A war of aggression is really nothing much more than a large-scale armed robbery. Is this scenario plausible? I think it’s quite plausible. Because nations are greedy. Particularly Marxist nations.
James Adams: Doug, you served out in the Far East as a submariner. Do you agree with that? Was the potential threat posed by China part of the war game that went on when you were out there?
Captain Doug Littlejohns: I was out there in the mid ’60s. That was at the time of the Indonesia confrontation, and we didn’t really think much about China in those days.
James Adams: Would you buy the general scenario as seeing China becoming a bigger player on the scene?
Captain Doug Littlejohns: Oh, very much so. And I think this is an extremely good plot.
James Adams: Tom, you talked briefly about the Spratlys. Tell me a bit more about them. We’ve read a lot about them, and we know that many nations claim them, and I think that China has landed ships on them. And so have other countries. What exactly is the status of those islands?
Tom Clancy: The Spratly Islands are kind of like a dead grandfather with a heck of a big estate. And everybody wants to claim to be the number-one heir. In fact, I think that China’s territorial claim to the Spratlys is fictitious.
James Adams: Tenuous at best.
Tom Clancy: Especially given their location. But they’re such inhospitable pieces of real estate that whoever can get there, plant a flag, and defend it is going to own them.
James Adams: And you think that this scenario, where China is an aggressor because of political instability internally, might be a realistic driver in the near future?
Tom Clancy: Well, historically, a nation with internal problems will externalize. And nothing draws a country together like an external threat. Or a perceived external threat. It’s the classical method historically to unite a country.
James Adams: Doug, you have tremendous experience in submarines. This is a story about submarines. We’re in a post-Cold War world now. We devoted a great deal of energy to dealing with the potential threat from the Soviet submarine fleet. But now we’re in a different environment. What do you think is the strategic and tactical role of submarines in the post-Cold War world?
Captain Doug Littlejohns: It ranges right across the spectrum, starting obviously with the major strategic use of a submarine — which is to launch intercontinental ballistic missiles. But in this situation, the submarine can be used strategically by taking up a position off an enemy area. Its existence is then made known to the enemy. We had a very good example of that in the ’70s when Argentina was making noises about the Falklands. We dispatched an SSN down there, and we told them it was there. And that put off the business for a few years.
James Adams: But in that particular situation, Argentina had no counter force to combat that. They weren’t capable really of dealing with the submarines that we had. That’s not the case with China, where they have a pretty extensive anti-submarine warfare capability.
Captain Doug Littlejohns: Well, they have an anti-submarine warfare capability. I don’t think you can put it in the same league as the anti-submarine capability of NATO nations or, indeed, of the former Soviet Union. So for the game — and for reality — the technical superiority of the U.S. submarine force far outweighs the capability that China, on its own today, could put against them.
James Adams: In other words, the submarines that the Americans can field are quieter and faster than the capability of the Chinese to find with their sonars and other technologies.
Captain Doug Littlejohns: Yes. At this stage. But the world always moves on.
I think that for the scenario that we’re looking at here — which isn’t cast in today’s technological climate — the American submarines would have a pretty good time against their ASW forces.
James Adams: Tom, do you think that the Chinese Navy would have any realistic chance against the United States? They have a lot of numbers but not much capability, and there’s a huge technological gap between the two.
Tom Clancy: One of the things you have to remember about combat is that it’s not really a technical exercise. It’s a human exercise, and a psychological exercise. It’s not machine against machine, it’s person against person. And we all too often overlook that. The difference between a good navy and a bad navy is the quality in the training of its personnel. You know, better to have good men in bad ships than bad men in good ships. If the Chinese decide to make it a national goal to upgrade their Navy — and, of course, they don’t really have a Navy; it’s the Naval Branch of the People’s Liberation Army — but if they decided to really invest some time and money in it to develop the capabilities they need, they could indeed be quite formidable.
China does have a maritime history that we all too often forget.
James Adams: But they’ve been trying to upgrade land, sea, and air for some years now. They’ve invested a lot of money, and a lot of people. But they’ve not been able to bridge that technological gap between the United States and the NATO forces and what they currently have. They have a lot of things, but can they take that training and that technology and bring them together to make it effective, do you think?
Tom Clancy: The fundamental power base of any country is its economy. China has a very rapidly growing economy. They’re making computers. They’re making all manner of products, which can be sold worldwide. If they can do that, they can make damn near anything.
James Adams: So do you think that today we treat China with kid gloves that are perhaps inappropriate? Do you see them as a threat, as some people would argue, for the stability of the world?
Tom Clancy: I don’t know that I would go quite that far. Probably the country at greatest risk from Chinese aggression would be Russia, the former Soviet Union.
Do we treat China in a way which causes me difficulty? Yes. When Deng Xiaoping stomped on the demonstrators in Tiananmen Square, we should have done something, for two reasons: First of all, America should not do business with countries that do such things to its own citizens. Moreover, and this is something frequently overlooked, that act was deliberately taken in the knowledge that Bernie Shaw and CNN were filming it — or sending it out live at the time — on global television. They were, indeed, therefore telling the world, “Drop dead. This is the way we do business and if you don’t like it, that’s too bad.” I question the ethics of doing business as usual with a country that is so grossly repressive as the People’s Republic of China.
James Adams: Doug, in SSN we have a very realistic portrayal of what it’s like to be in command of a submarine. Something that you have done. Can you tell me a bit about what sort of training goes in to make a commander? What is looked for, psychologically and in practical terms, in somebody who can deliver?