Cold War Heats Up in Asia

The People’s Republic of China decided to defy the “pivot to Asia” by parking its HYSY 981 drilling platform—protected by a flotilla of various vessels perhaps not including PLAN ships-- in waters that Vietnam considers part of its EEZ.

Vietnam has been displeased, to put it mildly.  It has reached out to the Philippines, indicating that it may support Manila’s legal challenge to the nine-dash-line or perhaps institute a legal case of its own.

A Vietnamese deputy prime minister is also visiting Washington DC at US Secretary of State John Kerry's invitation, apparently to provide optics for an expected US congressional resolution condemning PRC activities in the South China Sea.  The visit also raises the specter (for the PRC) of a US return to Cam Ranh Bay, the massive US-built naval base on the southish Vietnamese coast.

Many Western observers believe that the PRC has blundered into the pivot’s clever trap, and its aggressive moves are simply driving its neighbors into the welcoming arms of the United States, enabling a more forward military presence for the US around China’s borders, and justifying US claims to a central role in the region as security guarantor.

I suspect, however, that the PRC has gamed this out and is willing to roll the dice in the South China Sea.  

The long-term view from Beijing, I think, is that China occupies enough islands to move beyond the hard to defend “cow tongue” claim to a more defensible island sovereignty + EEZ formula for pursuing its interests in the SCS; China’s growing economic and military heft, its ability to limit the terms of dispute to economic terms, the unresolved issues of EEZ ambiguity, definition, and enforcement, and the PRC’s unwillingness to budge from its positions will force its neighbors to come to terms, albeit reluctantly and resentfully, over the long haul.

East China Sea is a different matter.  

On the issue of the Senkakus, the “possession is 9/10s of the law” shoe is on Japan’s foot.  Furthermore, the islands are unambiguously included in the scope of the US-Japan security treaty thanks to President Obama’s statement during his recent pivot tour to Asia (even though the US doesn’t recognize Japanese sovereignty over the islands; that’s another story), and Japan’s military infrastructure and capabilities to defend them are increasing.  Assuming that Prime Minister Abe is able to thread the needle through the Japanese constitution and past the suspicious Japanese public and institute “collective self defense”, Japanese military power will be augmented by its ability to engage in “defensive” military activity while conducting joint operations with the US.

I read the red tea leaves and believe that the PRC does not have a realistic expectation of seizing the Senkakus or otherwise changing the status quo vis a vis Japan over the islands.  I wouldn’t be surprised if the PRC has few serious intentions of occupying the Senkakus and foments tension simply as a “pricetag” retaliation for Japan’s increasingly overt and aggressive anti-PRC foreign policy.

With the PRC deterred from making a genuine move against the Senkakus, the dominant dynamic in the East China Sea will be of Japan trying to achieve unity of doctrine and response with the United States for a contain-China policy, while the PRC will be trying to wedge US and Japan.

The process plays out with Japan’s invocation of “gray zone crises” i.e. friction with the PRC manifested in non-military ways.  Japan is trying to establish a definition of gray zone conflicts that permits a military response to a non-military scenario such as the PRC's ceaseless salami-slicing, and thereby gets the United States on the hook to provide backup muscle for the Japanese move.  I see this as Japan's desired quid pro quo for signing on to "collective self defense".

One scenario I saw involved “armed Chinese fishermen” i.e. the idea that the PRC might try to seize the Senkakus with some kind of irregular force that the coast guard couldn't handle, and would require an SDF response even though PLA forces nominally weren't involved.  As the United States digests the Crimea annexation precedent, expect Japan to invoke this kind of scenario more frequently.

The United States, whose primary interest is to get Japan on the hook for US military adventures, not the other way around, is apparently resistant to nailing down the “gray zone conflict” definition and giving Japan a green light (or at least a blinking yellow) for pushing back on the PRC, especially in murky a.k.a. "gray" clashes between Japanese and PRC vessels on the high seas.

Indeed, the gray zone problem neatly crystallizes the whole problem of the pivot: that it creates a moral hazard (in Western terms) or emboldens US allies (the PRC formulation) to engage in reckless behavior not necessarily advantageous to US interests, specifically the US interest in not engaging in a scorched earth economic conflict with the PRC for the sake of some uninhabited rocks.

