By Zachary Keck
The Diplomat
Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons
A senior U.S. military officer has accused China’s People Liberation Army of training for a “short sharp war” against Japan in the East China Sea aimed at seizing the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands.
According to the U.S. Naval Institute, Captain James Fanell, Director, Intelligence and Information Operations for the U.S. Pacific Fleet, said that the massive Mission Action 2013 exercise between all three branches of the PLA last year was aimed at preparing for a war to defeat Japan’s Self Defense Forces in a conflict in the East China Sea.
“We witnessed the massive amphibious and cross military region enterprise — Mission Action 2013,” USNI News quoted Capt. Fanell as saying. “[We] concluded that the PLA has been given the new task to be able to conduct a short sharp war to destroy Japanese forces in the East China Sea following with what can only be expected a seizure of the Senkakus or even a southern Ryukyu [islands] — as some of their academics say.”
During the speech delivered at the USNI-sponsored WEST 2014 conference, Capt. Fanell also took aim at some of China’s broader maritime activities in the East and South China Seas.
“Tensions in the South and East China Seas have deteriorated with the Chinese Coast Guard playing the role of antagonist, harassing China’s neighbors while PLA Navy ships, their protectors, (make) port calls throughout the region promising friendship and cooperation,” Fanell said, according to USNI News.
He went on to add: “By the way, protection of maritime rights is a Chinese euphemism for coerce[d] seizure of coastal rights of China’s neighbors.”
Fanell has wide experience serving in the Pacific, giving him unique insight into how the region’s navies operate and how this is changing over time. He also has broad expertise on China itself. According to his official biography, in 1991 Joint Intelligence Center, Pacific (JICPAC) named him as one of the first China maritime watch officers. Between 2005 and 2006 he studied China’s naval operations at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, and from 2006 through 2008 he was the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI)’s senior intelligence officer on China. He currently serves as the moderator of Red Star Rising, an information service that monitors the rise of China.
Although Fanell’s remarks were far blunter than is typical of senior U.S. military leaders, they were not uncharacteristic for him. Fanell has often offered more withering criticism of China’s military than many of his counterparts in the U.S. armed services. At the same USNI conference last year, for example, Capt. Fanell stated:
“In my opinion, China is knowingly, operationally and incrementally seizing maritime rights of its neighbors under the rubric of a maritime history that is not only contested in the international community, but has largely been fabricated by Chinese government propaganda bureaus in order to quote-unquote ‘educate’ the populace about China’s ‘rich maritime history’ clearly as a tool to help sustain the Party’s control.”
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RELATED STORY:
Pentagon plays down intelligence officer’s provocative China assessment
By Phil Stewart
Reuters
Reuters
WASHINGTON
(Reuters) – The Pentagon on Thursday played down remarks by a senior Navy intelligence officer who told a public forum that he believed China was training its forces to be capable of carrying out a “short, sharp” war with Japan in the East China Sea.
The comments by Captain James Fanell, director of intelligence and information operations at the U.S. Pacific Fleet, were little noticed when he made them last week at a conference on maritime strategy called “West 2014″ in San Diego. They can be seen here: link.reuters.com/qyq96v
Fanell also predicted China, which declared an air defense zone last year in the East China Sea where it is locked in a territorial dispute with Japan over a string of small islands, would declare another air defense zone by the end of 2015, this time in the South China Sea.
The Pentagon’s top spokesman, Rear Admiral John Kirby, declined to comment on whether it was appropriate for Fanell to publicly offer such a blunt assessment, but said the Pentagon wanted closer ties with China’s military.
“Those were his views to express,” Kirby told a Pentagon news conference.
“What I can tell you about what Secretary Hagel believes is that we all continue to believe that the peaceful, prosperous rise of China is a good thing for the region, for the world,” he said, referring to Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel.
Asked whether the Pentagon shared Fanell’s assessments, Kirby said it would be inappropriate for him to speak to the intentions or motivations of another country’s military.
“It’s for China to speak to China’s intentions and motivations and their relations with their neighbors. And nothing’s changed about our view here,” Kirby said.
Ties between China and U.S. ally Japan have worsened due in part to mistrust over China’s military buildup and their territorial dispute in the East China Sea.
The U.S. military has refused to recognize the air defense zone China declared last year. Some U.S. officials have warned that any declaration by Beijing of another such zone in the South China Sea could result in changes to U.S. military deployments in the region.
Asked whether Fanell’s comments could be a “trial balloon” signaling a possible toughening of the U.S. military posture in the region, Kirby said: “I would refute that absolutely, not a trial balloon.”
Fanell, addressing the San Diego forum, said he expected China to declare an air defense zone in the South China Sea in 2014 or 2015.
Fanell said China was expanding training for its navy beyond the “long-standing task to restore Taiwan to the mainland.”
“We witnessed the massive amphibious and cross military region exercise, Mission Action 2013, and concluded that the PLA (People’s Liberation Army) has been given a new task: To be able to conduct a short, sharp war to destroy Japanese forces in the East China Sea,” he said.
He added that such a war could be expected to be followed by a seizure of the islands at the heart of China’s territorial dispute with Japan. The islands are known as the Senkaku by Japan and the Diaoyu by China.
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