By Luo Yuan (China Daily)
Updated: 2007-10-25 07:15

The Chinese government has decided to join the United Nations Military Budget Transparency Mechanism as a major step to increase its military transparency and return to the United Nations Conventional Weapons Registration System this year.

This fully demonstrates the positive attitude with which China has been pushing for better military mutual confidence with other nations of the world and the country's goodwill and sincerity in building a harmonious world.

Military transparency, strictly speaking, is not a purely military but a political issue. It has developed and evolved along with the progress of international military struggles.

The military transparency issue was first raised after World War I, when major powers brought up the need and rules for monitoring and inspecting their implementation of the Treaty of Versailles and the Washington Treaty to ensure all signatory parties abide by the limits on military hardware development written in the two treaties.

The United States and the Soviet Union brought military transparency back into prominence after World War II in an attempt to strike a military balance between them. In the 1970s, encouraged by US-Soviet "dtente", the Organization for Security Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) began promoting the concept and practice, making military transparency one of the fundamental principles.

All major countries in the world, mindful of their national strategic interests, attached more importance to military transparency after the end of the Cold War. In the past 20 years, the UN and some other international organizations have called for greater military transparency, while regional organizations such as OSCE, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) have also made various arrangements for enhancing military transparency and measures to build up mutual confidence.

The usual ways to increase military transparency include:

Speech transparency, which is carried out mainly through a military press release system. Major Western powers such as the US, Britain, France, Germany and Japan all have their own designated military press offices and spokespersons to take care of the organizing, release and assessment of military news.

Policy transparency, which is seen in the release of defense and armed forces policy documents, regularly or aotherwise. For example, the US regularly publishes The National Security Strategy annual report, the Pentagon's four-year strategy review and The National Military Strategy, while Britain, France, Germany and Japan all release their own defense whitepapers regularly. Russia has released several guiding papers on military build-up as well.

It is through the publication of these policy papers that major powers make such important military information as their assessment of the security threats they are faced with, national strategy intent, plans for military build-up and direction and defense budget known to the rest of the world.

Transparent exchange is reflected mostly in military exchanges and cooperation. From the practices by major Western powers one can see that the implementation of military transparency actually involves two fronts - internal and external. Internal transparency is mainly for the legislature and general public.

External transparency is meant for other countries and the international society. When implementing this transparency, particular attention must be paid to the degree and scope of military transparency to make sure it does not harm the country's national security interest.

It means the degree and scope of military transparency must be adjusted according to the nature of a country's relationship with another (an ally or enemy or neither) and the international situation in a particular period of time.

Normally the degree of military transparency among allies is higher, so as to facilitate strategic coordination in face of common threats; while for potential competitors this transparency could be both true and untrue by mixing concrete information with hot air for the purpose of strategic deterrence or strategic deceit.

As for countries that are neither friends nor enemies, military transparency is usually based on more than one consideration, with an eye on applying pressure to influence the other side's development as well as enhancing mutual confidence to expand bilateral cooperation.

China is integrating deeper and deeper into the international system as its reform and opening process gains depth. On security matters, China advocates and practices a new security concept of mutual confidence, mutual benefit and coordination, actively takes part in the construction of regional multilateral cooperation mechanisms by playing a constructive role in the SCO and ASEAN regional forum.

It is also actively involved in and supports the international arms control and non-proliferation mechanism. It has joined and abided by a host of international arms control treaties and agreements, including the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the Biological Weapons Convention, the Chemical Weapons Convention and the amended Landmine Protocol of the Convention on Conventional Weapons (1988).

It has also joined all international treaties on nuclear non-proliferation and related organizations while continuously stepping up export control.

China has been actively expanding military exchanges and cooperation with other countries and increasing military "transparency". It has published six editions of the National Defense Whitepaper. Since 2002, China has participated in 18 joint military exercises with 11 countries, all of which were presented to the public by the news media.

At the same time, it has also been actively involved in the UN's peacekeeping and disaster relief missions, with a total of 5,915 personnel in 16 peacekeeping missions since 1990. Eight of them lost their lives in action.

China's participation in the military transparency is not unconditional and must not be achieved at the expense of sovereignty and national interests. China made important contributions to the making and development of the UN Register of Conventional Arms (UNRCA) and has fulfilled its obligation exactly for the register.

However, because a particular country began providing the details of its arms exports to the Taiwan region in 1996 in violation of the spirit of relevant UN resolutions and the dictum and principles of UNRCA, China decided to suspend its participation in the process.

It was only after that particular country stopped its actions that hurt China's sovereignty and interest that the Chinese side decided to resume providing information concerning the import and export of conventional arms in seven categories to UNRCA.

Military transparency must not undercut the armed forces' capabilities by giving away secrets. Military transparency is relative and not absolute. Western countries, though enthusiastically promoting military transparency, maintain strict rules on the scope, degree, ways and timing of such transparency.

They emphasize secrecy as well as transparency. The US Department of Defense has issued a specific set of instructions on conducting foreign exchanges to prevent breach of military secrecy.

The British military requires authorization by the military intelligence chief or the defense minister to disclose sensitive military information.

The relationship between military transparency and mutual confidence is that the former is a means while the latter is the end. Military transparency is in essence an issue of confidence building between armed forces. Without at least some rudimentary mutual confidence, no one will trust you no matter how transparent you try to be.

For instance, China has expressed the good will to increase military transparency, but the Chinese military's efforts to be accepted by the international community have met with a lot of difficulty. Some ill-advised parties have been spreading the "China threat" mumbo-jumbo, deliberately exaggerating China's military strength and applying a different standard to China's defense modernization than to their own.

If you do not "duly" submit the kind of information that supports their twisted, fizzy and even demonizing conclusion, they will accuse you of being "not transparent" for sure. The truth is that you can never satisfy these people no matter how much you tell them.

The relationship between transparency of military intention and that of military capability is that the former is more important than the latter. There is a common formula in the field of international security: intention plus capability equals threat. Intention without capability does not make a threat; and neither does capability without intention.

China does not have the intention or capability to pose any threat to others. Chinese leaders have vowed to all peoples of the world for generations that China will never seek hegemony in the world. Is there a more transparent strategic intent than that?

The difference between individual countries means it is impossible to have a universal standard for military transparency. Military transparency will never have a universal standard as long as there are poor countries and rich nations in this world. To rich countries military transparency is an effective way to brandish military power and deter others; whereas to poor nations low military transparency is a way to protect themselves, by being ambiguous rather than specific.

For the above reasons, military transparency should have a few principles: The first principle is voluntary transparency, which stands against arbitrary demand, pressure and, most of all, interference in other countries' internal affairs. Second is the principle of mutual transparency. That means all parties concerned should implement military transparency at the same time instead of just one. The third is the principle of reciprocal transparency. Big military powers should take the lead in adopting military transparency and, better yet, in disarmament.

The fourth principle is progressive transparency, meaning it cannot be accomplished in one leap. It should be a gradual process with one sure step at a time. By the way, military transparency is only relative and no one should expect it to work wonders.

The fifth principle is intent ahead of other concerns. Big military powers should first make their strategies transparent and make such unmistakable pledges as "we will not be the first to use nuclear weapons", "will not interfere in other countries' internal affairs" and "prefer solving international disputes by peaceful means".

The original goal of maintaining military transparency can be reached only after a country convinces others it has no strategic intent to harm anyone.

The author is a researcher with the Academy of Military Science of the Chinese People's Liberation Army

(China Daily 10/25/2007 page11)