Failing a meeting of the minds on “gray zone” conflicts, Japan has to content itself with provocations against the PRC in the hope that a PRC over-reaction will compel the US to expand its de facto security guarantees to Japan.

I place the recent contretemps over the close-quarters flyby conducted by Chinese fighter jets against Japanese military surveillance aircraft in the area of the joint PRC-Russia naval exercise in the category of a provocation, committed with an awareness of growing US disgruntlement with the PRC as well as the Obama administration's need to explicitly stand with allies post-Crimea.

Western media has reliably regurgitated Japanese government spin that the flyby was some recklessly aggressive behavior by the PRC.

However, facts indicate that the Chinese military posted a no-fly/no sail notification concerning the naval exercise and Japan flew over there anyway. 

 

The only justification that Japan can offer is that it refuses to recognize the PRC ADIZ over the East China Sea.  In fact, the incident shows why it’s important to respect other countries’ declared ADIZs and in fact the reckless party in this episode was not the PRC, but Japan.  In terms of unintended consequences, it may also feed into US concerns about the hazards of letting Japan take the initiative in butting heads with the PRC in the ECS and then demanding US backing.

Interestingly, the official Japanese position now seem to be limited to the “Chinese planes flew too darn close” bleating.  

An as yet unnoted element of the ADIZ issue is that the United States is the only power that asserts the right to fly military aircraft through somebody else’s ADIZ without filing a flight plan (to refresh everybody’s memory, US-flagged civilian carriers respect the PRC ADIZ regs.  But the US immediately flew two B-52s into the ADIZ unannounced to affirm the US military prerogative).  

Now Japan seems to be asserting that same right for its military aircraft, at least within the PRC ADIZ, a “destabilizing” “status quo-changing” state of affairs, one that also places the Japanese military at parity with the United States on this issue.  I wonder if the US is terribly happy about this but will have to suck it up since Japan is currently dangling the collective self defense and TPP carrots before it.

It would seem unlikely that the United States would take Japan under its wing, so to speak, and conduct joint military flight patrols within China’s ADIZ as a show of support, but the Obama administration’s red line manhood is being questioned worldwide post-Syria and post-Crimea.  So it might happen.

And the PRC might just have to suck it up, consoling itself with the idea that getting its way in the South China Sea is adequate compensation for getting balked in the East China Sea.  

At the back of everybody’s mind, I think, is the potential real crisis in East Asia: the possibility that Taiwan will declare de jure independence at some time, and the PRC will be compelled to put up or shut up on the relatively existential issue of losing Taiwan.  That’s when military posturing, military threats, and military maneuvers become genuinely pressing issues.

In this context, I consider the most disturbing development in US-PRC relations is not the tussling over rocks in the South China Sea or the East China Sea; it is the decision to twist China’s nuts with the indictment of five PLA officers for hacking.  I expect the US national security civilian apparatus considers the indictment one of those clever, legalistic soft power moves that, again, traps China in the web of law and international norms.

But the battle lines in Asia have hardened: pivot vs. China.  The status quo is becoming confrontation, at least in regional security issues.  With the expectation that US and PRC forces will be engaging and confronting each other, it would seem desirable that both sides have a better understanding of their opposite numbers.  Indeed, the US Department of Defense has shown little enthusiasm for the White House's anti-hacking jihad which, in addition to clearing out the US government's stock of cyberrighteousness, seriously depreciated by the Snowden revelations, has scotched US-PRC military-to-military exchanges on ground rules for cyberwarfare.

Engagement with the PRC, for better or worse, has become a military matter.  And if a clash occurs, it had better be because at least one side really wants it, and not because of the main abettors of military catastrophe: FUD or "Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt."

Bell Tolls for the Pivot in the South China Sea

In discussing the issue of why the PRC plunked down the drilling rig HYSY981 off the Vietnamese coast, there seems to be a certain amount of cognitive dissonance plaguing the Western commentariat.

