일본의 난세이제도 탈환 전략은 큰 실수

[위종민]

https://bityl.co/72cx (1945)

난세이 제도 방어는 일본 정부의 주된 관심사 중 하나이며, 기시 노부오 일본 방위상은 "자위대가 방어하지 못하는 지역이 있어서는 안되며, (멀리 있는) 섬 지역에 부대를 배치하는 것이 매우 중요하다."고 선언했었습니다. 

일본 육상자위대는 센카쿠 제도 등 난세이 제도 방어를 위해 수륙기동단(ARDB;Amphibious Rapid Deployment Brigade)을 창설했었습니다. 반쇼 코이치로 퇴역 육장은 2018년 랜드 보고서에 번역돼 소개된 글에서 야마모토 토모히로 전 방위상이 ARDB의 목적은 "원격도서지역의 불법점거시 신속한 상륙과 탈환, 확보이다."라고 선언했다고 말했습니다. 

그러나 적대세력의 침공과 함락을 전제로 한 탈환 전략은 큰 문제가 있다고 저자가 지적합니다. 대신 인민해방군이 침공하기 전 먼저 섬에 주둔해 섬을 요새화할 전략을 세워야 한다고 주장합니다. 

사실 직관적으로 생각해봐도 이미 점령당한 섬을 탈환하는 것보다 방어를 강화하는 게 전략적으로 훨씬 유리하긴 하지요. 우리 입장에선 반가운 주장은 아닙니다만. 

Japan’s Backwards Island Defense Strategy Against China Is A Mistake

By

James Holmes

Published

3 days ago

Type 88 (AShM) firing, Japan GSDF.

Japan may be coming at the problem of defending its southwestern islands backward.

This week over at the South China Morning Post, Julian Ryall reports that Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga’s government stands ready to spend more on defense. Since World War II the island state has informally capped defense spending at 1 percent of GDP to placate Asian neighbors worried about a potential resurgence of militarism.

China’s rise to martial eminence and overbearing conduct in the East China Sea have evidently induced a Japan with a strong pacifist streak to burst through the spending cap. Defense of southerly islands such as the Senkaku archipelago is a major concern for Tokyo. Declares Defense Minister Nobuo Kishi: “There should not be any areas not covered by the Self-Defense Forces. It is very important to deploy units to island areas.”

To that end, the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force (JGSDF) has raised an Amphibious Rapid Deployment Brigade, or ARDB. As retired lieutenant general Koichiro Bansho translates it in a RAND conference report from 2018, former defense minister Tomohiro Yamamoto announced that the ARDB’s chief purpose is “to conduct full-fledged amphibious operations for swift landing, recapturing, and securing in the case of illegal occupation of remote islands.”

In General Bansho’s telling this adds up to a “Southwestern Wall Strategy” meant to keep the island chain under Japanese sovereignty and make it a barrier to Chinese maritime movement. This all sounds good. Yet recapturing is a telling and troubling word. If it faithfully reflects strategic thinking in Tokyo, the Japan Self-Defense Forces (JSDF) expect to undertake reactive rather than proactive strategy and operations along the first island chain. Tokyo will await an attack. China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) will seize ground, then the JSDF will respond and take it back.

This is unduly passive. Instead, Japanese commanders must plan to rush troops to the islands and fortify them before the PLA can mount an attack. Walls tend not to hold if their defenders leave the battlements unguarded until an assault is underway. The Southwestern Wall is no exception.

Prussian field marshal Helmuth von Moltke would be agog at the suggestion that Japanese forces should consciously plan to recapture islands after they’ve fallen to enemy attack. In a riff on Clausewitz, Moltke, the military architect of German unification and one of history’s foremost martial practitioners, proclaims that “the tactical defense is the stronger” form of war while the strategic offensive is “the more effective form—and the only one that leads to the goal.” In other words, the combatant that seizes or occupies some site or object—then defends it tactically—positions itself for strategic success. It shifts the burden onto the foe of retaking something at steep cost and hazard.

In warfare as in life: possession is nine-tenths of the law.

This is no less true in a marine setting. A century ago, in fact, maritime historian Julian S. Corbett imported Moltke’s insights into the near-shore arena. Corbett declares that combining strategic offense with tactical defense offers good prospects for success in a limited war—a war in which the combatants have no intention of fighting to the finish and imposing terms on the vanquished. In all probability, any Pacific war will be a limited war, as no one relishes a fight to the finish in the atomic age.

Waging tactical defense in concert with strategic offense, says Corbett, “presupposes that we are able by superior readiness or mobility or by being more conveniently situated to establish ourselves in the territorial object before our opponent can gather strength to prevent us.” Once there the opponent “must conform to our opening by endeavoring to turn us out. We are in a position to meet his attack on ground of our own choice and to avail ourselves of such opportunities of counterattack as his distant and therefore exhausting offensive movements are likely to offer.”

