Page 2 of
2 China
checks the pivot line By
Peter Lee
With the US Seventh Fleet
unlikely to slide into the South China Sea and
blast away at Chinese vessels as an adjunct to the
Vietnamese navy, Vietnam appears to have drawn the
lesson from the PRC's ferocious mugging of Japan
that the disadvantages of auditioning for the role
of frontline state in the anti-China alliance may
outweigh the benefits.
The big story in
East Asian security affairs this year was the
PRC's decision to bully Japan, ostensibly over the
idiotic fetish of the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands, but
actually because of Tokyo's decision to give moral
and material support to the US pivot by once again
making an issue of the wretched (Taiwanese)
islands.
In 2010, China made the
diplomatically disastrous decision to
retaliate officially against
a Japanese provocation - Seiji Maehara's
insistence on trying a Chinese fishing trawler
captain in Japanese courts for a maritime
infraction near the Senkakus. A relatively limited
and measured effort to send a message to Japan by
a go-slow enforcement effort in the murky
demimonde of rare earth exports became a China
bashing cause celebre, an opportunity for
Japan to raise the US profile in East Asian
maritime security matters, and an invitation to
China's other neighbors to fiddle with offshore
islands and attempt to elicit a counterproductive
overreaction from Beijing.
In 2012, the
PRC was ready, probably even spoiling for a fight,
seizing the opportunity even when the Yoshihiko
Noda government clumsily tried to defuse/exploit
the Senkaku issue by cutting in line in front of
Tokyo governor and ultranationalist snake-oil
peddler Shintaro Ishihara to purchase three of the
islands.
This time, Chinese retaliation
was clothed in the diplomatically and legally
impervious cloak of populist attacks on Japanese
economic interests inside China. The 2012 campaign
did far more damage to Japan than the 2010
campaign, which was conceived as a symbolic shot
across the bow of Japan Inc. The Japanese economy
was not doing particularly well even before the
2012 Senkaku protests devastated Japanese auto
sales and overall Japanese investment in China,
raising the possibility that China might deliver a
mortal blow, and not just a pointed message, to
Japan.
The major US effort to refocus the
economic priorities of Asia and offer material
benefits to countries like Japan which line up
against the PRC - the China-excluding Trans
Pacific Partnership - is facing difficulties in
its advance as economies hedge against the
distinct possibility that China and not the United
States (which is looking more like an exporting
competitor than demand engine for Asian tigers)
will be the 21st century driver of Asian growth.
It looks likely the US pivot into Asia
will be a costly, grinding war of attrition fought
on multiple fronts - with Japan suffering a
majority of the damage - instead of a quick
triumph for either side.
This year, let's
call it a draw.
Call it a draw in most of
the rest of the world as well.
The Indian government apparently feels that
the Himalayas provide an adequate no-man's-land
between the PRC and India and warily navigated a
path between China and the United States.
With the re-election to president of Vladimir
Putin and a return to a more in-your-face
assertion of Russian prerogatives vis-a-vis the
United States, Russia is less likely to curry
favor with the US at Chinese expense than it was
under Dmitry Medvedev.
On the other hand, the European Union, winner
of the Nobel Prize for Pathetic Lurching
Dysfunction, excuse me, the Nobel Peace Price, is
desperately cleaving to the United States in most
geopolitical matters, including a stated aversion
to Chinese trade policies, security posture, and
human rights abuses. It remains to be seen whether
this resolve is rewarded by a recovery in the
Western economies, or falls victim to Europe's
need for a Chinese bailout.
The most
interesting and revealing arena for US-China
competition and cooperation is one of the most
unlikely: the Middle East. The PRC has apparently
been attempting a pivot of its own, attempting to
leverage its dominant position as purchaser of
Middle Eastern energy from both Saudi Arabia and
Iran into a leadership role.
With the
United States approaching national, or at least
continental self-sufficiency through domestic
fracking and consumption of Canadian tar sands -
and ostentatiously pivoting into Asia - it might
seem prudent and accommodating to welcome Chinese
pretensions to leadership in the Middle East.
The PRC has a not-unreasonable portfolio
of Middle East positions: lip service at least to
Palestinian aspirations, acceptance of Israel's
right to exist and thrive, a regional security
regime based on economic development instead of
total war between Sunni and Shi'ite blocs,
grudging accommodation of Arab Spring regimes (as
long as they want to do business), an
emir-friendly preference for stability over
democracy, and an end to the Iran nuclear idiocy.
As to the issue of the Syrian
bloodletting, the PRC has consistently promoted a
political solution involving a degree of
power-sharing between Assad and his opponents. The
United States, perhaps nostalgic for the 30 years
of murder it has abetted in the Middle East and
perversely unwilling to let go of the bloody mess,
has refused to cast China for any role other than
impotent bystander.
Syria, in particular,
symbolizes America's middle-finger approach to
Middle East security. Washington is perfectly
happy to see the country torn to pieces, as long
as it denies Iran, Russia, and China an ally in
the region.
The message to China seems to
be: the United States can "pivot" into Asia and
threaten a security regime that has delivered
unprecedented peace and prosperity, but the PRC
has no role in the Middle East even though - make
that because - that region is crucial to China's
energy and economic security.
This is a
dynamic that invites China to muscle up
militarily, project power, and strengthen its
ability to control its security destiny throughout
the hemisphere.
The likely response is not
going to be for threatened regional actors to lean
on Uncle Sam, which has more of a sporting than
existential interest in keeping a lid on things in
Asia. Even today, the Obama administration has yet
to come up with an effective riposte to China's
playing cat and mouse with Japan - and chicken
with the global economy. Sailing the Seventh Fleet
around the western Pacific in search of tsunami
and typhoon victims and dastardly pirates is not
going to help Japan very much.
If Japan
decides to seize control of its security destiny
by turning its back on its pacifist constitution,
staking out a position as an independent military
power, and turning its full spectrum nuclear
weapons capability into a declared nuclear arsenal
- and South Korea nukes up in response - the
famous pivot could turn into a death spiral for US
credibility and influence in the region.
If this happens, 2012 will be remembered
as the year it all began to unravel.
Peter Lee writes on East and
South Asian affairs and their intersection with US
foreign policy.
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