Apropos l’affaire HYSY 981,The Asia Society hosted a roundtable on its website composed of the luminaries Daniel Kliman, Ely Ratner, Orville Schell, Susan Shirk, and Carl Thayer.  Almost all of them ignored the elephant in the room—the US pivot to Asia.

Only Carl Thayer, in my opinion, gets it right in discussing the third of his three possibilities for the PRC’s provocation:

The third interpretation stresses the geo-political motivations behind China’s actions. The deployment of the CNOOC mega rig was a pre-planned response to President Barack Obama’s recent visit to East Asia. China was angered by Obama’s support for both Japan and the Philippines in their territorial disputes with Beijing. Therefore China manufactured the oil rig crisis to demonstrate to regional states that the United States was a “paper tiger” and there was a gap between Obama’s rhetoric and ability to act.

The third interpretation has plausibility. China can make its point and then withdraw the oil rig once it has completed its mission in mid-August. But this interpretation begs the question why Vietnam was the focus for this crisis and why China acted on the eve of the summit meeting of the heads of government/state of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

I would go a step further than Mr. Thayer, and opine that China’s South China Sea escapade is more than a one-off tantrum.  It represents a “sea change” in the PRC’s strategy for dealing with the pivot to Asia.

For US-China relations, that means:

No G2.  That’s been clear since Hillary Clinton 86’ed the concept as Secretary of State, anyway.

Little more than symbolic lip service to the “new great power” relationship founded on the comforting myth of the World War II victors’ dispensation with the heirs to Roosevelt & Chiang Kai-shek calling the Asian shots, a fantasy which Prime Minister Abe is working assiduously to undermine and supersede.

And, most importantly, from the Chinese point of view, no pivot, at least in the South China Sea. 

In other words, the PRC intends to ignore the idea that its actions in its near beyond are to be deterred by the alarm and opposition of the US and the Asian democracies, thereby challenging the basic assumption of the pivot: that PRC’s defiance of the pivot triggers a virtuous cycle of escalation and anxiety, causing smaller Asian countries to cleave to the United States more closely, thereby enhancing US influence and inhibiting the PRC’s freedom of motion.

I would suggest that, to answer Mr. Thayer’s rhetorical question, the reason that the PRC decided to beat up on Vietnam just before the ASEAN summit—when, by pivot logic the PRC should be loath to antagonize its nervous regional interlocutors and increase the risk of united, anti-PRC action on behalf of Vietnam and the Philippines by the various spooked ASEAN nations—the Chinese leadership did it because they could, and because they wanted to.

Quite simply, I think, the PRC wanted to make a statement that it would not be deterred.  

Surprisingly, ASEAN went along and declined to administer a serious flaming to the PRC, despite the vociferous complaints of Vietnam and the Philippines concerning the rather blatant provocations by the PRC.  A communique on the issue merely asked for “all sides” to show restraint.  Wonder how much bilateral stroking and armtwisting that took.

The fact that the PRC has taken a major action to repudiate the basic premise of the pivot—that a US-led security alliance can deter unilateral and provocative PRC behavior and put an end to the endless exercise of salami-slicing and cabbage-wrapping in its maritime adventures—is, in my opinion, a pretty big deal.

The pivot, after all, is welcomed because it assumes that the PRC, whose military is no match for the US or even, probably, Japan, can be deterred with relatively low risk and at low cost.

If the PRC is going to ignore the consequences of challenging the US pivot and assume, rather logically, that the US is not going to light off a war with China over the SCS, those costs and risks increase.  Worst case, President Obama has to fall back on Nixon’s “madman” doctrine, which is to say the United States is prepared to inflict and endure (at least through its unlucky allies) losses disproportionate to the interests at stake in order to maintain credibility of the deterrent.

The PRC’s willingness to challenge, provoke, and escalate is a major issue for the pivot. 

However, the clang of cognitive dissonance still seems to be faint and ignorable for the public US Asian affairs commentariat, at least as long as the designated victim is Vietnam, if the Asia Society round table is an indicator.

Ely Ratner and Susan Shirk, in particular, take the tack that the HYSY981 is simply a big, stupid blunder by the big, stupid PRC.

