Chuck Hagel's Demise...and James Fanell's Rise...and Australia!

The dismissal of an unwilling Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense in 2014 was, I think, a watershed in the fortunes of the China hawks, both in the Pentagon and at Pacific Command.

Perhaps because it is bad form to explore the possibility that Hagel was purged for insufficient enthusiasm for a pro-active China confrontation agenda, nobody went there.  But I did.  Natch.

In 2015, I buried my analysis in a tediously long piece that was meant to give an overview of the evolution of US China policy, and provide a corrective to the "Chinese aggression" meme that China hawks like to lean on.

The narrative of escalating Chinese aggression is central to the China hawks' thesis that we need an escalating response. 

Rather interestingly, today a lot of this narrative is coming out of Australia. Google "Chinese influence Australia" and you'll get an idea of the barrage of local and global coverage keying on the skillfully shaped message that Chinese influence--though it is not illegal--must be feared.

I've recently come to the conclusion that spate of panic stricken reports emerging from Australia concerning the China menace in economics, politics, and academics are a belated and improvised substitute for what was supposed to be the real deal: a pivot from Obama namby-pambyism to steely Clinton resolve to confront China in 2016.

The unexpected Trump victory--and the determined gutting of the State Department by Team Trump--has temporarily put paid to dreams of running a united and highly coordinated global anti-China initiative out of a Clinton White House drawing on allies and assets in Asia and Europe. 

Instead, the aggressive anti-China alliance is being improvised in exile and, in Australia, with the support of James Clapper, who did a visiting scholar thing down there, the unflagging efforts of the Lowy Institute (which, in addition to serving as the FP mouthpiece of the Lowy family, which bundled for the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign and contributed coin to the Clinton Foundation, also employs Hillary Clinton's foreign policy major domo Jake Sullivan), and the assistance of a local flock of eager pro-US China hawks at Australian unis and think tanks and in the media.

More significantly, I'm guessing Team Clinton might be getting more than a little help from the king of PACOM's China hawks, Admiral Harry Harris, in supporting the Australian natsec establishment in eliciting a remarkably aggressive anti-China posture out of previously dovish Malcolm Turnbull.

Admiral Harris, indeed, is rumored to be ready to retire from the US Navy to take over as US Ambassador to Australia next year, which would give him the opportunity to get hands-on in coordinating the China confrontainment mission.

With this perspective, it's interesting to read what I wrote in 2015 after Chuck Hagel hit the bricks:

Now, of course, the DoD has a new boss—Secretary of Defense Ash Carter; and PACCOM has a new commander—Admiral Harry Harris, and the general consensus is that the muscular defense sector has wrestled China policy away from the milquetoastian White House.  Interestingly, Admiral Harris was previously the Pentagon’s liaison to to the State Department under Hillary Clinton as well as John Kerry, which reinforces my impression that Hillary Clinton and her foreign policy advisors have pre-loaded China policy with her supporters, and I expect things to get ugly quickly so that the nasty and awkward business of starting the confrontation can be done under Obama before Clinton enters office.

As I put it elsewhere: Hillary wants to inherit her China crisis from Obama, not foment it herself.

 

And maybe now we've had to outsource the crisis to Australia!
For those who want to go through a lengthy and taxing account of how the China hawks developed their narrative and strategies since 2010, there's the full 2015 piece: It's Official.  America Has a China Containment Policy. 

For those who want to read about Chuck Hagel getting shivved (a story I don't think anybody has told in full) read on in this tasty excerpt:

The Chuck Hagel years (Feb 2013-15) are a sore point for US hawks, and perhaps explain why they like to date the South China Sea crisis to 2012 and a period of accommodation/appeasement/common sense during which the PRC ran amok in the South China Sea, and not 2010 when the carnival really started.

In an end-2013 piece on the South China Sea, Bull In The China Shop, Professor Pedrozo, the legal muse for China hawks in the navy,  (now at the US Naval War College, the go-to institution for US SCS lawfare) gave full rein to his China hawk side.  Beginning with an epigraph from Franklin Roosevelt, “When you see a rattlesnake poised to strike, you do not wait until he has struck before you crush him”,  and concluding with an exhortation to America, with its allies, to “stand up to Chinese brinkmanship before it is too late”, Pedrozo’s piece is also remarkable for the venom it displays toward then Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, PACCOM’s Admiral Locklear, and the Obama China team for its caution/appeasement in dealing with the PRC on the Cowpens incident, the East China Sea ADIZ, and the tussle over Scarborough Shoal.

