SYDNEY - A rat that gnaws at a cat's tail
invites destruction, says the classic Chinese
proverb on the importance of knowing one's
physical limits. Yet the United States and its
regional allies appear blissfully content that
China, Asia's economic and political tiger, will
not swat back as they pursue their crude security
containment strategy.
This week's defense
pact between Japan and Australia bolsters the
third axis of the Trilateral Security Dialogue
that those two countries share with the US.
Washington wants to make it a neat
quadrilateral by also
bringing in India.
What then? Some
diplomats envisage a happy family of democracies
stretching through South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore
and possibly Thailand that would channel their
collective fear of a resurgent China into a
pooling of resources - and possibly even
retaliatory measures.
The US already has
defense arrangements with each of these countries.
Canberra and Tokyo signed a memorandum in 2003
that initiated a strategic dialogue, including
regular ship and aircraft visits and other
exchanges. But the latest pact, the
Japan-Australia Joint Declaration on Security
Cooperation, takes these relationships a step
further by providing for the sharing of
intelligence and high-level exchanges of military
personnel, as well as extensive cooperation in
training.
Unlike the ANZUS treaty that
binds Australia, the US and - to a much lesser
extent - New Zealand, the agreement does not
commit either country to send troops to support
the other, though Canberra has said it is amenable
to a further upgrade in ties.
But it
nonetheless turns up the heat on Japan's raft of
neighborhood squabbles, including the North Korea
nuclear standoff and the abduction of Japanese
nationals, a development that has triggered alarm
in the two Koreas and in Beijing.
Specifically, the new agreement states
that there will be "cooperation for a peaceful
resolution of issues related to North Korea,
including its nuclear development,
ballistic-missile activities, and humanitarian
issues including the abduction issue".
While the emphasis is on combating
transnational crimes and terrorism, areas of
cooperation will include border security, "the
exchange of strategic assessments and related
information", and maritime and aviation security.
North Korea may be the main thrust of the
pact, but few are in any doubt that China, the
Pyongyang's closest friend, is the main target.
"What would be the purpose of formalizing
such an alliance? The only reason would be to
constrain China's rising power," said Dr Alan
Dupont, director of Sydney University's Center for
International Security Studies. "It would be
extremely unwise, in my view, to be drawn into a
quadrilateral arrangement which would only
reinforce Chinese fears of strategic encirclement.
It smacks too much of Cold War containment."
Security analysts say the deal was
brokered by US Vice President Dick Cheney during a
visit to Japan and Australia last month, when
China's growing military presence reportedly was
high on the list of discussions.
The US is
the only other country that has a defense
arrangement of this nature with Japan. Under the
demilitarization accord Tokyo was forced to sign
in 1947 and the subsequent 1960 Japan-US Security
Treaty, Washington has in effect assumed
responsibility for Japanese external defense.
Although Japan's Self-Defense Force is one
of the world's most modern and best-equipped armed
services, the Japanese constitution prohibits the
development of an offensive capability, which
means there are no ground attack units and its
aircraft cannot be refueled in flight, which
restricts them to home operations.
North
Korea's sporadic ballistic-missile tests have
deliberately been targeted over Japanese territory
in the knowledge that there will be no
retaliation. Tokyo's only response has been to
step up monitoring activity by launching spy
satellites and deploying high-tech warships.
But the United States has made it clear
that it wants a more assertive Japan to keep China
in check and reduce US defensive commitments in
the region, a process that will include troop
withdrawals from bases on Okinawa.
In
2004, Japan and the US signed a deal to increase
cooperation on a ballistic-missile defense system
that is due to be fully operational in 2011. Tokyo
also began to lift some of its self-imposed
restrictions on military activity, including an
arms-export embargo.
The removal of the
exports ban will allow Japanese scientists to
become fully fledged partners in a US-led research
effort to install a missile shield covering Japan
and Taiwan and possibly even the Korean Peninsula.
"Developing a missile defense is tough
work, but my friend, it is a noble challenge,"
then US ambassador Howard Baker told Japanese
defense minister Yoshinori Ono after they had
signed the missiles deal. Baker, a hawk who served
as chief of staff in the administration of US
president Ronald Reagan in the mid-1980s and also
had close links to Reagan's successor, George H W
Bush, was instrumental in developing the platform
for a closer security relationship.
That
baton is now being carried by Cheney, who said
during his visit to Sydney in February, "The
growing closeness among our three countries sends
an unmistakable message - that we are united in
the cause of peace and freedom across the region."
Cheney, who is already under fire over his
ideological blueprint for reshaping the Middle
East, has found a willing ally as nationalist
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe pushes for most
remaining constitutional barriers to Japan's
rearming to be scrapped.
Abe has sought to
improve the tense relationship with Beijing since
he took office in September but is also a strident
supporter of the missiles cooperation and plans
with the Tripartite countries to launch a new
generation of satellites with an intelligence
capability aimed squarely at North Korea and
China.
Professor Hugh White of the
Australian National University's Strategic and
Defense Studies Center believes the pact will
propel Asia closer to the emergence of adversarial
armed camps, with mistrust of Beijing the common
element.
"The Cheney proposal is an idea
that the neo-cons in Washington have been pursuing
for some time as an approach to containing China
and it would be seen for that by Beijing and by
others," he said.
China has so far reacted
with remarkable restraint, possibly because of its
close economic ties with all three countries. But
it is unlikely to sit quietly by if the alliance
is expanded to include India, Beijing's most
bitter security rival in recent decades.
Japan and the US are pushing hard for a
"quadrilateral", but Australia, conscious of
Chinese paranoia over encirclement, is less keen.
The opposition Labor Party, tipped to take power
in general elections this year, has signaled that
it will block any such deal.
India badly
wants more access to US military hardware, but
this is one deal it will probably be willing to
pass up on. Before acting, Delhi might want to
consider another timeless Chinese proverb: "Once
you are on a tiger's back, it is hard to alight."
Alan Boyd is a Sydney-based
correspondent.
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