First, Ely Ratner:

[T]he Chinese Communist Party appears increasingly unable to reconcile predominant political and economic goals of securing its sovereignty aims while sustaining a peaceful regional security environment… we’ve seen China engage in bearish and clumsy actions that have raised concerns not just in Tokyo and Manila, but also Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta and now Hanoi. At the end of the day, this means that domestic bureaucratic and political imperatives are overcoming the logic of strategy in Beijing, a dangerous development for outsiders hoping that relative costs and benefits (not politics and nationalism) will shape China’s decision-making on its territorial disputes… These…troubling elements paint the picture of a country whose foreign policy is untethered from strategic logic and increasingly engaging in preemptive revisionism.

And Susan Shirk:

The diplomats in the Chinese Foreign Ministry, especially Foreign Minister Wang Yi, who crafted China’s very successful strategy to reassure Asian countries about China’s friendly intentions during 1996-2009 and is trying to revive the strategy now under Xi Jinping, must be well aware that such high-profile assertions of sovereignty will provoke a backlash among China’s worried neighbors. When ASEAN meets next week, the Southeast Asian countries will certainly be pointing fingers at China, as Taylor Fravel predicts in his very informative Q & A with The New York Times. But the Foreign Ministry’s voice no longer dominates the foreign policy process.

What China’s actions reflect, as Ely Ratner says, is the very dangerous possibility that Chinese security policy has become “untethered from strategic logic.” In other words, domestic bureaucratic interest groups and nationalist public opinion are driving toward over-expansion of sovereignty claims in a manner that could actually harm China’s overall national security interests.

I am no fan of the “crazy stupid psycho panda” school when it comes to analyzing PRC moves that the US finds disturbing.  Nevertheless, the CSPP school is a remarkably durable construct in US Asia-wonk circles, perhaps in direct proportion in faith in the genius of the pivot and the idea that it is the best and essential tool for dealing with the PRC.

My general take is that the United States is the only power with the wealth, military capability, and political and geographic impunity to act really stupidly and irrationally, a characteristic, I might say, is on full display as the Obama administration feeds Ukraine into the maw of anarchy in order to punish Russia for the annexation of Crimea (and perhaps distract attention from the spectacular, compounded clusterf*ck that is the US program for building a pro-Western regime in Kyiv).

Smaller powers, regional powers, and candidate superpowers in complicated neighborhoods, like the PRC, have to plan their moves a little more carefully.

And Beijing has been thinking.

China’s Defense Minister, Chang Wanquan, drew a line during his joint press conference with Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel in early April:

China-U.S. relations is by no means the relations between China -- between the U.S. and the former Soviet Union during the Cold War, nor is it relation of coercion and anti-coercion. With the latest development in China, it can never be contained.

Fast forward to the ruckus surrounding the HYSY 981:

MOFA spokersperson’s statement on May 12:

Q: First, Association for Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) calls for speeded-up negotiations with China on the Code of Conduct in the South China Sea (COC). What is China's response to that? Second, some western media believed that China's drilling activities in the waters off Xisha Islands are in response to the US's pivot to Asia and President Obama's recent visit to Asia. What is China's comment?
A: On your first question, the issue of South China Sea is not one between China and ASEAN. There is consensus between China and ASEAN countries on jointly safeguarding peace and stability in South China Sea. China stands with ASEAN countries to continue to work for a full and effective implementation of the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC) and steadily move forward the negotiation process of COC.
[As to the second question, the spokesperson asserted that the drilling rig operation was routine and had nothing to do with the pivot, which I choose to interpret as a backhanded statement that the pivot has nothing to do with the South China Sea.]

And May 13: 

Q: The US Secretary of State John Kerry held a phone conversation with Foreign Minister Wang Yi today. The US side asked China to stop taking provocative actions. What is China's response to that?
A: You mentioned the word "provocative". It is true that provocative actions have been seen in the South China Sea recently. But they are not taken by China. It is nothing but the wrong words and actions made by the US side on maritime issues that have emboldened some countries to take provocative actions. We would like the US side to think hard on this: if they really want the Pacific region to be pacific, what kind of role should they play? What actions should they take to truly contribute to the peace and stability of the Asia-Pacific region?
…Wang Yi … urged the US to treat these issues with objectivity and fairness, live up to its commitment, watch its words and actions, and avoid emboldening relevant parties' provocative actions.