For Corbett as for Moltke, terrain, geographic distance, and the initiative work on the defender’s behalf—making counterattack a daunting prospect for the challenger. Their logic is doubly compelling in the marine realm. Corbett proclaims that if “the territorial object is sea-girt and our enemy is not able to command the sea,” that augurs well for the defender’s chances of holding the disputed ground. Islands are nothing if not sea-girt. Maritime command converts the sea into a barrier, helping confound the attacker’s attempts at tactical offense.

Tokyo should embrace the offensive ethos and methods prescribed by these giants of strategy. It’s one thing to accept that things may go wrong and PLA forces may land on Japanese islands before SDF troops can get there. Things always go wrong in war. That’s different from assuming Japanese sea soldiers will have to undertake opposed amphibious landings—among the most difficult operations in war—to protect Japanese sovereignty in the southwestern islands. It assumes China—not Japan—will enjoy the advantages that go to the tactical defender. If that fatalistic assumption seeps into the minds of Japanese foreign-policy and defense chieftains, Tokyo could balk at giving the order to deploy the amphibious brigade. Better to think proactively.

Man the ramparts—and do it early.

Now, it is possible that Japanese officials and officers are thinking offensively in ways Moltke and Corbett would applaud. Perhaps they just aren’t communicating their intent as clearly as they might. I hope that’s the case. And indeed, as Bansho notes, a JGSDF press release titled “Activation of the ARDB” announces that the JSDF will amass “integrated capabilities” sufficient “to interdict any attack on Japan’s remote islands at sea.” That does sound like stopping a Chinese amphibious offensive short. And yet this official statement also bills the amphibian brigade’s main purpose as “to land, recapture and secure without delay” any remote islands that come under assault.

There’s that word recapture again.

Some of this seeming reticence may flow from the asymmetry between Japanese and Chinese strategy. Tokyo’s 2017 Defense White Paper points out that “China’s attempts to change the status quo in the East and the South China Seas based on its unique assertions which are incompatible with the existing order of international law, have become serious security concerns to the region including Japan and to the international community.” In other words, Beijing entertains revolutionary—and thus offensive—aims.

Yes, yes, China claims always to wage active defense, harnessing offensive operations and tactics for the sake of strategic defense. It tries to blame the victims of Chinese aggression for Chinese aggression. But overturning a regional order of long standing is anything but strategically defensive. In reality the Chinese Communist Party is on the strategic offensive and using offensive methods. Given their druthers PLA commanders like to seize disputed but undefended places or objects and dare others to take them back. That’s the pattern from the South China Sea to the Himalayas. Moltke and Corbett would instantly recognize this approach to martial affairs.

Japan, meanwhile, really is on the strategic defensive, but its leadership seems conflicted about its choice of tactics. The Moltkean scheme is Tokyo’s truest guide. The Amphibious Rapid Deployment Brigade should get to the contested turf before the Chinese antagonist and defend it will all the tenacity the Self-Defense Forces can muster. It should claim the advantages of tactical defense before the antagonist can.

So Suga & Co. should heed counsel from Helmuth von Moltke and Julian Corbett on methods for garrisoning the Southwestern Wall. Japanese leaders should model their outlook toward Chinese marine aggression on the Spartan king Leonidas, whose miniscule but stalwart army practiced tactical defense of the pass of Thermopylae in 480 B.C. When emissaries from the Persian king Xerxes demanded that the Greeks lay down their arms, Leonidas replied: molon labe—come and take them.

A fitting attitude two millennia ago; a fitting attitude today.

James Holmes is J. C. Wylie Chair of Maritime Strategy at the Naval War College and a 1945 Contributing Editor. The views voiced here are his alone.

[백선호]

섬은 지켜도 제공권 제해권을 빼앗기면 섬에 고립된 수비대가 쫄쫄 굶게 되는 문제가 남는 것은 2차대전 때나 지금이나 마찬가지겠네요.

그래도 일단 국토를 '빼앗기면' 일본 국내의 여론을 통일시키는 효과는 있겠습니다.

[위종민]

태평양전쟁에서 지겹도록 겪은 나라니까 도서방어전에서의 제해권, 제공권의 중요성은 잘 알고 있겠죠 ㅎㅎ

[ssn688]

일본에선 미야코지마는 논도 나름 있고 소도 키워서, 점령군이 게릴라 수준일지라도 쌀과 고기의 식량 걱정은 없을 것이란 예측(?)도 본 것 같습니다. :)

[백선호]

미야코지마에 럭셔리한 호텔과 리조트들이 많이 있네요. ㅎㅎ