John Kerry recently concluded a friendly visit to Beijing, with both sides chatting about matters of mutual concern in a way that implied these two great powers have areas of shared concern and interest.
Some observers might fear that peace might break out.
Don’t worry.
My personal opinion is that a dwindling group of PRC doves
in the Obama administration are being rolled by military and think tank hawks
who sense the weakness of the individuals with suspected panda hugger
inclinations, such as Joe Biden and John Kerry, and also smell blood in the
water with President Obama’s emerging lame duck status and the likely return of
a down-the-line China hawk civilian slate with the expected election of Hillary
Clinton as President in 2016.
The result has been a spate of articles calling the White
House, especially Joe Biden, soft on China and pointing the finger at John
Kerry for being excessively preoccupied with the Middle East and thereby
allowing the precious Pivot to Asia to languish.
I, for one, detect a pretty effective tag team between the
Abe administration and US anti-China/pro-Japan hawks. It should be recalled that Abe’s closest US
relationships are with the Cheney wing of the Republican Party and his
relations with Obama are, at best, cool.
So, if US policy as it pertains to Japan and China is being criticized,
both directly in terms of flagging Obama commitment to Asia and over-commitment
to the Middle East, I think the fine Japanese hand can be suspected,
reinforcing (but not necessarily directing) the anti-Obama grumblings of
various think-tank hawks.
When I saw a poobah on Twitter opining that the Yasukuni
furor showed the rather pathetic limitations of the Japanese PR machine, I had
to lift both eyebrows in skepticism. Actually, I ran around with my arms in the
air like Spongebob Squarepants in his utter-dismay mode, while yelling
Nooooooooo like Luke Skywalker did after Darth Vader cut off his hand and told
him he was his father.
Japan has learned the lessons of World War II, when the
Japan Lobby was bested by the China Lobby, and also from the fraught decades of
the 1970s and 80s, when Japan filled the designated role of Asian menace to the
Western way of life in US politics.
Recently, the Abe administration has energetically ingratiated itself to
the US military, defense hawks, and the American Right, and done a pretty good
job of leveraging its ally status into a favorable position in the US policy
debate…especially when compared to the PR black hole occupied by PR China.
In my humble opinion, Kerry’s focus on the Middle East—where
the United States is deeply involved in three armed conflicts in Afghanistan,
Syria, and Iraq, a political crisis in Egypt, and a high-risk diplomatic gambit
with Iran—at the expense of the Far East—which is facing the threat of Chinese
aggression against five unoccupied islands and an uninhabited atoll—is pretty
well justified.
In fact, conspiracy theorists might note that Kerry is
getting some assistance from the PRC in trying to wrangle the
Syria, Afghanistan, and Iran questions, as he acknowledged during his press availability--while Japan has very little to offer.
I, for one, would not be surprised if the Japanese foreign
ministry, concerned that the PRC might be piling up deposits in John Kerry’s
favorbank for eventual redemption in the Far East and programming against Kerry's visit to Beijing, might have thought it better
to encourage concerns about excessive US attention to the Middle East and US “softness” on the PRC in order to make sure the PRC is
recognized as the real bad guy and pre-empt any possibility that the dreaded “G2”—an
effective alliance of interest of the US and PRC on key questions that excludes
Japan—ever materializes.
I think the concerted and orchestrated nature of the
pro-Japan campaign is revealed by the fearmongering that the United States
“might” fail to back up the Japan on the Senkakus.
As Bill Gertz, the journalistic dean of China hawks, reported in an article which accused the Obama administration of fecklessness in China affairs (excuse me, in which unnamed "China watchers" and "analysts" opined that the adminstration's response to China had been "confused", "vacillating", "mild" and "too little too late"):
A U.S. official summed up the tensions in a comment to The Nelson Report’s Chris Nelson: “What we need to think our way through is how China’s salami-slicing tactics (and they will continue whether with an ADIZ in the [South China Sea] or elsewhere) will play against U.S. credibility.
“If all we have are diplomatic response[s] when China is creating new facts on the ground/in the sea/air, this will continue to erode U.S. credibility with allies and partners; and, if, God forbid, we fail to honor alliance commitments, especially on the Senkakus, we soon will have no allies/partners/standing in the region.”