Emphasis added.

I am not torturing prose here to interpret these remarks as “China cannot be contained” (Chang actually said that), and that the declaration that the PRC will work together with ASEAN to “jointly safeguard peace and stability” is meant to convey that the United States has no legitimate front-line interests in the South China Sea and the main job of the United States is to “watch its words and actions” to avoid exacerbating the problems.

In other words, the PRC is working to maneuver the South China Sea issues away from the rather canard-esque “freedom of navigation” issue that Hillary Clinton used to claim a compelling US interest in the South China Sea disputes in 2010.  

Instead, the drilling rig episode highlights the fact that the real issues in the South China Sea are the local matters of territory, sovereignty, fisheries, hydrocarbon reserves and delineation of Exclusive Economic Zones or EEZ (Vietnam cannot claim an uncontested EEZ at the site of the HYSY 981; beyond the notorious Chinese cow-tongue claim, the rig is too close to the Paracels, which have their own, as yet undefined EEZ potential).  

This framing is more factual and practical, and more problematic for the United States and the pivot in the South China Sea.  

The US doesn’t take positions of sovereignty issues concerning the miserable rocks of the South China Sea and has had to hang its hat on “no forcible change of the status quo” as American policy.  That might work for the Senkakus in the East China Sea, but offers limited consolation for Vietnam in its hopes of recovering the Paracels, or for the Philippines in its travails over the Scarborough Shoal.

As for the headaches of EEZ delineation occasioned by the ridiculous fruit salad of sovereignty claims and disputes in the South China Sea, the US—which has been unable to ratify the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea even as it announces its adherence to its provisions—has even less ability to complain.

So the PRC is now claiming a pretty big chunk of salami—declaring that it doesn’t recognize a US role in the South China Sea.

As to why the PRC is making this provocative move, I’ve argued before that it is moving preemptively, in response to President Obama’s pivot and also expecting an extremely unfriendly constellation of forces in Asia once Hillary Clinton becomes president.   

So I am inclined to believe that Xi Jinping has decided it’s time to challenge the pivot, carefully and via Vietnam, but openly.

In terms of proximate causes, I wonder if it was a smart move to send President Obama to Asia for a trip explicitly & exclusively designed to promote the pivot, lobby for Japanese collective self defense, conclude a new military agreement with the Philippines, leave the PRC off his itinerary, and expect the PRC to be mollified by visits from Michelle Obama and Chuck Hagel?

The PRC apparently didn’t think so, judging from Chang’s pugnacious remarks at the joint news conference with Hagel.  In addition to announcing his rejection of any China-containment strategy, Chang devoted much of his time to complaining about the perceived transgressions of US allies the Philippines and Japan.

Also, I think Ukraine is a factor.  While demonstrating US fecklessness as a security partner for its allies, it also served as an object lesson in the US willingness to escalate recklessly when it sees a chance to stick it to a designated adversary.  

The fact that the United States has seen fit to drive Vladimir Putin into Xi Jinping’s arms just as the PRC was looking at an extremely tough decade of isolation and confrontation with the US and its Asian neighbors will, I am sure, provide ample grist for future students of international relations.

For now, I find it rather mystifying that the PRC challenge to the pivot is ignored in the popular, pundit-driven press.

Maybe it’s me.

But maybe there’s some kind of code of omerta, an agreement that this issue won’t be bruited about until the US government has settled on a suitable public riposte.

I don’t think the US government is oblivious.

Consider this report in Stars & Stripes:

A USS Blue Ridge-embarked helicopter photographed two Chinese navy ships May 5 near the site of a heavily contested shoal that has sparked a months-long standoff between China and the Philippines in 2012.

The Navy’s photo release of two Chinese Navy ships near Scarborough Shoal sparked some online news outlets to label the encounter a confrontation, which 7th Fleet officials disputed Friday.

The USS Blue Ridge is the command and control flagship that runs things for the US Seventh Fleet.  The two Chinese ships—PLAN ships, not the usual maritime patrol vessels that harass the Philippines—were presumably in the area to monitor a joint Philippine-US military exercise.