A key event in 2014 was a speech given in February by a key Navy insider and China hawk, Captain James Fanell to a US Naval Institute conference, in which he stated: 

“[We] concluded that the PLA has been given the new task to be able to conduct a short, sharp war to destroy Japanese forces in the East China Sea, following with what can only be expected a seizure of the Senkakus or even a southern Ryukyu [island] — as some of their academics say.”

Maybe bullshit, as in Fanell seizing on the  “everybody has a warplan for every contingency” thing to make China-bashing hay.  But the key element was that Captain Fannel was the head of intelligence for PACCOM…and he had gone off rez.

And he had gone off rez at the same time that Secretary Hagel was prepping for a make-nice trip with the PRC.

Fanell’s comments come at the same time that Washington is arranging a trip for Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel to Beijing, with the expressed goal of enhancing U.S.-China military-to-military relationships. U.S. military officials want this relationship, among other reasons, to prevent some of the tense encounters between U.S. and Chinese ships in recent years.

In that context, Washington officials, when asked about Fanell’s comments, dismissed them.


Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno, who has been in Beijing laying the groundwork for Hagel’s visit, went a step further.

Asked about Fanell’s “short, sharp war” assessment, Odierno responded: "I've seen no indications of that at all."

And Fanell’s speech to an obscure conference about East Asian hypotheticals miraculously received the widest possible attention in the non-specialist media.

Fanell was reassigned i.e. demoted in November 2014 (took a while, didn’t it?  Admiral Harris, at the time the nominated but not yet confirmed Commander, Pacific Command, promoted from Commander, Pacific Fleet [and Fanell’s boss], did the dirty, perhaps as a condition of his new employment). 

Navy Times reported:

Fanell's views have supporters inside naval intelligence, and he has become a high-profile spokesman for a more alarmist view of the rise of China than those espoused by Navy senior leadership, an intelligence source who spoke to Navy Times said. Fanell's articles on China have been published by Hoover Digest, Naval Intelligence Professionals Quarterly and the U. S. Naval Institute's Proceedings.

So Fanell was gone, but guess what?  Two weeks later, Hagel was gone as well!

Supposedly Hagel was booted because he wasn’t up to the IS challenge, but I wonder.  I’m not alone.  Per US News & World Reports at the announcement of Hagel’s involuntary retirement:

“I can’t figure out what he did to merit being voted off the island,” says Eric Edelman, who until 2009 served as the undersecretary of defense for policy, essentially the No. 3 position at the Pentagon. 

 “He gave them the strategy and the budget they asked for and wanted,” Edelman says. The White House has planned for a military drawdown after wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and a reset toward a renewed presence in the Pacific. “I understand there were a few occasions when he may have leaned a little too far forward on his skis with regards to ISIS. But it’s kind of hard to figure out what it is they found lacking in his performance.”

US Middle East policy in 2015 is, for lack of a better term, still totally for sh*t under Ash Carter and still characterized by conflicted flailing and an utter unwillingness by the US uniformed forces to re-embrace the jihadi tar baby, a sentiment that Hagel shared completely, but Asia policy…well, galloping along in the new hawkish direction.

Fanell retired too, but his January 31, 2015 retirement party was pretty much a victory lap and a sounding of the China threat tocsin.  In his farewell speech, Fanell said:

[T]he Communist Party of China’s designs stand in direct contrast to espoused U.S. national security objectives of freedom of navigation and free access to markets for all of Asia. 

This not only threatens our own national security, but is also very clearly upsetting the entire Asia Pacific region has enjoyed for over 70 years. 

The challenge, as I have seen it, is for intelligence professionals to make the case, to tell the truth and to convince national decision and policy makers to realize that China’s rise, if left unchecked or undeterred, will necessarily disrupt the peace and stability of our friends, partners and allies.  We should not have to wait for an actual shooting war to start before we acknowledge there is a problem and before we start taking serious action.  The “Rebalance” is a good first step forward, but it must be backed up with a real, tangible deterrent force and we must stand-up to Beijing’s propaganda and bullying campaign, especially those that come at the expense of our allies and partners.

To continue the synchronicity of Hagel & Fanell’s careers, Hagel’s retirement ceremony took place three days earlier and was, we can say, shrouded in defeat & failure:

A senior Pentagon official told NBC News at the time that Hagel was asked to step down because the president no longer had confidence in his ability to lead the military as it struggled to defeat Islamic extremists waging war in the Middle East.

'He wasn’t up to the job,' the official said. 

...