Although the PRC officially disclaimed any plans for an SCS ADIZ in response to a US declaration, thereby supporting the unwelcome surmise that the US could effectively engage with the PRC, Gertz manages to brush aside this ruse and keep the eternal reality of China's inexorable salami-slicing menace alive in the minds of his readers with the parenthetical remark ("they will continue whether an ADIZ...or elsewhere").
Despite the concerns of Gertz and the various watchers and analysts, I don't think the U.S. is even remotely considering selling out the Senkakus. Like it or not, US support for Japan on the
Senkakus is the linchpin of US credibility in the region (ever since Secretary
Clinton, in response to the somewhat fishy-smelling Captain Zhan incident and the subsequent rare earth “crisis”
in 2010, reversed the Obama administration’s previous internal decision not to
reaffirm their inclusion in the scope of Article V) and it’s not, in my opinion, going anywhere.
Lower down the foreign policy and op-ed food chain, the term
“appeasement” has floated to the surface like an unwelcome addition to the punchbowl
of China discourse, often referencing the PRC’s declaration of the Air Defense
Identification Zone in the East China Sea and the measured US response.
A few things to bear in mind.
First, the United States showed plenty of confrontational
sack by immediately flying two B-52s into the ADIZ unannounced.
Second, the only thing that the United States—and the rest
of the world, for that matter—didn’t do was follow Japan’s lead and take the
rather irresponsible step of directing its civilian carriers to drop their
compliance and start disregarding the ADIZ.
So, in this context, “appeasement” means not doing something
that Japan wants, something that is worth bearing in mind when considering
whose interests are really being promoted by a more aggressive policy.
Third and for extra credit, according to a credible-sounding
report in the Mainichi Shinbun as reported by the Shingetsu News Service, the
PRC had notified Japan and the US about the ADIZ extension in 2010, supporting
the inference that the US & Japan, instead of coming up with a faltering
and incomplete response to “assertive China”, were actually being plenty
aggressive and confrontational in using the public announcement of the ADIZ
to sandbag the PRC with accusations of destabilizing the region.
So, in my opinion, US PRC policy has not been excessively
weak-kneed.
However, looking at the recent chest-thumping and
scrotum-hefting declarations of the White House concerning the China threat, it
looks to me like the Obama administration is ostentatiously inoculating itself
against the “weak on China” accusation while, when the remarks are closely
parsed, still trying to reserve some space for the US between the PRC and Japan
as “the honest broker”.
In fact, John Kerry was quite reassuring during his recent
visit to Beijing and his words probably triggered a brief, blissful reverie in
the PRC leadership about the unconsummated new great power relationship. Cooperation on North Korea was the lead item,
followed by nice words about the SCS Code of Conduct and some collective
handwringing about climate change. Kerry
averred that the United States was not trying to contain China.
From his press availability:
Our cooperation, frankly, on issues of enormous importance in the world should not go unnoticed. China and the United States are cooperating on big-ticket items. We’ve worked together in the P5+1 on Iran. We’ve worked together on Afghanistan. We have worked together on Syria. We are working together on other issues like South Sudan and the prevention of violence there. And we appreciate enormously the Chinese efforts with respect to those kinds of initiatives. Not many people know that that kind of cooperative effort is underway.
Kerry’s statement on the SCS disputes—particularly his
apparent endorsement of Chinese gripes about provocations by “others”-- will probably have the China
hawks mailing him Neville Chamberlain umbrellas:
And the Chinese have made clear that they believe they need to be resolved in a peaceful and legal manner, and that they need to be resolved according to international law and that process.
And I think they believe they have a strong claim, a claim based on history and based on fact. They’re prepared to submit it, and – but I think they complained about some of the provocations that they feel others are engaged in. And that is why I’ve said all parties need to refrain from that. Particularly with respect to some of the islands and shoals, they feel there have been very specific actions taken in order to sort of push the issue of sovereignty on the sea itself or by creating some construction or other kinds of things.
So the bottom line is there was a very specific statement with respect to the importance of rule of law in resolving this and the importance of legal standards and precedent and history being taken into account to appropriately make judgments about it.
The PRC leadership obviously likes Kerry and his policies,
especially when compared with the alternative (Hillary Clinton); and it seems
to me that Kerry is not just playing good cop in the good cop/bad cop
chainyanking exercise.
So China hawks have a right to be anxious that Big John is
not sufficiently enthusiastic about twisting the PRC’s testicles until
universal peace, freedom, democracy, and prosperity explode into East Asia.
Nevertheless, a Global Times op-ed realistically noted that
nice words from Big John do not, however, translate directly into a favorable
attitude by the United States:
Kerry did say
something to pressure China as US politicians always do. But he also reasonably
exchanged ideas with Chinese leaders and showed some good faith. His positive
remarks about the US not to contain China will at least have some impact on
Washington's behavior for a while. We are not demanding too much.
I don’t think the hawks have to worry overmuch. The countdown to a new, almost certainly more
hardline US presidency has begun, and the PRC is unlikely to deliver any
foreign policy win to Kerry that’s big enough to cause a significant and
lasting U-turn in US policy.
Also, by yielding to the insistence of the Pentagon to
endorse Japanese “collective self defense”, I think the Obama administration
has let the pendulum swing far enough away from China that it has sacrificed
much of its tattered “honest broker” cred and, from the PRC point of view, is
perhaps considered “weak on Japan” i.e. so far in Japan’s pocket that it cannot
constrain Japanese behavior in a way useful to the PRC.
On the surface, “collective self defense” doesn’t seem to be
a huge change to the US-Japanese relationship.
It would simply enable closer integration of US and Japanese forces during
joint military operations. Of course,
this might involve joint flotillas in international waters countering the
mythical threat to freedom of navigation from the PRC but, I suppose, the
thinking is that the US would have overall command and therefore control over
when and where a serious confrontation with the PRC might occur.
However…
Japanese strategists, to their credit, have repeatedly
asserted the “collective self defense” will be applied to Japanese security
arrangements with other friendly countries (read Philippines, India), new
bilateral relationships that have nothing to do directly with the United
States.
(Astute observers, of course the only kind of readers China
Matters has, will recall that the Abe administration frequently if discretely
voices its anxiety about true US staying power in Asia in order to justify its independent
security outreach in the region and thereby stampede the Obama
administration into a more assertively pro-Japanese policy.)
Anyway, assuming that Prime Minister Abe as expected announces the
legitimacy of “collective self defense” through a cabinet statement, the
Rubicon’s been crossed, cat’s out of the bag, Pandora’s box has been opened,
America sh*t the bed, choose your metaphor, the Japanese government’s freedom
to create a new parallel security regime in Asia without the input of the
United States is being enabled by…the United States.
I’m assuming that the Obama team is well aware of this
implication but has decided not to worry/care about, maybe because President
Obama, contemplating both his lame duck status and his marked distaste for the
PRC regime combined with strong institutional pressure from the Pentagon and
its allies, has decided not to expend too much political and bureaucratic
capital fighting this thing.
And the Chinese leadership, expecting John Kerry’s
panda-hugging tendencies to be circumscribed by the anti-appeasement whispering
campaign, President Obama’s upcoming Asian tour programmed as a celebration of
democratic Asia and the US pivot against the menace of Chinese aggression, the
Japanese government taking advantage of the US tilt to push more aggressive
policies (like the needlessly provocative declaration it wishes to sue the
hapless Captain Zhan), and the prospect of President Clinton waiting in the
wings, will just have to keep its head down for the next few years.
Beyond threatening to disintermediate the US in the creation
of a new Asian security regime, I think the real threat from collective self
defense to regional and US interests comes for its possible integration into “deterrence” as
the standard security template for Asia.
As I discuss in my most recent article at Asia Times Online, US and Japanese strategists have
characterized the situation with the PRC in the East China Sea as a “gray zone
crisis” i.e. neither war nor peace, to be addressed by a combination of
“dynamic” and “static” deterrence.
In the Chinese context, it means that the PRC position is
defined as “probing for and attempting to fill a power vacuum and thereby expel
competing powers from its near beyond”, and the correct riposte is Japanese
vigilance and US preparedness—heightened surveillance activity in the area that
integrates directly into the SDF and US military capability so that decisive
military power can be brought to bear in case of a confrontation.
The possibility that the PRC might have legitimate interests
that could be negotiated is infra dig—it’s
appeasement. Hey, there’s that word
again!
Same thing, of course on the PRC side. With the deterrence framing, concession =
capitulation.
So, conflicts that were and could possibly continue to be
handled through bilateral civilian negotiations become militarized.
Concessions, indeed negotiations, on these issues are not
particularly desirable since they are a sign of lack of resolve and detract
from the credibility of deterrence.
Deterrence, in other words, easily turns into a
self-fulfilling prophecy, with each side continually thinking about escalating
their response so as not to show the dreaded “weakness”.
And, of course, maintaining deterrence offers the delectable
prospect of an arms race, as the various parties parse their worst-case
scenarios and decide to muscle up.
With the concept of collective self defense, Japan has the
opportunity to apply the two-tiered deterrent architecture to formal security
arrangements it concludes directly with other Asian democracies. Thereby, the US is faced with diminished
regional clout in an environment of increased danger.
Beyond the theoretical problems with collective security and
deterrence theory, there are some major holes in practice.
In Japanese affairs, the double-tiered deterrent structure
deploys Japanese forces at the front end, with the US at the back end. Looking at it another way, the providers of “static
deterrent” are theoretically hostage to the implementers of “dynamic deterrence”
because the “static” is expected to back up the “dynamic”, otherwise the credibility
of deterrence collapses and with it the whole security architecture.
But the one thing the United States does not want to do is
get forced in a war with the PRC because the SDF shot down some plane over
Senkakus; and the security treaty, by specifying in case of an attack the US “would
act to meet the common danger in accordance with its constitutional provisions
and processes” does not directly mandate War! This unavoidable loophole irks and concerns
the Abe administration, I think, for good reason: there is always the chance
that the US Cavalry, instead of riding to Japan’s rescue, will first stop off
for an anxious powwow with the enemy.
This sort of ambiguity is great for US flexibility, but it
undercuts the credibility of deterrence and, in fact, makes the whole deterrent
concept look rather fanciful and destabilizing.
And, truth be told, a similar modified-hangout-backup would probably also
apply to any security arrangement that Japan might conclude with the now useful
but potentially dangerous fire-breathing administration of Philippine
President Aquino.
So, to the militarizing and escalating dynamic of deterrence
add a widespread suspicion about its actually effectiveness.
With the implementation of collective self defense and
deterrence, we are faced with a situation in which the US pivot to Asia, which
is supposed to a) secure American leadership and b) assure the peace and
prosperity of the region for the 21st century by c) reducing
tensions and avoiding the dreaded miscalculations and misunderstandings is
instead a) promoting the disintermediation of the United States in the Asian
defense equation by empowering Japan b) stoking an expensive arms race and c)
polarizing Asia into two opposing blocs d) making it more likely that some
Asian power will do something irrevocably stupid.
Rather ironic.
Deterrence is a dead end, figuratively. Hopefully figuratively, not literally.
I don’t blame Prime Minister Abe or Japan for this state of
affairs. He has a strategy for advancing
Japanese interests at the PRC’s expense.
It’s zero sum, but he expects Japan to come out on the positive-number
side of the equation.
I have less generous feelings about the US foreign policy
solons who look to the Asian pivot and a deterrence structure to make life
easier for US budgeters and defense planners, and pick up some easy diplomatic
gains by encouraging antagonisms between the Asian democracies and the PRC, but
don’t seem to have thought through the ultimate implications for the US
position in Asia.
Mostly, I think it’s because America is hooked on
hegemonism—being the unmatchable top dog in Asia—but really can’t do it alone
as Asia becomes more prosperous and pours more money into national defense
budgets.
So I think the US is taking a leaf from the history of the
Roman Empire, by enlisting the inhabitants of the borderlands—in this case
Asian democracies instead of fur-clad Goths—in order to make sure the imperial
writ is still obeyed. The US might not
find itself fighting off Goths, but it will find itself herding cats—or
Japanese panthers—and the US leadership position in Asia will degrade
accordingly.
The popularity of the China pivot strategy is a testament to
the remarkable power of a bad idea.
As currently implemented, the pivot may not be a workable
solution for Asia’s putative ills, but it’s a big fat gift to the military,
military contractors, and think tanks.
And it has a virtue shared with other bad ideas.
Dealing with the neverending stream of negative consequences
created by a really bad idea is called “process”. And “process” can be very profitable.
Trying to turn chickenshit into chickensalad isn’t just a
job; it’s a career, maybe even a lifelong crusade. I don’t doubt that the architects of the
pivot, when they shuffle off their mortal coil and enter the neo-liberal
Valhalla, will still find profitable PRC containment conundrums with which to
wrestle.
Thanks, Pivot to Asia!
Somewhere up there the God of War is laughing.
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