And I presume that the USS Blue Ridge sailed past the Scarborough Shoal in order to yank the PRC’s chain, and not just because that was the quickest way to Thailand, which the US Navy claimed as the reason for the approach.


This represents something of an escalation of the US presence in the area of the Philippines vis a vis the PRC, especially compared to the US government’s discrete behind the scenes assistance to the Philippine government’s resupply mission (and media jamboree) to the derelict freighter on the Second Thomas Shoal.  
 
By sailing the USN Blue Ridge around down there and flying helicopters to take a gander at the Chinese warships, I think that the US wanted to put the PRC on notice that dispatching the HYSY 981 to Philippine waters will be a more complicated and fraught undertaking than the Vietnam exercise.

Whether the PRC finds it expedient to heed that warning is something we may find out about in the next few months.


Below the fold for reference are excerpts from Chang Wanquan’s remarks at his press conference with Secretary Hagel, and from the MOFA press conferences addressing the oil rig issue:

Twilight of Soft Power

PRC Moves to Hard Power in South China Sea

It is difficult to be blithe about the dispatch of China’s HYSY981 drilling rig into disputed waters off the Vietnamese coast.

It actually would have been less of a provocation if the PRC had sent the aircraft carrier Liaoning down there instead.

One of the interesting by-products of the US “freedom of navigation” campaign in the South China Sea was the U.S. staking out a position that military operations by foreign vessels inside an Exclusive Economic Zone or EEZ were not the kind of economic intrusion that UNCLOS intended to preclude.

In fact, after the harassment of the USNS Impeccable, a US Navy survey vessel that cruises through China’s EEZ towing various gadgets, the US went out of its way to assert that the ship was not doing anything that could be construed as economic or even dual use, such as mapping the ocean floor, and insisted the ship was there to track PLAN submarine movements.

By that logic, the Liaoning chugging through any waters in the South China Sea, in EEZs disputed or not, is something that nobody can complain about.  And indeed, that’s what the Liaoning did, on its shakedown cruise in the South China Sea at the end of 2013.

Sending the HYSY981, China’s billion dollar deep water drilling rig--with its Vaderesque Death Star mission to intimidate China’s hydrocarbon adversaries by demonstrating the PRC’s capabilities in unilateral development of contested oil fields--is exactly the kind of destabilizing EEZ gambit that raises tensions and invites a response.  

The PRC has left itself some wiggle room by sending the rig to a location close to the Paracel Islands—held by China and deserving some as yet undetermined EEZ of its own—so that the waters are contested rather than unambiguously Vietnamese, but the nature of the incursion implies that the PRC was not expecting Vietnam to suck it up and ignore the PRC challenge.

The HYSY981 is reportedly escorted by a flotilla of dozens of vessels, including the PRC’s ubiquitous maritime patrol vessels and, I would assume, the various support vessels needed to go about its drilling business.  I also came across a report, well, actually a statement by an overwrought PRC nationalist blogger, that the rig is also escorted by anti-missile destroyers, which would be a major crossing of the line in bringing overtly military elements into the PRC’s economic contention with its maritime neighbors.

Even if the destroyers aren't on the scene, the PRC is committed to dishing it out.  

Vietnam released a video of PRC maritime patrols vessel ramming Vietnamese coast guard cutters trying to approach the rig, a sign that the PRC has no qualms about playing the pugnacious/threatening/aggressive regional power for a world audience.

The big question is Why?

Why, after Vietnam has been reasonably cooperative in its dealings with the PRC, most conspicuously by declining to openly support the Philippines’ arbitration case against the nine-dash-line, is the PRC picking on it in such an ostentatiously crude and overbearing fashion?

On the most immediate level, I think it’s because the PRC wants the practice—practice in engaging in relatively large, cumbersome naval operations in a genuinely hostile environment, but one in which the embarrassment of a catastrophic military encounter is pretty low.  Engaging in a major provocation inside Vietnam’s declared EEZ and getting the chance to bully Vietnam, with its underpowered marine forces and lack of a formal defense alliance with a capable regional (Japanese) or world (US) power, fills the bill.

One of the biggest challenges to the PRC’s military capability and credibility is that it hasn’t fought a hot war with anybody in the last 35 years.  With a provocation against Vietnam, the military system gets a nice little exercise.

Bearing in mind a comment I read that “the same capital ships that escorted the Liaoning are with the HYSY981", it doesn’t take too much imagination to imagine the Liaoning plunked down inside the same kind of security cordon that now contains the rig.

On the intermediate level, I see the Vietnam gambit as preparation for a confrontation with the country that the PRC really wants to humiliate: the Philippines.

The Philippines is a much riskier nut, since it has 1) a military alliance with the United States and 2) a foreign policy team that has put most of its eggs in the brinksmanship basket, refusing to engage bilaterally with the PRC, relying/hoping that the US will deter PRC aggression and, if some kind of conflict breaks out, intervene in an effective way on the Philippines behalf.

The Philippines apparently sees it the same way, if yesterday’s seizure of a Chinese fishing boat is indeed designed to demonstrate its resolve to succor Vietnam by presenting the PRC with the unwelcome prospect of getting embroiled in two maritime disputes—with the prospect of US involvement—at once.

I don’t think the PRC will take that particular bait today.  But I would not be surprised to see the HYSY981 show up in the “West Philippine Sea” in the near future.

On the higher, long-game level, I believe the PRC leadership has decided that the United States can no longer bring anything positive to the table for the PRC as it has completely and symbolically committed to the Asia pivot and its narrative of PRC containment with President Obama’s trip to Asia.

I think it would have been prudent for President Obama to have hedged America’s bets by dropping in on Beijing, but he didn’t, sending Michelle Obama instead.  Die is cast, in other words.

The PRC response, I believe, is not to confront the United States; it is to marginalize it, by driving the Asian security narrative into regions that deeply concern its neighbors but only tangentially engage the United States.

In recent weeks, I would contend that the PRC has reversed the wedge against the US-Japan alliance. 

Instead of trying to wedge the United States away from Japan and toward some kind of accommodation with PRC interests, the PRC is trying to wedge Japan away from the United States by goading/enticing Japan into an independent role that marginalizes the United States.

So we saw the PRC wait for President Obama to leave Asia, then resume its provocations in the Senkakus, while exchanging peaceable mid-level envoys with Japan…

…and ostentatiously beating up on Vietnam, which Japan has been courting as a member of Prime Minister Abe’s anti-PRC economic and security alliance.

The motive, I would guess, is to compel Japan to abandon its formal lockstep identification with the US pivot leadership in Asia (which, I would posit, Japan has honored in the breach already with its independent-minded footsie with Vietnam, Philippines, & North Korea) and emerge with its own initiative to provide Vietnam with some kind of diplomatic, economic, or military support—or else reveal the hollowness of the assurances it is offering to South East Asian countries to entice them into the Japanese camp.

Once Japan is “off the rez” so to speak, it will be forced to engage in a meaningful way, either through confrontation or negotiation, with the PRC in order to advance its Asia strategy…and the United States will see its clout diminished and have to deal with the PRC as well to get back into the game.

Given the PRC’s traditional focus on avoiding confrontation while it muscles up militarily and diplomatically, this kind of provocation and open escalation would seem to be counter-intuitive.

But I think the PRC has decided that, with the US public commitment to the pivot and encouragement to Japan to implement collective self defense, the US “honest broker” ship has sailed, the real US security role in Asia is backstopping its pivot allies, and the pivot battleline has to be challenged before it became too entrenched.

And it’s doing that by demonstrating, in relatively crude terms, that the deterrent strategy that underpins the pivot will not, well, deter the PRC and the PRC will bear—and extract—the economic costs of defying the will and preferences of the US and its Asian allies (and, in the case of Vietnam, its unlucky Asian associates).

As to why the PRC should decide to excite universal fear and loathing at this particular junction, one could spin it positively by saying that it is simply accelerating the birth of a new Asian order with a new balance of powers and the US stripped of its dominating role.

The negative interpretation is probably more persuasive.  The PRC sees a hard and ugly decade ahead, with anti-PRC administrations in power in many of the Asian capitals, keystoned by a Hillary Clinton presidency.  Best to lance the pivot boil early, before the pivot military bulk-up has completed , and while the relatively conciliatory President Obama is in power and distracted by the idea that he doesn’t want to pile a confrontation with China on top of his current problems with Russia.

The PRC’s decade of soft power is, prematurely, over, thanks to the success of the pivot in blunting the PRC’s drive to dominate the region by virtue of its economic, demographic, and implied military clout.  Its relations with its maritime neighbors will, I expect, be increasingly driven by hard power.

I think the PRC has decided to hunker down, and absorb the diplomatic, economic, and social costs of heightened fear and anger, and gamble that it can outmaneuver and outlast the hostility of the pivot nations.

It’s an ugly and dangerous gamble, especially since the first, second, and third instinct of everyone involved on the anti-PRC side will be to escalate in order to create a greater feeling of security and also bolster the deterrent narrative that the military capabilities of the US and its pivot partners is what is keeping Asia safe.

Dangerous days, indeed.

I originally addressed these themes a couple weeks ago in a piece I’m excerpting below.  So far the model is holding up.  If trends continue, we're in one of those "hate to be right" scenarios.

From April 23, 2014:

In bad news for the United States and the pivot, it looks like the PRC has decided to call [the pivot] bluff.

When Secretary of Defense Hagel visited the PRC, his counterpart, Chang Wanquan, stated:

"The China-U.S. relationship is neither comparable to U.S.-Russia ties in the Cold War, nor a relationship between container and contained. China's development can't be contained by anyone."

This statement is not just bravado and bullshit, in my opinion.  It reflects the PRC’s considered response to the threat of the pivot.

Specifically, the PRC is stating that the containment model doesn’t apply because the PRC is deeply integrated into the global economy and, indeed, into the economies of its putative adversaries.  The PRC does not recapitulate the containment of the USSR envisioned by George Kennan; for Kennan, the USSR had intentionally isolated itself and sought to prop up its rule by invocation of the Western threat, so economic isolation automatically underpinned the military element of containment.

Also, I think the PRC position is based upon the perception that there are no existential issues involved in the PRC’s conflicts with its neighbors.  Nobody wants to upset the global economic applecart by starting World War III over TWINWTDF [The Worthless Islands Nobody Wants to Die For].

So the PRC is signaling it does not fear the pivot.  Or, more accurately, the pivot has produced genuine disadvantages and costs to the PRC, but it has decided it is in its interests to push back, strategically and systematically, instead of trying to modify its behavior to suit the US and its pivoteers.  That’s why the PRC excluded Japan from the naval fleet review planned at Qingdao and, when the US pulled out to demonstrate its support for its pivot partner, cancelled the whole exercise instead of pursuing some face-saving compromise.

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Given the unfavorable west Pacific environment, sitting idly by, or trying to ingratiate itself with the Asian democracies and the United States through soft power gambits do not appear to be high on the PRC's list of options.

With its overtly confrontational moves in Qingdao and Shanghai, it appears the PRC is signaling it is prepared to abandon "soft power", give up on the promise of US forbearance, and manage its business in an increasingly hostile regional environment.

And it doesn't seem likely that the PRC is blustering in order to obtain some face-saving concessions or lip service from the US. It is targeting Japan instead of dealing with the US, and challenging the United States to do something effective in support of its ally.

The PRC has always been alert to the need or opportunity to challenge the credibility of the US deterrent and, with the heightened anxiety fostered by Russia's annexation of Crimea, that day has arrived perhaps sooner than anybody wished.

If the PRC intentionally fomented the Ayungin Shoal resupply crisis with the resolve to let the US-PRC relation go south if needed rather than passively let the pivot dynamic play out to its disadvantage, we are definitely in for some tense and unpleasant times - and the costs of maintaining the credibility of the US deterrent might be considerably higher than we prefer.

The PRC appears to be signaling its determination to hunker down and weather the geopolitical storm - which might include a sooner-rather-than-later Taiwan crisis and the need to blame a handy US scapegoat - for years if need be, and pursue the struggle in domestic venues where it holds an advantage.