Today Earnest's stand-in, Deputy Press Secretary Eric Schultz, said 'friction' between the White House and the Pentagon is 'something that predates this administration.'

...

Schultz said the White House believes it has 'good relationships with the military leaders.'

Uh-huh.

With Hagel gone, the US on track to extract new defense guidelines from Japan, and with the DoD in the hands of the China hawks, it was clear to the PRC it was time to make hay while the sun shone and get its facts on the water for a prolonged period of China containment struggle, one that might endure for the next decade factoring in the possibility of two terms for Hillary Clinton.

It's Official: America Has a China-Containment Policy

Actually, that was a title of a post I wrote in July 2010, before island-building, before the Senkaku crises, before the rare earths brouhaha, even before Hillary Clinton declared that the US had a “national interest” in freedom of navigation at the 2010 ASEAN foreign ministers’ conference in Hanoi and formally kicked off the “pivot”.

I offer it as a reminder to the indignant commentators who declare we’re just out in the South China Sea responding to the PRC threat, a theme serendipitously sounded in an op-ed in The Australian by the Lowy Institute’s Alan Dupont after I thought I had finished this piece, but not too late some last-minute cut and paste:

Fairfax columnist Hugh White, for example, believes US policy makers have long believed that the territorial disputes in the South China Sea are a strategic opportunity rather than a problem for the US, allowing them to “cast Beijing as a bullying and aggressive rising power and themselves as the indispensable guardians of regional order and international law”.

These portrayals misrepresent the main causes of the rising tensions in the South China Sea and the issues at stake for Australia and the region.

The genesis of the current imbroglio was Beijing’s 2012 decision to prioritise the South China Sea and initiate an extensive, unprecedented land reclamation program on disputed islands that it occupied or planned to occupy.

That’s leaving out a big chunk of history, including all the stuff Hillary Clinton was involved in before she left office. 

I cover the current efforts in wishful historiography in a piece at Asia Times.  It is keyed to more alarming piece of opinion management than Dupont’s measured op-ed, a Japanese contribution courtesy of Yomiuri Shimbun that included this map illustrating the assertion that US intervention in the South China Sea is necessary to bottle up the PRC’s strategic nuclear submarine fleet: 

It’s a pretty brazen showing of the containment hoof and involves a leapfrog from the previous “freedom of navigation” nonsense to a more straightforward (but in its implications for a nuclear arms race and the problem of trying to achieve first-strike supremacy over a nuclear adversary wary and armed to the teeth much riskier) military containment strategy.

I conclude:

[I]sn’t it interesting how the US has converted a PRC “core interest” in its vital near beyond sea lanes in the South China Sea into a US “core interest” in securing the South China Sea 8000 miles away against unrestricted PRC submarine traffic? 

…

Now, of course, the DoD has a new boss—Secretary of Defense Ash Carter; and PACCOM has a new commander—Admiral Harry Harris, and the general consensus is that the muscular defense sector has wrestled China policy away from the milquetoastian White House.  Interestingly, Admiral Harris was previously the Pentagon’s liaison to to the State Department under Hillary Clinton as well as John Kerry, which reinforces my impression that Hillary Clinton and her foreign policy advisors have pre-loaded China policy with her supporters, and I expect things to get ugly quickly so that the nasty and awkward business of starting the confrontation can be done under Obama before Clinton enters office.

As I put it elsewhere: Hillary wants to inherit her China crisis from Obama, not foment it herself.

It may give heartache to the “Chinese aggression is the root of all evil” crowd but anybody who doesn’t see a crash US program to escalate  what the PRC would like to limit to a contained and manageable local friction in the SCS simply isn’t paying attention.

My apparently distinctly marginal view is that this policy is not going to work very well (though its difficulties will be the source of much occupation and profit for the milsec fixer-uppers and explainers).

As I see the problem, America is not striving for the goal of regional security; it is chasing the chimera of continued American leadership even as the strength of all the Asian powers—Vietnam, Japan, Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines as well as the PRC—grow, and US relative strength declines.

In other words, China will spend the next ten years grabbing what it can; and the United States will be struggling to keep what it can’t.

READ THE WHOLE THING. 

Below the fold I’m providing the mother of all South China Sea ‘splainers as background.  It floats, for the first time, I think, the theory that Chuck Hagel was forced out as Secretary of Defense by the China hawks at the Pentagon.

7500 words give or take.  You have been warned.  If this piece is reposted by some bot, the two long blog post block quotes will undoubtedly get screwed up to the confusion of all.  Refer to the original post at China Matters for proper formatting.

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: