34 aerial victories during World War II. Photo US Navy.)
The South China Sea might be the pivot on which the new century is going to turn. I have a pal who is deeply concerned about what is going on there. I have been a little distracted of late, personal matters on the one hand, and professional ones on the other, attempting to compile my napkin-notes from Willow on the extraordinary career of my great friend Admiral Mac.
I have been threatening to get down to Mac’s account of the tension between Dick Nixon and his National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger and the Central Intelligence Agency, and how Mac wound up working there on the Intelligence Community Staff, but that, as you know, required a detour through the coup that overthrew Prince Siahanouk in Cambodia, and installed a more user-friendly Lon Nol government.
My pal the Lawyer has some strong opinions about that, and he wrote a thinly-fictionalized account of his time negotiating with the anti-communist rebels and the assorted Spooks across the border from his post at Ha Tien, RVN. It was what happened after that really upset him- Lon Nol was completely dependent on US aid at the end, and with the withdrawal of American forces from the region, the government ran out of ammunition.
During one of the Khmer Rouge final assaults on the capital of Phnom Penh, Lon Nol sprinkled a circular line of consecrated sand in order to defend the city. The first priority of the KR after conquering Cambodia- and renaming everything to their liking- was to execute all its leaders and high officials. Then, they would continue to murder anyone with an education.
Lon Nol escaped that fate sine he fled the country on April Fool’s day, 1975, to die a decade later of natural causes in Fullerton, CA.
I don’t know if the genocide would have been prevented, had Sihanouk remained in power and the domino not been tipped, but the staggering number of those murdered or worked to death- 1.7 million out of a total population of only 8- certainly makes one wonder if there might not have been a better policy option.
That Henry Kissinger is back as a senior statesman making recommendations on how to treat the rising China makes one wonder, too.
I got a note from Switzerland over the weekend from a colleague who told me to watch what was happening between the Vietnamese and China’s PLA-N.
It is a complicated business, armed diplomacy, and there is a lot of ominous activity.
I have to say- and this is sort of weird- that I have a certain admiration for the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. They were a tough and successful adversary, and it was their intervention in Kampuchea that toppled the monster Pol Pot.
I had a chance to tag along on a Bill Richardson CoDel to Hanoi in 1995, I was impressed with the people we met at the Foreign Ministry. Things were clearly changing in the SRV, and if the US did not re-engage with the Vietnamese, it was clear we were going to be left behind to other strategic business partners.
Bill’s report to President Clinton was one of several recommendations to normalize relations with the SRV, and I like to think a pivotal one. An Embassy was opened and full diplomatic relations restored later that year, and have expanded steadily in the years after. In 2003, USS Vandegrift (FFG 48) arrived in Ho Chi Minh City to conduct a port visit, the first since the big pull-out, and last year the Curtis Wilbur (DDG 54) called at Da Nang.
(Vietnamese Officers observe the arrival of USS Curtis Wilbur. Photo USN)
That is the port from which Vietnamese navy sortied this week to conduct live-fire drills in an area forty clicks off the central Vietnamese coast.
A long-standing dispute about Chinese and Vietnamese claims to the Spratly and Paracel island chains are at the core of the dispute.
The Spratlys are a group of more than 750 assorted reefs, keys, atolls and islets claimed by China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Taiwan and Malaysia. They are strewn across more than 425,000 square kilometers of open sea. About 45 islands large enough to stay mostly above sea level are occupied by relatively small numbers of military forces. The Chinese have been increasing assertive about their claims, and tensions have spiked in the last few weeks.
(South China Sea territorial claims. Map National Georgraphic annotated by Wikipedia.)
The force lay-down is that China currently occupies all the Paracels after a shoot-out with South Vietnamese soldiers left eighteen dead in 1974. In the Spratlys, more than 70 Vietnamese were killed in a brief battle with the PRC in 1988.
The live-fire exercise is inside the area Vietnam claims as its 200 nautical mile economic zone, which naturally overlaps the claims of the Chinese (and others). Hanoi has accused Chinese surveillance vessels of twice cutting exploration cables of an oil survey ship inside the area.
Beijing, in turn, has warned Vietnam to halt all naval activity in the region. Most observers think there is a showdown coming, and it may have consequences for the Americans, too. While the two communist nations started to square off, the North Koreans got into the mix.
Chronically cash-strapped, Pyongyang apparently decided to sell medium range rockets to the other paranoid dictatorship in the region- the former SLORC junta in Myanmar (formerly Burma.) Some of the usual suspect here in Washington had to trumpet a diplomatic success, and the Post and Times got the story this morning.
The Office of Naval Intelligence and the counter-proliferation crowd identified M/V Light, a Belize-flagged-North-Korean-owned merchant that had popped up on the “bad actors” list for association with previous illegal arms shipments. Suspecting the ship was laden with missile components, PacFlt was directed to task 7th Fleet assets to shadow the ship.
The George Washington Carrier Strike Group just had a marvelous port visit in Singapore, a great town for liberty, and home of the Long Bar at the Raffles Hotel. In my days as a 7th Fleet sailor, the wonders of Bugis- Boogie- Street were legendary, though construction and increased public decency have cleaned the area west of Victoria to Queens street since. Pity.
McCambell got the call, and she sped off from the Strike Group on independent steaming. On May 26, in the waters due south of Shanghai, she caught up with the cargo ship and broadcast on bridge-to-bridge frequency a request to board under under authority State had squeezed out of the government of Belize. The Korean skipper refused four times.
The White House reportedly was reluctant to forcibly board the ship in international waters fearing a firefight that might have consequences back on the Peninsula.
What followed was a maritime version of OJ’s slow-speed chase while Washington tried to figure out what to do.
State admits to be mystified at what the Burmese are up to . concede they are mystified about Myanmar’s motives. What might be SCUD-C missiles aboard the M/V Light have a range of about 350 miles, meaning they could hit parts of India, China, Thailand or Laos.
It is unclear who or what the Burmese would want to shoot at.
In the end, diplomacy paid off. M/V Light went dead in the water, then reversed course to head north in the South China sea en route home. That was not the only time she went DIW- apparently there were engineering casualties as well.
You cannot say that the South China Sea is not going to be an interesting place in the years to come. Who knows? We might very well be back in Cam Ranh Bay and swimming at China Beach again.
And I just wish McCambell had been around when the North Koreans moved the Pueblo.
Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com